Raven (Orphans 4)

"If you hate men so much," I asked her, "why do you go out with one almost every other night?"

"Don't have a smart mouth, Raven:' she fired back. She thought a moment and then shrugged. "I'm entitled to some fun, aren't I? Well? I work hard. Let them take me out and spend some money on me."

"Don't you ever want to meet anyone nice, Marna?" I asked. "Don't you ever want to get married again?"

She stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes looked sad for a moment, and then she put on that angry look and spun on me.

"No! I don't want to have no man lording over me again. And besides," she said, practically screaming, "I didn't get married. I never had a wedding, not even in a court."

"But I thought . . . my father . ."

"He was your father, but he wasn't my husband.

We just lived together," she said. She looked away.

"But I have his name . . Flores," I stuttered.

"It was just to save my reputation," she admitted.

She turned to me and smiled coldly. "You can call yourself whatever you want."

I stared, my heart quivering. I didn't even have a name?

When I looked in the mirror, whom did I see? No one, I thought.

I might as well be invisible, I concluded, and returned to my seat by the window, watching the gray clouds twirl toward the mountains, toward the promise of something better.

That promise.

It was all I had.

I A Rude Awakening

I woke to the sound of knocking, but I wasn't sure if it was someone at our door. People pounded on the walls in this apartment building at all times of the day or night The knocking grew sharper, more frenzied, and then I heard my uncle Reuben's voice.

"Raven, damn it, wake up. Raven!" He hit the door so hard that I thought his fist had gone through. I reached for my robe and got up quickly.

"Mama!" I called. I ground the sleep from my eyes and listened. I thought I remembered hearing her come home, but the nights were so mixed up and confused in my memory, I wasn't sure. "Mama?"

Uncle Reuben pounded on the door again, shaking the whole frame. I hurried to Mama's bedroom and gazed in. She wasn't there.

"Raven! Wake up!"

"Coming," I cried, and hurried to the door. When I unlocked it, he shoved it open so fast he almost knocked me over.

"What's wrong?" I demanded.

We had a small naked bulb in the hallway

which turned the dirty, shadowy walls into a brown the color of a wet paper bag. There was just enough light behind Uncle Reuben to silhouette his six-footthree-inch, stocky body. He hovered in the doorway like some bird of prey, and the silence that followed his urgency frightened me even more. He seemed to be gasping for breath as if he had run up the stairs.

"What do you want?" I cried. "Get some things together," he ordered. "You got to come with me."

"What? Why?" I stepped back and embraced myself. I would have hated going anyw

here with him in broad daylight, much less late at night.

"Put on some light," he commanded.