Leaving Atlanta (27 page)

“My hometown is Sugarloaf, Alabama,” she said. “A town so small that there isn’t even a caution light to tell people when
to get off the highway. There were twelve of us children, but only nine survived.”

“Kids was getting killed way back then?” I was shocked. The way people carried on here lately, I thought that child murdering
was invented in 1979.

“No. Back then, many children didn’t survive infancy. One of my brothers died in his crib from a spider bite. The twin girls
had whooping cough. All of this happened before I was born. My brother, Everett T, was murdered, but that was much later.”

“Twelve kids is too many,” I said.

“That’s the right attitude, Octavia.” She smiled. “Two is plenty in this day. But back then, children worked the land. We
were a sharecropping family and Father was a proud man. He was determined to pay off the debt.”

“What about your mama?”

“Mother worked cotton too. She was strong, taller than father and nearly as broad. People never knew she was expecting until
it was time for the babies to come. And they only knew then, because she took two days away from the field. One day for birthing
and the other day to marvel at what she had done.”

Mrs. Grier stared out the window behind me. The merry-go-round and swing set reflected in her glasses. She was quiet as a
library.

“Do you want me to clean the blackboard?” I asked, just so somebody would be saying something.

“That would be nice.”

I went down the hall to ask the custodian for warm water and rags. When I got back, Mrs. Grier picked the story back up.

“I was the youngest. My sister Livonia, who watched after those of us too small yet to pick cotton, made quite a pet of me.

“Every night Mother would tell us that she loved us. She might say, ‘Livonia, I love you like a cup of cool water. Everett
T, I love you like the morning. Edna Lee’ (that’s my given name) ‘Edna Lee, I love you like a bunch of grapes.’

“I had never tasted grapes. But I knew they would taste like love. When I was in college, my roommate gave me some fat ones
from the farmer’s market. I expected them to be bright purple like the pictures in the primer, but they were dark as Mother’s
knuckles. When I tasted the sweet juice, I knew what Mother meant about love and then I bit into the bitter seed and I knew
better. Do you understand, Octavia?”

I didn’t have no idea what she was talking about. My mama always gets the light green grapes with the seeds taken out already.
“Yes’m,” I said.

“Mother and Father passed away on the same day. Father was a race man. He walked eight miles to Troy to get dry goods. There
was a mercantile on our place, but the store in Troy was colored owned. Someone knocked him off the road as he walked back
pulling the cart. He fell in a ditch and drowned in two feet of water.

“At the same instant, Mother put down her sack, complaining of a headache. She laid under a magnolia and died.”

I had the whole board wiped down but soon as it dried, traces of the chalk letters started showing through again. I dunked
my rag in the water and started over.

“We children were separated. The older boys, Everett T and Burnett W, stayed behind. All the rest of us were sent, one by
one, to live with relatives. My aunt Lee asked for me since my mother gave me her name. She came with Uncle James in a blue
Packard and took me to Atlanta.

“I was just six years old, and had never ridden in a car before.”

“You was used to catching the bus?” I asked. Me and Mama always be on the MARTA.

“No, Octavia. We were sharecroppers. Everything we did, we did right on the farm. A plantation, really. Understand?”

I nodded and she went on with her story.

“So there I was in the backseat of the Packard. I didn’t realize we were moving. I thought that the
trees
whipping by the windows were passing
us
. After we were on the road an hour or so, I needed to use the lavatory but I was afraid to ask my uncle and aunt to stop
the world so I could get out.” She laughed at this. Her mouth was the same pink as her fingernail polish.

I stopped rubbing the board and stared at her. Grown people love to tell the saddest stories and laugh about them.

“By the time we got to Atlanta, naturally, I’d had a little accident. Aunt Lee was angry. I burst into tears, not because
I was about to be whipped but because Livonia had told me that Mother was always watching me from heaven.

“My aunt didn’t live in a mansion. The home I have now is larger. But to my Alabama eyes, it was amazing. Running water was
some kind of miracle. I was scared to flush the commode.

“I shared a room with my cousin, Twyla, who is a few years older than I am. I had seen Twyla only once before when she came
to Sugarloaf to meet us—her country relatives. We had all gathered in the front room. Twyla, who had never seen such a big
family, whispered to Aunt Lee, ‘Mama, they have
company.
’ All of the adults had laughed and we children were confused. When I got to Atlanta, she was like a stranger.

“When night fell, I tried to climb in the bed with Twyla. I couldn’t imagine sleeping alone any more than you could imagine
a single person eating an entire ham.

“ ‘Not in here with me,’ Twyla said, as though bed sharing was disgusting. I tucked my little head and went to the other twin
bed. The pretty spread was butter colored and I was afraid that I might spoil it. I was as lonely that night as I have ever
been in my life. But I didn’t cry because I didn’t want to wet the eyelet pillow slip.

“Somehow, I managed to sleep well that night. Drowsiness relaxed me and I spread myself all over that bed. Every time I moved
an arm or a leg, I felt cool cotton. In a year’s time, I hardly thought about Sugarloaf at all.

“When my sister, Livonia, came to visit me four years later, I hardly knew her. By then, I was about your age. I saw Livonia
like Twyla did, a country cousin that we both felt sorry for. I remember that she wore run-over brogans and a man’s belt around
her dress.

“Livonia stayed for dinner. She wrapped her roll up in a paper napkin with a chicken leg and stuffed it in her bag. Before
she went outside to wait for her people to pick her up, we had a moment alone. Livonia hugged me to her chest. I smelled the
cocoa butter she used on her face and hands mixed with the chicken in her bag.

“ ‘I love you, Sister,’ she said to me. ‘Like a bunch of grapes.’

“I held on to her neck and did all the crying that I didn’t do that first night after I left Sugarloaf. Livonia gently pulled
me free. ‘I gotta be going now,’ was all she said.

“I never saw her again.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

Mrs. Grier rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head. “She stepped on a rusty nail and died of lockjaw.”

“For real?” At first I couldn’t figure out why she was telling me this story. But then I thought that maybe she was taking
my
side. She was telling me this so I could get Mama not to send me to South Carolina. I almost smiled, but I thought of poor
Livonia with her jaws locked up. I rubbed that chalkboard with a straight face.

Mrs. Grier took a deep breath. “But that’s not the point,” she said. “While I stayed with Aunt and Uncle, I had to make myself
useful. I washed all the clothes every day when I got home from school and ironed them in the morning before I left. Everybody
in school admired Twyla’s clothes, but I was the one who had to iron in all those tiny pleats. I was the one with burned fingers
from the curling irons I set her hair with twice a week.

“Oh, you should have seen me huffing and puffing under my breath about how things would be different if my parents were alive.
I felt like a little colored Cinderella.” Mrs. Grier smiled.

“But didn’t you want them to still be living? Nobody wants for their mama and daddy to be dead.” I didn’t hardly know my daddy
but I didn’t want him to be
dead
in the ground. And if something happened to my mama I’d probably just hop in the casket right along with her.

“You’re right, Octavia. I grieved for my mother and father. My brothers, sisters, and I have never again been under the same
roof. I mourn that. But what I am trying to tell you is that I made myself
useful
in my aunt’s house and good things happened as a result.”

“What good things? They treated you like a maid. My mama said she ain’t sending me to South Carolina to be nobody’s maid.
She said slavery times is over.” I crossed my arms again.

“Hush, child,” Mrs. Grier said. “I’m not finished. Your mother is right. Your father
should not
treat you like a servant. But I’m a little older than your mother, and I have had a few more experiences, so listen to me
when I speak.

“Often people don’t do what they should. And if your father and your stepmother make you earn your keep, earn it. They won’t
send you back if you make them need you. By the time you finish high school they will be obligated to sponsor your education.

“My aunt and uncle didn’t send me to Spelman College with Twyla. I went to Fort Valley State. But I took advantage of opportunity.
I didn’t have money for movies and hamburgers like other girls, but I completed my teaching certificate just the same. I met
my husband there too. He may not be a Morehouse man, but he works hard and we made a good life for ourselves. Understand?”

I still had my arms folded tight across me. “No.”

She got up from her chair and pulled my arms apart. Tugging on my wrists, she said, “Octavia, when you’re poor you don’t always
have a choice.”

I wanted to snatch my arms away and tell her that me and my mama are not poor. We don’t stay in the projects. We stay across
the street from the projects. But she let me go all of a sudden and gathered up her things.

“I’ll drive you home.”

We didn’t hardly say nothing while we were heading to the burgundy Cadillac. I was still mad about her calling me poor. But
she didn’t even look over at me to ask why I had my lip poked out. Mrs. Grier was so far into her own head that she messed
up three times trying to get her keys in the car door.

The inside of the Cadillac smelled like Christmas because of the little cardboard tree hanging from the mirror. Mrs. Grier
turned on the radio and played the kind of music that don’t have words.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“Down by Fair Street.”

Through the shaded car windows, everything we passed from school to my house was dirty brown like an apple with a bite out
of it. People had their decorations up, but the stockings wasn’t red enough and the green of the wreaths was faded as old
socks. A dog had knocked over a trash can, throwing empty egg cartons and tin cans every which-a-way. Running over it sounded
like crunching a squirrel. I wanted to tell Mrs. Grier that a mutt was to blame. The people who live there put it in the can.
They can’t help what a dog do. But I kept quiet.

“Right here,” I said, when we got to my building.

Mrs. Grier was looking out the wrong window to the project side of the street.

I tapped my window. “On this side.”

She turned, but her mouth was still bent into a sad clown line. How come she didn’t smile to see that I didn’t live over where
she first thought I did? Probably because of the rainy-day windows. I followed her eyes to the flowerpot Mama and me put marigolds
in last spring. The blooms were long gone. Now, it looked like a bucket full of dry dirt.

“Mrs. Grier, we had flowers in that pot before.” I had to tell her. “They not really dead. They’ll be back come spring, Mama
say.”

She nodded like she understood, but the corners of her mouth bent down.

“Well, thank you for the ride.” I put my hand on the door. I wanted to get from behind the smoky windows. From where I was
I couldn’t hardly tell my building from those across the street. Both were made of dirt-colored bricks with windows without
cute shutters like in school-book pictures.

“Do you want me to go with you and tell your mother you were with me?”

“No ma’am,” I told her. “It’s not too late.”

I opened the car door. I thought that light was going to flood in from the other side of the glass, like when God speaks,
but maybe everything had got dingy just that fast.

I turned around and waved at Mrs. Grier once I was on my sidewalk. Weeds grew bushy in the places where the concrete was broken
up. In the spring there would be dandelion flowers there too. I thought maybe I should have hollered that to Mrs. Grier. But
it’s not ladylike to holler. And dandelions are not much to talk about.

“Think about what I said.” Her voice was loud but not hollering.

“Yes ma’am. I will.”

Mrs. Grier waved and rolled up the window and watched me through dark glass until I went in my door.

Mama was sleep when I got home. She was stretched across her bed diagonal. One arm hanging off the edge, her fingers barely
touching the rug.

“I’m here, Mama.”

“Okay,” she said. “Put the teakettle on for me, okay?”

“Alright,” I said, and went into the kitchen.

In the refrigerator was a plate of crackers and cheese but the cheese wasn’t cut into little chunks the perfect size for a
Ritz cracker. I broke the hunk of cheese into smaller bits and ate a little of it while I waited on Mama’s water to heat up.
Mama took some days off to spend time with me, but all she been doing is sleeping and sewing. She want me to carry all the
Nikky dresses with me.

The teakettle started whistling.

“Mama, your water ready,” I said.

She came in wearing her blue robe. She poured the hot water over brown coffee pebbles. She stirred in some sugar and took
a deep sip. I don’t know how she can drink that hot stuff without burning her mouth.

“Go and put on that pink dress. I want to make sure I got it pinned right before I sew it.” Her eyes were crusty.

“Mama, you going to wash your face?”

She nodded as she sipped.

“Why do I need to take that pink dress with me? I’m just going to be up there for a little while, right?”