1I like coffee, I like tea.

2I like the boys and the boys like me.

3Y es, no, maybe so. Y es, no, maybe so . . .

4One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready to take you where?

5They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking, Rachel says turning the jump rope a little quicker. She has no imagination.

6You need them to dance, says Lucy.

7If you don't get them you may turn into a man. Nenny says this and she believes it. She is this way because of her age.

8That's right, I add before Lucy or Rachel can make fun of her. She is stupid alright, but she is my sister.

9But most important, hips are scientific, I say repeating what Alicia already told me. It's the bones that let you know which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which a woman's.

10They bloom like roses, I continue because it's obvious I'm the only one who can speak with any authority; I have science on my side. The bones just one day open. Just like that. One day you might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones got to give.

11But don't have too many or your behind will spread. That's how it is, says Rachel whose mama is as wide as a boat. And we just laugh.

12What I'm saying is who here is ready? You gotta be able to know what to do with hips when you get them, I say making it up as I go. You gotta know how to walk-with hips, practice you know—like if half of you wanted to go one way and the other half the other.

13That's to lullaby it, Nenny says, that's to rock the baby asleep inside you. And then she begins singing seashells, copper bells, eevy, ivy, o-ver.

14I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but the more I think about it . . .

15You gotta get the rhythm, and Lucy begins to dance. She has the idea, though she's having trouble keeping her end of the double-dutch steady.

16It's gotta be just so, I say. Not too fast and not too slow. Not too fast and not too slow.

17We slow the double circles down to a certain speed so Rachel who has just jumped in can practice shaking it.

18I want to shake like hoochi-coochie, Lucy says. She is crazy.

19I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say picking up on the cue.

20I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity. Or tembleque!

21Yes, tembleque. That's a good one.

22And then it's Rachel who starts it:

23Skip, skip,

24snake in your hips.

25wiggle around

26and break your lip.

27Lucy waits a minute before her turn. She is thinking. Then she begins:

28The waitress with the big fat hips

29who pays the rent with taxi tips . . .

30says nobody in town will kiss her on the lips

31because . . .

32because she looks like Christopher Columbus!

33Y es, no, maybe so. Y es, no, maybe so.

34She misses on maybe so. I take a little while before my turn, take a breath, and dive in:

35Some are skinny like chicken lips.

36Some are baggy like soggy band-aids

37after you get out of the bathtub.

38I don't care what kind I get.

39Just as long as I get hips.

40Everybody getting into it now except Nenny who is still humming not a girl, not a boy, just a little baby. She's like that.

41When the two arcs open wide like jaws Nenny jumps

42in across from me, the rope tick-ticking, the little gold earrings our mama gave her for her First Holy Communion bouncing. She is the color of a bar of naphtha laundry soap, she is like the little brown piece left at the end of the wash, the hard little bone, my sister. Her mouth opens. She begins:

43My mother and your mother were washing clothes.

44My mother punched your mother right in the nose.

45What color blood came out?

46Not that old song, I say. You gotta use your own song. Make it up, you know? But she doesn't get it or won't. It's hard to say which. The rope turning, turning, turning.

47Engine, engine number nine,

48running down Chicago line.

49If the train runs off the track

50do you want your money back?

51Do you want your MONEY back?

52Y es, no, maybe so. Y es, no, maybe so . . .

53I can tell Lucy and Rachel are disgusted, but they don't say anything because she's my sister.

54Y es, no, maybe so. Y es, no, maybe so . . .

55Nenny, I say, but she doesn't hear me. She is too many light years away. She is in a world we don't belong to anymore. Nenny. Going. Going.

56Y -E-S spells yes and out you go!