How to Escape From a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique Read Free Book Online Page B

I tell her I just slapping my stuff when I look at her picture. She thinks that’s sexy so sometimes that’s what I do for real and I let her listen. I make more noises and stuff than I would if I was by myself, so she could feel she a part of it. I think it’s practice for when we really do it for the first time. I mean, I love this girl. I have some secrets but they in her best interest. I is a street man. And a street man is the sweetest man. Them goody schoolboys don’t know what to do when they have a lady on their hands. They tell everything and make their woman miserable. They worry about career and shit before they worry about pleasing their woman. Not I and I.
    My last name is Colter and that’s a good name on the island. Only my pops is the black sheep so we don’t have no money like the other Colters. But Yolanda’s moms is forgiving. She a black sheep, too. Her husband dead in some American war and now she live down by the seaplanes. So she okay with a street man for a son-in-law. I polite. I say goodnight when I enter. I wash the dishes when they have me over for dinner. And while Yolanda is gone I still visit her moms. Sometimes do her shopping for her. I never bring my piece in their house. I always keep body spray in the car so I don’t smell like sensimania when I knock on the door.
    I pick Yolanda up from the airport when she come home for summer vacation. First thing she tell me is that she miss me and then in the car she all over me. I call her moms on my cell and say that the plane is delayed but it coming in an hour or so. I take Yolanda to this house on a hill that get blow away in the last hurricane. It don’t have no roof and only one wall but it have a flat for the car to drive up and it have a view of the ocean—which is hard to come by on St. Croix. I know this place because I used to deal to the white folks that owned it. They didn’t like to come around the park so I would drop it off during my lunch break. When the hurricane hit they run speeding back to Texas. They had want to set up some long-distance thing but Fish and me can’t be doing that. We small time and I plan on keeping it so. The place ain been sold yet now so it’s kind of my place. I go there to think. Think like how I might one day own my own Sun Shack place. How I would sell shades to all the local roughnecks. Expensive stuff and good quality, like Fendi or Dolce. I think about greeting the customers and putting the things that don’t sell on sale. I think that I’ll always do my own books so no one even have a chance to mess with me. I think even Fish will come to my place with respect and I going give him a deal. I think maybe I could even have the shop here at this blown-away house. How if someone spare me a loan I could set it up.
    I ain never brought anyone else up here. And now I bring Yolanda. We do it right in the driver’s seat. I open the car door so there’s more space. Her back keep hitting the horn and making her laugh. It’s so good, but I don’t want to come too quick so I think about my moms who left the outside light on for me and about how she gonna cuss cause I ain washed her car in a week.
    When we done I ask Yolanda if it’s okay if I smoke. She says it’s cool. I don’t offer her. I don’t like ladies smoking. It’s a bad habit and it looks even worse on them. But for fun I blow the smoke toward her and she open her mouth to catch it. I think that yes, this is my woman. My woman is home.
    It’s summer so we go out constant. Sometimes we hit the beach before it get dark and the sand flies come out. Sometimes she and her moms want to have family time so I wait until midnight and then roll by. I just sit in the car in the middle of the street. Sometimes I park right there, turn off the car, and wait with the radio on low. Yolanda knows my ride so it don’t take her long to come out. Then we go to my house and watch a flick with action and a love story—something we could both be into.