Leaving Atlanta Read online

  “No, Mama,” I said. “It wasn’t me that was in trouble.” She looked relaxed now. “It was my friend, Rodney.” She tightened up again. I should have told her my friend was a girl. Now she was going to try to squeeze the whole story out of me.

  “Who?” she said, with her eyebrows all up in the air.

  “Rodney,” I said. “This boy I know. Sit behind me. Remember I told you about him? Quiet and everything?”

  She nodded her head like she knew what I was talking about, but I knew I had never said one word to her about him.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “His daddy came up to the school and beat him in front of the class,” I told her.

  Mama got up and went to the cabinet and took down a blue glass. She rinsed it out before filling it with ice water. “His daddy?”

  “That what I said. Whoever heard of a man coming up to the school in the middle of the day to whip somebody?” I had heard about people’s fathers getting rough. And stepfathers supposed to be the worsest one out of all of them. My own daddy never got rough with me because I don’t hardly know the man. He stay in South Carolina with his wife and they baby girl. And I had never seen a man raise his hand to a child out in the public. “Ain’t a man supposed to be at work during the day?”

  Mama said, “Well, the mothers that come up to the school have a job.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But daddies supposed to have the kind of job you can’t just up and leave.”

  Mama drank some more of her water and shrugged her shoulders. “At least he was there.” She got up from the table and poked around with frozen chicken soaking in a sink full of water.

  Least he was there? She make it seem like any old daddy is better than none at all. Don’t get me wrong. I sometimes wish that maybe my daddy, Ray, would be around here with us. And not just for TV-reasons like taking me to the park or letting me step on his shoes to learn how to dance. But also because when your daddy is not around, it look like you and your mama ran him off. Like he just couldn’t stand to be around you no more.

  But if I had a daddy like Rodney got, he would have been the one ran me off. For real. He took that strap to Rodney like he was enjoying it. And Rodney is so quiet that he couldn’t even cry. When it was all over, I thought the man was going to take a bow while my stupid teacher, Mr. Harrell, clapped. Rodney walked back to his chair, but it seemed like he was crawling. Then he just stayed there, all crumpled up like a dirty napkin.

  But Mama wouldn’t understand so I didn’t say nothing else about it. It was easy keeping it to myself after dinner because Mama don’t talk much after the sun go down. This is because she is too busy being worried about me being home by myself at night while she’s off at work.

  She try to act like it’s not a big deal, but I know different because I heard her lying to Granny saying there wasn’t nothing to worry about. “Eleven-to-seven shift ain’t that bad,” she said. “It’s better for me to be at work when she sleep than for me to be gone when she get home from school. The afternoon is when kids get into mess.” She put the phone back on the hook and blew smoke out her mouth and sucked it back up through her nose. “Mama act like that white man ask me when I want to work.” Then she mashed the cigarette out.

  So what ends up happening is that I have two bedtimes. Nine o’clock is the first one. Mama makes me go to bed then so I can be good and sleep by the time she leave for the SunBeam Factory around ten-thirty. It mighta worked if I didn’t know that she was leaving at eleven P.M. Then I could sleep as sound as I do on her off days. But I can’t get locked good into a dream because I keep waking up looking at the clock to see how much longer before I’m by myself. It’s like the men that’s about to be put in the electric chair. They always ask them what they want to eat. But I bet they bring them the fried shrimp or whatever and the men can’t even eat it because they so worked-up about what’s going to happen next. That’s how I am at night. My stomach get balled up in a gooey mess like chewing gum stuck in somebody’s hair.

  Before she leaves, Mama comes in my room to put an extra quilt on. She do that no matter what time of year it is. I always make little sleepy sounds when she kiss my fore-head, but soon as the lock clicks, my eyes pop back open. I stay in the bed awhile longer to make sure she good and gone. I used to have my feet on the floor as soon as the door shut but one time she came back to get her sweater. It took some fancy dancing to get out of that one.

  The first thing I do when I get out of bed is put on my shoes. I get nervous and I like to be ready to run if I have to. I ain’t never had to, but it’s good to be ready. The next thing I do is get my door key from my nightstand. I threaded a shoestring through the hole so I can put it around my neck. I’ve only had the key for about two years. Mama used to just lock me in the house and the door would stay closed until she came back. But three little kids who stay in the projects across the street got burned to death while they mama was at work. After that, we rode the bus to Kmart and got a key made just for me.

  Once I got everything I need, I head to the living room to watch TV.

  It was a regular night. I was wrapped up like a mummy in my quilt, with the TV turned to the eleven-o’clock news. I had watched at the six-o’clock show with Mama, but I like to watch it again at eleven to make sure that everything is still okay. Channel Two is the best channel because they got Monica Kaufman, a black lady, giving the report.

  As soon as the theme music went off, and the camera zoomed in on Monica, I knew that somebody else was dead. Whenever there was bad news, she took a breath before she talked, like she was fixing to dive under water. I held my breath too and waited for her to tell us who it was. Please, God, let it be far from here, I prayed right quick. But I should have known that praying only makes thing worse. It gets God’s attention like with Job. Right there in the middle of the screen was my friend Rodney.

  Monica has this way of talking about everything like it was just a ribbon cutting downtown or something like that. “A twelfth child has been reported missing in Southwest Atlanta tonight. Police are looking for information regarding the disappearance of Rodney Green.” On and on like that. She said almost the same thing when Jashante next door came up missing. It would seem like there should be some different words to talk about two people that were nothing alike. But all Monica had to say about both of them was that they were gone. Then they showed Rodney’s mother and father. They both just said how much they wanted him back just like Miss Viola had said back in October.

  And even I was almost the same. I was on the same couch in my same pajamas staring at this same TV like I had never seen one before. But last time, my mama was with me. We knew Jashante was missing because his mama had been all over the neighborhood looking for him. She knocked on our door twice. “You seen Shante?” she said. I had the door locked because my mama wasn’t home. “No ma’am,” I hollered. She came again and I said no. Mama came home before Miss Viola came back again.

  Miss Viola had on a black skirt and a yellow-and-green top. Thick stockings the color of white ladies stretched up her legs and tied off at the knee. She sat down at our rickety table while Mama fixed her a cup of black coffee.

  “When the last time you seen him?” Mama asked her.

  “When he went off for school this morning.”

  Mama looked at the clock. It was nine o’clock at night. She had only been looking for him since eight. I sat as quiet as I could so I wouldn’t get sent to my room.

  “You going to call the police now?”

  “You think I should?”

  “Yeah,” Mama said. “They can help you look.”

  “But I got some hot checks at Big Star, some other places around town.” Her voice faded out. “Sometimes the police pick people up for stuff like that.”

  “Viola,” Mama said, “this ain’t no time to be worried about no bad checks. This your baby.”

  “You right,” Miss Viola said. She pushed up on the table to get up.

  “Wait a seco
nd.” Mama put another cup in front of her. “You better get another cup of coffee in you before you go talking to the police.”

  Now, why she need to have coffee before she talked to the police, I don’t know. She didn’t look to me like she was about to fall asleep. Maybe coffee makes you brave. Granny say that it put hair on your chest. But Mama don’t let me touch it because she believe it will stunt my growth.

  So when they put Jashante on the eleven-o’clock news I was ready. But this Rodney thing caught me by surprise like a cheap trick. Like when Leon put vinegar in my thermos at school and I took a big gulp, setting my whole head on fire. I coughed so hard the vinegar came out my nose and all the kids laughed. When I saw Rodney’s school picture on the screen with the task force number blinking under it, my crying came hard and sudden like a coughing fit. And the tears were hot as blood.

  Then I had a stupid idea and I dried my tears up. Maybe he wasn’t dead yet. Miss Camille Bell was on the TV a few weeks ago saying that her boy, Yusef, stayed alive almost a week before they killed him. When they found little Yusef he was clean looking, well-fed, she said. But he was still dead. Then I thought something even more crazy. Maybe Rodney was having a good time with those child murderers. They might be giving him Big Macs and strawberry shakes to keep him from hollering and running for the police. Like with Yusef. But like the man in the electric chair and the fried shrimp, Rodney would be too scared to enjoy himself.

  They put a big clock on the screen. “It’s eleven-fifteen. Do you know where your children are?”

  Mama knew where I was and I knew that she was at the Sunbeam factory making bread and imitation Twinkies. But knowing don’t mean nothing if you can’t be there. And anyway, by the time a mama can figure out that she don’t know where her child is, it’s all over with anyway.

  A commercial came blasting out of the TV. It was loud like somebody had snuck up behind me, screaming in my ear about washing powder. Two little white boys dropped blueberry pie all over their white shirts. “Uh-oh,” one of them said. They mama said, “It’s okay; we got All.” The kids hollered, “Hoo Ray!” Uncle Kenny used to say, “Who is Ray anyway?” I would laugh because Ray is my daddy. “Nobody,” I said. Uncle Kenny would be laughing too and bounced me on his lap hard and kissed the back of my neck. The TV showed how All can lift off any stain. “Hoo Ray!”

  Rodney’s picture was back on. Sometimes you can see a picture of somebody you know that don’t really look like that person. Like a picture of Mama when she was a girl. It’s her but then it ain’t her. Her driver’s license is like that too. And the photo of Rodney hit me the same way. In the picture he looked like a regular boy from our class. He was by himself so you couldn’t tell that he was shorter than most of them and just nicer and smarter than all of them put together. Kodak commercials say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the one they showed of Rodney ain’t worth more than three or four. Boy. Black. Dead. Rodney was what my mama call “good people.” Nice for no reason at all. Sometimes he might leave a Blow Pop on my desk and not say nothing about it. He just wanted me to have it. I turned around one time and said thank you and he looked shocked like he didn’t have nothing to do with it. But I know it was him because nobody else in our class say hi to me let alone give me nothing. And Rodney come from a family with a lot of money. He always had so much candy in his pockets like he must spend two, three dollars a day. But I said thank you to him anyway. My voice was always a little bit soft when I talk to him. It was because he speak almost like a whisper. Talking loud to Rodney Green would be like screaming at a librarian. But you couldn’t see none of that in the picture up on the screen. I could tell it was Rodney, but the picture didn’t show him good enough for someone to see him and know him.

  But it don’t matter anyway, I guess. Gone is gone.

  My alarm clock scared the bejesus out of me. Mike Roberts said, “This is V One-o-three FM” and I like to had a nervous breakdown. It’s been like this on and off ever since this first started happening with the kids. When the first kids got found, I was jumpy at night like after I seen Night of the Living Dead. Then I started getting over it. Then Yusef Bell who went to E. A. Ware Elementary got snatched. I didn’t know him but I knew where that school was at and I got tied up all over again. When Jashante got took, I couldn’t get no scareder. As a matter of fact, when he got killed it cooled me down a little bit. I was thinking that it couldn’t happen in the same place twice. That’s what they say about lightning. But now it seems like bad luck could be like chicken pox. You got to catch it from somebody. And if anybody could catch it from Rodney, it would be me. After all, I was the only one he talked to really.

  When I looked over at the clock again, it was seven A.M. My mama probably was punching out at that very second. She told me that her and Miss Darlene be out the door by seven-o-two. Sometimes if I’m running late, I’ll see her just as I’m heading out.

  I went in my room to see what Mama had laid out for me to put on. “Man!” I said out loud. My green jeans were stretched across my chair. Why she feel like she have to pick out my clothes anyway? These pants were way too short for me, but she don’t care. Now if they were too tight, she would get rid of them in a hot second. Last week, I had on my favorite jeans. They were kind of light blue with long legs rolled up into fat cuffs by my shoe. I was about to go out and Mama stopped me. She pulled at the back pocket.

  “Take them off,” she said.

  “Why? These my favorite pants.”

  “They too close in the seat.”

  And I haven’t seen them pants since. I bet she put them in a box to send to my cousin Kay-Kay in the country. It makes me mad to think that I’m going around with these in-the-water green pants and Kay-Kay having the only instyle thing I got. And Kay-Kay stay out in Macon where they don’t even know what style is.

  But there wasn’t nothing I could do about it that morning. Once I had the outfit on, I went to the bathroom and stood on the commode so I could see how I looked in the mirror over the sink. “Man!” I said again. The pants were riding up my legs so high that my socks showed. Mama need to stop bragging to everybody that I’m growing like a weed if she don’t want to buy me no new clothes. Now when I walk into class, everybody going to start singing “Wade in the Water.”

  But no, Rodney Green got snatched yesterday. I bet everybody in that whole class would be quiet and scared.

  When I was headed out, I bumped into Delvis Watson. I was shocked to see him so early. Since his mama work eleven-to-seven with mine, he have to get his little brother and sister ready for school. The three of them was usually running late. Today they were out early, but they should have spent another minute or so in front of the mirror. I couldn’t tell if Delvis had dressed the twins or if they had dressed themselves, but they looked a mess. Darlita’s skirt was twisted and Donathan had a sock on his left hand and a glove on his right. His eyes were ringed around with a soft crust. I couldn’t tell if it was from sleep or from tears.

  “What’s the matter, Little Man?” I asked him.

  “Darlita bit me.” He looked like just saying it was going to jump-start his crying.

  “It was a accident,” Darlita said.

  I didn’t see how you could bite somebody without meaning to. Especially since both twins were missing their main biting teeth.

  “You seen the eleven-o’clock news last night?” I asked Delvis.

  “No. I was sleep. What they said?”

  “Somebody in my class got snatched.” I didn’t like saying dead people’s names.

  “Who?”

  I started describing Rodney.

  “Just tell me the name.” Delvis rolled his eyes.

  “Can’t,” I said. “Bad luck.”

  “It’s bad luck to say the name of dead people. When people just missing you can call them all you want.”

  “Rodney Green,” I whispered, in case he was dead.

  “For real?”

  I nodded.

  Delvis
was real quiet. The sound of wind in the pecan trees was like girls giggling. He bobbed his head a little bit like an old man agreeing with the preacher. The twins stopped passing licks and followed him like quiet baby ducks.

  “Get one of them so we can cross the street,” he said. I took Darlita’s cold hand. Her nails were colored with blue Magic Marker.

  “Rodney Green,” Delvis said all loud. He didn’t let go of Donathan even though we had been gotten across the street. “He in your class; wear glasses?”

  I nodded.

  “Always be in Mrs. Lewis store stealing candy?”

  I shook my head. “This boy I’m talking about not like that. He real quiet. Smart too.”

  “Got a blue book bag with a green stripe?”

  “No. Not Rodney. He got money. Sometimes you see his mama bringing him to school in a long blue car with a tan top.”

  “That’s him.” Delvis brought his cheek low to scratch his face without having to let go of his brother. “His sister in the same class with the twins.”

  “Who?” they said at the same time. They know better than to get into big kids’ conversations, but when somebody say their name they think they can join in.

  “What’s that girl name in your class who wear her hair curled like on The Brady Bunch?”

  “Patricia Green,” said Darlita.

  “Her pencils got her name on them,” Donathan added.

  Rodney had the same kind of pencils when we were in the baby grades. I wish I could find one maybe under the radiator and take it home to remind me.

  “See,” Delvis said. “That’s him.”

  “But he not roguish.” Delvis needed to mind his own business. Calling up the dead is bad luck, but lying on them is just plain evil. And anyway, how he got all this time to be watching Rodney? He needed to be watching the twins. He let Darlita out the house with her plaits sticking out from the side of her head like a TV antenna.

  “I seen him with my own eyes.” Delvis looked at me like I had gone crazy in ten minutes flat. “Why you getting so mad? Y’all go together or something?”