Somebody's Someone (34 page)

“You got this for me? What is it?” I asked her, barely able to hold on to myself.

“Yes, it’s for you. Go on and open it.”

I hardly knowed what to do with myself. I took my time opening the package. Instead of tearing through it as fast as I could, I held it in my hands for a small while. I wanted to hold on to the feeling of someone caring ’bout me.

“Go ahead, silly, open it. It won’t bite you, I promise.”

I took my eyes offa Miss Claire’s face and turned back to my present. Next, I took each corner as slow as I could, peeling the tape back inch by inch. I was wanting to save the blue bow that sat in the middle of the gift, so I took it off and put it in my pocket. Finally, I pulled the paper back and looked at what was inside. I wasn’t quite certain what it was, so I held it out from me a ways and studied it for a minute.

“Know what that is?” Claire finally asked me.

“Nope, I sure don’t,” I answered her with wonder sitting deep b’tween my eyebrows. “What is it?”

“It’s a handheld tape recorder with earphones. I guessed that since you enjoy singing and talking, maybe you could use this to record with.”

I’d had a tape recorder at school that we was allowed to make music with, but I’d never seen one quite like this. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. “Oh, that’s so nice. I love it a whole lot, and I ain’t gonna let nobody else touch it! Plus, I’ll make you a tape from KFRC radio station the first chance I get, or I’ll sing you something.” And I meant it too. I loved my new gift, and I wasn’t gonna never lose it from moving so much, like I’d done with most of the things I’d ever gotten in my life. This would be different. It was a gift from somebody who loved me.

“Well, sweetheart, I’m glad you love it. Because I want you to have something special; you deserve it.” Praise the Lord! We rode the rest of the way with li’l smiles splattered on both our faces.

From the first time I ever went to Miss Claire’s house I was able to tell her how to get there. She told me I had a mem’ry like a elephant and that she was gonna have to watch what she said and did round me. She winked her eye at me while talking. Times when Miss Claire wasn’t working, I would run off from the shelter to look for her. I didn’t like it when she wasn’t close by. It was like I stopped breathing or something. And the only way I could start would be if she would smile at me and call me sweet names. Just to be near her made me wanna do betta’ at everything.

One night I just couldn’t take it. I decided to see if Miss Kennedy wanted me as much as I wanted her. I told myself that if I went to her house and she let me stay, then that’d mean she wanted me for herself and that I could prob’ly become her daughter. I decided to leave right after dinnertime.

The coast was clear. I got down on my knees and crawled past the staff office. Since the top part of the office was glass, making it so you could easily see who came and went, crawling was the only way out. Slowly I made my way without nobody taking notice. I snuck out a side gate that was knowed for not making any noise. I’d watched the older girls go out that door to smoke so nobody’d hear them leave. Out the corner of my eye I could see inside the office, and I seen Miss Kennedy signing her name out in the big red book that all the staff had to use—she was on her way home.

I made my way to the edge of the yard. After climbing to the top and jumping the big Cyclone fence that went clear round the shelter, I made my way all the way to Miss Claire’s house. I crossed highways and hid in bushes along the interstate whenever I seen a police car, and sure enough I arrived at her house in what seemed like no time a’tall.

I knocked on her door a few times, but nobody answered. “Miss Kennedy, you in there, Miss Kennedy!” I tried to keep my voice down ’cause I didn’t wanna get her next-door neighbors going. After a while, I decided to sit on the steps and wait for her to get home.

“Oh my God! You startled me. What on earth are you doing here, Regina?” Her white face in the dark looked like it was glowing.

“I wanted to be with you.”

“Sweetheart, you know that it doesn’t work like this, don’t you?” She stared down at me as she asked me that question.

“Yeah, I know, but I still wanna be here with you. I hate being at that shelter. They don’t understand me like you do. Nobody understands me like you do. Why can’t I just be here with you like normal kids do?”

“I know, sweetheart, but that’s where you live for now and where I work. And if we both want it to continue to be that way, we have to put up with the rules. I didn’t make them, but we have to live by them.”

“I hate them stupid rules. Whoever made ’em must not have or like kids. Anybody knows that if you like somebody and they like you, it ain’t easy to stay away from ’em.”

Claire moved towards me as I was sitting on her stoop. She put her hand under my chin and lightly shook it. “What am I going to do with you?”

I pushed my shoulders up and down. For a minute I didn’t know what to say to her question. I wasn’t for sure if she was asking or just talking out loud. But whatever her reason was, I decided to just say what I’d wanted to say, if she was really meaning to ask me. “Keep me, I hope.” I sat and studied Miss Claire to see how she was gonna act hearing my bold talk.

All she said was, “Come on inside; you must be cold.”

I wasn’t cold, but I followed her anyway.

“You know I have to call Mr. Porter at the shelter and let him know where you are, don’t you?”

I nodded.

Claire stood for a minute with the receiver in her hand and then said, “I’ll take you back in the morning; you’ll have to spend the night here, okay?”

“Okay!”
I listened as she told the shelter folks that she was too run-down to drive me back that night and that she’d have me there early the next day. That night I got to sleep in a beautiful white nightgown with lace round the bottom. I counted five tiny li’l buttons that ran up into the collar and stood up at attention round my neck. I looked like one of them queens in a ole movie. After slowly, slowly, brushing my teeth with Claire’s toothbrush, I got in bed. She said she had some work to do, so she stayed up. I waited for her, crossin’ everything I could on my body—toes, fingers, legs, and feet—and prayin’ that she could be mine.

“All right now, Mr. God, if you can hear and see anything that I’m saying or doing right now, then you know how bad I need a mama. If you ain’t too busy and too tired from helping those other folks, please hear my prayer. Amen.” Just shortly b’fore my eyes clamped shut from being plumb tired, I could feel Claire slide underneath the covers. Her big toe accident’ly scraped my leg as it was finding its way to the foot of the bed. I pulled my leg up and held on to it all night to seal her touch into me.

She kissed me on my forehead and said, “Sweet dreams, pumpkin.”

Not only did Miss Claire take me places and do nice things for me, but she also told me ’bout a man who was kinda like God—his name was Meher Baba. She wore his picture in a beaded necklace round her neck. When I asked ’bout it she told me he was something called a guru. At first, I was a li’l scared ’cause Big Mama had told me that white folks was knowed for being devil worshipers. But after she explained that he was just like Jesus, but from a different place, I felt all right ’bout it again and decided to like her even more. I was figuring that after all, maybe she was God’s friend and this was his way of wanting to help out. I was beginning to think that somehow Miss Claire was sent to help me out, ’cause Lord knowed, she sure did have a way with me.

Miss Claire also learned me ’bout reading other kinds of books, like
The Prophet
by a man named Kahlil Gibran and
The Little Prince.
I loved reading whatever she gave me ’cause them books made me feel like I could go to the places she’d been to b’fore. Aside from reading fun books, Claire told me it was time I started understanding that I should take care of my body. She brought me a book called
Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Who could’ve ever thought to write such a thing? I was too embarrassed to look at some of them pictures and have to read ’bout what happens inside your body. I fanned through the pages, but I thought it was too stupid to really take the time to read it. Plus, the letters was too small for me to read, so I wasn’t interested in it.

Outta all the things I got from Claire, the best thing that I liked was how she said that the freckles on my face—spots I one time wanted to scrub off with a S.O.S. pad—was called “angels’ kisses,” and that God had put ’em there just for me. I’d never heard such a thing b’fore. I wanted to love my li’l spots from here on out. And at night, sometimes before she went home, Miss Claire would come into my room and show me how butterflies kissed. She would take her own eyelashes and lean her eye to my cheek. Then she’d bat her eye back and forth ’cross my skin real fast, and I’d feel the wings of the butterfly kiss my face.

To keep her there with me longer, I asked her how butterflies was made, even though I already knowed the story ’bout the cocoon and the caterpillar. I loved it when she told me how a caterpillar believed it could be more than just a worm and after sleeping for a small while, grew wings and became a butterfly. “You remind me of a butterfly, sweetheart, and if you put your mind to it you can become anything in the world. You have so much potential that you aren’t even aware of. I can see that you’re really trying, and I’ll let Miss Forde in on that. Always remember, you can be anything that you put your mind to.”

With Miss Claire I felt like I was wanted for the first time in my life. I even thought that if I wanted to real hard, I could grow wings and fly us both off from the shelter. The way I seen it was, if a caterpillar could turn into something else like a butterfly, then so could I. Maybe I could turn myself into Claire’s baby. That way she’d have something for her very own and would wanna take care of it like all mamas was s’posed to do for their children. I let myself believe what she said.

It soon became clear to all that I did a whole lot betta’ when Miss Claire was round. At least when she was at work, the staff knowed that I was somewhere close, and it kept them from having to write up a AWOL report or call the police. The other thing that could keep me in line was always knowing that if I didn’t do right I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere with Claire again.

After some time, my social worker reviewed my situation and had a meeting with the folks at the shelter. After the meeting I was told that I could go on home visits with Claire, seeing how good she was with me. The staff felt it would be good for me to get outta the shelter with someone who wanted to be with me. Miss Forde wasn’t so certain, but she gave me a chance against her better judgment—whatever that meant. She just told me to be sure when I was with Miss Claire and was gonna spend the night, that I should have a separate place to sleep.

On one of our first official outin’s Miss Claire took me to see the San Francisco Ballet’s
Nutcracker Suite
. And I learned that folks who stand on they tippy-toes in li’l pointed, pink satin shoes was called ballet dancers. They was the most beautiful folks in the world to me. I loved how the shoe ribbons danced round the ankles of the ladies and how pretty the outfits was— like the Easter dresses I wore when I was small. I couldn’t believe that the big toes could be that strong to hold a body up like that. I wanted to be a ballet dancer more than anything. I ’magined having my very own music made just for me to dance to. I wanted to dance and make folks feel good, just like I was feeling. Maybe then I could be free from people not wanting me and I’d make a way for myself.

One time, Miss Claire got me to dress up real fancy. She made me a light blue corduroy dress with a round collar—she somehow knowed that blue was my favorite color. The dress had rainbows and hearts that she hand-sewed on it, all by herself, and she got the fit just perfect without even measuring me first. We had dinner at the Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto in Berkeley—a real fancy restaurant—and then drove to see the San Francisco Opera. Claire told me that the opera was called
La Tra-vee-ah-ta,
and that it was a love story of some kind ’bout love going wrong. Or maybe going right, whatever way; I can’t ’xactly r’member. I didn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but it didn’t matter none. I watched the women in they big skirts and hair and loved it all. I thought it was funny how the men’s hair was just as big as the women’s. I sat back and watched and listened. I wanted to sing songs at the top of my lungs so that every night people could come and watch me too. Folks would come from far away to watch and listen to me sing in different words and dresses, my hair all big and fancy. Maybe I would be famous. Not like Glenn my so-called daddy famous, where I’d lose my mind to Jesus and abandon my child for strangers to take care of her. But famous where folks would hear that I was good and took care of children and sang ’em songs ’bout love going right.

Going to big fancy shows wasn’t the only things me and Claire did. Though I was filled with my ole country ways, like eating and talking at the same time and putting my elbows so deep on the table there’d be no room left for my plate and stuff, Claire learned me how to use my fork, knife, and spoon the right way. She told me to always pick my fork up from the outside of a place settin’. And if I needed to cut my meat or something, then I should place the knife in my right hand, fork in left, and switch back after I was ready to eat. She said doing this showed that I had manners. I figured these was the secrets that white folks kept from everybody else. I wondered if that’s why black folks wasn’t let to eat with whites a long time ago. I have to say, where I come from folks never bothered with this sort of stuff—good manners and all. I also learned to put a napkin on my lap and chew with my lips together without smacking. But that wasn’t all she taught me—she even told me how to act b’fore getting the food.

“Sweetheart, it’s really important that you never go to anyone’s house empty-handed. You should always bring a small token of appreciation. And when the dinner is over and you go back home, you must always send a thank-you note.” Man, was she smart, even if it did seem like a lot of work.