Leaving Atlanta (21 page)

The mailman knocked on the door this afternoon, right after
The Flintstones
. I turned the TV down and looked through the peephole. Mama wasn’t home and I didn’t have no business answering the door.

“Who is it?” I asked, trying to waste a few seconds so maybe Mama would come up just in the nick of time.

“Mailman,” he said.

Everybody been saying the child killer probably going around dressed up like the police or a fireman or somebody. I shouldn’t
believe that nobody is what they say they is. But I could see the box through the peephole. I opened the door but left the
chain on. I saw my name.

“Could you leave the package? My mama not home.”

“No, I need a signature.”

“What happen if you don’t get one?” Where was Mama? This man wasn’t going to stay out here all day jawing with me. I could
see already that he was ready to leave.

“I’ll have to take it back to the post office and your mother can pick it up from there.”

“Later on today?”

“No, tomorrow.”

That was too long. The best thing about Nikky Day is I never knew when it was coming. I didn’t end up awake all night with
grasshoppers in my stomach like on Christmas Eve. Nikky Day was a surprise holiday.

“Could I sign for it?”

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen.” I was glad the chain was on the door and he couldn’t get a good look at me. I wasn’t even a real grown-looking
eleven.

“Fine,” he said.

“Slide it through the door.”

He blew air out like
I don’t get paid enough for this.

I wrote my name on the line in my best cursive. It was the first time anybody ever asked me to sign something. I looked it
over carefully to make sure that all the letters were right and slanted to the side. The mailman knocked again.

I put the paper through the crack. He glanced at it and stuffed it in his bag.

After I was sure he was gone, I opened the door and slid the box inside. It was wrapped up with brown paper sacks cut open
and turned outside in so I couldn’t see the name of the grocery store. Should I open it when Mama wasn’t there? How was I
going to explain to her how I got it in the house? She said “Don’t open the door for nobody.” I was going to have to slide
it back in the hall. It was just that simple. But first, I wanted to at least
look
at it. My name was across the front. Miss Octavia Yvette Fuller. I wondered did Nikky write it or her mother. Nikky was fourteen
herself and old enough to have a nice script. Whoever wrote my name didn’t take pride in they letters. The
O
on my first name wasn’t closed all the way and looked something like a
U.
The
t
was crossed but the
i
had no dot. It must have been Cousin Elaine that wrote this. Pretty Nikky in her dress with a sash would take time for proper
penmanship.

Finally I scooted the box back in the hallway and locked the door again. I couldn’t see it through the peephole. What if somebody
came by and stole it? This not the projects, but still people can be roguish over here. I kept my eye pressed to the peephole
anyway; even if I couldn’t see the box itself, I could see somebody if they came to mess with it.

The box was every bit worth the wait. Last year must have been a good year for Nikky. She had two long dresses. One pure white
and the other one blue velvet.

“Where she be going in these dresses?” I asked Mama.

“I don’t know,” she said, pinching the fabric in at the waist to see how much it would have to be took in to fit me. “I think
Elaine have her in pageants and stuff.”

“Like Miss America?”

“I don’t know. Never been.”

“You ever been to Chicago?” I asked.

“I had a chance to go one time.” Mama tucked the bottom of the skirt under and put straight pins to hold it there.

“For real?” She never told me this.

“I was about to finish high school. My aunt and uncle promised me a bus ticket up there. I was supposed to get a job working
with the phone company.” She smiled a little bit. “It was going to be my graduation present. Back then, everybody wanted to
work for Ma Bell or for the post office. Benefits and stuff.”

“And everybody wants to go to Chicago. Especially me,” I said.

Mama stopped fooling with my dress. I wanted to go look in the mirror and see myself, but there were straight pins all around
and I didn’t have my shoes on.

“Sweet Pea, hold still,” Mama said, with pins between her teeth. “My mama was so excited. She took four weeks getting my stuff
together for my trip. New clothes, new hairbrushes, even luggage from Sears and Roebuck.”

“So why you didn’t go?”

“I’m getting there,” Mama said. “One morning, Mama came in my room to tell me that we were going to walk into town to get
me a hat. She wanted to get a early start. It was just April but it was plenty hot already. And I think she wanted to get
it over with. Mama hated shopping.”

“How come? I thought everybody like to go to the mall.” At least, I know that I like to go when I know for sure I’m going
to get something. When I go and just have to look at things I can’t have, I get grouchy and be ready to go on home.

“Well,” Mama said, taking out some of the pins in the waist and putting them back in looser.

“You making it too big.”

“You don’t need your clothes all tight up on you,” she said. “But anyway, Mama didn’t like going into town because white folks
were so mean back then. We couldn’t try on the dresses or hats. You just had to pick one out and pray that it fit when you
got home. And you know if we couldn’t try nothing, they wouldn’t let us
return
it. Well, I take that back. You could try on a hat, but first you had to put this stocking thing on your head.

“But even knowing what was ahead of us in town, she was in a good mood. But I was feeling sick that morning. I was talking
to her as normal as I could, then I ran to the rest room and threw up. When I came back into the bedroom, she had took off
her hat and shoes.

“ ‘You ain’t going to Chicago,’ she said to me, just like that.”

“Because you was sick? You was too sick to go?” Poor Mama.

“Yeah, I was sick alright.” She shook her head from side to side.

“So how come you didn’t go when you got better?”

“I had you,” she said, like they don’t let people have babies in Chicago.

“I coulda went,” I said.

“Well, Auntie and Uncle never asked me again.” She patted my behind. “Go look in the mirror and see how you like it,” she
said, picking up the pins off the floor.

When I got back from the bathroom, she had hung up the other dresses, pins and all. Mama never went to the trouble of sewing
them in place until I had someplace to go to wear the dresses. Now that the box was empty, she started loading in the dresses
from Nikky Day two years back. She folded them, and wrapped each dress in tissue paper. We were going to send them to my cousin
Kay-Kay, in Macon.

Mama was in my closet taking the pins out of the dresses from last year. I could fit them now without her taking them in.
All of a sudden I started laughing. It was like when somebody tell you a joke and you don’t get it till half a day later.
Kay-Kay probably think that I get to wear these dresses all the time. What if she call it “Sweet Pea Day”? Chicago is the
windy city, but what is Atlanta? I asked Miss Grier one time and she say, “Atlanta is the city too busy to hate.” Mama say
it’s the “Chocolate City.” Kay-Kay probably think everybody up here smile all the time and eat Hershey Kisses wearing velvet
dresses.

The phone rang just after Mama left for work. I hate it when that happens. I never know what to do. If the person on the phone
is somebody that want to rob us, or something, it’s good for me to pick up so they will know that somebody is here. That way,
they will go and rob somebody else. But if the person on the phone is a murderer, then it would be better for him to think
that nobody is home for him to kill. I went ahead and answered it because only one of the kids that got killed got killed
at home. There was one little girl who got carried out her window. My room is too high up for all of that.

“Hello,” I said.

“Sweet Pea.”

“Uncle Kenny?” I said loud at first. Then I lowered my voice even though I was home by myself. “Kenny?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “My sister there?”

I didn’t know what to do, again. Mama say that I’m not supposed to tell nobody that I’m home by myself. Except family. And
except Ray. But when she threw Uncle Kenny out, she wasn’t acting like he was family.

“Yvonne there?” he said again.

He didn’t sound mad at me. And I was grateful about that since I’m the one that got him put out in the first place. But I
didn’t want to get on Mama’s bad side either.

“She at work, but she’ll be right back.” That was a half lie.

“I thought she was working eleven to seven,” he said.

If he knew that, why was he calling right now? “I don’t know,” I said.

“How you doing Sweet Pea?” he said.

“I’m alright.”

“You being safe with all that going on down there?”

“Yeah,” I said. His voice wasn’t as nice as it was a few minutes ago. I should have told him Mama was here.

“I miss Atlanta,” he said. “Miss seeing you. My friends. Ain’t nothing going on here in Macon. Nothing at all. No jobs, no
clubs, no nothing.”

I didn’t speak. It was my fault that he wasn’t still here. But it was a accident. And in a way it was more Mama’s fault than
mine. She the one told me the lie in the first place. She the one gathered up all his stuff in black garbage bags and put
them by the door. I was just trying to help.

“You there?” he said.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t say nothing. I heard a soda can open.

“Where you at, Kenny?” I asked.

“At Mama house. Where you think?”

“We better get off the phone then. You know Granny get mad when people run her bill up.”

“So you don’t want to talk to me either?” he said. His voice was getting a little meaner.

“Granny there?”

“I’m not going to hurt you over the phone, Octavia.” He said my given name slow. Like he thought it was a stupid name.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble that time.”

“Sorry ain’t nothing but a word,” he said.

“But I’m still sorry.”

“I gotta go. You know I can’t be running up Mama phone bill. Bye.”

“Bye,” I said. He didn’t believe me, but what I said was the truth. He should know already that I didn’t mean to give away
his secret. When Mama put him out, I was the one that suffered the most. When he was around, everything was fun like a day
at Six Flags. He had came to stay with us three years ago, right when he got through graduating from high school. Mama and
me went to Macon to see him in his blue cap and gown and he came right back home with us on the Greyhound.

We didn’t have an extra room for him to have, so he slept in the living room on the divan. When I was in my bed, I could hear
him breathing in like a horn and blowing out with a whistle. When he was awake, Uncle Kenny was more fun than television.
He used to say, “Who knows what the nose knows?” And then in a squeaky voice he’d say, “Speak Beak,” holding his hand out
to me like it was a microphone. Sometimes, when I was at school and people mess with me, I could say in my head, “Speak Beak”
and almost start laughing.

But now when I think about him, I feel like crying. I hate the way things can just be not fair and there ain’t nothing you
can really do about it. It wasn’t my fault that my mama like to tell lies. She told me that dope needles was the same as doctor
needles. But I guess it was my fault for believing her.

The thing that’s so wrong about it is that I called myself helping him. See, Mama had told me never to touch a needle laying
on the ground because a doctor would come back looking for it. A lie ain’t nothing for her to tell.

“How come we don’t just pick it up and carry it to the doctor?” I asked.

She made a face like she was thinking it over, but then she shook her head. “Doctors don’t like people messing with they stuff.”

“What he’ll do if he catch somebody?” Doctors were scary enough even when they smiled and gave out lollipops.

“He won’t help you when you sick and just let you die.”

So I was just trying to be helpful when I said, “Mama, the doctor is going to get Uncle Kenny because he got them needles
off in his bag.”

“Where?” Mama said quick, looking up from the corn-bread she was stirring in a plastic bowl. “Show me.” Worry beaded up on
her face like she was scared what would happen when the doctor came back looking for his needles.

I showed her Kenny’s black bag with the zip. I thought that she was going to ask me what I was looking in there for in the
first place, but she didn’t.

“Get back,” she said, like it was going to explode. She looked in the bag and saw the needles. She took out a spoon, burned
and bent up, and held it up to the light. Then, she cussed. I don’t mean those little cusses like “hell” and “damn” that are
in the Bible. But a true cuss word.