Somebody's Someone (26 page)

I was used to the Church of the Nazarene, where Jesus was quiet and didn’t run round beating the sin outta folks and forcing ’em to speak words that only him and his daddy understood. He just hung over the pulpit on his cross, and on the windows keeping watch over us. I kinda missed the Church of the Nazarene. There they told me that Jesus loved me and that I could be whatever I wanted, if I wanted to. And they never held me down to no floor while smearing oil all over my forehead, tryin’ to force me to turn my life over to Jesus.

When me and Anica wasn’t draggin’ ourselves to that tore-up church of her mama’s, we would either be making our way over to Wild Cat Canyon, looking for the wildcats that the boys in the neighborhood told us ’bout, or figurin’ out and singing the words to our favorite songs. Sometimes we even played doorbell ditch; but that didn’t last long ’cause Anica’s fat behind couldn’t move too quick, and she got us caught a few times. And the people threatened to call the police on us if it happened again. I figured Anica wasn’t all that fun, but again, she was betta’ than being with Nadine.

Livin’ with Nadine just wasn’t working no more. I didn’t know how to be when I was round her and them kids, and whenever I was round ’em, all I wanted to do was be someplace else. I figured that it was up to me to try and find myself a new place to live. I guessed that if I was real nice to Anica’s mama and pretended to like the Jesus she liked, then I could maybe live with them. And if that didn’t work, I could try Marlena. I tried Anica first, since she was seen as black like me.

I told Anica’s mama that Glenn was a famous music person and was rich and lived in Los Angeles.

“If he so rich, how come you ain’t with him?” she wanted to know.

“B’cause he ain’t got time to write records and be no daddy,” I answered her.

“See looka here!” I showed Miss Bushfield the record Glenn had gave me, and how he signed it and all. “To Regina, with all my love,” it read. I thought to myself, All what love? But I didn’t let on to the Jesus freak.

“Well, if he loved you that much he should have his God-fearing tail here to take care of you.”

I told Miss Bushfield that Glenn also gave me a signed record from Barry White and one from Love Unlimited. He’d actually sent them to me from Los Angeles. Each time he was s’posed to be home I got a record instead. I was glad he’d sent ’em though, ’cause I loved that one Love Unlimited song: “Walking in the rain with the one I love.” I’d rather spend my time listenin’ to that song than be with Glenn.

After many days of going to that church and helping her round her house with her chores, Anica’s mama finally told me that I was welcome at they house anytime. She say she loved Love Unlimited, and Barry sho’ did remind her of some good ole times. She said that Barry was the kinda man that made the womens want to do the work of the devil. I offered the record to her to listen to for a while, but she said that the Lord wouldn’t let her listen to no worldly music, ’cause it made her wanna wrongfully sin, and she needed to be able to tend to her flock—unlike my daddy and his wife. Miss Bushfield even went as far as to say she’d talk wit’ my daddy if I needed her to. She told me she could have her whole congregation gather round his and Nadine’s house and clean the bad spirits out! For a minute I thought I’d like that just to see what that ole Nadine would do when the spirit of Jesus was upon her, but instead, I told her no thank ya.

I taught “Walking in the Rain” to my friends, and we would walk to school arm in arm, singin’ it loud as we could. I was always the one wit’ the biggest mouth, and I liked that. Whenever I could, I’d be as loud as I wanted, and the good thing ’bout it—nobody seemed to care if it got me into trouble. That was ’cause there was nobody to care. When we sang, I decided that I was Glodean James—the lead singer—and Anica and Marlena was the backups. Neither one could hold a tune good ’nough to lead the song, but we did the best we could.

It was hard for me to sing like Glenn, ’cause his voice was real high, but I learned some of his songs too. The best one on the record, the same one the whole album was named after, was called, “I Love You More and More.” I r’member hearing it on the radio for the first time! I could feel my head and heart racing to get to the finish line. It was hard to believe it was Glenn. The words was easy to learn, so I caught on fast; in no time a’tall I was singin’ “Honey I love you more and more,” over and over.

I ran down the street tellin’ everybody that I knowed this man, that he was my daddy. Folks didn’t believe me at first ’cause we didn’t have the same last names, and I didn’t know how to figure that one out. But eventually my friends came round to just looking at the record cover and seeing for themselves how much we had the same forehead and nose, ’cept mine was smaller. Plus I had that signed record. Marlena told me, “You can’t blame us for not believing you when we’ve never even seen the man in person.”

“You just wait,” I told her. “He’ll be back one day, and I’ll inna’duce him to you.”

I learned to sing the song from the radio ’cause I just knowed Glenn was talking to Ruby when he wrote it; you could tell by the way he sang the words, all slow and sad. And if he was singing to her, then he must’ve been also talking ’bout me. ’Cause I was the proof they’d been together. I figured that his other girls was too young to really understand his words, and with him knowing I’d be listening, he decided to write a song just for me. Anyway, I was here way b’fore his other kids was. I was even here way b’fore Nadine. She herself told me when the two of them met, and I sat down, added all the numbers up, and seen that I was born five years b’fore he ever set eyes on her. And if what I was thinking wasn’t so, it didn’t matter any ole way ’cause I’d already told anybody who’d listen that the song was for my mama and me. It didn’t even matter when folks asked me where she was and why wasn’t she married to him instead of Nadine. I fixed that real good. I told all my friends that Nadine come round to our house one day, when we all lived together in Texas, and she seen my daddy and stole him right out from under our feet. I told them that she put some kind of spell on him and he left us and never looked back until my mama hunted him down and made him take me. My friends thought Ruby was cool and that Nadine was wicked.

I think that way, way deep down inside me, in the place where I kept secrets, I was feelin’ a li’l bit of what Miss Odetta said she felt for Glenn—I didn’t know, but maybe I was a li’l bit proud, ’cause it sho’ did make me wanna talk ’bout Glenn with a smile, even if it was only ’bout his music.

The first chance I got, I called my mama in North Carolina and told her ’bout Glenn’s song on the radio. I’d asked Nadine if I could call Ruby, but she told me that they was on something called a “budget” and long-distance calling wasn’t covered. She told me that I should let Ruby call me instead. Well Lordy be, if I waited round for that, I’d never talk to my mama. I hadn’t talked to her in I don’t know how long, and Nadine wasn’t gonna stop me! Plus, my mama didn’t have all the money that Glenn and her is s’posed to’ve had; maybe that’s why she didn’t call me. So I did what I wanted—I called Ruby anyway. Not wanting Nadine to know, I snuck into the back of the kitchen and brought my voice to a whisper and talked on that phone to my mama.

“Hi, Ruby, this Regina, you r’member me?”

“Gina, you so silly, girl, of course I do. You my chile, ain’t you?” It was funny how Ruby was all nice when I wasn’t with her. But I tried not to pay too much mind to it.

“Why you whispering?”

“ ’Cause Nadine say I cain’t call you. Why come you ain’t called me?”

“Oh ’cause of the time difference. You always ’sleep when I’m woke.... Benny tells me to say hi.”

I knowed she was stone outta her mind. But that was okay; she didn’t know no betta’. I let her words go by me.

“Hey, Glenn wrote a song for you. It’s called ‘I Love You More and More.’ You should listen for it on the radio.”

“How’d you know he made it for me?”

“I just know!” I could just feel Ruby smiling on the other end.

One day, things took a turn for the worse at Glenn and Nadine’s. A woman called and claimed that Glenn had left her with a baby boy that was only a few months older than they oldest child Candace. I could hear Nadine crying on the phone:

“Glenn, I can’t believe this! Who is this woman, and what is she talking about?”

I overheard Nadine tell Glenn that she wasn’t gonna keep taking care of me when he was out gallivanting through the city without her knowing. She also yelled at Glenn for lying to her ’bout me staying through the school year.

“Glenn, I can’t believe that you had me enroll Regina in school, when she was only to be here for a month. Why did you trick me into this, Glenn? I can barely care for my own children.”

Nadine was crying loud now. What trick was she talking ’bout? And what was this month business? I didn’t believe that my own mama had been in on some kinda plot to get me to stay with folks who really didn’t want me. I wanted to call Ruby again, even if it meant that she would be mad at me, but I waited. But I did plan on asking her ’bout this trick.

“I need you here with me, Glenn. And the girls need their dad.”

I knowed she wasn’t talking ’bout me, ’cause I didn’t need nobody’s “dad.” Nadine’d said all she needed to say.

Marlena and me decided it was time to learn to smoke. I figured if Huckleberry could go and run off with Jim the slave and the carpetbaggers and make his own way, then so could I. And another thing, Huck had learned to smoke the corncob pipe while he and Jim was traveling down the river hiding from his pap. I told Marlena and a group of our friends that I learned how to smoke from my mama.

“Ooh, you did?” they all ask me at the same time.

“Yes indeedy, I did,” I told ’em. They all loved my talking ways. They said I reminded ’em of the Beverly Hillbillies, ’cepting I was black.

We all went to the Kmart, and I showed ’em how to put a pack of cigarettes down they pants and walk out the store. Marlena wanted to pick the cigarette flavor, so I let her. I figured that there was nobody who was gonna get mad at me if I got caught anyway, so I dared myself—and stole them cigarettes in a blink of an eye.

“I want Kool Longs ’cause that’s what my boyfriend smokes,” Marlena said. We all agreed without pitchin’ fits. Once we was safely outside, and seeing that we got away with it, we took the pack of Kool Longs and divvied each one to a member of our gang. On account there was five of us, we was sure to get two cigarettes apiece to start with. Since I had to go and open my big mouth, telling ’em ’bout how I knew how to smoke, they told me to go first.

“Why don’t you go first, Marlena, since your boyfriend does it?” I tried.

“I said he was the one who smoked, not me! Anyway, you said your mama showed you how, remember? Now don’t tell me you’re a scary-cat-chicken?”

I knowed one thing I wasn’t, and that was a chicken. Them was fightin’ words. I took one of Marlena’s cigarettes and lit it. I r’membered back on how I seen Ruby do it, and I did what I thought I saw. I inhaled the smoke fast, and as I did, my head took off on its own and started spinning. Not only that, but I started choking and wanted to throw up all at the same time. That didn’t stop me, though—no siree. I looked at smoking like a game I had to win, and I didn’t stop till I won. And I don’t mind saying, I was sicker than a junkyard dog with rabies.

After getting away with borrowin’ the tobacco sticks, we decided to move up to taking tennis shoes. Lord, I loved Converse tennis shoes. All the kids who had money wore ’em. And since Nadine didn’t have money to buy me stuff with, I went and got stuff for myself. If I didn’t borrow it from the store directly, I’d borrow money from the tennis ball cans that Glenn kept in the kitchen cupboard. I found ’em one day when the ice cream truck man came round and I watched Nadine go and get money to pay for the ice cream. I figured that since he was my daddy, then whatever he had for her, he had for me. Plus, how could anybody keep track of all them nickels, quarters, and silver dollars when they wasn’t round anyway?

I didn’t mind the stealing part even though Donna Janine’d told me ’bout not being punished till I turned twelve and now I was. I called it borrowing, not stealing. Sometimes, at night, just before I fell off to sleep, I would ask the good Lord to forgive me for my borrowing. I also promised that if Glenn ever sold some of his records, that he would pay everybody back. And if Glenn didn’t, then I would one day.

“Glenn, if you don’t get home as soon as possible, I am leaving,” I could hear Nadine telling him for the hundredth time, over the phone. I watched as she cried like a baby but quiet-like, with her hand over her eyes. “Your kids don’t even know you, and you’ve only seen Regina once in the four months she’s been here. And I can’t control her anymore. All she does is stay out with that Marlena girl, leaving the house and playing like she goes to school. Last month she missed more days than she attended. And when she’s not with her cronies, there’s the issue of the phone bill. She’s been calling Ruby without asking. And she’s violent; she’s busted out the windows of my car. She is a problem! When are you coming, Glenn?” Man did Nadine seem sore. I kinda liked how she got all tough with Glenn. It made me like her a li’l betta’ ’cause she reminded me of the folks I come from. Maybe if she was more like that all the time I could get on with her betta’—but I knowed that would never happen.

It was true. I did bust the windows out Nadine’s car and rob her house. I did it ’cause my friends dared me to, and I’d decided that if somebody dared me to do anything I’d do it just to show I wasn’t no sissy. Marlena told me that I should get Nadine back for what she did to my mama, so I did. Anyway, I didn’t feel so bad for Nadine. From where I stood, she wasn’t thinking ’bout my Ruby one li’l ole bit and not much ’bout me neither.

After a while Nadine was sounding like a rat caught in a trap right b’fore it got the cheese, and I sho’ didn’t see her “Glennypoo” running home. If it was me, I would’ve left his sorry ass a long time ago. One thing I learned from Ruby, she didn’t stay too long with no man who didn’t wanna put up with her. Nobody would’ve had to tell Ruby or me twice that we wasn’t wanted. Plus, Nadine should’ve knowed ’bout this other boy he s’posedly had. She should have seen’d it coming—I sho’ did! Far as I was concerned, she got everything that was coming to her and more. After all, didn’t she know that Glenn belonged to my mama first?