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    Rain
    Rain
    Rain
    Ebook484 pages7 hours

    Rain

    By V.C. Andrews

    4/5

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    • Self-Discovery

    • Family Relationships

    • Coming of Age

    • Personal Growth

    • Identity

    • Fish Out of Water

    • Forbidden Love

    • Secret Identity

    • Rich Vs. Poor

    • Love Triangle

    • Rags to Riches

    • Class Conflict

    • Riches to Rags

    • Estranged Family Members

    • Star-Crossed Lovers

    • Social Class Differences

    • Secrets & Lies

    • Deception

    • Betrayal

    • Romance

    About this ebook

    Rain already knows how hard life can be, but she is about to discover a shattering secret from the past that will change her future forever...

    Growing up in the ghettos of Washington, D.C., the cards are stacked against a hardworking dreamer like Rain Arnold. Rain has fought to be the best daughter she can: she studies hard and gets good grades; she helps her mother cook and clean. And unlike her defiant younger sister, she avoids the dangers of the city streets as if her life depends on it...and it does. But Rain can't suppress the feeling that she has never truly fit in, that she is a stranger in her own world.

    Then one fateful night, Rain overhears something she shouldn't: a heartbreaking revelation from the past, a long-buried secret that is about to change her life in ways she never could have imagined. In the blink of an eye, everything Rain has ever known—the family she has loved and the familiar place she has called home is left behind, and Rain is sent to live with total strangers, the wealthy Hudson family. But just as she did not belong to the troubled world she was raised in, Rain is also out of place in this realm of luxury and privilege. With nowhere to turn, Rain finds an escape in the theater, inside the walls of an exclusive private school. But will it be enough to fulfill her heart's deepest wish and give her a place to call home?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Books
    Release dateFeb 8, 2011
    ISBN9781451637045
    Rain
    Author

    V.C. Andrews

    One of the most popular authors of all time, V.C. Andrews has been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of Flowers in the Attic, first in the renowned Dollanganger family series, which includes Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. The family saga continues with Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger, and Secret Brother, as well as Beneath the Attic, Out of the Attic, and Shadows of Foxworth as part of the fortieth anniversary celebration. There are more than ninety V.C. Andrews novels, which have sold over 107 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than twenty-five foreign languages. Andrews’s life story is told in The Woman Beyond the Attic. Join the conversation about the world of V.C. Andrews at Facebook.com/OfficialVCAndrews.

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    • 5/5
      Kept me turning the pages
    • 1/5
      Yeah. V.C. Andrews. Wow. Everyone who writes as V.C. Andrews seems to think that they must include some form of incestuous activity, preferably more than once. Except, this writer wasn't exactly comfortable with it, so s/he kept sort of ducking the issue - or making it 'all right' in the terms of the book. Very odd. Plus, book suffered from a distinct case of 'Mary Jane' syndrome. It was tiring after a while. And the author oversimplified villains. Didn't give actual motivation for their rabid hate. And sometimes s/he would show someone was a villain by a simple, basically meaningless action - like the fact that they had sex, or enjoyed pot. At the least, it was a quick read. It's part of a series, but I'd avoid every one. 0.5/10. For grammatical English.

    Book preview

    Rain - V.C. Andrews

    Prologue

    My sister Beni and I were jolted simultaneously out of sleep by the explosive sound of a dish smashing against the kitchen wall. We heard the shattered pieces of china rain down on the pale yellow linoleum floor. I lay there, staring up into the darkness and holding my breath. Beni sat up to listen, her braids falling over her eyes so that she had to part them like a beaded curtain.

    What was that? she gasped.

    I was afraid to move, much less speak. The silence was like that moment after you see a streak of lightning and know there will be a boom rattling windows and your own bones. Sure enough, we heard Mama’s tear-filled voice wail at Ken.

    For as long as I could remember, Beni, Roy and I had called him Ken instead of Daddy or Papa. Calling him by his name instead always fit our lips better. Something in the way he looked at us, especially when we were younger, told all three of us that he didn’t want to be known as anyone’s father, much less ours.

    Go on, then, we heard Mama cry, leave. You aren’t much good to us here anyway. You never were.

    If that’s the way you feel, woman, then I might just go, he roared back at her.

    Go, go, go, she chanted like a high-school cheerleader. The strain in her voice made the strings in my own heart strain to the point of snapping.

    I will, he threatened. I won’t stay where I’m not appreciated. That’s for sure; that’s for damn sure.

    Appreciated? She laughed a shrill, thin laugh. What’s there to appreciate? Your spending all your wages on drink and other women? Your coming home and falling on your face? You haven’t ever been here for me and the children anyway, Ken Arnold. We aren’t even going to know you’re gone, Mama assured him.

    Ungrateful bitch! I oughta…

    Lay a hand on me. Go on. I dare you. I’ll call the law, I will. Go on, she challenged.

    I sat up. It felt like tiny drums of fear were tapping beneath my breast. Quickly, I embraced myself. We had all seen him strike her before. It was ugly and tied knots of fear in our stomachs. Beni moaned in anticipation. She started to edge herself off her bed reluctantly, like someone being urged to run into a burning building.

    Don’t go out there, I warned in a loud whisper. You’ll only make it harder for Mama.

    She paused. Even in the dark, I could see the abject terror in my younger sister’s eyes.

    Our older brother Roy came to our door, rubbing his right palm back and forth over his forehead as if he were sanding a block of wood. It took a lot more to wake him than it did us. Mama always said, That boy proves someone really could be dead to the world when he sleeps.

    Roy stopped outside our open doorway. What the hell’s going on now? he muttered, grimacing as if he had just swallowed some sour milk.

    Don’t get between them, Roy, I cried. Once before, he had, and Ken had hit him so hard, he had knocked Roy down and made his lip bleed and swell. Mama kept him from getting up and getting the worst beating of his life for sure.

    Ahh, you deserve me leaving you, Ken muttered.

    Apparently, Mama had held up her challenge. She had fixed those hot ebony eyes on him and made him back down. The next thing we heard was the front door opening and slamming shut. It rattled the walls in the small apartment and then all was still for a moment before we heard Mama sobbing.

    I got out of bed and Beni and I joined Roy. All three of us entered the kitchen and found Mama seated at the chipped Formica table, her head down on her folded arms, her shoulders shaking.

    We had seen her this way many times before.

    What happened this time, Mama? Roy asked, his eyes blazing with anger.

    Mama raised her head slowly and with great effort as if it were made of stone. Her eyes were red and glassy with tears. She took a deep breath, her small shoulders rising and then falling quickly, resembling some puppet whose strings had been cut. She seemed to sink into the chair. When I saw her so despondent, my heart felt like a squeezed orange. My chest was so tight that I couldn’t take a deep breath. The tears that had streaked down Mama’s cheeks left jagged lines right to the tip of her chin.

    She sighed deeply and ran her thin fingers through her hair, hair that had once had a healthy sheen to it and now looked dull, with strands of gray invading like a threat. I hated to see Mama age. Worry and trouble weighed heavily on the hands of her clock, rushing time along. I wanted her to be forever young with a face full of smiles and hope and a voice filled with laughter and song. For as long as I could remember, Mama had to work hard. She hated the thought of being on welfare. No matter how wasteful and neglectful Ken was, Mama wouldn’t succumb. She had a steel rod of pride through her spine.

    As long as there’s an ounce of strength in these legs and arms, she would tell us, I’m never going to let the government tell me I’m part of the problem. No sir, no ma’am, no. Latisha Carrol’s got a long way down before she hits bottom.

    Right now, she looked like there wasn’t all that much longer to go. Currently, Mama worked at Krandel’s Market stocking shelves and packing groceries like some high-school dropout. She never complained about it, however.

    None of us had any kind of job, but when Roy was younger, to earn tip money he would go to the supermarket and carry groceries out to cars for people. Once an elderly white lady gave him a twenty. Mama felt sure she meant to give him a dollar and just made a mistake. She told Roy to wait for the lady and return it as soon as he saw her. Roy didn’t want to. That twenty nearly burned a hole in his pocket, but he was afraid to spend it. Finally, he saw the same old lady and told her what she had done. She looked at him as if he was crazy and told him he must be in error. She doesn’t make those kind of mistakes. He came running home to tell Mama, who sat back, thought and said, Well Roy, if that old white lady’s so arrogant she can’t admit a mistake, then it’s honestly yours.

    Ken told him he shouldn’t have bothered trying to give it back anyway, but Mama always had a bigger influence on us than Ken did. I don’t remember exactly when Roy lost respect for our daddy, but I think Ken knew all along that his son didn’t look up to him. Maybe that was part of the reason he stayed away from home so much.

    Your daddy’s gone and left us again, Mama said.

    Good riddance to him, Roy snapped.

    You know I don’t like that talk, Roy Arnold. He’s still your father and you know what the Bible says about honoring your father and mother.

    God wasn’t thinking of him when he had that written down, Ma, Roy said angrily.

    Don’t you go claiming to know what God meant or intended, Roy Arnold, she fired back at him, her eyes filling with the heat and light of her passion. Mama always felt that holding on to her religion was the only glue that held us together. She wasn’t a regular churchgoer, nor did she chase us to church on Sunday as faithfully as some other mothers herded their children, but she never let us drift too far from prayer and the Bible.

    Roy shook his head and lowered it as he slumped with fatigue.

    I’m going back to bed, he muttered.

    Y’all go back to bed. You’ve got school in the morning and I don’t want to have to shake you girls awake, hear?

    Are you going to bed, Mama? I asked her.

    Soon, she said.

    I looked at Beni. We both knew she would stay up most of the night tossing and turning with worry. Bills were the ghosts that haunted our home, flashing their numbers on the walls in Mama’s room, piling themselves on her shoulders. Ken never worried about our bills. It was always a battle to get him to pay for some of our expenses before he spent his paycheck, when he had one, on his own pleasure and amusement.

    Whenever Ken ran off like this, his paycheck disappeared with him and whatever small amount Mama might have gotten from it was gone too. She didn’t make anywhere near enough at the supermarket to take care of our needs.

    Beni and I will look for work tomorrow, Mama.

    No, you won’t, she retorted so fast it was as if she’d expected my offer. I want you girls concentrating on your school work.

    But Mama, other girls our age are working part-time here and there, Beni protested. Why can’t we?

    So when do they do their homework, huh, Beni? They work after school. They drag their sorry selves home late and don’t do any reading or writing, and then they work weekends and can’t study then either, Mama declared.

    We aren’t going to college anyway, Mama. It doesn’t matter, Beni said.

    Why can’t you try to be more positive, Beni? Rain manages to, Mama said, her eyes narrowing.

    Beni flashed an angry look at me.

    Mama shook her head and looked at Roy.

    We’ll be all right, Mama, he said. I’m taking that job at Slim’s Garage. I’ll be giving you as much as he ever did, probably more.

    I don’t want you giving up on school, Roy, Mama said, but not with a great deal of insistence. Roy was a man now, eighteen, with broad shoulders pumped with pride, pride she knew he had inherited from her.

    Right, he said and flashed a deep-eyed look at me before he turned to go back to his room.

    Mama sighed again and then looked up at me.

    Don’t make the same mistakes I did, Rain. You take forever before you hook up with any man, hear?

    Yes, Mama.

    And don’t believe any promises, she warned. Men are full of promises. They get some well of false hope filled for them the day they can begin to utter their first words, and they just dip into that well every time they set eyes on some unsuspecting female.

    Okay, Mama, I said smiling.

    Look how pretty you are, even woken up in the middle of the night. Come over here and give me some sugar so I can have a good dream tonight, she said and for a moment her eyes were young again, the eyes of the Mama I remembered singing to me, holding my hand, hugging me after bad dreams and kissing me good night.

    I embraced her and she held onto me a little tighter than usual, stroking my hair. It put a flutter of butterfly wings in my stomach. I could feel her bones shudder beneath her thin skin. She had lost weight, as if trouble shrunk her by the minute.

    You children are my only hope now, she whispered. Don’t let me down, Rain.

    We won’t, Mama.

    Beni’s got a bad chip on her shoulder, she said in a tired voice when we parted. I don’t know why. I don’t teach her to hate, but she thinks being black means being angry all the time. She needs to smile more. I was hoping you would teach her that, Rain. I was hoping some of your light would spill into her dark.

    She’ll be okay, Mama, I promised.

    I know, Mama said, but she looked down when she said it so I wouldn’t see her doubt and worry.

    You go to sleep now too, Mama. You know Ken. He’ll go off for a while and then he’ll come back.

    I know, she agreed. Go to sleep, Rain. Go on, she urged.

    I started out of the kitchen, looking back once to see her take a deep breath, rise and pick up the pieces of the dish she had thrown against the wall. She dropped them into the garbage can and stood there with her back to me, her five feet four-inch frame shriveling a little more. Mama’s bank account of hope was dwindling. When do the good get their just rewards? I wondered, and I was positive Mama was wondering the same.

    Beni was lying in her bed with her eyes wide open, smoldering like some house that had been set on fire.

    Mama’s always going to like you more than me, she snapped at me as soon as I entered.

    No, she’s not, Beni.

    No? Why can’t you be like Rain? she mimicked, wagging her head. That’s all I ever hear her say anymore.

    She turned on her side so her back was to me.

    She’s just worried for all of us, Beni. She doesn’t mean you’re not as good as I am, I said. I went to her and put my hand on her shoulder. Don’t be like this, Beni. Not now, not with all Ken’s doing to her and to us, I pleaded.

    She kept her back to me and spoke toward the wall.

    She always had more of you in her eyes than she had of me, Rain. It’s like she… She turned to face me. …like she owes you more than she owes me or something.

    That’s silly, Beni.

    No, it’s not, she said stiffening. There’s something, she said nodding, convinced. There’s some reason.

    In the darkness her eyes picked up the small glow of the hallway light and glittered like new dimes.

    I know you know what I mean, Rain, she said in a softer voice. I know you pretend there’s no difference, but I know you know.

    I started to shake my head.

    Let’s not lie to each other, Rain, she followed. At least let’s not do that.

    I didn’t speak.

    She wasn’t really all wrong. I always felt Mama looked at me in a different way. I just didn’t know why and I didn’t want to find out. I was afraid. I don’t know why I had a stream of fear running through the back of my thoughts, but it ran, thin and silvery, like a thread of light I was afraid to touch. It was safer in the dark.

    I went to bed and lay there quietly, looking up at the ceiling.

    I hate him, Beni muttered. I hate him for what he’s doing to us. Don’t you?

    No. I don’t hate him. I can’t hate him. I don’t understand him, but I don’t want to hate him. He’s our father, Beni.

    I don’t care who he is. I do hate him, Beni said. Sometimes, Mama’s wrong. Sometimes, hating makes you feel better. It makes you… stronger. That’s something you oughta learn, Rain. That’s something you oughta learn from me.

    She was silent for a moment and then she braced herself on her elbows and looked over at me.

    Maybe that’s why Mama cares more about you, Beni said, sounding like she was solving her own dilemma, maybe she knows you’re weaker than me and you need more protection. Yeah, she said lying back on her pillow, I bet that’s it.

    She liked that idea. I could almost hear her smile of satisfaction. It helped her close her eyes and go back to sleep.

    Maybe she’s right, I thought. Maybe I am weaker. Maybe Beni had a better chance to survive in this hard world because of the way she was.

    I turned over and traveled a different road to the same darkness.

    1

    The Beginning of the End

    For as long as I could remember, we lived in an apartment located in a building complex everyone called The Projects. Even as a little girl I hated the name. It didn’t sound like a home, a place to live with your family. It sounded just like the word suggested: some government undertaking, some attempt to deal with the poor, some bureaucrat’s program. Beni called it The Cages, which made me feel like we were being treated like animals.

    I suppose at one time the buildings looked clean and new. In the beginning there wasn’t gang graffiti scribbled madly over every available space creating the Books of Madness, as I liked to describe them. The streets in front weren’t dirty and the small patches of lawn didn’t look mangy and sick. Now the whole place seemed like someone’s ashtray.

    Our apartment was on the second floor: two-fifteen. We were lucky because we could use the stairway when the elevator was broken, which was often, and we weren’t on the first floor where there was a greater chance for burglaries. Some of the tenants on the first floor actually had bars installed in their windows, which was why Beni named the complex The Cages. It didn’t do any good to tell her that bars on cages were meant to keep animals in, not people out. She claimed the government wanted to keep us locked inside.

    We’re like some ugly pimple on the face of the capital. I bet the government people don’t want foreigners to see us. That’s why they don’t take them through our streets, she declared, parroting one of Ken’s frequent speeches of self-pity.

    I couldn’t deny that there was a lot of fear and crime around us. Everyone had some kind of an alarm and often they went off accidentally. It had gotten so no one paid much attention to them. If there was ever an example of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, it was here in The Projects.

    Beni, Roy and I had only three city blocks to walk to school, but sometimes we felt we were going through a minefield in a war zone. During the last six months, two people had been killed by stray bullets fired from passing cars, one gang shooting at members of another without regard for innocent bystanders. Everyone thought it was terrible, but went on and accepted it as if it was simply a part of what had to be, like some nasty storm coming through. There wasn’t much anyone could do about bad weather and most people had the same attitude about our street crime.

    Mama was visibly terrified whenever one of us went out after dark. She’d actually start to tremble. I began to think we weren’t living much differently than people in the Middle Ages. When our teacher talked about the fortresses, the moats and drawbridges and the dangers that lurked outside the fortress walls back then, I thought about The Projects now. Beside having alarms and bars on windows, everyone locked his doors three or four ways with chain locks, bolts and bars and did the same with the windows. Many of the elderly sat away from their windows and shivered at the sounds of the night, the screaming in the hallways.

    From my window I could just manage to see the lights in some of the government buildings, and when we walked a few blocks east and looked toward the Capitol, we could see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial all lit up with promises. We were able to take some class trips to the sites and even tour places like the Treasury Building where we saw money being printed, and the FBI building, where we learned about crime labs and fingerprints. We never saw the Congress in action, but we did visit the buildings.

    I sometimes felt like an astronaut on these class trips. It was as if we were being transported to another planet. We saw the fine homes, the embassies, how rich and prosperous people were. We heard about all the wonderful hopes these buildings and monuments represented, but we always returned to our reality where it was possible to witness a drug sale on the comer, or see an unattended child wandering near broken glass and rusty metal. What will become of him? I wondered. What will become of us? In school we studied about democracy and we were taught dreams that were apparently reserved for other sleeping faces, not ours.

    Recently, someone overdosed on heroin under a stairwell in our building. The police swarmed over the hallway like blue bees and then left as quickly as they had come, none of them seemed surprised or even concerned. I think they, too, had come to accept the horrors the same way we had.

    Mama always dreamed of getting us out of here, of course. To me it seemed most of the people who lived here could no longer even imagine that for themselves. Mama wouldn’t talk to anyone but us about it because she hated the dark, heavy notes of discouragement. Once, when Ken was doing well, not drinking as much and making a decent wage, we were able to put away enough money to actually consider the possibility of at least renting a small house in a better neighborhood, but then one day Ken went and secretly withdrew the money. I remember how Mama came home looking drained of blood after she had discovered what he had done.

    He killed our dreams, she mumbled.

    I thought Mama was going to have a heart attack. Her lips looked so blue and she seemed to have trouble breathing. She had to have a shot glass full of whiskey to calm herself. She sat staring out the window most of the afternoon, sat there gazing down at the streets with a strange, soft smile on her face and hummed an old tune as if she were looking at a beautiful field or majestic mountains. I tried to talk to her, give her something to eat, but she didn’t seem to hear me. I was very frightened, afraid for all of us.

    Finally, Ken came home. Roy wasn’t there at the time. I was glad of that because there would have been a fight for sure. Beni and I were in our bedroom doorway, holding our breath. We expected Mama was going to explode with a fury we had never seen before, but she fooled us. She spoke calmly in the beginning, just asking him to tell her why he had done such a thing without telling her, and what he had done with the money. At first, we thought he wasn’t going to tell. He moved across the kitchen, getting himself a beer, wrapping his long, thick fingers around the bottle, opening it and taking a long gulp. He leaned against the counter by the sink.

    I needed it, he finally said, to pay a debt.

    A debt? What debt? The electric bill that’s past due? The dentist bills for Beni and Rain? What debt, Ken? she demanded.

    A debt, he repeated. He avoided her eyes. She rose slowly.

    Some of that money was money I slaved to earn. Don’t I have a right to know where it’s gone? she asked, still remarkably softly for her.

    I had a debt, he repeated.

    She seemed to inflate, her small shoulders rising, her bosom lifting. I looked at Beni. Her face was full of anger and my stomach felt like hornets had built a nest inside.

    You gambled away our money, didn’t you, Ken Arnold? Go on, tell me. You just threw away all that money, months and months of work, gone!

    He turned to face her, the beer bottle to his lips, his neck working like the body of a snake. Suddenly, Mama slapped the bottle out of his hand and it flew across the kitchen and smashed on the floor.

    Ken was stunned. For a moment he couldn’t move. He was so amazed at her aggression and her anger, it stopped him from breathing too. For Beni and me the sight of Mama, all five feet four, one hundred and five pounds of her fuming in front of Ken with his six feet five inch, two hundred and fifty-pound body with his massive shoulders and thick neck, was terrifying. He could squash her like a fly, but she stuck her face into his and didn’t blink.

    You go and destroy my hope just like that and then tell me it was some debt? You go and spill my blood and sweat in the street and tell me it’s just some debt?

    Back off, woman, Ken said, but I saw he was shaking. Whether he was shaking with his own overwhelming anger or fear was not clear. Suddenly though, he realized we were there, too, and his pride reared up like a sleeping lion.

    What do you think you’re doing slapping my beer across the room? Huh? he roared, his eyes wide. You’re a crazy woman and I ain’t standing here and listening to a crazy woman.

    He turned and rushed out of the house. Mama stood looking after him for a moment and then she went to clean up the mess. I jumped to help her.

    Watch you don’t cut yourself, Rain, she warned in a low, tired voice as I picked up the pieces of glass. Beni was still shivering in her chair.

    I’ll do it, Mama, I said.

    She didn’t argue. She went to her bedroom to lie down. I thought she might never get up, but somehow, Mama found the resilience to fight on, to restore her optimism, to replant in her garden of hope and dream on for all of us.

    I think it was Mama’s courage more than anything that kept me full of dreams, too. If she could be this way after what had happened to her, I thought, I, who was so much younger and still had so much of a chance, had to be full of heart. I had to hold onto my smiles and not be like Beni. I had to push back the urge to hate everyone and everything. I had to see blue sky and stars even in days of rain, so many days of rain.

    Our school was nothing to look at. In fact, I often closed my eyes when I first turned the corner and the tired, broken-down building appeared. It looked more like a factory than a school and all the windows on it had bars. There was a chain link fence around the property, too, with big metal signs warning against trespassing.

    Two uniformed guards were at the front entrance when the students first arrived for class. To get into the building, we all had to pass through one of those metal detectors you see at the airports. On too many occasions, students, especially gang members, had slashed other students with knives and on one occasion, a tenth-grade boy was found carrying a loaded revolver. The teachers were adamant about added security. There was almost a strike before the powers that be installed the metal detector and kept uniformed guards patrolling the halls and supporting the teachers.

    Mr. McCalester, my history teacher, said all the teachers should be given battle pay as well as their salaries. He made it sound like we should all be thankful if we made it through a school day without being harmed. It was hard to concentrate and care about poetry and plays, algebra and geometry, chemistry and biology while outside the fenced-in area angry young men waited to destroy each other and anyone who got in their way.

    Most of my and Beni’s friends were battle worn, veterans of the hard streets. Everyone knew about drugs and no one was surprised to find someone using crack, pot or whatever happened to be the flavor of the day. Neither Beni nor I ever used or tried any of it. Roy was the same way. There were times when I was afraid Beni would give in. Girlfriends challenged us, said we weren’t being sistas and we were acting stuck-up.

    Some of the girls resented me anyway because of my looks. Mama always taught me that vanity was a sin, but I couldn’t help wondering if I had been given some special gifts. My hair was straighter, richer than most. I had a creamy caramel complexion, never bothered much by acne. I also had light brown eyes, more toward almond, with long eyelashes. Roy once said he thought I could be a model, but I was afraid to even wish for such a thing. I was afraid to wish for anything good. Nice things had to happen to us accidentally, by surprise. If you wish for something too hard, I thought, it was like holding a balloon too tightly. It would simply burst, splattering your dream into pieces of nothing.

    When I was younger, Mama loved to brush my hair and hum one of the soft melodies her mama had sung to her.

    You’re going to be a beautiful young lady, Rain, she would whisper softly in my ear, but you’ve got to know that beauty can be a burden too. You’ve got to learn to say no and watch yourself more because men will be looking at you more.

    Her warnings frightened me. I couldn’t help but walk through the school corridors with my eyes firmly fixed straight ahead, not returning a glance, not welcoming a smile. I knew most of the kids thought I was a snob, but I reacted this way because of the tiny hummingbird that fluttered in my heart every time a boy gazed at me with interest. That flutter sent a chill through my spine and down to my feet. I’d almost rather be unattractive, I thought.

    I know Beni didn’t think she was pretty, even though I thought she had nice features and beautiful ebony eyes. She had a bigger bust than I did and liked to keep a button or two undone or wear tighter clothes, but she was wider in the hips and Roy always criticized her for looking like a tramp. My lips were thinner and my nose was straighter and more narrow than Beni’s. Sometimes, when Beni wasn’t looking, I would study her face more and try to find resemblances between us. She and Roy looked more alike, although his hair was closer to mine.

    Once, I asked Mama about it and she said sometimes your grandparents show up in you more than your parents do. I thought about it and studied the pictures we had of Ken’s parents and Mama’s parents, but I didn’t see resemblances to me in any of them.

    Neither Mama’s nor Ken’s parents were alive. Ken’s father had been killed in a car accident and his mother had died of liver damage caused by alcohol. Mama’s mother died before her father. She had had a heart attack. I got to meet my grandfather, but he lived in North Carolina and he died of emphysema before I was five, so I didn’t remember all that much about him except he smoked so much, I thought it came out of his ears as well as his nose and his mouth. Mama had one sister in Texas. Her name was Alana, and she had a brother named Lamar somewhere in Florida. They rarely contacted each other. I never met Lamar, but I did meet Alana one Christmas when I was seven.

    Ken never talked about his older brother Curtis, who was in prison in Oklahoma for armed robbery. A man was killed so he had been given a long sentence.

    Aunt Alana was supposed to have had a baby she gave away, but we didn’t know any real details about it except that it was a girl. Sometimes, Beni and I would wonder aloud. We imagined she would be about our age and she probably looked a little like one of us. Occasionally, Beni would tease Roy and say things like, Be careful ’bout the girls you sleep with, Roy. One might be your cousin.

    Roy hated that. He hated it when Beni talked about sex. He was always after her to put something on lately, too. She would parade about in her panties and bra and sometimes, she would put on a robe with nothing underneath and not tie it too tightly. Roy would get so angry his eyes would nearly explode. He had Ken’s temper for sure, only not for the same reasons.

    He was different with me. If he caught sight of me underdressed, he looked away or walked away quickly. I always tried to be properly dressed if I was in the kitchen or the living room.

    Despite his gruff manner at times, Roy was as loving and as protective a brother as Beni or I could want. He tried to be right beside us as much as he could be when we were in the streets. Now that he was taking a job at Slim’s Garage after school, he was troubled about our walking home without him. He had told us both at least six times to be sure we went directly home and not stop at any of the jukebox joints to listen to hip-hop music. The worst types hang out there, he warned.

    He just wants to keep us little girls forever, Beni complained. Two of her friends, Alicia and Nicole, were always trying to get her to go out after school. Finally, one afternoon after Roy had started working, she met me in the hallway at the end of the day and said she wanted to go with Alicia and Nicole to hang out for a while at Oh Henry’s. It was a dingy luncheonette in one of the worst neighborhoods. Roy always said if all the roaches living in it were harnessed, they’d pull down the building.

    Mama will be upset, I told her.

    She won’t know unless you tell. I’ll be back before she gets home.

    Why do you want to go there? I pursued. You know what it’s like.

    I don’t know what it’s like. I never been there, Rain. Besides… there’s someone I want to see who goes there, she added with a flirtatious smile. I knew she had been flirting with Carlton Thomas lately; he was in a gang because his cousin was a leader in it.

    If you go, I have to go, I complained.

    No, you don’t I can take care of myself, she bragged, loud enough for Nicole and Alicia to hear.

    I know you can, but Roy will kill me if I let you go by yourself.

    I don’t care about Roy. He doesn’t run my life, she snapped. And I don’t need you watching over me either. Rain. I’m not a baby.

    She spun around and joined Alicia and Nicole. They started for the exit.

    Okay, wait up, I called. I’ll go but we’re getting home before Mama, I added when I joined them.

    They sauntered along, Beni looking pleased with herself, her eyes full of anticipation, and despite the brave front she put up, a little fear, too.

    * * *

    The music was loud; the room was smoky and crowded and it smelled greasy and sickly sweet, but no one seemed to mind or care. Some people were dancing. Older boys who had been out of school a while were drinking beer and passing the bottles to those who weren’t old enough to buy it. I saw some drug deals being made and bad stuff being passed along. Most of it was done out in the open. The owner and the bartender and waitress acted as if the place was empty. If they saw anything, they looked right through it.

    I glanced at Beni when we all entered and saw the look on her face was not much different from the look of disappointment and disgust that was on mine, but the moment she caught me staring at her, she acted as if she was still very excited to be there.

    Now that you see what’s going on, you still want to stay here? I asked.

    Of course I want to stay here. Why else would I come?

    She dove right into the crowd with Alicia and Nicole, surrounding Carlton, who was talking to members of a gang. I knew they were gang members because they wore Dickie pants with a blue belt hanging down from their pockets. They called it flue instead of blue, which was the color for the Crips.

    I didn’t see anyone I wanted to talk to so I tried to stay out of sight, more toward the door like someone who thought a fire might start at any moment and it was better to be near an exit. After a while Beni came back for me.

    If you’re gonna just stand there like a statue, Rain, you should go home. They’re all laughing at you. At least come listen to the music and dance or something.

    We should go home, Beni. Look at this place. Look what’s going on, I said nodding toward a couple who were kissing and petting as if they were alone in the back of a car. Across from them, some young man looked like he was in a

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