Somebody's Someone (19 page)

It didn’t take long for hell to break loose from wherever it was b’fore and find its way to our home. Like a thief in the night, it snuck up on our li’l house and robbed us all of any chance to be more than we was. It sort of started when Doretha thought that Ruby liked me more than her. It didn’t help when Ruby thought Sister was being fresh with her man. I ain’t for sho’ which hurt more; I just know it started.

“Why does she hate me so much and like you?”

Those was words I hadn’t figured on ever hearing. I’d thought that Sister was happy with having Big Mama as her own, so it never come to me to think on the fact that she might be jealous of me and Ruby. Suddenly, it seemed that Sister hated me to the core.

“And how am I s’posed to live in here while you’ve taken all the room up?” Now Sister was mad ’bout the room we was sleeping in. Seemed like I didn’t know who she was no more. Seemed like nothing could keep her happy or her mouth from telling us how mad she was for having to be round Ruby and “her men,” as she put it. And if that wasn’t enough, she caught sight of my dog-chewed-up canopy bed under the carport. That had to be the last straw, as the grown folks would say.

“Why is it that you gets to have your own bed that you asked for and I don’t?” They was questions I would’ve answered if she’d let me, but Sister didn’t wanna hear nothin’ I had to say. “I know she likes you betta’ than me! And it’s ’cause you her li’l light-eyed yella baby! You ain’t nothing but a li’l white girl!” I stood and watched as my sister plumb lost her mind. Outta nowhere she was throwing a conniption over nothing. Doretha reminded me of one of my teachers who’d use a pointing stick to show us all the wrong answers we’d got on a test. Something inside me felt like it’d been stepped on. I was all wrong in my sister’s eyes. I wanted to tell Doretha that I was happy to see her, but I couldn’t when all she did was make me feel bad.

Matters only got worse when Ruby would leave Doretha in charge of the whole house when she wasn’t home. That was all well and good at first. But when Mr. Benny started workin’ the opposite times that he was s’posed to work, things started getting hot. For one, all of a sudden Mr. Benny needed to sleep all day so that he could do his military police job at night. Which meant that all us kids had to creep round the house like we had no business being there in the first place. For two, Mr. Benny needed the house to be spic-and-span all the time whether he was there or not. And that’s why the creeping round part b’came real hard—who in they right mind was gonna walk round on they tiptoes to clean a house? And if that wasn’t ’nough, Mr. Benny started bossing Doretha round like she was his own. And Sister sho’ wasn’t gonna let one of Ruby’s men treat her wrong. No way.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but I’m here to let you know, you ain’t no kin to me, and I ain’t about to wash no damned dishes that I didn’t dirty,” she told him all in one sentence. Flash! Mr. Benny jumped over the couch and slapped Doretha upside her head so hard you could’ve heard it on the other side of town. Ruby wasn’t home then, so she couldn’t take up for Sister. Now me, on the one hand, I was trying to stay outta other folks’ mess ’cause I’d seen from Big Lawrence what can happen by running off at the mouth. But she was my sister, and I couldn’t hold back for long.

“Don’t hit her no more!” I screamed at him. I didn’t even know where that came from. Everybody stopped where they was; Sister standing there, holding her face in her hands, and me with my right fist balled and ready for action. As for Mr. Benny, he slammed the door, closing himself in Ruby’s room.

“Just wait till your mama gets home,” he yelled back at us. “We’ll see then who’s the boss.”

We sho’ didn’t have to wait long. Ruby was home in two snaps and a crackle. We figured the ole crybaby, Mr. Benny, had called her and told on us—“his” side of the story, that is. When Ruby thundered through the front door, me and Sister was sitting on the couch watching
Dark Shadows
. I had straightened up the kitchen so there’d be one less mess to speak of.

“Shut that goddamned TV off!” Ruby yelled as she walked through the kitchen, into where we was, on her way to her room. As I moved to push the on/off button in, she moved past me, almost taking my arm with her, and smashed the button into its hole, knocking the dang TV off the table.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, Doretha, but I’m the only bitch that rules this roost.” Ruby’s face was ugly. It was all drawn up like she had ate a whole pack a Sweetarts at one time. Her curly hair was all matted up in tangles. I never knowed somebody so beautiful could look so bad. “And as for you, Miss Regina, you need to take your little narrow ass and find some kids to stand up to, ’cause my man ain’t the one! The problem with you is you think you already grown, and that may well be, but not in my house you ain’t! Furthermore I cain’t believe that I work almost twenty-two goddamned hours a day and I cain’t get the fucking house cleaned!”

“Why you hate us so much, Ruby? Why’d you bring us here if you wasn’t gonna take care of us, but leave us with some man that even you hardly know?” Doretha was standing right up to Ruby. Asking her things I couldn’t dare to think ’bout, for fear that Ruby would know I was thinkin’ on ’em and would try and get rid of me.

“I know one motherfuckin’ thing, Doretha.” Ruby’s face looked like a tornado hit it. “You ain’t got no goddamned right to stand in front of me and ask me shit ’bout what I do. And I know somethin’ else, you betta’ watch yourself, before I blow your fuckin’ brains out.”

“I hate you!”
Doretha screamed, and tried to run out the room. But Ruby caught her ’fore she could run, and they was beating each other all the way down to the living room floor.

I thought my mama would be different. For all this time, I let my mind convince me that if Ruby had the chance, she would take up for her babies—specially me and Sister. I’d thought that she wouldn’t let some no-’count man treat us any kinda ole way. But instead, here we was watching her in full-blown sight take sides with that no-good Mr. Benny, without even tryin’ to hear what was going on for real. Not to mention beating up my sister—her own child—b’cause of him! I heard that dog-faced man come outta Ruby’s room and try and break them up. You should’ve seen his sorry ass play like he wanted them apart. “Come on now, y’all; there is no call for all this mess. C’mon now. Ruby, leave the girl alone.” He looked like he was trying to pull ’em apart, but when Sister almost managed to hit him, he dodged her punch and sat on the edge of the couch arm, a place where Ruby told us never to sit. From there, he slouched with his arms folded ’cross his naked-ass chest, chewing gum and watching Ruby and Doretha go at it. Even with all the fighting, I couldn’t help but watch him. Each time he chewed, it forced his lizard tongue to snap out while he made popping sounds. It looked scary and mean. Finally he said, “All right, y’all break this shit up.” Mr Benny jumped in and pulled the two of ’em apart. But that fight was just the beginning.

What was meant to be a coming together of a mama and all her kids turned out to be a time of bad beginnings. Miss Ida, who I’d talk to over or through the fence sometimes, said it all had something to do with the way folks lived they lives in the past and how it was all coming back to bite ’em. “You should try and keep a right mind ’bout what cha do, child, ’cause what goes round will be back again to greet cha.” I didn’t know what she was saying by that; but it sounded smart, and I thought maybe it’d make sense to me someday.

I knowed Sister was doing her best to make good with Ruby, but it seemed that no matter what she did to try and please our mama, Mr. Benny had a way with making it out to be wrong. And he’d convince Ruby that his way of looking at it was the right way. Like the time he found what he said was a dirty plate in the dish rack and slammed it on the floor. When Sister tried to explain her side, Benny cut her off and called her all kinds of lies, then told Ruby that Sister had dropped the dishes on purpose. I knowed that Ruby would never believe us girls, so I didn’t even try to change her mind from his.

There was many more fights to come. If it wasn’t Ruby and Doretha, it was Mr. Benny and Ruby, and more often than not it was Doretha and Mr. Benny. It got to the point that the neighbors would shut they windows and doors—all of course ’cept Miss Ida—when they saw a car pull up in our carport. ’Cause they knowed that sooner or later all hell was gonna break loose.

Somewhere in all of it, my twelfth birthday came and went. Ruby had told me she would take care of me later. She also said that if she didn’t r’member, it would be all right for me to remind her. I didn’t know how to remind her and was too scared to try and figure it out. The only present I r’member from me turning twelve was the scar that I got when I tried to shave my legs like I had seen Sister do. Accordin’ to Ruby, I was to be more grown at twelve than I was at eleven. So I thought to see if she was right by shaving my legs. I did it just like I’d seen Doretha do. I wet my leg down with water and Ivory soap and took a pink razor and run it straight up the middle of my leg— right on the bone part. It took all of two minutes for me to see my leg turn from brown to a white then pink bloody stripe. The line moved from the front of my ankle to my kneecap. Figuring that Ruby was a nurse and she’d know what to do, I showed her. I shouldn’t have done that—not only did I have to hear her go on ’bout me trying to be “grown” before my time, but I also had to have rubbing alcohol dabbed into the bone, to keep it from infection. I figured that was more than ’nough to let me know I didn’t wanna be too grown-up too soon. Specially if it’d mean I’d have stripped-up legs. When I was no longer inna’rested in razors, I decided to try on Sister’s makeup. Doretha’d once told me that I didn’t need to use the Maybelline black eye-pencil ’cause my eyes already looked like they was lined. So I laid some pink glitter stuff ’cross my eyelids like I’d seen her do.

“Oh no you don’t! Get that black mess offa your eyes.
Now!
” What was Ruby going on ’bout? I didn’t have nothin’ black on ’em.

“I ain’t wearing nothin’ ’cept eye powder. What black stuff you talking ’bout?”

“I’ve told you, Regina, that you ain’t nothin’ but a child. Shit! Don’t rush yourself b’fore your time.”

I went and wiped off the pink powder and showed Ruby the difference. For a full week she swore I was wearing makeup and threatened to beat me if I didn’t stay outta hers. Her words got me to thinking: I wondered if Ruby’d ever really looked in my eyes b’fore now. It was a question I couldn’t answer, and I didn’t wanna bother her with it, so I decided that if she hadn’t seen ’em by then, it would probably take her another twelve years if a’tall.

My fightin’ with Ruby and Doretha wasn’t my only problems. Seemed like no matter where I went, mens was gonna try to get fresh with me. At least when I was back on Big Mama’s property, when her gran’sons came in the night to try and take what didn’t belong to ’em by trying to stick they things in me, they used the window. One at a time, is how they did it, till all of ’em sat crouched at the foot of my bed. I didn’t know how many it was for sho’ ’cause I tried to play ’sleep by squintin’ my eyes. By what I could figure out there must’ve been at least three. The oldest gran’son, Lenny, pulled down my panties to just above the thickest part of my leg, and that’s when he’d put his thing right up to my you-know-what. Then he tried to push it inside me. I opened my eyes up fast and started pounding his nasty self offa me. And since I caught him off guard he stumbled over my body but managed to put his hand round my mouth. “You betta’ not say a damn word, or I’ll tell ’em you told me to come and get some,” he whispered in my ear. “You betta’ lay your fast ass down and let me take it!”

I pulled my legs together tight and decided I would die trying to keep ’em closed b’fore I’d let that low-down dog stick his-self in me! I knowed that Big Mama was right in the other room, so if I fought hard ’nough they’d get scared and leave. Strong as Lenny’s mangy ass was, I still kept my legs closed tight, ’cause I was strong too. Since he was the only one doing all the holdin’ it wasn’t hard to work against his pulling and tugging. It was dark, and I couldn’t make out who else was in the room, but I could hear small sniggles and figured they was the younger boys. I don’t know what was going on for Sister, but she must’ve not knowed or was acting like she didn’t know what was happening. After a second or so, Lenny tried to stick that nasty thing inside my hind part. I squeezed my butt together real tight like a board until he finally gave up. Then the dogs left the same way they came. As they was leaving they started calling me names like prick-tease and cocky wench, promising to get and tame me next time.

Here, in North Carolina, I didn’t have to be ’fraid of folks using windows and sneaking in during the night like long, black, flying cockroaches whose wings are too big to go into small places. Here, he came right through the front door. As bright as day and sure as midnight is pitch black, he stood tall and proud like the oak tree on Big Mama’s property.

Aside from Mr. Benny being a bully and asking us to do everything when Ruby wasn’t ’round, he started actin’ real strange and saying stuff that I know a grown man shouldn’t be saying to no girl. The first time he got fresh with me, I didn’t say nothing to Ruby or nobody else, seeing that there was so much going on already. I knowed he was being fresh ’cause I’d seen how him and Ruby acted right b’fore they’d go in her room. And I don’t know what he was thinking, but I wasn’t planning on doing nothing like what he did with her.

One day Ruby told me I needed a bra-zear. She said my chest was buddin’ and it was time for me to act like a girl and strap ’em down. “I’m too young to be a gran’mama now!”

When she told me this, I looked down at my chest and saw that my shirt stuck out in front of me a bit. I hadn’t really noticed b’fore. Plus, why’d she have to say that thing ’bout being a gran’mama? What was that s’posed to mean? Sometimes Ruby made me madder than a wild pig with a firecracker up its ass, the way she’d just say whatever came to the front of her mind.

Of course Mr. Benny had been tellin’ me as much. I just didn’t understand at first what he meant by the way he said it. Folks had called me perky b’fore ’cause they’d say that I was full of spirit. But there was something in the way that Mr. Benny said the word that didn’t sit right with my mind.