Indigo Summer. Monica McKayhan

in a natural style represents my heritage, for your information.”

      “Well, excuse me.”

      “You’re excused,” I said and sashayed toward my house, hoping Marcus wasn’t watching as I stumbled over the bottom step leading to my porch.

      When I turned and saw that he was not only watching, but cracking up, I wanted to choke my daddy for not fixing that step last Saturday.

      Chapter 2

      Marcus

      Marcus Frederick Henry Carter is my name. Marcus, named after Marcus Garvey, a man of color who organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association: an organization designed to bring unity among all blacks and to establish the greatness of the African heritage. Frederick, named after Frederick Douglass who fought to end slavery in America before the Civil War. And Henry. Well, Henry was my great-grandfather’s name on my father’s side of the family. All I got from my father was his last name, Carter and the wavy hair that every man in our family possessed. My intellect came from my mother. At least that’s what she told me.

      After my parents divorced two years ago, I ended up living with my pop because Mother relocated back to New Orleans, where her and Pop both grew up. It was her idea that I live with him. She thought I would receive a better education in the state of Georgia, than I would in Louisiana. And she thought a boy needed his father much more than he needed a mother. I still think she’s wrong on that one, because I miss her more and more each day. And I think a boy needs both parents in order to be successful. I still remember when my parents got divorced; it was as if my life stood still. My grades did a nosedive, and I thought I would flunk the eighth grade. It was the therapist my pop took me to who explained that what I was experiencing was depression.

      As time went on, things got better. That’s when I implemented this master plan of mine: maintaining a four-point-oh grade point average, serving as class president, tutoring kids after school, volunteering in my community…all of this would work to my benefit when I filled out my application for Yale or Princeton, whichever I decided to go to.

      Transferring to a different school district was about to mess up my master plan, but trying to explain that to my pop was like pulling teeth. He didn’t understand that the high school I was attending in Stone Mountain was a much better school than the new one I’d be attending in College Park. I had done my research, checked out each school and how they panned out on statewide tests. My school could run rings around the ones across town. And the better high school always looked better when trying to apply for college. Not only that, but the better high school would help me to accomplish my master plan. The new school in College Park probably already had somebody groomed for class president, and I wasn’t even sure they had a tutoring program. This was all messed up!

      I blamed Gloria, my wicked stepmother. She had my pop wrapped around her skinny little finger and jumping through hoops to try and please her. Had him spending some of my college savings on their stupid fairytale wedding; the one where she had too many bridesmaids with ugly dresses. And the tux she made me wear had me sweating like a pig in heat as I had suffered through a photo shoot that seemed to last for hours. And when it was all over, I couldn’t see where all my college money had gone.

      That’s why I definitely had to get a scholarship. Who’s to say there would be any money left after Step-Mommy-Dearest was done trying to spend it all.

      It was her idea that we move to College Park in the first place.

      “Rufus, I need to be close to my mother,” she told Pop, as I sat on the steps next to the kitchen eavesdropping on their conversation one morning before school. “She’s getting up there in age, and I need to be able to take her to her doctor’s appointments and to the grocery store. It takes forever just to get over there to her from where we live now. And God forbid she has an emergency.”

      She’s a drama queen, I thought, as I laced up my Air Force Ones.

      “Why don’t we just move Evelyn over to this side of town?” Pop tried to reason with her. “I’ve got a nice little piece of property just two blocks from here. It wouldn’t take much work to fix it up for your mother.”

      That’s what my pop did for living. Fixed up old houses and rented them out. Or sold them, whichever made him the most money. Since before I was born, he and my grandfather owned the same real estate investment company; the family business is what they called it. After Granddad passed away, my father inherited the family business, and talked of passing it on to me. Every chance he got, he was pressuring me about working with him, wanting to teach me the odds and ends of the business. He couldn’t wait for my graduation day, so I could start full-time the day after.

      The problem was, I wasn’t interested in selling or managing real estate. And the family business was definitely not my idea of a future. I had my master plan and I was going to college. I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life than manage a bunch of run-down properties. That’s where Pop and I bumped heads. We each had a different plan for my future.

      Killer, my German Shepherd, plopped his huge body down next to me on the step, licking on my shoe, and trying to chew on my shoestrings until I smacked him.

      “Stop, dude!” I said and made a mental note to give his stinking behind a bath when I got home from school that day. I didn’t want Gloria fussing about the dog smell in the house again. My backpack at my feet, I removed my doo-rag and brushed my waves as I continued to listen to the Drama Queen plead her case to my father.

      “Rufus, you know Mama. She ain’t gonna move to Stone Mountain and leave her house. Not the house that her and Daddy shared all those years,” Gloria said. “And all her friends are right there in the neighborhood where she lives.”

      “I understand, Gloria.”

      That was all Pop said that day. But next thing I knew, a RE/MAX sign was stuck in the middle of our front yard. Our house sold a lot faster than Pop and Gloria had expected and the new owners were anxious to move in and wanted us out. Before I knew it, we were packing our stuff into boxes. The problem was, we had nowhere to go. She and Pop had looked at dozens of houses in the newer subdivisions of College Park, but Gloria couldn’t seem to settle on one that she liked. She had to have the perfect house, with custom-made cabinets, the master bedroom had to be a certain square footage, and it needed to have a certain number of windows. She actually would walk through each house counting windows. Wow!

      “Why don’t we just have a house built?” She finally made a suggestion.

      “But where do we go while our house is being built?” Pop asked.

      “We can move into one of your rental properties temporarily.”

      “That would be fine, Gloria, but the problem is, I don’t have any available on that side of town.”

      “Don’t you have any tenants who are behind on their rent?” I could just picture that wicked little smile of hers. “One who’s just begging to be evicted?”

      “They’re all a little slow paying, Gloria, but I work with them. Always have. They’re good working-class people who just fall behind from time to time. That’s all.”

      “What about that woman in the property on Madison Place? The one whose husband left her. You’ve given her more than enough time to get caught up. And now that her husband is gone, she struggles just to make the rent every month. It’s always late, and sometimes short,” she said. “That’s a cute little house too, and I love it so much, Rufus!”

      “That family has lived in that property for nearly fifteen years,” Pop said. “I wouldn’t feel right asking Barbara to leave. And she’s got those children…and…”

      “I thought you wanted me to be happy.” I would’ve bet my lunch money that Gloria’s lip was all poked out as she began pouting, and I could just see her rubbing her index finger across my father’s face. “You could put her in one of your smaller places. You could put her in that place just two blocks from here.”

      Pop’s