Leaving Atlanta (9 page)

At lunchtime, Tayari ate with Octavia. Tasha sat alone.

“This is ridiculous,” Mama said. “You knew about this assignment for how long?”

Tasha bit her lip. It was almost eleven o’clock and she hadn’t even looked at her math homework. She was still working on
her book report. “Stop fussing at me,” she growled.

Daddy walked into the kitchen, almost stepping on DeShaun, who was snoozing in the corner, tucked into her sleeping bag. He
turned on the TV. “What’s going on?”

“Tasha waited until the last minute to do her homework,” Mama reported. “DeShaun didn’t want to sleep by herself, so she camped
out in here.”

“All while I was in the basement?” Daddy smiled and grabbed a handful of animal crackers from the box on the counter.

“A lot happens while you are down there,” Tasha snapped.

“What’s wrong with you, Ladybug?”

“Nothing.”

“Growing pains,” Mama told him.

Ever since Mama had presented her with a small pink bra, that had been her explanation for Tasha’s every mood.

She was about to complain when Mama looked up at the black-and-white TV and said, “Sweet Jesus.”

“That’s our school,” said DeShaun, from her nest on the floor.

A woman with a blue-and-white scarf sobbed into a microphone.
I kept telling him to come right on home after school. I told him the man was going to get him if he didn’t come right on
home.

It was Jashante. The fuzzy snapshot had been taken before he chipped his front tooth. He looked like a little boy. The scarf
woman was crying.
He didn’t come home after school.

“He didn’t even come to school today,” Tasha said.

A phone number on the bottom of the screen.
Call if you know anything. Call if you see anything. Someone out there knows something. Don’t be afraid. Come forward.

Tasha’s chest squeezed smaller. She leaned forward and put her head on her knees. “It’s alright, baby,” Mama said. “Breathe
slow. You’re alright.”

They showed the picture one more time. Missing, not murdered.
There may still be time for this boy. Call us. Twenty-four hours.
Scarf woman crying again. Wiping her face with the back of her hand.
He always give me a lot of trouble but I didn’t want nothing like this to happen to him.

“I know that boy. He’s in my class.”

“Shh … Don’t talk. Breathe. Get your air.”

Daddy stood over her. Picked her up, carried her toward the back of the house. He was worried. His face near hers. “Breathe,”
he told her. “Daddy’s here.”

Tasha put her hand up to intercept his kiss. “You said he wasn’t going to live to be eighteen. I heard you.”

“I didn’t mean— That’s the same boy?” Daddy was looking at the TV. “But he looks like a little fella.”

Mama put her arms around Tasha and she didn’t fight her. “Mama, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Shh, baby.”

Monica Kaufman said, “The missing boy is thirteen years old.”

When Tasha woke up the next morning there was a sweet moment of nothingness, but knowledge returned like a yoyo snapping itself
back hard into the palm of her hand. Jashante was missing. Somebody snatched him. Then the next thought, that Tasha herself
had brought it upon him with her hateful words.
I hope the man snatches you. Asphyxiated. Decomposed.
And she had meant it when she said it. Mad about ruining her coat, stinging from the laughter of her classmates, she had
meant it. And Daddy had cursed him too.
That boy’ll be lucky to see the other side of eighteen.
Jashante wouldn’t get to see the other side of fifth grade. And that was the saddest thought of all.

Recess was postponed indefinitely. No one announced it or made it official. The bell had just rung and nobody moved. Tasha
was uneasy in the stillness. She searched her classmates’ faces. Did they remember that she was responsible? All of the kids
wore weird expressions, like their eyes had been reversed and they were all staring inside their own heads.

Tasha’s father joined a search party. They all wore white T-shirts trimmed in blue and headed out in the morning dark.

“Where are they going?” Tasha wanted to know.

“They are looking out in the woods,” Mama said.

“Why would those kids be in the woods?” DeShaun asked.

Mama didn’t say anything and Tasha already knew that they were not looking for anyone alive. She opened her mouth to say this
when her mother gave her a look and said, “Button it.”

The three of them lay in Mama’s big bed waiting for Daddy to come back. DeShaun complained of a sore throat and fell asleep
soon after swallowing a big spoonful of purple medicine. When DeShaun started breathing in quiet snores, Mama spoke.

“How are you feeling, Tasha?”

“I’m okay. My throat’s not sore.”

Mama smoothed Tasha’s hair with her soft palm. “I mean how are you feeling on the inside? That boy from your class, Jashante?”

Mama said his name with uncertainty, like she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.

“He was my friend,” Tasha said.

“Baby, sometimes things happen and we don’t know why—”

But Tasha knew why. Her need to confess was as fundamental as her need for air. “I know why.”

“You can’t know.”

“Yes, I do,” Tasha said. “It’s not a
growing pain
.”

“Tell me, then,” Mama said.

“It’s me,” she said. “He pushed me down and I got mad and said that I hoped the man gets him, and now he’s gone.”

It felt good to tell someone, especially Mama, who had the power to punish and the authority to absolve. “I promise to be
more careful with my words,” Tasha said solemnly, looking up at her mother expecting to see anger or even revulsion.

“Oh, sweetie,” Mama said. “You don’t think that you— You don’t think that it’s your fault, do you?”

“It
is
,” Tasha insisted. Her contrition was turning to anger.

“Tasha, I understand that you feel bad about what you said to your friend, but you didn’t kill—” She paused. “You didn’t make
this happen. A very sick person is responsible for this. It has nothing to do with you. Do you understand me?”

Tasha pulled fuzz from the blanket, but didn’t speak.

“Listen,” Mama said. “How many times have you wished for something to happen and it didn’t?”

Just last week, she had wished for a pretty pink envelope with a magenta heart.

Mama waited a few seconds before she spoke again. “See, baby, things just happen in spite of our wishes.”

“Well, what about prayers?” Tasha asked.

“Prayers are different.”

But Tasha didn’t think so. After all, what were prayers but wishes addressed directly to God?

Mama suggested that they say a prayer for Jashante. Tasha bowed her head and said “Amen” when Mama stopped talking; but she
knew it wasn’t going to work.

Daddy returned that evening different. Dinner was cooling in bowls on the table as the girls and their mother sat waiting
for him to come downstairs. They could hear the shower running long after the bowls stopped steaming. He came and sat at his
place.

“Let us pray,” he said.

Tasha looked at her mother. They prayed over Sunday and holiday dinners, but ordinary meals like this one usually went unblessed.
Instead of the usual grace thanking God for the food we receive for the nourishment of our bodies, Daddy slowly recited The
Lord’s Prayer. Tasha listened carefully.
Forgive us our trespasses
. She moved her lips silently around the words. After they soberly said “Amen,” he said, “Don’t turn that TV on tonight.”

“Where did you go?” Tasha asked quietly. This was as close as she could get to her real question:
Did you see my friend? Was he dead?

Daddy spoke to his hands, which were situated in the center of his empty plate. “The group I was with went way north, all
the way where white people stay. All of us were packed in a bus like little kids going on a field trip. When we got out there,
some of them were ready to help us search. Their wives—churches, or whoever—had fixed sack lunches for us, but I didn’t eat
none of it.” He looked at Mama. “I am not prejudiced. Delores, you know that.”

Mama didn’t speak.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.

Tasha carefully set her glass down on the table without a click. She wanted to hear his confession.

“Does a man have to be prejudiced to see what is right in front of his face?”

Mama was still quiet.

“I’m asking,” Daddy said, staring at her.

“All I’m saying is that you don’t know.” She spoke the words slowly, pronouncing each letter.

Yes, you
can
know; Tasha felt her pulse accelerate. It knocked hard against her temples. Let Daddy talk.

“Well, let me tell you what I do know. I know that a black preschool blew up just six months ago.”

“What happened at Bowen Homes was an accident. The boiler exploded.”

“An accident like Birmingham,” Daddy spat. “Nothing has changed. When they found that little light-skinned boy, the one that
was just down here visiting from Ohio, all I could think about was Emmett Till.”

“Who?” DeShaun asked.

Mama looked over at the girls. Before she could send them away, Daddy answered the question.

“Emmett Till was a little brother in Mississippi; white folks killed him for no reason. Hung him and—”

“Charles. Hush now.”

“No,” Daddy said. “Don’t hush me like I’m a child. I won’t hush. That’s the problem. We been hushed up too long. These children
don’t know nothing about lynching. They don’t know about white folks burning niggers alive. That’s why we had to go out today—This
whole thing is because black kids don’t have sense enough to be scared of a strange white man.”

He was shouting. His voice, losing its richness, was ragged and mean. He punctuated his speech with a fist brought down hard
on the glass table, upsetting a blue tumbler of water and ice.

DeShaun’s eyes were filling up. She thought the rage and the hate were directed at her. Tasha touched her sister’s leg under
the table. Daddy should know better. Shaun was too little to understand that he was cursing something way older than the girls.
Something he had seen. And Mama had seen it too.

“Enough,” Mama said, with one eye on DeShaun. “Alright, Charles?” She spoke quietly. “Enough.”

The air in the kitchen was stretched tight like a rubber band. Daddy set both of his elbows on the table and covered each
eye with the heel of a hand. Suddenly, Tasha wanted him to hold her on his lap, kiss her forehead, and say that everything
was all right. But he didn’t even look at her. He stared into the cave his hands made like somebody stuck in the middle of
a game of peekaboo. Mama sent the girls to their rooms and Daddy didn’t move.

Tasha stood in the darkened hallway. Waiting. There was more. Daddy’s face was weighted in a way that Tasha almost recognized.

“Tasha,” DeShaun whispered.

She had almost forgotten that her little sister was with her. “Shush,” she said gently.

DeShaun moved so close that Tasha could smell the Kool-Aid on her sister’s breath as they watched their parents.

“Delores,” Daddy said, in a small voice.

“Come here,” Mama said, without moving.

Daddy got up slowly, taking careful steps like his feet hurt and stopped in front of Mama’s chair. She smoothed her skirt
across her lap and he slowly sank, putting each knee delicately on the yellow linoleum. Their faces were level.

“Sh …” Mama said. She put her hands on the sides of his face. Her nails were clean and white-tipped against his skin.

“Don’t shush me,” he pleaded. “I need to talk.”

He rested his head in her lap like he was horribly tired. She rubbed the story out of his head in gentle circles.

“Out there where we went, is like where I grew up. It’s a trip. Twenty-five miles outside of Atlanta and
bam
, back in Alabama.” He made a sound that was something like a laugh. “White folks looking at you half mean, half scared. The
ones who came out to help us look were decent; I’ll admit that. But most of them didn’t lift a finger. Just stayed in their
houses.