Leaving Atlanta (10 page)

“They paired us up. I got put with this white guy named John or Jim. I don’t remember. We didn’t say anything to each other,
which was probably for the best. I can’t think of anything that he could have said that wouldn’t have made me want to hit
him. I think that he could tell that’s how I felt. Sometimes those decent white folks can understand that we can’t forgive
them. Especially not at a time like this.”

In the hall, Tasha wondered about herself, Daddy, and even Monica and Forsythia. Could they be forgiven? Maybe not at a time
like this, but ever, at all?

“So me and Jim were in the woods, turning over bunches of leaves with our poles. It was cool and dry out but the leaves underneath
were wet and gummed up. Decaying. Nasty. The whole time I was wishing I was home. I even wanted to hurt my feet on those damn
jacks Tasha’s always leaving on the floor for me to step on. But I had to keep looking. You know? I watch the TV and I see
parents at their own kids’ funerals. So I have to go on looking. I have to help. How can I say I can’t stand to look under
a pile of soggy leaves when I know whatever I find can only be so bad because my girls are at home sleep?”

Was it Jashante? Tasha could only picture him like he was in the photo on the news. She imagined him fuzzy, out of focus,
and asphyxiated in a garbage bag.

“Shh …” said Mama. “I know. You don’t have to talk about it.” She rocked him like a grumpy baby.

“Mama, let him say it,” Tasha whispered. Only words can undo words. Kids say that to take something back you have to say it
backward. Like a filmstrip run the wrong way.
Die you hope I. Eighteen of side other. People some to nice be can’t you.

“That’s what I’m talking about. How can I say that I can’t stand to talk about it? And how can you say that you can’t stand
to
hear
it when other people are
living
it?”

Tasha couldn’t see her father’s face. She heard the strange muffled voice, and for a moment she didn’t believe that it was
him. She needed to see his mouth make the words.

“I was turning over the leaves.” Daddy went on. “Shamed, you know, and at the same time thanking God when there was nothing
but worms and dirt out there. Then we came across something foul in a hefty bag.”

Mama rubbed his neck until the words came out.

“The bag was about the right size and there was something dead in there, that much I knew. Only one thing smells like that.
I wanted to let it alone or call one of the group leaders to come and handle it. But that white boy was looking at me; I could
feel it. I took my pole and poked the bag open.

“It was nothing but a dead dog.”

“Was that all you found?” Mama’s voice was steady like when she said
Hold still
before pulling off a Band-Aid stuck to a wound.

What was out there to see? Pretty envelopes. Red dirt, pink satin. Shiny dimes and M&Ms. Magenta heart, torn open.

“Me?” Daddy said. “Yeah. That’s all I saw. But the other group, they came across that little girl.”

“Lord,” said Mama. “Where?”

“That’s the thing,” Daddy said. “It was right around here. I didn’t realize it at first. Word got around that they found a
body, a skeleton really, around a lake.”

“Around here?” Mama said. Her hand stopped its soothing circles.

“I saw a policeman. A brother. He said they found her at Niskey Lake. I said ‘Where the hell is that?’ and he told me. I said,
‘Man, that’s not far from where I stay. I never heard of no lake off of Cascade Road.’ He said, ‘Somebody did.’”

They were silent then. The heater hummed on as her father knelt with his head in her mother’s lap. Tasha pulled DeShaun’s
hand and they moved quietly into the black dark of their bedroom.

Tasha pressed her face against her window and saw the dark night through burglar bars. She looked across the lawn; it was
too dark to see the trees, naked without their leaves, but she knew they were there. Jashante was out there too, but the night
was huge. She saw one star. Tasha closed her eyes but didn’t wish.

“Tasha,” DeShaun said sleepily, “what’s the magic word?”

“Huh?” Tasha said, distracted.

“Remember you said that there was a magic word to keep you safe.”

“Oh,
that
magic word,” Tasha said, as if there were only one. Words could be magic, but not in the abracadabra way that DeShaun believed.
The magic that came from lips could be as cruel as children and as erratic as a rubber ball ricocheting off concrete.

“Shaun,” Tasha said, “there’s no such thing as a magic word.”

“Not at all?”

“Not like you mean.”

“Oh,” DeShaun said, with almost tangible disappointment.

“Well,” Tasha told her, “there is power. But—” She stopped, wanting to comfort her sister with more than flawed, uncontrollable
words.

“But what?” DeShaun pressed.

“It’s not a word; it’s a charm.”

Tasha retrieved Jashante’s air freshener from her pillowcase. She pressed it to her lips and was overcome by its green scent
as she handed it to her little sister. “Put this under your pillow and you’ll be alright.”

In autumn, oak trees drop acorns on Atlanta lawns and cover them with a quilt of decaying leaves. LaTasha Renee Baxter held
her little sister’s hand after school as they walked across their lawn, forcing the acorns under their feet into the red earth.
The air stank of leaves burning in barrels, but Tasha recalled the clean outdoor smell of pine.

The Direction Opposite of Home

M
orning begins the moment Father swings his
cracked feet over the side of the bed and stands. With the grace of the blind, he dresses in the dark of his and Mother’s
bedroom. You hear a crisp sound like pages turning as he pulls his starched coveralls around himself and fastens the zipper.

You are tense between your Snoopy sheets as he heads to the kitchen. When he pauses before your room, his body blocks the
yellow light that arches underneath your door. Is he standing there recalling some criticism he forgot to deliver yesterday?
You imagine him making a mental note to berate you tonight, over dinner. He continues down the hallway as you study the ceiling
over your bed, wondering who arranged the tiny stalagmites in such an intricate pattern, and wondering why your father hates
you.

Father’s small A.M. radio belches out
WAOK
. The shrieking teakettle cannot muffle Ron Sailor’s funereal report from the newsroom. One of your classmates, Jashante Hamilton,
has been missing for two weeks. You do not miss Jashante; he had terrorized you for most of your elementary-school career.
But you do not want to know that he has been found murdered, for whoever could kill Jashante, could destroy you effortlessly.

As you chant nursery rhymes to distract yourself from the news report, Father stacks his breakfast dishes in the sink and
shuts off the radio. Father rattles the back burglar door, assuring himself that it is as locked now as it was last night
when he turned the key and checked it twice. Exiting through the front door, he turns the double dead bolt behind him with
a responsible clunk. You close your eyes and stop humming. He’s gone to work. You can dream again.

At daybreak, Mother whisks into your room in a long satin robe, waking you with a contrived coloratura, “Good morning, Rodney.”
Ignoring her salutation, you do not stir. “Wake up,” she sings, shaking you with hands that smell faintly of glue. You emit
a grunting surrender to discourage her from tickling you or covering your face with cold-creamed kisses. Satisfied that you
are awake, she leaves you alone. Her blue robe swishes with inappropriate elegance as she moves to Sister’s room.

As you pull on your favorite pair of Toughskins, you notice the morning air is not heavy with too-crispy bacon and scorched
eggs. A long assessing breath detects rubber cement. You take another guilty inhalation, savoring the smell in the same way
that you enjoy damp ditto sheets held briefly to your face at school. But intoxicating or not, this is no breakfast smell.
You make your way to the kitchen, picking up the odor of paint as well.

Mother frets over a sequined shoe box in the center of the sturdy oak kitchen table. It is a diorama, Sister’s fall project.
Mr. Harrell ordered you fifth-graders to create festive posters illustrating the theme, “Reaching as we climb.” The purple
mimeographed sheet with the instructions is crumpled in the sticky bottom of your book bag.

Sister’s pretty little brow is creased as she carefully prints her name on the pencil line beside the word
by
. “Right here, honey,” Mother says. Sister is six years old and very obedient.

“Your poster is in the living room,” Mother tells you as she carefully encloses the diorama in bubble wrap.

You are surprised, but you shouldn’t be. This is hardly the first time that your mother’s industry has thwarted your strides
toward underachievement. But what else has she found rifling through your bag? Has she seen the candy wrappers? Maybe, but
that doesn’t prove anything. Furthermore, Mother is not predisposed to think ill of either of her children by virtue of love
liberally mingled with instability. You walk to the living room and retrieve the poster without comment.

“I’m hungry,” says Sister, not unpleasantly.

The kitchen is covered with putty, spangles, twine, and toxic solvents. Mother glances at the daisy-shaped clock over the
stove. “I have a hair appointment at eight. You’ll have to get breakfast at school.”

“What?” you sputter although you hadn’t intended to say anything. Since your words are almost invariably misinterpreted, you
avoid speech in general and abstain entirely from rhetorical questions.

“We’re going to eat at school!” Sister is happy, partly because she is a naturally effervescent little girl, but also because
the cafeteria ladies love her and give her extra cartons of chocolate milk. You have not made such a good impression on the
heavy women whose round faces are framed by hair nets. They actually
dislike
you, demonstrating this antipathy by a subtle twist of the wrist, ensuring that your serving of casserole never has cheese
on top.

And besides, school breakfast is eaten nearly exclusively by kids whose families are so poor that they don’t have anything
to eat at home. They carry meal cards, given out at the first of the week, marked
FREE
so they receive their trays without paying. You’d rather not be associated with this group, but you don’t mention this to
your mother. She would accuse you of pretension. Never mind that the shoe box she chose to make your sister’s diorama conspicuously
bears the label of her only Italian pumps.

Arriving at school, you head toward the cafeteria, but pause in the hallway in front of a huge cardboard tree. Dangling from
the branches are construction-paper apples bearing the names of the Students of the Month. No apple reads
RODNEY GREEN
. Mother once demanded a conference with the principal to discuss this oversight. She arrived for the meeting smartly dressed,
clutching a copy of your standardized test scores in a gloved hand.

“We tend to reward achievement rather than aptitude,” the principal explained, ushering her out.

You are starving. Why not push the cafeteria doors, walk in casually, and get yourself a tray? Every student is allowed to
eat. Hadn’t Mother said that you should be the
most
welcome because your family pays the taxes that make the breakfast possible? But sponsoring the meal does not erase the stigma
of actually eating it, so you stay hungrily in the hall.

When the project kids file out of the cafeteria, you offer them the courtesy of not looking into their faces. For some reason,
they hesitate a moment when they see you. Are they looking at your clothes? Can they tell that your socks, though similar,
are not an exact match? Or is it your howling stomach that attracts such attention? Finally, you realize that in the hallway’s
fluorescent light, your poster—Mother’s masterpiece—is magnificently luminous like the pulsing lights of a parking lot carnival.