“I want McDono’s!” Tyesha yells from the backseat, her high voice almost a shriek. “Me too!” Travelle says, balling his little hands into tiny fists and smashing them into his thighs.
“But mommy, I want McDono’s too,” Tia says, and in the rearview I can see her squirming in her car seat. Tyesha and Travelle gaze down lovingly at their little sister, who’s strapped in between them, then look at each other and smile their biggest, cheesiest smiles ’cause they know I can never resist Tia when she’s strapped in that thing, which I know she hates. They are starving, and by the time we get home and I get dinner on the table it’ll be past their bedtime…
The kids look at me to see if I’ll accept the proposition.
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I pull into the drive-through and cringe as we crunch over broken glass. A reverential silence comes over the car as the kids prepare to yell out their orders. We wait for the familiar crackle of the microphone.
Finally, from the little speaker we hear the clear sound of someone smacking on a wad of gum. After about five minutes of that the gum smacker decides to grace us with words: “The drive-through ain’t workin’,” she says. “You gotta come in.”
I get out of the car, as do Tyesha and Travelle, who has resumed the McDono’s chant and is jumping up and down. As I unleash Tia from her chair and prop her on my hip the guy in the Buick sits up. He looks me over, and then looks at my Camry.
“Don’t be talkin’ to my mama that way, you old gym shoe.” Tyesha gets an attitude real quick and always calls people names that on the surface seem to make no sense, but if you ask her about it she’ll be able to explain why she chose that name. Like she’ll say, “I called him an old gym shoe ’cause the kids at school tease anybody who’s not wearing the most up-to-date gym shoes, so being an old gym shoe is really the worst thing in the world to be ’cause you all beat up and don’t nobody like you and you get teased all the time.”
