Ninnies!

 Read below my excerpt from my book, chapter one of Candy, Sweet and Sour entitled "Ninnies."  Available now on Amazon in paperback, on kindle, and free on KU.

    

OMG! I’ve got ninnies! I woke up this morning to the usual tweet tweet of birds, stretched sleepily on the old plaid couch with the ratty tatty stuffing. A car backfired going up the steep hill in front of my Uncle Ronnie’s house where we’ve been living since December, and I screamed, grabbing my chest, sure I was being shot at by roving gangs of teenage gangstas. I screamed again, immediately jumping up to do a little dance around the dingy white living room in the grey dawn light. Lifting my shirt, I stared at the mounds of flesh that I’d been dreaming of since I’d first met Tyler, sure they’d be the thing to make him see me as more than a kid sister. I had even taken to wearing a training bra after I met him just in case they appeared. And now here they were, ready to be trained.

“Mama! Mama!” I yelled, still doing my half-naked dance in front of the old rectangular mirror hanging above the couch, a mirror I’d been studying myself in since I was old enough to climb up and see even half of my face. I couldn’t wait for her to wake up, so I danced right on back to her bedroom, just off the kitchen piled miles high with filthy, mismatched dishes.

“Mama! Mama!”

Her eyes struggled open. The book that was open on her chest slid to the floor with a muffled thump, landing softly on the piles of clothes around the bed. I couldn’t remember ever having seen Uncle Ronnie’s floor, but I remembered from photos that it was wood, old and scarred from the years of his alcoholic slobbiness.

“Girl, have you lost your mind?” Mama asked, sitting upright at once. Then she smiled. I could tell she was beginning to get it. “Ninnies! Them mosquito bites done grew!”

She did something unexpected—she tossed the worn quilt off and got right up out of bed, not even having to wait for her hands and feet to wake up. I could see just a bit of the pain at the edge of her blue marble eyes (did I mention we have the same intense eyes?), but she grabbed me by the shoulders, and we jumped up and down, chanting, “Ninnies! Ninnies!”

For a moment, I was just a normal eleven-year-old girl, having a normal celebration for the arrival of “the girls” as my Daddy Bobby calls them.

“Wanh. Wanh. Wanhhhh.” Baby Jadyn cried from his playpen wedged at the foot of the bed. All of our noise had woken him, my sweet little nephew who could cry louder than Miley Cyrus could croon. Daddy Bernie woke up, grumpy as always, especially when he doesn’t have his pills.

“Damn! Don’t ya’ll know some people trying to sleep?” Eyeing my still uplifted shirt, he said to me, “And how many times do I got to tell you to keep your clothes on? You know what happens to pretty little girls who act like them MTV girls.” Just like that, the spell was broken. My Mama’s silly grin drooped, and I could tell that it was going to be one of her bad days, one of those days where she can hardly get out of bed even to go to the bathroom.

Miranda padded in then, as much as a hippo girl can walk softly. “Shhhh,” she cooed to Jadyn. “Mama’s here. It’s alright.” She stopped to pick him up, and he hungrily chewed on her hair. She waded through the piles of clothes and tipping boxes of old musty books and into the kitchen, cursing when she saw the lid off his formula and the roaches climbing out. “Damn, damn, damn!” she muttered, opening the pea green refrigerator humming loudly in the corner. She took out the pickle jar filled with tea, and made Jadyn’s bottle with that. Anything to hush him up that early in the morning.
 Still, I was excited to finally have boobies. “Breasts,” I said out loud, trying on that grown up word for size. I am eleven years old, 6 months, and 6 days. I’d tell you the hours, but I can’t remember the time I was born, and my birth certificate was lost in the house fire. I went back to the couch, my bed, lost in thought, glad it was Saturday. Saturday meant no school. But it also meant drama drama drama as my crazy life spun around me.

I found the remote control on the back of the couch and flipped on the small TV in the far corner, happy as soon as the sounds of Nickelodon filled the background. At least I have a place to live, even if it is with a creepy old man who’s always trying to get my Mama alone so he can mess with her, even if this place is so filthy that it should be condemned by the health department. This house is one where you tell people where to find things based on the piles of stuff. Like the bathroom is on the back porch but we say go straight on through the kitchen and turn left where you see the bags of clothes piled up. Uncle Ronnie don’t get rid of nothing. He used to work as a janitor over at the school, and he loved to bring home them bags of lost and found. Said he was gonna wash it all and donate it to the coal miners, only he never got around to it.

Last year started out normal, if you don’t count Anson, my twenty-two-year-old brother, going to prison for things like stealing gas. And Cooter Dale, my seventeen-year-old brother, got Miranda pregnant, but now we had Baby Jadyn. So what if their relationship is more on-again, off-again than our cable? Last year, I met Tyler. I thought I had been in love before, but I was wrong. Love was a doe-eyed punk with baggy pants, extra large shirts hanging on his skinny frame, and a low-slung hat, cocked backwards or sideways. Love was his smooth honey voice, tempting me to do more than listen. Love…..



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