Somebody's Someone (36 page)

I looked at that picture every chance I got, always careful to put it back before Elena could discover it was missin’. This time, though, I was a li’l bit bold. I closed Elena’s empty box and hid it back where it belonged. I planned on using the picture just for a while and would put it back before bedtime when Elena always took it out to look at it and talk to her mommy. Careful not to hurt the picture in any way, I slipped it into the elastic of my panties, then pulled my shirt down to make certain you couldn’t see it. I wasn’t s’posed to be in my room at recess, so I snuck back downstairs and went to the tetherball yard.

“Look, y’all wanna see what my mama look like?” I held the picture up so that the girls from my homeroom could see. I was so happy to finally have somethin’ to show folks. I was tired of always being the one who had no proof that I belonged to anybody. “Don’t we look alike?” I asked, hoping that somebody would say yeah. Nobody said nothing. “Well! Don’t we?” I asked again.

“I guess a little bit,” Debbie, a girl from the day program, answered as she scrunched up one of her eyes and the left side of her mouth.

“Why is she so light and you ain’t?” asked Michelle, who had just come to the children’s home but lived in the part for much older girls.

“ ’Cause she half Mes’can, stupid, can’t you tell? Anyway ain’t you never seen any real light black folks b’fore? We come in all different colors.”

Nobody knowed what to say. They must’ve figured I was telling the truth on account that there was a couple of other black kids that went to the day-program school and we wasn’t all the same colors.

“Well, you do got real white teeth and some freckles. And your skin is lighter than the man my mama used to go out with, so I guess you and your mom do look alike,” Michelle added.

For the rest of the day, I showed my picture to all the girls in my classroom and anybody who asked to see it. By the end of the day it seemed like folks was nicer to me than they’d been before. I’d even look at the picture and start telling folks that my mama had been in court for the last coupla weeks trying to take me back from my daddy, who really didn’t want me in the first place. Some of the Mes’can kids started actin’ friendlier towards me when they found out that my mama was made outta half of them. The more I looked at that picture, the more I loved my Ruby-and-Miss-Claire mama all rolled into one. She looked so pretty, and she loved me so much...I couldn’t believe it—I finally had a mama of my own.

“
Where’s my picture!
Oh God, oh God, my mama. Somebody took my mommy! Give her back; give her back.” Elena’s screams could’ve been heard a mile away.
“I want my maaama.”
Now she was in a full-blown holler.

As the cryin’ got harder, it pulled me right outta my sleep along with the other girls in the room. Since Elena had been there longer, she had a later bedtime than the rest of us. All at once everybody’s heads started pulling up from the covers. I could feel my body shaking as it tried to figure out what was going on. And in a sudden, I realized it was the picture. I had forgot to put Elena’s picture back! By now she was drooling all over herself, and her face looked like it was caught in slow motion. Next thing I knowed she was running through the room tearing stuff off the walls: the fire extinguisher, the emergency exit sign, and even the li’l pictures they let us draw then tape to the walls. I didn’t know what to do.

“Goddamngoddamngoddamn!”
She kept repeating the Lord’s name in vain all over the place, at the same time running over to each bed and screaming “goddamn” over and over in folks’ ears. By the time she got to me I could hear the staff running up the stairs.

“What’s going on in here?” Mary the head counselor said as she got to the top of the staircase. “It’s bedtime, ladies; I wanna go home. What’s all the racket about?” By then everybody was up and wandering the hallway trying to figure out what was going on.

“Somebody stole Elena’s mama’s picture; she’s tripping out.”

“Move out of the way! Let me in!” Mary yelled as she pushed past the crowd of kids. “Can I get some backup up here?” she shouted over her shoulders, and in no time, there was three other grown folks trying to get kids to go back to their rooms. Elena was tearing up her own sheets by then.

“Okay, girls, someone should start talking.”

“Somebody took my mommy’s picture. I swear it was right here.” She pointed to her cigar box. “I put it right here where I always keep it, and now it’s gone.” Elena kept right on crying.

By now I was sittin’ up in the bed wondering how I was gonna get that picture back in that box, under the bed or wherever it was now. I couldn’t believe how stupid I was. My head started spinning as I tried to think of what to do.

“Are you sure you had it in your box?” Mary asked Elena.

“Yes, every night I put it back in my box right after I pray. Then I put the box back under my bed so that my mommy can be with me all the time.”

“Who’d you show the box to last?” Mary wanted to know. My hand slid underneath my pillowcase. My fingers found the black-and-white picture with the pretty Mes’can woman on it. I didn’t mean to keep it—I just wanted to hold it for a li’l while longer, and I must’ve fell asleep.

“I don’t know. I just say my prayers, put my box back, and go to sleep. I didn’t show it to nobody else.”

“Okay, ladies, everybody up and out. We’re going to do a strip search.” Mary’s voice moved through the room like a echo. My insides started jumping.

“Let’s move it, ladies.”

As I went to get out my bed, I started to pull the picture out from under my pillow and slip it up the sleeve of my pajama top. Mary must’ve heard the sound of the paper scrape against my skin as I bent it so it’d slide easier.

“What’s that in your hand, Regina?”

“What? Nothin’,” I answered back while my heart tried to beat itself right on outta my chest.

“Let me see what is in your left hand now!” Her face was glowing red.

“I said nothing; why you trippin’?” I yelled back at Mary.

B’fore I could get another word out she had called for backup again. “That’s it, young lady. This is not how we do it here!” She moved to grab me, and I jumped on another girl’s bed, holding the picture behind my back. “We will not tolerate stealing and lying!” The backup folks came runnin’ in, and Mary shouted at ’em to hold me down.

I yanked the picture from behind my back and told ’em if they touched me I’d tear it to pieces.

“Nooo!” Elena screamed and started hollerin’ up a storm and scratching herself. I decided right then to tear the picture in half so that we could both have a mama. I wanted to take that part of the face that smiled and made me know my mama loved me. As the other counselors held on to Elena, I tore the picture and tossed Elena the part of her mama she could look at when she prayed—the half with the eyes. I turned and ran smack into Bruce, whose jolly green giant body was blockin’ the door. He grabbed me by my arm. I balled the smiling part of the picture into my free hand as I tried to hit him as hard as I could. He yanked my arm behind my back and locked my neck behind his elbow.

“Let me go, you fat mother—”

I never got to finish my words. His one hand twisted my arm up higher while the other one slammed ’cross my mouth. “Let’s go,” he said as he pushed me towards the stairs.

All the way down I tussled and turned. By the time we got to the first landing, I could see somebody standing at the foot of the stairs: they was holding the li’l white room door open. I shook my head from side to side ’cause Bruce’s hand was round my mouth. I was screaming,
Please no! No, please not the white room. I get too scared. Please no.
Nobody heard me. As I landed on my hands and knees, the door slammed behind me in a way where it sounded like flesh landing on flesh.

“You are not comin’ out till you can behave!” Bruce called out, and walked away breathing hard.

“I can be good. I can be good. It’s all right. You gonna be all right.” I kept saying this to myself over and over while I waited in the white room.

At first I screamed bloody murder as I slammed and kicked and scratched at the walls and door. I called for Miss Claire and Ruby and Big Mama and God. And everybody ignored me. “I’m sorry, Elena. I didn’t mean to steal your picture. I’m sorry,” I cried over and over again. I sobbed myself to a quietness. Then somebody came over.

“When you can give us more of this, we’ll let you out.”

I couldn’t tell whose voice it was but I answered ’em back. “All right. Okay. I can do it.” I sat down on the floor. The only sound that could be heard was my hiccups as I tried to quiet myself down more. After a while, when I stopped only hearing myself and the sounds of kids running up the stairs getting ready for bed, I tried to open the hand that was holding the picture inside it. At first it seemed like it was stuck and my fingers didn’t wanna give. But slow-like, each finger gave way to the next, and b’fore long I could see what was left over from the picture being tore. It wasn’t near the same—in addition to the tear it had kinda melted in my hand. I tried stretching the picture out so I could see her mouth smiling at me, but it was too squished up. I had ruined it.

Shortly after I was let out the closet I was kicked out the California Wayward Children’s Home in Sacramento. I never told another soul ’bout my half Mes’can mama, but her face troubled me for a long, long time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

GONE

BACK AT THE SHELTER
everything seemed to fall right into place. Miss Forde had sat me down and told me how disappointed she was with me ’bout how I acted in Sacramento. And even though she was upset, she seemed a li’l softer than usual. But I didn’t let myself trust that. I knowed in no time a’tall she’d be back to her regular self. After she talked with me, Miss Forde met with Miss Claire, and they came up with a plan of action—as they put it—to make certain that I started following the rules and could have some success. Miss Claire, she never asked me ’bout why my placement failed in Sacramento, and I didn’t mention it a’tall.

I was told that if I did everything right, like respect other folks’ property, stay outta trouble with the counselors, and not run away, then in a while, I might be able to go and spend time with Miss Claire Kennedy in the right way. I promised to do my best to be good and follow all the rules. Miss Claire closed her eye at me real fast and told me welcome back. I was happier than I had ever been in my life. And even though I promised not to run off to Miss Claire’s house, every night when she left I wanted to go. I just never wanted neither one of us to leave the shelter again.

“Pumpkin, I will be going on vacation for ten days to Hawaii.”

The words just lay there. I felt like a balloon that was let go after being full of air, flyin’ round a room with no place to land. Seemed like I hadn’t been back two days b’fore things was changing again. “How long you gonna be gone?” I asked her.

“Ten days, like I said; then I’ll be back. I’m going to visit my father. He lives there.”

“If I lived there, would you take off work and come and see me?”

“If you lived there, I would be there with you, and you would go to the University of Hawaii, because you’re smart enough. And I wouldn’t have to visit you: I’d always be there with you.”

On the night b’fore Claire left, she sat me down on the couch and plaited my hair like I’d taught her to do. She’d gotten so good at it that I didn’t mind letting her when she offered. I could feel her fingers touch my scalp as she lay each piece of hair over the next, pulling on it gently, mindful not to hurt me. “Here is a calendar that will show you when I’m coming home, sweetheart,” she said, handing me a Holly Hobbie calendar with a big circle round the fifth of August to the fifteenth. Ten whole days. I didn’t know if I could hold out that long. I took the calendar from her and ran to post it over my bed. Then I ran to the bathroom. I didn’t want the other kids to know I was cryin’ over some white woman, and I didn’t want Miss Claire to know I was scared for her to get on the plane. I hid out in the bathroom for a while. Then I took some powder that we had underneath a sink and rubbed it all on my face, playin’ like I was disappearin’, like Casper. If Claire wasn’t gonna be round, I didn’t wanna be there either. And at least that way I could keep my word with ole Miss Forde. When I walked back out to where Miss Kennedy and some other kids was sittin’, they asked how come I had wet marks on my face. I told ’em that the powder burned my eyes and made ’em water.

I cried for the whole ten days she was gone. One of the older girls in my room told me that Claire’s plane prob’ly went down, since I hadn’t heard from her. I stopped eatin’—I wanted to starve myself just in case Claire’s plane was down and she didn’t have no food. If she didn’t have none, I didn’t wanna have none either.

The day she left I was so mad I couldn’t take hold of myself and got the worst incident report I could from the shelter. Right when it was time for the shift changes, I ran outside to the back gate and waited for the cars to make the left down the street that leads to Muir Road—the street that takes you toward the highway. I sat down and forced myself to take a dump right smack dab in the middle of my hand. When the first car left the yard, I threw the smelly stuff, aiming at the back of anybody’s window. The first time, I missed. The second time I hit a probation officer’s car that was coming from the Juvenile Hall place next door. B’fore I knowed what was going on next, the car stopped, and the man got out and chased me all the way back towards the shelter. I tried to run inside and hide, but he got me as I was rounding the building on the side with the quiet door. He filed a complaint and incident report against me and threatened to have me booked into Juvenile Hall if it ever happened again. I even had to clean the windows of his car—including the ones that didn’t have nothing on ’em. I was told that Miss Forde would be notified. I spent the rest of my time in my room counting the days of Miss Kennedy’s return.

I hardly dared to believe it, but Miss Claire was back from Hawaii ten days after she left—just like she’d said. I figured out that that was the second time somebody did what they said they was gonna do. The first being when Odetta came and got me from the Perezes’. Not only did she keep her word ’bout coming back, but she brought me something called a lei as well. It was a perfect circle of purple and white flowers sprinkled with tiny drops of water and packed in a plastic see-through box. When I asked Miss Claire why she gave the present to me, she told me a story: