Somebody's Someone (6 page)

I r’member when Odetta Fontaine came for me that first time I was hopping round like a box of Mes’can jumping beans. I felt good ’cause nobody told me to calm down or “act right” or anything in front of Odetta, and I liked that. I knowed that Big Mama and the grown folks would never say nothing to me in front of her on account of her s’posedly being my real kin. Any way, I was just too happy to maybe get some new clothes. Since I was the younger of me and Doretha Ann, I always got her leftover clothes, and most of the time I didn’t like nothing she had.

Odetta said that taking me shopping was the least to be done under the circumstances. Also, I learned that my so-called daddy had sent money for her to do good by me. I grabbed hold of her hard, dry hand and led her out our gate as fast as I could. I’d seen Sister walk off once she found out that Odetta was only there for me, and I didn’t want her to have to see me go. We went to a nice department store, and Odetta let me look round and pick out some things that I liked. She bought me the dark blue coat, with gloves and a scarf to match. I loved them, and was so excited to wear these beautiful new things in fronta everyone I knew.

I never did have a chance to wear that coat. Big Mama’d told me to get a large size so that I could grow into it. She said the bigger the coat, the longer I could wear it. I told Odetta what Big Mama’d said, and she bought me a jacket many sizes larger that would guarantee me at least two cold spells. Once I got home, everything was fine while Odetta was there. Oh, everybody loved my pretty new coat and went on ’bout how Odetta just shouldn’t have gone through the trouble to buy me such a nice gift, as they playacted smiling and battin’ their eyelashes. But the moment Odetta left, Big Mama couldn’t move fast ’nough to take my beautiful coat and give it to my sister. She said that Doretha could wear it until I was ready to fit into it. Big Mama said that I was too small for the coat now, and it just didn’t make sense for me to swim in it when it could be put to betta’ use.

My sister took no pain in handing over her old funky smelly sweater jacket. I never wore the thing and hated Doretha for taking my new coat. From the way Big Mama and them carried on, you wouldn’t’ve thought that Sister ever got anything nice, when all along it was the opposite—I was the one who had to wear other folks’ clothes once they was done with ’em. I was so mad, I didn’t feel so sorry for Sister anymore. I was hoping she’d wanna give my coat back without me having to ask, but she never did.

B’fore Odetta had left that day she told me that I could call her anytime I wanted. I asked her why come she was just now coming, if she knowed ’bout me all this time. And how come that time when Glenn came to see me he didn’t try and take me back to California since I was his. She whispered to me that Johnnie Jean Thornhill didn’t like them coming round too much and that she didn’t wanna cause no trouble for me since I was living in her care. I whispered back, askin’ where California and my daddy was. He was in Los Angeles, California, Odetta explained, and anybody who wanted to go would have to take a plane to get there. She went on to tell me that she hadn’t been to see her son on account that she hated aeroplanes and if God had meant for mens to fly, he would have made us birds instead of men. And that birds would be runnin’ the world. I tried to picture birds walking about on they tiny li’l legs telling folks how it was gonna be. I laughed. Deep down, though, something inside me secretly wanted to go to California one day.

While I was busy r’membering, a black-and-white checkered taxicab pulled up in front of the Perezes’ house. I heard the sound of a car turn off its engine. As I stood up and peeked out the window, Mrs. Perez headed for the front door. Slyly, out the corner of the kitchen window, I watched as a small and pudgy, light-brown-skinned woman stepped outta the car and started towards the house. It had to be Odetta, and boy did she look different than she had some years b’fore. By now, her hair was dark brown and white, and had small tight curls circling round her head then pinned up in the back, making her head look larger than it was. Her shoulders used to be straighter, more upright, but now they leaned a bit closer to her knees. And her forehead was even bigger than I first r’membered it to be.

Mrs. Perez let Odetta into the house. I was still standing in the kitchen, but I could hear ’em talking. Peeking out the window, I saw that the taxi man must’ve decided on staying, ’cause he pulled out a newspaper and started to read.

“Hola,”
Mrs. Perez said to Odetta. “Ju mus be here
por
Regina?”

“Yeah, that’s right. My name’s Odetta Fontaine; my son is this here chile’s daddy.”

Twisting that li’l piece of hair that was barely hanging on to the side of my head was all my hands could do. I didn’t want that pretty woman seeing me like this. I had done the best I could to clean the dried blood off my skin, but the stains was still holding on. And there was nothing I could do ’bout the welts; they wasn’t going nowhere.

Odetta came into the room where I was standing and stopped dead in her tracks, just like the armadillos did when you’d shine your headlights in they eyes.

“Oh, Lawd have mercy, chile, what cha go and let them do that to ya for?” With one hand Odetta covered her mouth, which was hanging wide open, and with the other she motioned to touch me. I flinched and moved outta her reach, scared that she would press too hard on me. “It’s okay, sugar,” she said. “I ain’t aiming to hurt cha now.” I moved closer to the corner, wanting to disappear.

“Who in heaven’s name needs to beat a chile till they see flesh? What chu do to dem folks?” I wasn’t planning on answering that question again. I pretended like I never heard a word she said.

“I’m a take you on home wit’ me,” Odetta told me.

“But we cain’t let on to nobody, ya hear, till we get some thangs straightened out,” Odetta continued while looking from me to Mrs. Perez. Mrs. Perez swore that if anybody came looking for me, that she wouldn’t tell ’em a word. She laid her first finger ’cross her lips and made the
shh
sound. It was nice of her, but deep down I could sense that nobody was really gonna come looking for me. There was many times I stayed gone long into darkness, and sometimes I was out way into the middle of the night and nobody never worried. Either they didn’t care, or figured that sooner or later I’d be home.

Odetta and me got into the waiting taxi and drove away from the Perezes’ house. I turned and waved to my friend’s mother, wondering if I’d ever see her again. But more than that, looking at Mrs. Perez standing waving in her apron, I wanted to know if I’d one day have a mama of my own. Somebody I wouldn’t have to leave if I didn’t wanna. Or someone like Mrs. Perez, who would get mad and cuss out loud if I was done wrong. It could even be a person like Odetta, who’d run to me, and take me with ’em when things went real sour. That’s the kinda mama I would want, if I ever got to choose.

As we headed down the road, I dragged my fingers ’cross my upper lip, which was now big on one side. Anytime I got real upset and cried a lot, my body would overheat and I’d get a fever blister. Big Mama said it was ’cause I was so bad and that the devil was trying to get out my body: that’s what brought on the swelling. I didn’t wanna help that devil by crying anymore, but seeing my daddy’s mama made my insides go off like a Fourth of July celebration—I couldn’t keep up with all that I was feeling, and the tears was threatening to roll. I couldn’t believe that Odetta had actually showed up, just like she said. My mind kept recalling the many times my mama, Ruby, had promised that she was gonna come back to south Austin and get us. The truth is she barely even talked to us, let alone come for us. I cain’t recount the Christmases, Easters, and birthdays where I’d sit and wait on her and she just didn’t make it. All the other kids would laugh at me and Sister and call us names like “child of a hussy” and say our mama was a ho’. They would laugh at us for being so stupid and easy. Lula even said that she hoped that Sister and me wasn’t as easy with the mens as we was with our mama, ’cause if that be the case, we was in for a world of trouble. I let them say whatever they wanted ’bout me as long as they didn’t hit me with sticks or stones. Secretly, when my mama didn’t come like she said, I’d just tell myself to act as if she had. That way anybody could say whatever they wanted and it didn’t hurt me. Plus, I told myself Ruby wasn’t to blame for not coming for us. I could tell by the way her voice sounded over the phone that she really believed she was coming. In my mind, my mama was already with me, and I was able to stretch that out and make it last for as long as I could.

While ridin’ in that taxi, I wrapped the muscles from my neck down to my stomach round the crying that wanted to come and just let time and the tears pass. The checkered-cab man drove us clear ’cross Austin, from the south side to the east. As we passed the graveyard on Martin Luther King Boulevard, I knowed we was in the all-black part of town. Deep down I was a li’l ’fraid on account that Big Mama’d said that she never wanted to live round too many of her own kind b’cause black folks didn’t know how to act sometimes and you never knowed what was gonna go down when you put too many of ’em together. She’d much rather be round funny-talkin’ Mes’cans and them dirty white folks that wore hot pants in the snow with no shoes on they feet—at least she knowed what she was getting up front, and that’s why we lived on the south side. I never did understand why come Big Mama would say the damnedest things ’bout folks when they wasn’t round her, but the minute they showed up, out would come the smiles and the “Hi there, how y’all doing? Sho’ is good to see ya.” She could make you think you was the very person she was looking forward to seeing. I sho’ didn’t understand her ways.

“Come on, chile, we home now,” Odetta said as she lightly touched my hand. I must’ve fallen off to sleep somewhere b’tween the cemetery and Odetta’s. After paying the driver, she led me gently by my arm inside the covered patio deck, making sho’ not to touch the sore parts. My daddy’s mama sho’ was a fine woman. I stepped through the small doorway and found myself standing in the middle of a tiny house that smelled like Pine-Sol on a Saturday after a good housecleaning. I wondered what Doretha was doing right now. I tried to miss her a little, but all I could think on was how much my body was stinging. I sat down on a rocking chair that had a crocheted blanket that was doubled over and laid ’cross the part where you’d put your behind—that seemed to make sitting more comfortable.

Odetta left the room. When she came back, she was carrying a pair of pink pajamas with green-and-white petals scribbled all over ’em. They was the prettiest things I’d seen yet. I moved my fingers over the raised colored thread and along the sharp edges of the front of the pants where the iron and starch had left they traces.

Odetta told me the pajamas was hers from when she was a woman of “younger days and more sinful ways.” I gladly took the nightclothes and held ’em up close to my chest, while sniffing the material for Odetta’s scent or any other. It reminded me of the time I’d found a picture of my mama, Ruby, and I’d sniffed it for weeks on end trying to find her smell to see if I could connect it to my mem’ry. Somehow, deep down inside, I had the notion that once you smelled a person, you would always be connected to ’em no matter what, ’cause what was in mem’ry would always be, as long as you could conjure it up. I followed my daddy’s mama to the bathroom, where I was meant to change. Odetta handed me a washrag and closed the door behind her, leaving me to tend to myself.

On the wall in front of me was a mirror with old pictures stuck in the corners. The pictures was mostly in black and white, and some looked a little gold; but they was all rough and rolled up round the edges. I stood and watched myself in the mirror and let the folks in the pictures get a good look too. Where there’d once been two ponytails held together by blue rubber bands and barrettes that I’d picked out earlier that day to match my shirt, there was now hardly anything left. On one side of my head, a piece of rubber band held on to the ends of my hair and dangled as I moved about. On the other side, my hair was wide out, pushed back and stuck in midair. My face, with the leftover tearstains that had made they way to my chin, looked like dirt after water had hit it; dry tracks with li’l bits of wetness. I couldn’t stand to watch me no more or let the folks from the pictures stare at me either, with they li’l beady eyes watching my every move. I laid my pajamas on the toilet lid and started getting ready for sleep. Trying like hell not to let my panties roll over the water-hose marks, I stretched the legs and the waistband out real big—my sister had taught me that trick whenever I had welts real bad on my lower parts. Then I pulled my legs, one at a time, out real slow-like. As long as I stood in one place my body didn’t throb so much, but when I moved, it made my skin seem as though it was cracking and tearing all at the same time.

Right when I was buck-naked, Miss Odetta walked in on me with a bottle of mercurochrome in her hand. She said it would help me scab faster and without infection. I knowed she was right ’cause that’s what Big Mama used all the time on us kids when we had cuts and sores. With the tips of my fingers, I held on to Odetta’s shoulder as she bent over and rubbed the pinkish-red medicine on me. “Ouch!” I flinched the moment she touched me. Odetta lightened up her hand and put the stuff on real nice and slow. Instead of rubbing right on the hurt part, she would hold the little glass wand above it and let the red medicine fall onto the torn-up skin. I couldn’t r’member when somebody had been that nice and soft with me. If Odetta was gonna be treating me like this, then I sho’ could bring myself to get used to her kindness. Big Mama had been nice to me too sometimes. I mean, she let me go everywhere with her, and she taught me to plait her hair and oil the heels of her feet with Pond’s cold cream. Big Mama even showed me how to pick blackheads out her back and from round her nose. I never minded doin’ these things for her, ’cause at least I wasn’t being whooped or put down.

My eyes got hot, and I started feeling sorry for Big Mama the more I thought on her. She was just a li’l ole woman who’d took care of me. For all I knowed, maybe she was out looking for me now. I sho’ didn’t wanna make no trouble for her and have everybody mad at me. Odetta must’ve heard me thinking, ’cause she looked up and told me all was gonna be fine. She touched her bent fingers to my face and dragged the back side of her hand ’cross my cheek. I could feel what she was meaning; I’d felt it b’fore when watchin’ mamas and they babies, when the mamas touch the li’l ones in a way where they don’t have to say they like ’em or that they sorry for the hurt a child must be feeling. And now I figured Odetta must’ve been feeling that for me.