Jungle 3: Revisited

Chapter 9

"How you like it so far?" Ebony took a sip of her glass bottled root beer while sitting on Mike's bed.

"It's good. I didn't know you had a whole nickname outchea'." Mike handed Ebony the first part of her autobiography she had him edit.

"My parents used to call me that and after they died, I kinda grew out of it."

"I'm a start calling you that. Say, Poodaaaaa." Mike smiled, drinking the homemade root beer float he made.

"Whatever. So you gone tell me what you did and why it got all this marking on it?" She flipped through the pages.

"Okay, I went to the store and bought highlighters and everything. So, I highlighted parts that I think should be tweaked. For example, you put little side stories about stuff that happened in ya' household. Which is cool, but it's kinda confusing when you tell a long ass story and then go back to whatever you was saying beforehand." He pointed out.

After two days of proofreading, Mike got back to Ebony on what needed to be fixed. He wasn't a teacher nor was he the smartest person in the world, but there were some obvious things he spotted. Staying up late after work, Mike got to learn more about Ebony's childhood. He even read about the day her parents died—in very vivid detail.

"I think you should keep the detail about what went on at home, but just shorten it a little. Oh yeah, a lil background information about ya' parents would be cool too."

"Should I add that in the beginning? If that's the case should I talk about my brothers being born too?"

"Add it right here. Where you said you the fourth child of six. State they names and just a small bit of info about them. And then just leave that section like that."

"Cool." She grinned as he passed her a pen.

"That's not it. Punctuation is good, ya' grammar could use a little work. For the most part, you know how to spell and how to structure a sentence and paragraph. Umm, how can I say this? You type how you talk."

"What you mean by that? Ain't that what I'm supposed to do? It's written by me and it's about me."

"I know I marked a few things, let's just say you wrote...I don't want go there. Okay, you know that's how we talk here, but for somebody else reading it, they might see that as an error."

"I don't wan' go there? I never said that." Ebony started reading his little notes.

"I can't understand ya' handwriting." She looked at him, waiting for him to explain further.

"I know you didn't say those exact words, but that's an example of how you talking in the book. Like when you said, my daddy killed my mama in front me. It's, in front of me. If you quoting ya'self then it might be cool, I see it as you speaking Ebonics throughout it. But if that's how you wanna write it then that's cool too."

"So basically I write like I'm slow. Okay." She nodded.

"I ain't say that. You a good writer, but some stuff need to be tweaked." He continued eating his ice cream.

"I know, I'm just playing. I understand what you mean and I'll try to speak proper English, I guess. Any other criticism?"

"No. Was it hard writing about that day?"

"A little. You think that was too much detail? My brothers said I can say whatever I felt that day. I kinda got some detail from them because some parts are a blur to me, I was only six."

"It wasn't, it's good how it is."

"Man, you got some sucky handwriting." Ebony placed the paper close to her face, trying to understand his jumbled up words that were far too close together.