Leaving Atlanta (19 page)

I called myself being cool, calm, and collected, but my stomach balled up and my legs got ready to run when we got to the
side of the street where the Angel was. He didn’t look dangerous. But if child murderers looked like child murderers, they
wouldn’t be able to drum up business.

“You kids alright?” he said.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Yeah,” Delvis said. “But let me ask you something.”

The Angel smiled and relaxed his Superman arms. He bent his knees a little bit. “Shoot.”

“Y’all got any black Angels?”

I couldn’t believe Delvis. Ten minutes ago, he was scared to cross the street, but now he got right in the man’s face, asking
him if he was prejudiced.

The Angel kept smiling. “That’s a good question. Young people need to ask smart questions. The answer is
yes.
The Guardian Angels is a multiethnic organization.”

“So y’all got black ones?”

Delvis was going to get himself in trouble mouthing off like this to this Angel. “We better hurry up,” I said. “The twins
are hungry.” I jerked Darlita’s arm a little bit trying to get her to whimper or something. But since we got to this side
of the street the twins acted like they ain’t got a tongue between them.

The Angel held his hand up. “Just a moment.” He looked at Delvis in the face like man-to-man. “Yes, young man, there are a
lot of black Guardian Angels.”

“Well,” Delvis said, “that’s who I want to save me.”

When we got to the cafeteria and got our trays, we split up. Delvis went to the back where the sixth- and seventh-grade boys
would sit when they got here; the twins ate together at an oval table. Next year, they will sit apart, boys at one table and
girls at another one. I sat by myself at a table by the window; I didn’t care that the wind blew right in like it didn’t see
the big piece of glass trying to keep the air out. I pulled my coat around myself and looked out the window.

In front of me was a bowl of grits thick like white mud. I gave the cafeteria lady my bowl and asked her to fill it up with
Froot Loops. She didn’t smile or call me baby. Instead she looked at the wall above my head and gave me these nasty grits.
I was surprised because the cafeteria ladies are most of the time nicer than teachers or kids.

“Scuze me,” I said. “I asked for Froot Loops.”

“Don’t have none today,” she said.

I saw a big ol box of them behind her, but I didn’t want to get in a fight with a cafeteria lady. If you get on they bad side,
you’ll never get nothing decent on your tray. I looked at her again, but her mind was moved on to someplace else.

I couldn’t decide to eat the grits or throw them away. I knew I would be starving like Marvin by noon. I scooped a chunk of
grape jelly out of a little container. I stirred it into my grits and got ready to just choke it down. Nobody ever died from
eating stiff grits, but hunger hurts and a growling stomach is embarrassing.

I managed to get three or four lumpy spoonfuls down, when I saw a pretty maroon Cadillac float into the parking lot. This
is why I liked to sit by the window. I got up all my things, threw that ten-ton bowl of grits in the trash, and ran outside
real fast before one of the hall monitors could ask where I was going.

“Mrs. Grier!” I hollered. “You want me to help you tote something?”

She smiled at me. “Good morning, Octavia.”

“Morning,” I said back to her. I love Mrs. Grier. For real. I told Mama this when I was in the second grade and Mrs. Grier
was my teacher. Mama said, “Does Mrs. Grier put food on this table?” Like somebody got to feed you for you to love them.

Mrs. Grier opened her trunk and gave me a spelling book. “You can carry this,” she said, leaning on the word
carry
to let me know it was better than saying
tote.

“I’ll
carry
it for you,” I said stretching the word out.

Mrs. Grier is one classy lady. She is tall and big, not fat, but big like she deserves the biggest room or the best plate
of food. She brushes her hair to the back of her head and then she twists it into this pretty crisscross. But at the Spring
Fashion Tea last year, she had it all fluffed out and I saw why they say old people’s hair is silver. Hers caught the light
and gleamed like a quarter do to just make you have to bend down and pick it up. But more than just being classy, Mrs. Grier
is
right.
I won’t say that she is nice because she isn’t really. She don’t play. If you don’t have your spelling words, you going to
be in the corner, no doubt about that. And if you do something real bad like talk back or fighting, she will take a ruler
to your palm without even thinking about it. But I say she is
right
because she can know the truth from a lie just as soon as she hear it.

Like one time, a library book had got abused. Mrs. Grier held the book up where everybody could see that damage and asked
who did it. (She always gave the misbehaver a chance to tell on hisself before she went to investigate.) Nobody said anything.
I was staring at the book with my mouth hanging all the way open to my knees. One of the first things we learned way back
in Pre-K is to respect library property.

Monica Fisher said, “I saw Octavia Fuller writing in that book.”

I turned around and looked at that h-e-f-f-e-r. The ends of her ponytails were tied with smooth yellow ribbons. I couldn’t
believe that somebody could sit there and lie for no reason at all, and in front of the person they were lying on. Even in
the second grade I knew about kids talking about people behind they back, but I didn’t think somebody would do it right in
front of my face. Mrs. Grier mashed her lips together and I knew that she was really mad. I opened my mouth right then to
say my mama didn’t allow people to beat me. But quick as a flash, Mrs. Grier said, “This is not Octavia’s handwriting.”

Now, see, that’s what I’m talking about.

It was amazing for me to think that somebody could pay enough attention to me to know that I wrote my words in a certain way.
And that thought made me feel good, but then my heart went in my stomach when I started picturing my letters. Sometime I crossed
the Ts and sometime I didn’t. I used to write real fast and sloppy. My Os looked like Us because I didn’t take the time to
close them off. But after then, I made sure that my penmanship was perfect, so somebody could know me for that.

After that, me and Mrs. Grier been friends. And that was good because after that day, I didn’t have no more regular friends
in school anyway. Before, people had picked on me. They said,
Octavia so black and ugly.
Or they said my hair is short and nappy. But not every day. The next day, they would be on to the next person. Maybe talking
about Tayari Jones because her mama, president of the PTA, always came to the school wearing weird square shoes with laces
up the front. Sometimes, they laugh at Cassius and call him raccoon because he got circles around his eyes. But after that
day, Monica Fisher made it her business to mess with me every day the Lord gave. And the Lord done gave a lot of days since
second grade.

We went in the classroom and Mrs. Grier shut the door behind us. The desks were lined up in the same eight little rows like
when I was in the second grade. I wanted to sit in my old desk for just a minute, but I couldn’t remember which one it was.
I walked up in the rows, trying to think like a second-grader, and hoped that my legs would stop in the right place. I bent
to sit; the chair was so low that I thought that the school board had sent over littler chairs to save money. But these desks
were too beat-up to be new. I squashed my big old self in anyway. The top of the desk was all written on. TJ+AM and stuff
like that. I ran my hand under the desk top and felt wads of gum, dried hard. I couldn’t believe it. Little kids writing on
school property? Drawing little hearts talking about they going together? When I was in the second grade, boys and girls didn’t
sit together in the cafeteria, let alone try to be a couple. And then they have the nerve to chew gum in class and not even
dispose of it properly?

“Mrs. Grier,” I called.

She looked up from her desk where she was situating her teacher stuff. “Yes?”

I shook my head in a way that was a question.

“Wrong desk, Octavia. Move up one.”

That meant that I was sitting in Rodney’s chair then. He always sat behind me because Fuller comes before Green in the alphabet.
I tried to remember him sitting back there three years ago, but I couldn’t see him. Why hadn’t I talked to him before this
year? Why was I sitting in his chair right now? The feeling was like the time I was halfway through brushing my teeth and
I realized that I was using Uncle Kenny’s toothbrush. I knocked the little seat over trying to unjam myself. My arms and legs
were long and wobbly these days, like the bean plants growing in milk cartons on the windowsill.

Mrs. Grier came over to help me. She smelled nice always like talcum powder, cologne spray, and warm air. “Tell me what’s
on your mind,” she said.

There was so much in my head that I couldn’t get it all lined up to come out. I opened my mouth and moved my lips around trying
out different words. Before I could pick out one, Mrs. Grier hugged me.

I wanted to hug her back. Her warm arms smelled so good. I looked at the little window in the closed door. What if someone
saw me? Every time Mrs. Grier do something for me, kids go around saying it’s because I can’t get somebody to do it for me
at home. One time, Mrs. Grier brushed my hair and the next thing I knew, people said,
Octavia so poor she ain’t got a brush at home.
Mrs. Grier gave me some banana bread and they said my mama don’t feed me. If they saw me now, what would they say—that my
mama don’t love me so Mrs. Grier have to hug me every day before class?

But after a second, I had to melt into her hug. I was tired from being up half the night crying for Rodney and sitting up
listening for weird sounds. Her chest was a good place for me to take a little rest. I closed my eyes so if somebody could
see me through the door-window, at least I didn’t have to see them doing it. After a minute, she held me away from her and
looked at me. She turned her face to the side. “You’re friends with Rodney Green?”

“Kind of,” I said. “He was nice to me, mostly he was.”

“Always very mannerable,” she agreed. I could tell that she was leaving words out so she wouldn’t have to say
was
or
is. Was
would mean he was dead and
is
means he’s coming back and I know Mrs. Grier don’t like to lie.

“You think he dead?” I waited for her to say,
Heavens no, Octavia. Why would you even suggest something like that?
But she didn’t open her mouth. After I sat there a little more, I got hungry to hear her say anything at all.

“Ma’am?” I said, as if she had called my name.

“I don’t know,” she said.

That was it? I didn’t come all the way down here for her to say something I could have came up with by myself. I tried to
pull my hands out of hers but she held on.

“You don’t walk home alone, do you?” She was looking at my fingers. My nails were clipped short and the cuticle pushed back,
just like she told me.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I walk with Delvis and the twins. On Wednesdays, though, I stay late for chorus.”

She nodded. “Are there patrols in your community?”

“Like the Bat Patrol? No. They all stay out in Techwood homes. We got Muslims, but Delvis say they can’t save nobody all dressed
up in suits and church shoes.”

“Delvis is wise beyond his years.” Mrs. Grier laughed a little bit. “I never thought of it that way.”

“We saw a Guardian Angel this morning, but I wish we could get some Bat Patrollers over here.”

“I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Grier said. “I’m not sure that I like the idea of angry men roaming the streets with baseball
bats. That seems like conflict just waiting to happen.”

“But at least they’ll be able to do something if they see somebody messing with a kid. What the Angels going to? Tell them
to stop?” I heard myself shouting and I lowered my voice. Miss Russell the white art teacher walked down the hall with her
brushes. “And anyway, at least the Bat Patrollers is black.”

“Calm down, Octavia. I was just thinking aloud.”

She wouldn’t be calm if she was the one people was trying to kill.

“I bet Rodney Green wish he had a Bat Patroller with him yesterday.” I couldn’t help saying one last thing.

“That’s enough, Octavia,” Mrs. Grier said. She looked back at my hands. Now I wished that I hadn’t groomed them like she said.
She touched her lips together. “Make sure Delvis walks you all the way to your door, hear?”

She looked worried like Mama did that time I had a fever so bad that my lips chapped and the skin pulled back. Mrs. Grier’s
mouth, pretty with lipstick, shrunk a little bit.

“My mama be there when I get home.” I said it to make her not worry, but her eyebrows shot up.

“Your mother is not working?”

Now what to do? Mama told me not to tell any of the school people that she was working the eleven to seven. Sometimes when
they find out kids stay alone, they call the State and that’s how kids get took away to live with foster families that beat
them.

“Oh, she still work at the bread factory. She just get off before I get home.” That wasn’t a lie but it tasted like one.

The bell rang in the hallway and I was glad. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“Sort of,” I said, thinking about the gummy grits.

“
Sort of
is not a complete sentence, or a balanced meal.” She went into her drawer and gave me a package of orange crackers with peanut
butter in between. “You can’t concentrate with an empty stomach.”

Some of the second-graders were coming in the room now. It was time for me to leave. “Have a nice day,” I said to her, but
she was helping one of the little kids get his scarf untangled before he choked himself to death.

To get to the fifth-grade class, I had to walk all the way down the hall, past the girls’ room, then outside through the double
door. Over the summer, they put trailers out back to make room for all of us. A lot of people complain about being out there,
saying it’s too hot in the summer and all of that, but I don’t mind it. Being out back means that you get to keep the hall
pass longer when you say you have to go to the girls’ room. I’m always trying to think of reasons not to have to be in class.
Sometimes I’ll ask to go to the nurse, or something like that. Last year, I used to go out in the hall with Fanon Robinson
and Malcolm Smith when everybody was saying the Pledge. The two of them had letters from their parents saying they didn’t
believe in the flag. I said I didn’t believe in it either so I could be out of the classroom. But this year, Malcolm and Fanon
both got tired of being so different. They stand up with everybody else and put their hand over their heart. I’m not bold
enough to not-believe by myself.