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“Say, y’all gotta chill,” I said through laughter. “It is what it is, Phee. It’s an all girls sleepover, so you and Zee gon’ have to hang out with me that night.”

“I might chill with y’all that night, too,” Aspen said.

“You not gon spend the night, sis?” Lourdes smirked. She knew what was up just like I did. Aspen wasn’t trying to help with all those kids overnight and into the next morning.

“Nope. After we sing happy birthday I’ma go ahead and see myself out. I don’t have time to be watching people’s kids. Milan got too many lil friends.”

“Mom said she’s only allowing her to invite four girls and that she’s going to ask their moms if they want to stay,” Aneesah laughed.

“Whattt?” Milan asked with devastated eyes. Like clockwork, she looked over at me. “Bubby, I can only invite four girls?”

“I don’t have nothing to do with it, Milan. You gotta talk to mama about that,” I chuckled.

“Let me call her,” Milan said like an old woman while holding up her phone.

“Aht-aht, Milan,” Aneesah butted in. “Don’t disturb mama with that right now. You know she’s studying.”

“Studying for what?” I balled my face up. As far as I knew my mom’s highest form of education was her junior year of high school. She was an honor roll student and had dreams of college until she got pregnant with me and started playing house with my dad. She claimed that he encouraged her to finish high school, but she preferred staying at home with me. In reality, I think she preferred keeping a close eye on my dad and following him around.

“Oops…,” Aneesah uttered regretfully. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“What you wasn’t supposed to say?” I asked. The fact that she was keeping a secret on behalf of Rahesha was puzzling because she told all her other business to me without holding back.

“Chile, mama studying for her GED, but you ain’t hear that from me,” Aspen readily answered. She evidently didn’t care about keeping Rahesha’s questionable secret. I wasn’t trying to be negative, but if she was doing something of substance like that then she of all people would definitely be bragging about it.

“Really, Aspen? You know that lady told us not to tell anybody,” Aneesah hissed. “If it gets back to her I’ma make sure to tell her that it was you who said it.”

“But you started it, though,” Phoenix said.

“Lil boy, stay in a child’s place,” she snapped, before focusing on me. “Don’t tell anybody, Bubby.”

I smacked my teeth. “I ain’t repeating nothing like that, trust me.”

“Why does it have to be a secret?” Lourdes asked. “She’s doing something positive.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” I added evenly.

“She really is studying for her GED, Bubby,” Aneesah said. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I don’t think she’d go through the trouble of buying text books and asking me to quiz her.”

“You didn’t hear me say that lady was lying, Neese.”

“She probably noticed the look on your face,” Phoenix said. He obviously hadn’t followed Aneesah’s orders to stay in a child’s place.

“Well looks can be deceiving,” I responded, gaslighting the hell out of them. I could’ve gone into grave detail about why I thought Rahesha was lying. If it were just me, Aspen, and Aneesah I probably would have, but I didn’t want to talk too much shit in front of the little ones.

“So what made her want to get her GED now?” I asked.

“She said she wants to enroll into a LPN program,” Aspen replied.

“Dang, you just keep going, Aspen,” Aneesah laughed.

“Girl, whatever, the cat is out the bag now.”

“That brings me back to my question that nobody answered, why does she want to keep it a secret?” Lourdes asked.

“Probably because she don’t want to deal with haters and naysayers. I know when I went back to college after having you everybody had a damn negative opinion,” Ms. Lucia said.

“How could people be negative about you going back to school?” Aspen asked in confusion.