Leaving Atlanta (28 page)

“Right,” she said.

“So why I need all those clothes? And where I’m going to be going to need that many good dresses?”

“I just want you to have them. To let them know you used to nice things.”

“Cause she quality?” I asked.

“Who?” Mama said.

“Granny say Gloria is quality,” I explained.

“Mama just color struck,” Mama said. “Now go get into that dress.”

“When I get through trying on the dress, can I go outside?”

“For what?”

“Talk to Delvis.”

“Alright,” she said. “But you better be back in here before the streetlights come on.”

It was just four days before Christmas and nine days before I was supposed to be leaving and I didn’t even tell Delvis yet.
I know I was supposed to tell him. Because when everything is counted up, he is my best friend. Almost my only friend. So
I shoulda gone running over to tell him as soon as Mama told me. But something about it ain’t quite fair. Your best friend
is supposed to be like your best friend out of all the friends that you might ever meet in the world, not just the best one
you got right now, where you at. But still, I needed to tell him. It seemed like a lie for me to run around with him and the
twins talking about what all we going to do next year when I know good and well that I ain’t going to be nowhere around here.
Two times already, I meant to say something. Now I’m shamed of having waited so long.

I walked across the yard to his building. The wind was kicking and I didn’t have on my hood. I remembered it when I was on
my stairs, but I wasn’t going to go back in my apartment until the streetlights came on.

Delvis snatched open the door before I even knocked on it.

“Come in and see,” he said.

I paused a second. I wasn’t supposed to be in people’s houses if they mama wasn’t home. But Delvis said, “Come on,” again.
So I followed him. What could Mama do to punish me now?

Delvis squatted down about six inches in front of the TV. He had the sound turned down extra low. He waved his hand for me
to sit down.

“Turn up the volume,” I said.

He shook his head. “I don’t want the twins to see what’s on.”

I looked hard at the screen. There was a lot of static, but it looked like they were showing a forest. Like the kind on TV
when families go to chop their Christmas tree by hand.

“What is it?” I said, knowing that the words
SPECIAL REPORT
didn’t have nothing to do with the holiday season.

Delvis put his ear to the speaker. “It was out in Decatur.”

“Somebody else got snatched?” I pulled at the dry skin hanging from my bottom lip.

“Naw,” said Delvis. “It’s a body.”

“Who?”

Delvis said his name right when they showed his photo.

You can’t be surprised by something that you already know.

“Aw, Sweet Pea,” Delvis said. “Why you crying? You didn’t think they was gonna find him still living, did you?” He put his
hand on my shoulder, then took it back and put it in his pocket.

“No,” I said. “I’m not stupid. But—” The tears started coming heavy. I wanted a Kleenex so I could blow my nose and stop swallowing
snot. “It’s not fair,” I said.

“What?” Delvis said.

“Just get me some tissue,” I told him.

I was cleaning off my face when he said, “You think you’ll get to go to the funeral before you go to South Carolina?”

I stared at him with my teeth clamped tight together. He knew this whole entire time that I was leaving and he had been spending
time with me every day like wasn’t nothing going on but the rent.

“You know that?” I said like a dummy.

“Yeah.”

“Why you didn’t say something?” My ears were heating up with anger.

“Don’t be hollering at me,” he said. “You the one perpetrating like you ain’t going nowhere. I just didn’t want to bust you
out in your lie.”

Sticks and stones are not the only things somebody can throw at you. Telling a lie is bad enough. It’s embarrassing in a private
way. Like if you wet the bed but can change the sheets before anyone gets home. But when someone takes your lie and throws
it in your face, it’s embarrassing like catching a whipping in front of your whole class.

Mama was going to go to the wake, but not me. That don’t make no sense, since I’m the one that knew him.

“Wakes are not for children,” she said, putting on her earrings.

“Tell that to Rodney,” I said, going into the living room and flopping on the couch. The Christmas tree was gone already.
She took it down right after dinner on Christmas Day. Most people leave theirs up until New Year’s. But most people don’t
give their children away.

“Sweet Pea, how many times do I have tell you to put your things in your room? Come and get your shoes from in the bathroom.”

I went where she was. I kept my eyes on the ground so she couldn’t see how red they were. I picked the shoes up by tucking
my fingers in the laces. I used to really like these shoes, canvas ones that everybody called “white girls.” Mama washed them
with bleach when they started getting dingy and now they look like moths got to them. They were cleaner, but how much longer
would they last? If I wore colored socks, you could see them through the holes.

Mama was still walking around messing with stuff. Now, she was in the kitchen peeking in the cupboards like she wasn’t sure
the glasses were still in there.

“You alright, Sweet Pea?” Mama said, without turning around.

“Yeah,” I said.

But that was a lie. I just didn’t want to talk about it. When somebody die, people like to sit around and say all the things
the dead person used to do. Like with Grand-daddy. But I didn’t really have that much to say about Rodney in that way. We
only really talked three or four times, but I could tell that we were fixing to be friends. And not just because he didn’t
talk to nobody and I didn’t really have no friends either. But because we liked each other. I don’t mean like people that
be going together. When a girl go with somebody she start acting like somebody else. Putting all this Vaseline on her mouth
and stuff like that. But when you just friends with somebody you start really acting like yourself. You can be in public the
way you can be at home. And that’s how it was with me and Rodney. Well, that’s how I think it was going to be, at least. And
when somebody die, you not supposed to sit around talking about shoulda, coulda, woulda. You got to say what actually happened.
And I didn’t have nothing to say.

I took my sneakers to my room and shut the door.

Mama had just left when the phone rang again.

“Hello.”

“Hello Miss Sweet Pea, let me talk to Yvonne.” It was just Granny.

“She’s not home,” I told her.

“She working?”

“No ma’am. She at the wake.”

“Wake?” Granny said. Mama told me not to tell Granny about Rodney or Jashante. She was still trying to act like nothing was
going down where we live at.

“Yes ma’am. She gone to the wake for one of them children that got killed.”

Granny caught her breath. Then she said, “Somebody y’all know?”

“Yes’m. One of my friends from school.” Granny was breathing with little shocked breaths. Mama was going to be mad when she
found out that I told, but I didn’t care. She needed to learn something about the truth.

“Bless your heart,” Granny said.

“And Jashante who stay next door to us, dead too. Snatched.”

“Lord have mercy,” Granny said. “Baby, you alright?”

“No’m,” I said. I was meaning to say I was fine, but once the truth gets rolling it’s hard to stop it. “I’m sad.” Granny didn’t
say nothing right then and the truth kept coming. “I don’t have that many friends at school. They pick on me. I got Delvis,
but he not in my class. My library card got took back because I dropped a book in the bathtub. It was a accident. The librarian
said it cost seventeen dollars to make it right and Mama can’t pay. I’m too shamed to even go back in there.” I was talking
and crying at the same time. “And the one who died was getting to be my friend. He gave me candy and stuff.”

Granny said, “Let it out, baby.” But by then I didn’t have no choice. It was like when you have the flu and start throwing
up. Ain’t no stopping it.

“I didn’t mean to make Mama put Kenny out. I was trying to do something nice. I liked having him here. It was like having
a daddy in a way. A fun daddy that like to talk to me without having to say
so
all the time. He used to kiss me too hard, though. But I was so little then.”

“What?” Granny said. “Say that again.”

“I gotta go, Granny,” I said. I was glad to have the words out of me. It was like drinking the last of the juice. Selfish,
but those last drops taste good in your mouth and cool when it runs down your throat. But the empty bottle makes you shamed
of yourself. “I’ll tell Mama you called, alright?”

“You alright, child?”

“Yes’m.”

“Alright. Tell Yvonne I’ll call her later.”

Mama got back from the wake at nine o’clock. I was already in the bed when I heard her turn the lock, but I wasn’t sleep.
I closed my eyes and tried to look peaceful when she came in my room. She took off her shoes to be quiet but I could hear
the rub of her stockings on the floor and I could smell her perfume. When she got closer I could smell cigarettes too. It
was like roses were on fire. The floor creaked as she got down on her knees beside my bed and started kissing me. She kissed
both my cheeks, touched her lips to my eyelids. There wasn’t no use in pretending to be sleep. She was
trying
to wake me up. I opened my eyes.

“Mama,” I said. The light coming in from the hall made her face shine. I wanted to feel her cheeks to see if what I saw was
tears, but my arms were pinned under the covers.

“Sweet Pea,” she said, not like she was calling me but like she was talking about me to somebody.

“Ma’am?”

She sniffed. I knew for sure she was crying. I could just tell it from the way her shoulders hung low. “You scared, baby?”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know how much truth I could tell without telling all of it.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered.

She stood up, slipped her dress over her head, and hung it on the back of my chair. I scooted over to make some room for her
in my skinny bed.

“It was so sad,” she said, laying down. “That little boy.” She started crying hard now. “And that lady. How do you say good-bye
to your child?” I didn’t have to touch her face to know it was slick with makeup and saltwater. She cried loud, not all quiet
like TV ladies who have to wipe their eyes to show that something was wrong. My mama laid on my bed and cried like kids with
their head busted open. She cried like she was the one who knew Rodney Green and I laid stone still like I was the mama.

At ten o’clock, she got up and changed clothes to go to work. She kissed me again before she went. When the door closed, I
put my hand on the wet place where her face had been. But I didn’t sleep.

Once you seen your mama cry, everything is different. Kind of like when you see a picture and it looks like one thing. But
then you find out there are twelve apples hidden in the drawing. Once you find the apples, all you can see when you look at
the picture is apples. You forget the main picture you were looking at in the first place. That’s how it was with Mama. When
I look at her now, I can always see the tears.

The day I was leaving, my picture was in the paper. On page three. I couldn’t hardly recognize myself. I knew it was me because
I saw the white trim on my dress, my black shoes with the strap. The girl on the paper had her hair like mine, curled up tight
with a headband holding it back. But it was like the pictures they draw at the Omni for three dollars. I looked like a joke
on myself.

“Mama, that’s me?” It was the first words I had said to her all morning.

We were in my room. I was wearing a new cotton slip that itched. Mama was looking through my new suitcase trying to figure
out which one of the dresses in there I should put on. She had changed her mind twice already.

“That’s you.” She pulled out a blue wool one that looked like something a deaconess need to be wearing.

If she asked me what I wanted to put on, I would have told her to let me wear my soft blue jeans. I would have told her to
wash my hair so I can get my naps back. But nobody asked me nothing so I just squinted at the gray picture of myself. I know
my shoes were not as nice as they were last Easter, but in print they looked like they had been handed down a thousand times;
but Mama had bought them new from Baker’s downtown. And Nikky’s dress didn’t look like I just needed to grow into it. It hung
off me like I was starving to death. “But I look funny.”

“No you don’t.” Mama came to the side of the bed where I was sitting and took the pink rollers out of my hair. “You look fine.”

“Ouch!” I said, when she touched my ear. It didn’t really hurt, but I wanted her to remember that she burned me there with
the curling iron.

Didn’t none of us look fine in the gray photos. We looked poor as a whole neighborhood of church mice. The only people who
looked the same on paper as they did at Rodney’s funeral were the people who be in the paper all the time. All the people
who worked for the city looked like they worked for the city. But all the rest of us were all over page three looking crazy.