Somebody's Someone (16 page)

“Hey, Benny, you r’member Regina don’t cha, my youngest girl?”

I had been with Ruby ’bout a week, and I hadn’t seen Mr. Benny since he’d picked me up with Ruby from the bus station. Now he was here in our house, actin’ like he lived with us or something. Why else would he be in my mama’s house, touching our things like they belonged to him? He didn’t seem to wanna move when Ruby first talked to him. He kept right on messing with the stereo and things. I wondered why Ruby was just now telling the man my name? I figured that was part of her own way of doing things.

Benny, the man Ruby was talking at, seemed like he had no mind to be bothered. After taking the stereo arm, and placing it halfway in the middle of a album, he finally looked up and nodded his head. “Hey now, how’s it going? Ya settled in yet?” he asked as the speakers let go of one of my favorite songs.

I answered “Fine” to the first question and let the second one go on by. I wasn’t real used to being round mens that wanted to talk to me and ask questions. I instead listened to “Sideshow” by Blue Magic rolling off the speakers.

Ruby moved past the man and went to her room, and I followed behind, going to mine. I could hear the Blue Magic singing from where I was. This was the first time in my life that I had my own room. I should’ve been happy, but I was scared ’cause my sister wasn’t with me. From the time I could r’member my name, me and Sister had shared the same room, bed, and sometimes panties (the panty part only lasted till she got the bloods). My new room wasn’t nothin’ too fancy; it had a small bed, a nice window, and a real closet to put your stuff in. It was a nice place to “hang your head at the end of the day.” That’s what Daddy Lent used to say made somewhere home. I r’membered back on him more than you’d think. In b’tween the happiness to see my mama and still being buck-wild mad at Big Mama for leavin’ me on that bus, I was still kinda missing south Austin and all of them. Out at Big Mama’s the room Sister and me had to share was way smaller than my new one. There, we had a bed that had a ticking-striped mattress full of piss stains and springs that came out at night and bit you while you was sleepin’. There was also this big ole raggedy fan that was always stuck in the window—rain, sleet, or snow (one time it did snow). In the bottom of the fan is where we’d put a rat trap stuffed with gov’ment-issued cheese to catch the rats when they was tryin’ to get in through the fan from the out of doors. Most times the smell of something dead would get us faster than we’d realize the trap got the rat. Other than the bed or the fan, there was also a ole wardrobe and a Chester bureau in our room. Sister told me that the Chester bureau is where they buried Chester, a neighbor, and the wardrobe was where his clothes was hid. I lost many nights’ sleep worrying ’bout Chester coming back for his stuff. So I never went near his belongings for fear of what he might do to me.

Even though I was a li’l homesick for south Austin, my friend Theresa, and the way I could run free and wild, I knowed that I never wanted to live like them folks again. The way they sometimes treated folks out there was nothing short of being the devil’s kin. And getting ready to meet Ruby’s boys, I was reminded of how bad them folks could be to kids who didn’t know betta’ or have somebody to watch out for ’em. It happened years back when Ruby’s two boys came to live with me and Sister out at Big Mama’s.

If the truth was to be told, I was real doggone nervous when I set eyes on Ruby’s two boys, ’cause it had been a long time since I was round boys who was s’posed to be related to me. The eldest, Dwayne Edward, was ’bout seven. His genius was discovered a few years back by a man while riding a Trailways bus ’cross the country. The story goes that Dwayne Edward started reading every billboard sign between Tallahassee and Beaumont. Nobody even knowed he could talk, let alone read. Seeing that Dwayne was only two or three or so, the man gave him the beginning of the Preamble of the Constitution to read, and Dwayne Edward looked at it one time and read the whole thing back to the stranger. Right then and there, Dwayne was offered a appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show,
but had to turn it down on account he was still a baby. Then there was the younger boy, Dennis Roy, who was round five. Everybody figured his genius might be the fact that he was gonna be as huge as his daddy, Big Lawrence, and maybe he’d turn out to be a famous football player. But no one knew ’bout they genius parts when they came to stay at the Thornhills’.

Accordin’ to Big Mama, our mama had got real sick down in Augusta, Georgia, and didn’t know nobody down there. They was all livin’ in a trailer park, and Ruby was unable to give the boys care. Big Mama got a call from Ruby and went down to Augusta and brung them boys on back with her. Even though their stay was real short, it was one I’ll never forget.

One day that shit-disturber Donna Janine, who I already knowed to be a liar and a thief, concocted another one of her famous tales. This time it was about the boys. Now I knew right off the top that she was just green-eyed ’cause the boys got more notice than she did (’cause everyone thought it was cute how they stuck together like li’l marshmallow Easter bunnies still in the pack), and she wasn’t gonna have it no way, no how! That night, while Dwayne, Dennis, and me was sleeping in our room, I heard somebody sneak in and fumble round a bit. I looked up and seen Donna Janine messing with Dwayne’s pillow. Because he had a way of slamming his head against his pillow at night and knocking it clean off the bed, I thought she was being kind and putting it back under his head. It never dawned on me that the good-for-nothing conniving hussy was up to her usual tricks.

The next morning her “kindness” turned out to be nothing short of a mission from the devil hisself. Donna Janine had placed a butcher’s knife underneath Dwayne’s pillow. She had run and woke Big Mama up, swearing on the Bible all the way that Dwayne had put the knife under his pillow ’cause he wanted to kill his brother, Dennis, while he was sleeping. Now, I knew she was a lie, but them stupid-ass grown-ups, they swallowed every cotton-picking word Donna Janine said. When she was asked how she knew what his plans was, she said she’d overheard him talking to himself. The truth of the matter, if anybody really wanted to know, was that the boy could barely see his way out of a paper bag, even if you gave him directions! And all you had to do is see that he couldn’t hold his own eyes steady, let alone a butcher knife!

Big Mama beat them poor kids bad. She threw Dennis in just in case whatever it was that possessed Dwayne Edward might’ve rubbed off on him, seeing how close they was. I don’t r’member what happened after that, but I do know that the boys became my responsibility. Every day b’fore I went to school, they was to be put outside the house. Big Mama believed that there should be no demons in the house when no one was home. An old wrecked car sat in Big Mama’s yard—her daughter Aint Bobbie had it towed there on a promise that she would have it fixed by her then-mechanic boyfriend. My duty was to get the boys to the car and get ’nough food to last ’em all day. Most of the time they was only wearing a pair of old dirty drawers and a T-shirt. I wasn’t let to give ’em clothes in case they would try and hide something on they bodies. Big Mama said that if you gave the devil an inch he would take a mile, so it was best not to tempt him.

Once they was in the car, I’d have to bring ’em their food. I’d mix powdered eggs with water and stir in some potted meat. Most times the meat would be so hard that the spoon I used would bend till it took on the shape of a question mark. If there was bread, I would get ’em some to soak up that nasty mixture and help push the stuff down they throats. And the eggs I had to serve them babies was cold, watery, government-issued eggs. I knew what they was ’cause I’m the one who stood in line to get the free vouchers. Big Mama said that I was good with people, so I’d be the best one to ask for the free coupons. She also believed that free food was God’s way of helping her out, and since she was doing some of his work it was the least he could do. By the time Ruby did come and get them boys, they stomachs was poking out in front of ’em real big-like, and they tongues had what looked like white ringworms all over ’em. I had prayed for God to send our mama for them kids, even if it was to mean that I couldn’t go wit’ her. I was glad when she came.

I’d been scared to see them boys now, in case they r’membered me to blame for they bad treatment. I recognized them right off as they came tearing through Ruby’s living room the day I got there.

Each of ’em looked at me and kind of smiled.

“Is you our sister?” The older one talked for the both of ’em.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I answered, not certain if I even had a right to be part of what they already had, not to mention that I was being unloyal to my sister for claiming them, since I knowed how she felt ’bout Ruby not choosing us. Laughing like baby hyenas, they kept right on moving back to where they had come from, outside in the backyard. I just stood and watched, r’membering those bad times.

“Why don’t you go on out and play with the boys?” a voice asked me. It belonged to Benny, who was standing at the door eyeballin’ me.

“That’s all right,” I told him back. I didn’t wanna look at the boys just yet in case they could tell what I had been thinking ’bout, even though something inside me told me that if they hadn’t r’membered by now, they prob’ly never would. “I’ll go in a li’l while.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as he moved away from my door.

I looked round in my mind to try and find somebody as black as Benny. Big Lawrence came close, but Benny took the cake. His skin was as smooth and dark as midnight. He had a nose shaped like it had been pinched in a clothespin, and his eyes was dark. His lips, which he referred to as “soup coolers,” was brown on the outside, like he’d used one of Ruby’s Maybelline eye-pencils round ’em, and a lighter shade of red on the inside. And he had a tongue that was pink, like he’d licked raspberry Kool-Aid straight from the package. And as dark as he was, he sure did have good hair. It was jet black and real shiny. His waves was wide and soft, making his hair lay flat up against his head all along the sides and back, but longer on top. He was wearing a green outfit with black and brown spots smudged all through it, with a matching hat. His pants was tucked into his boots, making him look like a pirate. Round his waist was a belt, holdin’ a gun and a police stick. I think I even seen some handcuffs. I wanted to ask him what all that mess was, but something told me not to be too nice to Mr. Benny.

After he left my doorway, I went and brushed my teeth, then was off to find Ruby, knowing she liked it when my breath smelled nice and sweet. Her room was kitty-cornered from mine. Walking over to her door, I stood and waited for her to notice me. She was puffing on a cigarette and talking on the phone. I was happy she was by herself. While I stood by and listened to Ruby talk, I watched her feet. I loved feet and was plumb stumped at how something so long and narrow could hold up a big person all on they own. It was a true mystery to me. Ruby was wearing the flip-flop house shoes that she seemed to love. I liked when she wore ’em ’cause I got to see her toes, and they sho’ was pretty the way they was painted red and filed to be perfect—they looked just like mine ’cepting for the filed-down, painted-red part. I was happy to see that Ruby and me had the same feet. It made me think that maybe mine would be able to wear beautiful shoes like the ones that Ruby wore to parties. And maybe one day, my feet would take me to all the fancy traveling places Ruby’d already been.

“Come on in, Miss Lady,” Ruby called to me as she hung up the phone. I loved it when she called me Miss Lady. I felt like it took a li’l extra to call me that than just plain ole Regina. I made myself believe that I was becoming special to Ruby. “And take that hot-ass sweater off; you making me boil just looking at ya.” I did ’xactly like I was told. I took the sweater off and had a seat at the foot of Ruby’s bed. I couldn’t bear to sit too close to her. As it was, I felt like I was only dreaming.

“What’s that on ya’ arms there?” Ruby asked, balancing that cigarette b’tween her lips. I looked down at my arms. I r’membered how I had held ’em up in front of me, trying to keep from being hit in the face. I studied Ruby’s face for a minute. Even though she was twenty-nine, which I figured out for myself since I knowed she had Sister when she was thirteen and a half and me when she was eighteen, I could tell that she had seen and heard too much hard stuff in her life. Her eyes was sad by the way they hung at the corners. I sho’ didn’t wanna bring no bad news. So I let all the stuff I’d saved up in my heart and mind melt like icicles in the sun.

“Oh, these old things,” I said as I picked the last of a old scab off my arm. “I fell in some bushes after tripping over a tree root.” It felt real nice to be able to say whatever I wanted to, whether it was real or not, just to see what would happen, just to see how it could change the way something turned out.

“Oh, girl, you still a tomboy, I see. And I betcha that didn’t stop you either, did it? I bet you just got up and kept right on moving, huh?”

Nodding my head and laughing right along with her, I watched them eyes of hers lift from they lazy corners and grin at me. I liked it when she was happy. And it seemed like she found some things in me that made her that way. Whether it was my breath or my wild ways, I wanted to be the one who could help lift all the corners of her face into a smile—eyes, lips, mouth, ears, and all. Ruby took a minute and thought ’bout what she was fixin’ to say.

“Guess who’s coming to live with us in a little while?” I had no idea what Ruby was talking ’bout.

“I don’t know.” I couldn’t ’magine who.

“Your long-lost sister, Doretha,” Ruby said with a lack of care as she sucked the smoke back in her mouth and let it blow out her nose.

“When she coming?” I wanted to know right then and there! Not seeing my sister for what seemed like forever, even though it’d been a coupla weeks, was a li’l hard for me. Although we wasn’t that close, when I didn’t see her, seemed like my heart wanted to play tricks on me and make me miss her.