Begging For Change

They never call me over the intercom at school.
But I can tell by the way the secretary is saying my name over that thing-I’m in trouble.
“Raspberry Hill,” she says real slow, with a crack in her voice. “Come, come to the office, please.”
Kids start teasing me. Saying I must be in big trouble. On my way outta English class, one girl looks at me and says, “You lucky. You probably get to go home for doing something stupid. Wish it was me.”
No way would that girl wanna be me right now, sitting in the hospital hoping my mother don’t die. Mad at God and everyone else who shoulda looked out for her, but didn’t.
In school, there ain’t never a good reason to cry. If you accidentally cut your hand off in wood shop, you better hold back them tears. ‘Cause if you let ’em loose, somebody gonna say you a punk, and you won’t never live that down. But it’s okay to cry in this place. And that’s just what I do. I cry all the while I’m in the waiting room. Cry some more when I see how really bad off Momma is.
The newscaster on the TV in the hospital waiting room said Momma was jumped in broad daylight right out front of our place. Wasn’t no stranger who whacked her over the head, neither. It was Shiketa Nixon, the girl who lives two buildings up from us. She’s seventeen, but she looks twenty-five. And she don’t know nothing ’bout picking up her own mess, or telling her no-good friends to stop waking up the whole neighborhood at three and four in the morning with loud music, crap games, and fights.