Leaving Atlanta Read online

  I turned and looked Stanley right in his fat face. He was almost all cheeks.

  “You sitting in his seat?” It wasn’t a question. It was like when Mama stood in the doorway of my room and said, “You didn’t make up your bed?”

  Stanley looked shocked. Probably because I ain’t said two words to him since we been in school together. “No,” he said. “You the one.”

  “Uh-uh. I sit one seat from the front.”

  “Well I sit one from the back. He sat three from the back and that’s just where you at.”

  “But—” I was about to tell that fool that the same was true if you counted the other way. Rodney sat three from the front and that’s where Stanley had his big behind. I can’t stand him. But I let it go because the problem was that Mr. Harrell had took Rodney’s chair right out of this row. Like he was never there. That wasn’t right. When my granddaddy died, Granny didn’t go and move his chair from the head of the table. When we went there for Thanksgiving, his place was just empty. So when we got to remembering how much he used to love sweet potato pie, we could look at his place, shake our heads and say, “Sho do miss him.”

  Moving Rodney’s chair was just plain disrespectful.

  Mr. Harrell tapped his ruler on the desk to get people to cut out all the whispering. He cleared his throat like he was about to say something big. But he just sat down at his desk and pulled out his roll book.

  “Angelite Armstrong.”

  “Here,” Angelite said.

  “LaTasha Baxter.”

  “Absent,” somebody said from the back.

  I got this nasty feeling in the bottom of my stomach. What was he going to do when he got to Rodney? Was somebody going to say, “Dead”? Or should I say, “Absent”? Somebody should stand up and say, “Missing, like his chair!” Maybe I would do that. Everybody would just about have a heart attack because I’m just about as quiet as Rodney was. I hardly open my mouth unless somebody is messing with me. Like Mama say, I stay to myself.

  Denise Daniels said, “Here.”

  I had to hurry up and make up my mind. When Mr. Harrell called Rodney’s name, I had to say something good to let him know I didn’t appreciate what happened with the chairs. Maybe I could say, “He not here, but who ever took his chair better have it right back by recess.” But if I said that, I would get sent to the principal’s office. Then I got a better idea. I wouldn’t say anything at all and it could be like a moment of silence for him.

  Monica Fisher said, “Here.”

  And then Mr. Harrell called my name. “Octavia Fuller.”

  I said, “Here,” and then bowed my head to get ready for the memorial.

  There was a quiet second while he wrote a little check in his book, but then he went on to Stanley Halliday. I snapped my chin up and looked at Mr. Harrell like he had lost his mind. He was supposed to call Rodney’s name and we could do our moment. But he just went on like our class was a creek and Rodney was just a cup of water that somebody dipped out.

  I twised around completely in my chair and looked right in Stanley Halliday’s fat face. “You better not say nothing,” I said under my breath, quiet but mean.

  His eyes got kind of big and he looked over at Mr. Harrell like he wanted the teacher to tell him what to do.

  Mr. Harrell just called Stanley’s name again, with a little edge on it like all this was trying his patience.

  Stanley looked at me and I said, “I ain’t playing with you.” And I wasn’t. So many times, I seen him cheat off of Rodney’s spelling test and neither me or Rodney said anything. Now it was Stanley’s turn to keep his mouth shut. I could almost hear his brain sloshing around in his big ol water head, trying to decide if he should be scared of me. Finally, his voice came out loud and on purpose like he was saying something in a play. “Present.”

  I hate Stanley Halliday and every single person in that class.

  I never said here for Mr. Harrell again. After a couple of days, he stopped calling my name and the fifth-grade creek just kept on going.

  Recess is the part of the day that I hate. I know that sounds crazy since I am always trying to think of ways to get out of class. But it’s not the class room I be trying to get away from. It’s the people in it. So recess is the same as being in class except we don’t got no lesson and Mr. Harrell not telling everybody to shut up when they start talking. That’s what makes it such a bad time. I generally hang by myself hoping nobody won’t say nothing to me.

  Mrs. Grier say that’s my problem. I need to go out and make friends with people. “Octavia,” she told me one time, “just go up to a nice young lady and tell her that you would like her to be your playmate.” I like Mrs. Grier a lot, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I think that she been reading too many primary readers. I can just see myself going up to Trina Littlejohn and asking her to “be my playmate.” The only time I ever heard anybody use that word was in that clapping rhyme, “Say say my playmate. Come out and play with me.” That was always my favorite. I like the sound of the word. Playmate sounds more special than friend. Socks have mates when they are just alike.

  But in real life, there ain’t no playmates. Lots of kids go around together but they not mates, really. They get mad over stupid stuff and don’t talk to each other for a couple of days. People think it’s just girls that be like that, but boys are messy too. But it’s the girls that be on my mind because I don’t like to fool with boys no way.

  If a girl wants you to be her friend, she will ask you to sit with her and her other friends at lunch. It’s the one with the friends that get to do the asking. I generally sit alone and once or twice I have asked some girl to my table. She will say yes only if her other friends are mad about something. But when they get back together, she will never ask me to sit at the big table with all of them. That’s just the way it is, Mama says. I don’t need to worry about it. I asked Mama if she ever got invited to a pajama party. She says when she was coming up, black folks didn’t do stuff like that. Well they do now and I would like to get a invitation just one time.

  I was sitting by myself reading my Judy Blume book. I had read it before but I had to read it again because I didn’t have nothing else. I used to have a library card and could get a new book every week, but I accidentally dropped a hardback book in the bathtub. I went to the librarian and told her I was sorry. She wasn’t mad at me, but she said that I would have to pay for the book before I could borrow another one. Mama came to pay, but when they told her that it costs seventeen dollars, she told them they must be crazy. So now I have to read what I have.

  I heard somebody say, “On your marks, get set, go,” and a few boys started running but nobody was much paying attention to them. People had things on their mind: Rodney.

  Well, not really thinking about him like Mama think about Granddaddy and tell me how he used to sing “Hush Little Baby” to her when she was a girl. Or how he brushed his teeth with baking soda. They didn’t know Rodney well enough to look back on him like that. But they knew he was gone and they wondered where he was at and would whoever got him come back to this school to get somebody else. Oglethorpe is the only school where two people got snatched from. Three if you count Yusef Bell, who came once a week for gifted classes.

  But I didn’t talk to nobody. I just minded my own business and tried not to be too cold. Warm is a state of mind, Delvis say. I don’t know if I agree with him all the way, but I do know that thinking about a thing makes it feel stronger. So my mind had its hands full thinking about staying warm and the book in my hand. When somebody said to me, “Hey, Octavia,” I thought it was my imagination.

  I looked up and saw LaTasha Baxter standing in front of me. She had on a fancy pink coat with fur around the hood and even this little fur pouch thing to keep her hands warm. I seen the whole getup in the Sears catalog. That’s how I know that little fur thing had to be bought separate. Her parents must got some serious money.

  “Hey,” I said, putting my hand without the mitten behind me.
Tasha rubbed her lips together a couple of times. What did she want? Tasha’s one of those girls that don’t talk to you unless her other friends is mad with her. But she was nicer than some of them. She never called me “Watusi” or pinched her nose when I walked by.

  “Sad what happened to Rodney,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering why she was coming to me with this. She looked over her shoulder every few seconds, over to where her friends jumped rope. They would be talking about her like a dog by the time she get back there.

  “You think they going to find him?” She said it in a soft whisper. The wind pressed her fur trim against her face.

  “No.” I felt like I was a grown-up talking to a little kid. Hadn’t she noticed that none of the kids who were missing never got un-missing? All missing meant was they didn’t find the body yet. All the search parties that went out on Saturdays and Sundays were looking for dead bodies, not live children.

  “Jashante neither?” she said.

  Then I knew why she came over here in the first place. Her and Jashante had this kind of thing going on right before he got snatched. He sat with her at lunch a couple of times, I thought. I couldn’t quite remember because I don’t like to be up in people’s business. But evidently she was up in mine because she knew that me and Rodney had been friends too. And to tell the truth, I didn’t mind it so much. It was like me and her were mates, having the same problem and everything.

  “No,” I told her. “Me and my mama gave Jashante’s family a pound cake and everything.” I almost said “like he was dead,” but I bit my tongue.

  Tasha maybe got the message. She nodded.

  “Your mama going to carry something over to Rodney people?” I asked her. I figured that all the money-people live nearby to each other.

  She shook her head. “Our parents don’t know each other.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  She kept looking back at her friends. One of them said her name.

  “You better get back over there,” I said, like I was tired of talking to her. I wanted to send her away before she could say “I gotta go,” and run off with her siditty girlfriends.

  “Well, if you hear something about Jashante. Either one of them. Would you tell me?”

  “Anything happen like that, be on the news,” I said. “You don’t need me to tell you nothing.”

  She looked like her feelings was hurt a little bit. But I didn’t have time to be worried about her feelings. At lunchtime she wasn’t going to be worried none about mine. Mrs. Grier would say, “Now, Octavia, don’t assume the worst.” But at lunchtime, that girl didn’t even look at me when I was trying to find a seat. I stood in the middle of the cafeteria for a second, craning my neck all around so somebody could invite me to sit down if they wanted. Nobody said anything, and I sat at the little oval table where I always sit, always by myself.

  I think that it might be nice to go to Chicago. I never been there. I never been anywhere really. Just to Macon to see my Grandmama and one time we went down to Savannah to see the old houses and the beach. I can’t remember the Savannah trip, but we got pictures to prove it really happened. Me and Mama sitting on the sand with our legs crossed in front of us and our arms behind us like a couple of movie stars. I wish that I could remember it, because it might be the most fun I ever had. Even now, when I’m doing something and kind of enjoying myself, I say, Is this better than Savannah? And I can’t know. I just have to trust what the picture say.

  But Chicago is even better than Savannah. We got family up there. My mama’s cousin Elaine moved up there right after I was born. She got a daughter named Nikky who is about three years older than me. I can’t remember Nikky, but Mama got a picture of me laying on the couch and Nikky looking at me like she never seen a baby before. Even back then, Nikky was a sharp dresser. Since I was just born, I only got on a Pamper. Nikky got on a green-and-yellow dress with bows all over the place. And right on the top of her head was a yellow ribbon edged in white. Cousin Elaine got good taste.

  Once a year, or thereabouts, Nikky sends me all her clothes that she got too big for. Pretty things. Velvet dresses with lace collars. Or cotton ones with flowers. Some long to the ground and others just before the knee. But all of them have big ribbons around the waist that tie in the back. That must be the style in Chicago. The Windy City. I can see all those girls walking through the streets with their satin sashes flapping behind them. That’s where I want to go next time I get to go someplace. Forget the beach; I don’t need to be sitting out in the sun getting no blacker anyway.

  The mailman knocked on the door this afternoon, right after The Flintstones. I turned the TV down and looked through the peephole. Mama wasn’t home and I didn’t have no business answering the door.

  “Who is it?” I asked, trying to waste a few seconds so maybe Mama would come up just in the nick of time.

  “Mailman,” he said.

  Everybody been saying the child killer probably going around dressed up like the police or a fireman or somebody. I shouldn’t believe that nobody is what they say they is. But I could see the box through the peephole. I opened the door but left the chain on. I saw my name.

  “Could you leave the package? My mama not home.”

  “No, I need a signature.”

  “What happen if you don’t get one?” Where was Mama? This man wasn’t going to stay out here all day jawing with me. I could see already that he was ready to leave.

  “I’ll have to take it back to the post office and your mother can pick it up from there.”

  “Later on today?”

  “No, tomorrow.”

  That was too long. The best thing about Nikky Day is I never knew when it was coming. I didn’t end up awake all night with grasshoppers in my stomach like on Christmas Eve. Nikky Day was a surprise holiday.

  “Could I sign for it?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.” I was glad the chain was on the door and he couldn’t get a good look at me. I wasn’t even a real grown-looking eleven.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Slide it through the door.”

  He blew air out like I don’t get paid enough for this.

  I wrote my name on the line in my best cursive. It was the first time anybody ever asked me to sign something. I looked it over carefully to make sure that all the letters were right and slanted to the side. The mailman knocked again.

  I put the paper through the crack. He glanced at it and stuffed it in his bag.

  After I was sure he was gone, I opened the door and slid the box inside. It was wrapped up with brown paper sacks cut open and turned outside in so I couldn’t see the name of the grocery store. Should I open it when Mama wasn’t there? How was I going to explain to her how I got it in the house? She said “Don’t open the door for nobody.” I was going to have to slide it back in the hall. It was just that simple. But first, I wanted to at least look at it. My name was across the front. Miss Octavia Yvette Fuller. I wondered did Nikky write it or her mother. Nikky was fourteen herself and old enough to have a nice script. Whoever wrote my name didn’t take pride in they letters. The O on my first name wasn’t closed all the way and looked something like a U. The t was crossed but the i had no dot. It must have been Cousin Elaine that wrote this. Pretty Nikky in her dress with a sash would take time for proper penmanship.

  Finally I scooted the box back in the hallway and locked the door again. I couldn’t see it through the peephole. What if somebody came by and stole it? This not the projects, but still people can be roguish over here. I kept my eye pressed to the peephole anyway; even if I couldn’t see the box itself, I could see somebody if they came to mess with it.

  The box was every bit worth the wait. Last year must have been a good year for Nikky. She had two long dresses. One pure white and the other one blue velvet.

  “Where she be going in these dresses?” I asked Mama.

  “I don’t know,” she said, pinching the fabric in at the waist
to see how much it would have to be took in to fit me. “I think Elaine have her in pageants and stuff.”

  “Like Miss America?”

  “I don’t know. Never been.”

  “You ever been to Chicago?” I asked.

  “I had a chance to go one time.” Mama tucked the bottom of the skirt under and put straight pins to hold it there.

  “For real?” She never told me this.

  “I was about to finish high school. My aunt and uncle promised me a bus ticket up there. I was supposed to get a job working with the phone company.” She smiled a little bit. “It was going to be my graduation present. Back then, everybody wanted to work for Ma Bell or for the post office. Benefits and stuff.”

  “And everybody wants to go to Chicago. Especially me,” I said.

  Mama stopped fooling with my dress. I wanted to go look in the mirror and see myself, but there were straight pins all around and I didn’t have my shoes on.

  “Sweet Pea, hold still,” Mama said, with pins between her teeth. “My mama was so excited. She took four weeks getting my stuff together for my trip. New clothes, new hairbrushes, even luggage from Sears and Roebuck.”

  “So why you didn’t go?”

  “I’m getting there,” Mama said. “One morning, Mama came in my room to tell me that we were going to walk into town to get me a hat. She wanted to get a early start. It was just April but it was plenty hot already. And I think she wanted to get it over with. Mama hated shopping.”

  “How come? I thought everybody like to go to the mall.” At least, I know that I like to go when I know for sure I’m going to get something. When I go and just have to look at things I can’t have, I get grouchy and be ready to go on home.

  “Well,” Mama said, taking out some of the pins in the waist and putting them back in looser.

  “You making it too big.”

  “You don’t need your clothes all tight up on you,” she said. “But anyway, Mama didn’t like going into town because white folks were so mean back then. We couldn’t try on the dresses or hats. You just had to pick one out and pray that it fit when you got home. And you know if we couldn’t try nothing, they wouldn’t let us return it. Well, I take that back. You could try on a hat, but first you had to put this stocking thing on your head.