Leaving Atlanta (3 page)

Tasha carefully cut a triangular section of the cheese-dream and popped it into her mouth. She was overwhelmed by sugar and
a faint food-color bitterness. Mama looked at her daughters, struggling with too much of a good thing, and laughed.

Her laugh was clean but heavy. The power of it shook her bosom, bouncing the gold locket around her neck. Tasha laughed too,
although her favorite meal was all but ruined, drowning in sweetness. DeShaun giggled too.

Mama rescued the sandwiches from their gooey beds and set them on clean saucers. Putting them down in front of the girls,
she said, “I do believe that we are going to be alright.”

“Ouch,” Tasha protested, as her mother fastened an elastic around a small, neatly partitioned section of her hair. It didn’t
hurt, but she howled as a preventive measure. DeShaun never complained and, as a result, often went to school with her hair
pulled back so tightly that her eyes slanted.

“You know this is not hurting you,” Mama said, but she used a lighter touch.

“Why can’t I fix my own hair?”

“Because you can’t part straight and I can’t have you going out of this house looking like a little pickaninny.”

Tasha sighed, resting her face on the inside of Mama’s thigh and running her hand up and down her pecan-colored shin, enjoying
the texture of the stocking.

“Tasha, let my hose alone. I don’t have time to change them when you put a run in them.”

Tasha moved her hand, feeling rejected.

“Okay,” Mama said, patting her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m done.”

Tasha went into the bathroom to inspect the job in the mirror over the sink. Her hair was just like DeShaun’s. Evidently,
Mama thought that it was cute for the two of them to be small and large versions of the same thing, like those dolls that
nest inside each other. But it was entirely inappropriate, not to mention humiliating, for a fifth-grader to have the same
hairdo as a little bitty third-grader.

Assuming an air of maturity, Tasha wiggled the silver key hanging on a shoestring like a pendant, from under her blouse to
the outside. This, at least, would separate her from her sister; no little kids had keys and Tasha had only gotten hers this
school year. Instead of staying with their neighbor, Mrs. Mahmud, she and Shaun went straight home after school and stayed
alone until Mama got off from work.

Those two hours were Tasha’s favorite time of day. She was
in charge
. Each day, she gravely insisted that she be the only one to touch anything mechanical.

“It’s too dangerous,” she had told her sister, as she adjusted the thermostat to seventy-four degrees.

She looked in the mirror a little longer. If the weather had been better, Tasha would have demanded some modification of her
coif. But it was raining outside and she would be forced to wear a stupid hat anyway.

Tasha was sitting at her desk when her nose started to run. There was a long piece of bathroom tissue in her pocket, but Forsythia
Collier, across the aisle, was dabbing at her nostrils with tiny Kleenexes from a cute little pouch. Too embarrassed to tear
off a piece of crumpled toilet paper, Tasha inhaled deeply through her nostrils, hoping to reverse the flow without making
noise.

Mr. Harrell looked at her with disapproval from in front of the class. “Miss Baxter,” he said, “if you need to blow your nose,
please go to the lavatory.”

Tasha skulked out of the trailer appearing to concentrate intently on the white tile floor, flecked with black.

Although the walkway connecting the fifth-grade trailers to the main school building was covered, it was not enclosed. Wet
air blew into Tasha’s face. Just as she shoved her hands into her pockets, she saw Jashante Hamilton leaning against a pole.
He rested his weight on one leg and angled his chin.

“What you get sent out here for?” he wanted to know.

“I’m just going to blow my nose.” For some reason, Tasha felt as though she were pleading.

He was good-looking. Not in the same way as Roderick Palmer, who had pretty eyelashes like a girl, cute bow-legs, and skin
soft brown like the wood around a pencil lead. Jashante was tall and brown-red like a pair of penny-loafers. His hair, shaved
low to his head, was pomaded and brushed into rows of even waves. There was something grown about him. Tasha knew he was much
older than the average fifth-grader. (Way older than her, since she had a late birthday.) Roderick Palmer claimed to have
somehow seen Jashante’s permanent record, which said he was fifteen.

“Don’t you have one of them little bitty Kleenexes in your pocketbook like all the other fancy girls?” he asked. His voice
was slippery and almost deep.

Tasha was flattered that he thought that she was of the same caliber as Forsythia Collier; in reality, she didn’t even carry
a purse. She stuffed whatever she needed into her pockets or in the front flap of her book bag.

“Oh. I left them at home.”

Jashante didn’t say anything. He looked at her slowly. Tasha was fragmented as she watched him seeing her. He took in the
babyfied hairstyle, seeming to count each plastic barrette. Eyes lingered on the faint outline of an undershirt over a chest
almost ready for a training bra. Her bony wrists, a generic brown with no warming hints of red, sticking out from the too-short
sleeves of a striped turtle-neck, narrow hips fastened into pink jeans.

“I gotta go,” she said. “It’s cold out here.” She wanted the sanctity of the girls’ room where she could reassemble herself.
She walked past him.

“Say,” he said.

She pretended not to hear.

“Say, Fancy Girl. What your name is?”

By then Tasha had reached the swinging door. She pushed it and went inside. Inside the warm, safe building, she made an effort
to breathe slowly. She felt tingly, itchy, and warm all at the same time, like she was loosely bound in a wool blanket.

The television, a small black-and-white with long antennae tipped with foil, was perched on top of the refrigerator. Tasha
noticed it immediately when she and Shaun came down for dinner.

“What is that TV doing up there?” she asked. It hadn’t been there an hour earlier, when Tasha had come home still crackling
from the electricity of her hallway encounter.

“Surprise,” said Mama.

“I thought you said we didn’t need a TV in the kitchen.” Her good mood was losing voltage fast.

“Well,” Mama said, “I knew how much you wanted one. And I saw this one on sale …”

This was bad, Tasha knew. When she had first brought up the subject of a kitchen television, three years ago, it was after
she found out that Monica Fisher watched cartoons in the morning while she ate her breakfast. She could imagine Monica giggling
contentedly as she downed countless bowls of Lucky Charms. Tasha, on the other hand, had to amuse herself by endlessly rereading
the back of the box of Shredded Wheat. When she brought this inequity to her mother’s attention, her request was unequivocally
denied.

“This family,” Mama had sniffed, “
talks
to one another while we are at the table. We don’t need TV to keep us company.”

“But what about in the morning? We don’t talk then. All you and Daddy do is drink coffee. Me and Shaun end up reading the
cereal box.”

“Shaun and I,” Mama corrected, and the case was closed.

Reversal of opinion was not Mama’s style. This TV thing had to do with the separation. That was obvious. Since Daddy was gone,
dinner conversation had dwindled to “pass this” and “eat your broccoli.” The TV meant he was not coming back to lively up
the evening meal with knock-knock jokes or funny stories from work. Daddy was gone for good and in his place was a raggedy
little TV that probably couldn’t even get Channel Forty-six good.

And Mama didn’t even let them choose what to look at. She insisted that they watch the news at dinnertime.

“But we wanna watch
The Flintstones,
” DeShaun whined.

“No,
The Dating Game,
” Tasha complained.

“We are watching the news,” Mama said, in her that’s-final voice.

“But—”

“But nothing. You need to know what’s going on in the world, or else, white people could reinstate slavery and you wouldn’t
know it until they came to take you away.”

That was something that Daddy liked to say. Mama had been doing that a lot lately. Like in the morning when she woke them
up, she said, “Get ready to greet the world!” instead of “Rise and shine.” It was depressing to hear Mama say Daddy’s lines.
It was a pitiful substitution, like the time when she lost her shower cap and had to bathe with a freezer bag on her head.

As it turned out, the news wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as interesting as
The Dating Game
, but it was neck and neck with
The Flintstones
, since she had seen all of the episodes already. At least the news never played a rerun. There was a black lady on Channel
Two whom Mama liked to call by her first name and critique on her appearance like she was somebody they actually knew. “Monica
should know better than to pull her hair off her face like that,” Mama might say, pouring melted Velveeta over broccoli.

Tasha was going to say, “I like that top Monica Kaufman has on,” as soon as she finished chewing. But before she could swallow,
the pictures of the children appeared on the screen. Nine photos that looked like school pictures were arranged in three rows
like a tic-tac-toe game waiting to be played. Tasha stared hard at the TV. She had a mouth full of soft sweet fruit that she
tried to swallow, but her throat was constricted and she coughed. Instead of patting her back, Mama said quietly, sternly,
“Hush.”

“Mama,” DeShaun said.

“Hush.”

Somebody had murdered all those kids. Two little girls, all the rest boys. What had happened? Tasha had seen a couple of people
get murdered on TV. There was the noise of a gun and then the person lying on the floor with a big spot of ketchupy blood
on his clothes. She wasn’t sure how the gun killed people. A bullet was involved, yes. But a bullet was a teensy thing that
could fit on just one of your fingers.

“All them kids are killed?” DeShaun asked. She was looking at the girl in the upper left-hand corner, who was about her same
age. The girl was smiling with her mouth open, as if the photographer had been playing with puppets to make her laugh right
before snapping the picture.

“Some of them,” Tasha said, leaning forward to hear better.

DeShaun hooked her fingers between her bottom lip and teeth. She was about to cry; Tasha noted her little sister’s fluttering
eyelashes. She pushed the can of peaches toward her sister in an effort to hold off the gusher until the news was over because
DeShaun didn’t cry like regular people; she wailed, and nobody would be able to hear the news over that racket. When DeShaun
opened her mouth to let out a whopper, the phone rang, choking her sobs in mid-bawl.

“Hello,” Mama said. “Yeah, we’re watching right now.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Of course they’re home.”
Noisy exhale. “I haven’t had a
chance
to talk to them yet. We get the news at six o’clock, same as you.” Mama shifted the phone to her other ear and turned her
eyes toward the ceiling. “Fine,” she said. “Here’s Tasha.”

Daddy’s voice was deep, like a hole that went all the way to China. “Hey, baby,” he said. “You watching the news?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Listen”—his voice was serious—“I want you and DeShaun to come right home after school. Hold your sister’s hand and don’t
talk to anybody. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Tasha said. He sounded like he was mad. That wasn’t fair. She knew he wasn’t going to talk to DeShaun like that.
Tasha decided that she had a question for
him
. “Daddy, where are you?”

Mama looked at her sharply across the table. She opened her mouth but then she shut it again, pressing her lips together tightly
as a warning. Tasha knew from careful eavesdropping that Daddy was “with his woman” but wanted to know exactly where.

“Not far,” he said gently. “Don’t you worry about that.”

Tasha was about to press him for a little more specificity but DeShaun was trying to wrestle the receiver away.

“Ouch!” Tasha said. “Shaun
scratched
me.”

“Give her the phone,” Mama said.

“But I’m not through talking to Daddy. I was fixing to ask him—”

Mama pointed her slim index finger at Tasha and shook it wordlessly. Tasha gave the phone to DeShaun, mumbling, “It’s not
fair.”

DeShaun held the phone with both hands and yelled into the mouthpiece as if she thought that she had to talk loud enough for
him to hear her, wherever he was. “Daddy, can you come back? Somebody is getting the childrens!”

Tasha shook her head. Whenever DeShaun got scared, mad, or even really happy, she started talking like a baby. Her voice got
all high, and she messed up even simple words.

Tasha didn’t know exactly what Daddy said to Shaun, but she figured that it was something like he would not be coming home
right that instant, because DeShaun knocked the can from the table to the floor. Thick syrup and orange peaches landed on
the yellow linoleum and were smashed under Mama’s shoes as she sprang to take the phone from DeShaun, who was begging her
daddy to come back and save them. “I’ll call you back,” Mama said into the phone and hung up.

They slept with Mama that night. She had invited them after they followed her around the house all evening, not wanting to
be left in a room without her protective adult presence. Sometimes Tasha would feel better if DeShaun was in the room too.
But today, when she thought about going to her room with her little sister and listening to the record player, she realized
that being in a room with DeShaun was just about the same as being alone. If something scary happened, what would DeShaun
do? Probably run to Tasha expecting her to be the one to save the day, since she was the oldest and everything.

Mama stepped on DeShaun twice while trying to fix the curtain rod in the den.

“DeShaun, baby,” Mama had said, “don’t stand up under me like that. I don’t want to hurt you.”