I’m the only one who needs the hot comb.

“All done,” my mother declares with satisfaction, dividing my hair into sections for ponytails.

“Can you leave some out?” I ask.

So it hangs down my back like Iris’s. Like yours and Aunt Priscilla’s.

I don’t say it aloud, but that’s what I want.

Mama’s hands pause, but then she parts my hair so a large section in the back is left free of the bands, pulling the rest into two ponytails.

“I’m leaving some out,” Mama says, a warning in her voice. “But you can’t run all over the place sweating. Your hair will go right back and not be straight anymore.”

“You done?” Aunt Priscilla asks, inspecting my hair. “We’ll see how long that lasts. I don’t know why you bother pressing it in the middle of the summer.”

“It’ll last today,” Mama says. She turns off the stove. “You ready?”

“I got potato salad and fried chicken,” Aunt Priscilla answers. “Check on those sweet potato pies. We need to go.”

“We gotta wait for Ron anyway.” Mama opens the oven to check the two pies.

“Well he better bring his broke ass on,” Aunt Priscilla mutters, not quite under her breath enough that we don’t all hear.

“Don’t talk about my man.” Over her shoulder, Mama gives Aunt Pris an irritated look.

“Honey, what you see in that trifling man I don’t know. He can’t pay your rent, and neither can you. Far as I can tell, they ain’t worth keeping if they can’t pay at least a bill or two. That’s a recipe for a new man if I ever saw one.”

“Ron’s different,” Mama says, her voice softer than usual. I’m used to hearing a sharp edge to Mama’s every other word, but not when she talks about Ron. She says Ron is different, but I say she is. I’ve never seen her act the way she does with him.

“And he’s so good with Lo.”

No, he’s not. He creeps me out and touches me every chance he gets.

It’s nothing unusual. Mama and Aunt Pris keep creepy men around who help pay the bills. Iris and I have gotten really good at avoiding their hands, but Ron has stayed longer and seems to have more hands than the rest.

He finally shows up thirty minutes later.

“You’re late,” Mama tells him, a frown puckering over her dark eyes.

“I say I’m right on time, baby.” He lowers his head to kiss her, shutting her up.

“So nasty when he puts his tongue in her mouth,” I whisper to Iris.

“I know.” Iris scrunches her expression. “But they seem to like it.”

By the time Ron takes his tongue out of Mama’s mouth, she doesn’t look irritated anymore. She wraps her arms around his neck while he whispers in her ear. Aunt Pris enters the living room, looking like a buttercup in her yellow sundress. She rolls her eyes and twists her bright red lips.

“Like we ain’t late already,” she says, popping Ron on the head as she walks by. “Let’s go.”

Me, Iris, and Aunt Priscilla squeeze into the back of Ron’s old Cutlass Supreme. Mama rides with him up front.

“No air in here?” Aunt Pris complains.

“You could be walking,” Ron says, looking at Aunt Pris in the rearview mirror.

“And you could be home, since this ain’t your family reunion,” Aunt Pris fires back.

Iris and I giggle, and I catch Ron glaring at me in the mirror, too. I don’t care. I like it when Aunt Priscilla says all the mean things to Ron I wish I could say.

“Broke ass,” Aunt Pris mutters again under her breath.

“Broke ass” is the worst thing a man can be in Aunt Priscilla’s book. Usually Mama’s, too, but ever since Ron started “sniffing around,” as Aunt Pris calls it, she’s changed. For once, Mama doesn’t seem to care that Ron can’t pay her bills—that sometimes, she has to pay his. Aunt Priscilla never hides her irritation that Mama is fine with Ron’s wallet being empty as long as her bed isn’t. It breaks their code of survival.

I stick my arm out the window and let it wave like water.

“If you don’t roll that window up, Lo,” Mama snaps. “Long as it took me to press that hair, and you gonna roll down somebody’s window?”

“Sorry, Mama,” I mumble, rolling the window up, but leaving a tiny, rebellious crack at the top to let the breeze in.

“I hope they’re playing horseshoes,” Iris says.

“I’m not good at horseshoes,” I remind her.

“I’ll show you. Remember when you couldn’t even get hopscotch right?”

I pinch her side playfully, and we both giggle. When we were younger, I could never get hopscotch, so Iris would jump ahead of me and I would follow her lead until I started doing it on my own. I don’t know why it was so hard for me, but mimicking her steps was the only way I got it. “Hopscotch” is our code now for when one of us needs help from the other. We’ve both yelled hopscotch on the playground when a bully has tried to mess with us. Maybe it’s silly, but it’s our thing. It’s hard in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, and we don’t have much, but Iris and I have each other.

“We’re here,” Mama says. She half-turns in the seat and studies my hair. “Remember. Don’t sweat your hair out.”

I glance out of Ron’s car window doubtfully. It’s so hot they already have sprinklers on at the community center where the reunion is being held.

“Go find the kids,” Mama says, hands on her hips. “We don’t need y’all in grown folks’ business today.”

We “find the kids” and play horseshoes and kickball, while the grown folks play spades, Bid Whist and dominoes, their laughter and all the things we aren’t supposed to hear reaching our ears anyway. When it’s time to eat, Iris and I sit at the kids’ table with a little bit of everything on our plates.

“What’s your favorite?” I ask Iris.

“Fried chicken,” she says around a greasy mouthful, pointing to a leg, thigh, and breast on her plate. “Can’t you tell?”

“I like this étouffée.” I spoon up some of the soup and rice from a Styrofoam bowl.

“I can teach you how to make it,” an old lady nearby says.

It’s my great-grandma MiMi. We don’t see her much since she lives in the bayou out in the middle of nowhere.

“Okay.” I shrug. “Maybe someday.”

She takes my chin between her fingers and studies my face. “You’re growing up, Lotus,” she says. “Such a pretty girl.”

Does MiMi see Iris sitting beside me with her light skin and long, silky, “good” hair? She’s the one people usually notice, not me. We’re dressed almost identically, both wearing white tube tops and shorts.

“Uh, thank you.” I look away when MiMi keeps staring at me. She has a way of looking right through you. Mama says she practices voodoo like a lot of the women in our family used to do. She’s kind of scary, and I’m glad when she lets my chin go and moves on.

We eat and run all day until it’s close to getting dark. The sun’s about to go down, and I’m playing hand slap with one of our cousins when Aunt Priscilla walks over, frowning and glancing around the pavilion.

“Lo, I don’t see Iris anywhere,” she says. “Go find your cousin so we can go. I don’t want to be in that death trap of Ron’s on the road at night.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I take off toward the field where I last saw Iris playing with one of the dogs someone brought along.

“Bo!” I call. Aunt Priscilla is Creole. Iris’s father is German, so Iris is all mixed up and got a little bit of everything in her. That’s why I call her Gumbo.

I wander into the old sugarcane field that borders the community center. Looks like no one harvested it last season. All the tall stalks, some of them rotting, make it hard to see.

“She wouldn’t have come this far in.” I turn, ready to retrace my steps and find my way out, but I bump into something solid.

“Oh, Ron,” I say, looking up at him cautiously. “Hey.”

“Hey, Lo.” He addresses the words to the little buds on my chest in my tube top. “You growing up fast.”

His smile makes my stomach knot with nerves, but I’m not sure why. I glance around and see nothing but stalks and Ron.

“I better get back.” I go to step around him, but he steps with me. When I step right, so does he.

He chuckles and touches my face. “We got a few minutes.”

“I-I gotta go. Aunt Pris sent me to find Iris.” My voice shakes a little, and my heart is pounding so hard I hear it. “She’ll be looking for me.”

“Naw. Her new man just got here,” he says easily. “She’ll be occupied for a while, convincing him to pay next month’s rent. We never get to talk, you and me.”

“I’m gonna go on back, Ron.”

He grabs my wrist and pulls me into him. “You been running around here half-naked all day,” he says, his voice coming deeper, rougher. “Looking all good.”

The word naked sets off alarms in my head. He shouldn’t be talking to me like that. Or looking at me like that. Or sneaking in little touches every chance he gets.

“No, I haven’t.” I try to pull away, but his fingers tighten. “Let go.”

“Just one kiss, Lo,” he whispers, leaning forward and pressing his mouth to mine.

“No!” I jerk back, but he holds my head in place with one big hand. I open my mouth to scream, and he shoves his tongue inside. It’s wet and thick and muffles my voice. I gag. How can Mama like this? I bite his bottom lip until I taste blood.

“Little bitch,” he snarls, letting me go and touching his bleeding mouth.

I run, but don’t get far before he pushes me from behind. I fall, and my head hits the ground hard. The world darkens, spotted with little pegs of color like the Light Brite toy I got from Goodwill last summer.