Imani All Mine Read online

  Miss Odetta say, Girl, I’m sorry. I don’t mean no harm. I’m upset. My nerves shot. I mean, goddamn, wouldn’t you be upset if someone broke in here?

  Mama say Miss Odetta should call the police.

  Miss Odetta say she wouldn’t. Right then, I know me and Mama was thinking the same thing. Mama threw me a look that I caught out the corner of my eye without letting Miss Odetta see. This all must have had something to do with June Bug. With drugs. With money. Why else she ain’t want to call the police?

  Miss Odetta hands was all shaking when she pulled a pack of cigarettes out her pocketbook. She kept fishing around, I guess for her lighter. But she ain’t pulled out no lighter. She pulled out a gun with her hands still shaking and lay it on the table.

  You’d think that all the birds of the trees be asleep at that time of night. But I must have startled a whole flock of them awake, because they flew into my mouth that was hanging wide open and taking away all the words. I was thinking that maybe it was so late that I wasn’t seeing right. I was only imagining that, along with the remote control and the TV section of the newspaper, there was a gun all silver and shining laying on the cocktail table.

  Miss Odetta ask me to go light her cigarette on the stove. I just stood there. Miss Odetta seen I was looking at the gun. So did Mama.

  Mama say, Goddamn, Odetta put that thing back in your purse. You carrying it around like it’s some toy.

  Miss Odetta put it back inside and say, June Bug can get you one. Every woman should have at least a thirty-eight. If I’d been home tonight, I would have killed me some motherfucking body. Breaking in my house!

  I went quick to light the cigarette. Glad that Miss Odetta wasn’t home when her house got robbed. She ain’t even need to be shooting no gun at nobody. When I come back and give her the cigarette, Miss Odetta kicked off her runover shoes and put her feet up on the table. Her feet smelled all stink like some spoiled milk, and she had a hole in the toes of both stockings where the nails was all long and had scratched they way through. Probably trying to get away from the funk.

  Mama let out a yawn while I headed straight for the steps. I got Imani out of her bed and put her in bed next to me. Imani was asleep, but I was still up when Miss Odetta left and Mama come into my room.

  Without saying nam word, Mama put the light on and went and lifted up my window. She lowered the storm window and then let down the inside window, locking it tight.

  I ask Mama, What kind of gun was that?

  Mama say, I think it’s a nine millimeter. Something like that.

  I ask, Is that the size of the bullets? Wide? They nine millimeters?

  Mama say, I look like I run a pawnshop or something? I don’t know about guns. That’s probably June Bug gun, anyway. Not Odetta’s. She just holding it for him.

  I looked at the window and ask Mama real soft, Could a bullet come through the wall? Remember that old woman was killed and one came right through the wall?

  Mama say, Tasha, shut up and go to sleep.

  I knew Mama was scared. Maybe she was like me, not sure what she was more afraid of. That somebody broke into Miss Odetta house. Or that somebody that drink like Miss Odetta, somebody whose hands shake like leaves in the wind, carrying a gun.

  When Mama left the room, I reached under the pillow to find Jesus. He wasn’t there. I looked under the covers, under the bed. Jesus was gone. I guess he went off to join the angels. I took the covers and pillows off the bed and lay them down on the floor. I got down there with Imani. Closed them blankets over us and say into the dark, with my lips moving, quiet, I say, Jesus, tell all them angels we still here.

  I felt sorry for Miss Odetta when I seen her the next morning. She was heading off to work half bent over in the wind. Behind her the sneakers on the wire in front of her house was swinging. Right above where June Bug park. June Bug I think is a real dog, a real son of a bitch, for laying up in the bed and not giving his mama a ride to work in the cold.

  But when June Bug was standing on the porch today, he looked pitiful hisself. He had on this five-hundred-dollar leather jacket. I know how much it cost because I done seen it at the mall. But he ain’t have on no hat and no gloves. A stream of clear snot was running out his nose. That took the hardness out his face. Snot take the hardness out of any gangster face. It made June Bug look like the June Bug who was a boy when I was a girl. I ain’t slam the door in his face.

  He say, Come on, Tasha, just let me wait for my mama. You know she be getting home soon. I ain’t got time to be running way back over here later. I got business to take care of.

  I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past four. I say, You can wait until four-thirty. That’s it.

  He say that’s all right and I unlocked the storm door. He come inside and stamped the snow off his feet. June Bug Miss Odetta child, that’s for sure. Anybody with sense would’ve knocked the snow off on the porch.

  I picked up Imani, who had crawled up behind me, and we went into the living room. June Bug come right behind us and flopped down on the couch right where Miss Odetta like to sit and put the bag at his feet. I was fenna give him a tissue for his nose, but he wiped the snot on one of his hands and tried to play it off by running his hands down the legs on his jeans. Then he put that hand he used for a tissue right on the arm of the couch. I ain’t say nothing. He was raised by Miss Odetta. He was just doing the best he could.

  I sat down on the other end of the couch with Imani, trying to remember where I seen the Lysol last. If it was in the bathroom or back in the kitchen. While I thought on that, I ask him, How you like the west side?

  He say, How you know that’s where I moved?

  I say, Your mama name still Miss Odetta, ain’t it?

  June Bug laughed.

  He know his mama and he should’ve knew Miss Odetta come dragging that bone over here about him moving the day after he left. She told Mama he moved in with some girl with dreadlocks. She say, Look like the girl got a head full of snakes. Like Methuselah.

  Mama say, Methuselah? What you talking about? What make you think he had a head full of them dookey Rastafarian dreads? Where that at in the Bible?

  Miss Odetta say, I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about the woman. The woman. Ain’t that her name? she ask. She was sitting on our couch waving around a cigarette just about half ash, and I was trying to follow it with an ashtray.

  I say, No, that’s Medusa.

  Miss Odetta say, That’s her.

  I say, And she could put a curse on you. If you looked at her, she turned you into stone.

  Mama say, Medusa? Come on now, Tasha. I don’t pretend to be no damn Bible scholar, but I think I would remember if there was some bitch running through the Bible with snakes in her head turning niggers into stone.

  I told Mama she wasn’t from the Bible. She was from ancient mythology.

  Mama say, Oh, that’s different.

  Miss Odetta pointed at Mama with the hand she was holding the cigarette in. The ash fell on the table and I got it up quick.

  I don’t believe Medusa from no ancient mythology, Miss Odetta say. She the skank my baby living with. Got her hair all snaked up and crazy on her head. Child too damn black and ugly to have her head that nappy. She be looking evil half the damn time too! I swear I’m going to look up and she going to be done turned my baby into a stone-cold statue. Lord, I just hope they don’t have no baby. It would be a little black and crispy thing like her.

  Mama say, What would be wrong with them having a black child? June Bug ain’t exactly light, bright, or no damn where near white hisself. Shit, if you feel that way, then he should be with a white girl.

  Miss Odetta let out a loud burp that she ain’t even excuse herself for. She say, I’m just saying. You the one know about them things, anyway.

  Mama say, What things? I don’t know about no goddamn things. You mean Mitch?

  Miss Odetta nodded and blew smoke out her nose and mouth at the same time. I was glad I had already put Imani in
bed.

  Mama waved her hand. She say, You need to quit, Odetta. Acting like I’m Whoopi Goldberg and shit. Like I never met a white man I ain’t like. Let me tell you something; if I’d been setting out to meet one in the first place, Mitch ain’t even the kind I would’ve went after. I’d a gone for one of them dark Italians look like they part nigger anyway kind of white men.

  Miss Odetta say, I ain’t mean nothing by it. I’m just saying, is all. I just ain’t ready to be no grandma. I’m too young.

  Mama laughed and so did Miss Odetta. Mama say, You older than me.

  I don’t think that was what Miss Odetta was worrying about. I don’t think she could come right out and say she miss June Bug.

  Sitting on the couch, June Bug told me he lived on the real west side. Not in the Puerto Rican west side, which is just like the east side, broke-down and raggedy. He say, I live right on the lake. You can see Canada.

  I say, So? Ain’t nothing special about looking in on Canada and living on funky Lake Erie.

  June Bug say, Girl, you ain’t got a view of nothing from here. Not a damn thing.

  I say, I can see plenty from here.

  June Bug laughed. He say, That’s what they want you to think. Not me. They don’t even want no niggers where I moved. But I’m there. Right where they don’t want me.

  Imani was squirming to get down, so I let her. I say, I don’t want to be nowhere where people don’t want me.

  June Bug waved his hand at me. He say, You done changed.

  I told him he was the one who changed, and he say it’s true. He say but he still think like he always done. Big.

  Maybe Miss Odetta got him thinking big. She always seen to it that June Bug had the best of everything. The best skates, bike, sneakers, video games, headsets, haircuts, sweats, jackets. He probably had the best drawers, too. And I know where she got some of the money for it. From Mama.

  Mama used to all the time sell her some of our food stamps. I ain’t like it. Mama sold them fifty cent on a dollar. I can’t say Mama ain’t make out. She got money in her hand, but Miss Odetta made out better. Going to the grocery store getting food half price put even more money in her hand to spend on June Bug. Mama stopped selling them when Miss Odetta found somebody to give her a better price. Thirty cents on a dollar. I ain’t even want to see what woman was desperate enough for money she’d sell her stamps that cheap.

  The thing is, I ain’t even stop liking June Bug when some of Mama money was going right on his back. I got to say he always looked good. He would be running around with a hundred dollars’ worth of clothes on. Even in the summer. He’d wear sport jerseys. Real ones. Official ones, with the tags, while we wasn’t doing nothing but playing kickball and dodgeball and hide the stick and pop the whip and football in the street. June Bug always looked like he was dressed up to go somewhere.

  Like this boy called Long Legs who used to live up the block. He would be all clean every Friday during the summer. That was the day his daddy come to pick him up for the weekend. To take him over to his house on the north side. Long Legs would take a shower after lunch, dress up, and sit on his porch. He used to make us all sick, because he’d come off the porch to play and make a big deal out of it. All afternoon Long Legs would say, I can’t get my clothes dirty because I’m going to my dad’s. I can’t go bike riding because I’m waiting on my dad. Hey, don’t step on my sneakers because my daddy coming to get me.

  His daddy did come get him and I think we was all jealous of him for that. Lots of kids claimed to have a daddy, but his was the only one that showed up. Regular. His was the only daddy I ever seen.

  Long Legs’ daddy drove a pretty car. A burgundy deuce and a quarter. It was always clean clean and shining like it was brand new. We would all gather around it like it was some spaceship that had just landed. Like Long Legs’ tall daddy was some kind of alien. He would reach down and touch all our heads and smile. Like he was happy to see all of us. Sometimes he’d give us each a dollar before he left with Long Legs. Then me and June Bug and the other kids would sit on the curb where the car had been and talk about Long Legs like a dog. His daddy too.

  That’s a old car Long Legs’ daddy drive. My daddy drive a better car than that. He drive a Lincoln. That ain’t really none of Long Legs’ daddy nohow. My mama told me. She pinned Long Legs on him. Long Legs think he something. Wait until next week, I’m going to scuff up his sneakers before he go. I would always stick to the same line. My daddy dead, I’d say. June Bug would always say, When I grow up, I’m going to have me a better car than that. Way better, and I ain’t going to live on the east side neither. I only remember saying once that I wanted to move on the north side. Even though I’d never really been there.

  June Bug reminded me I had said it. He say, You ain’t planning on spending the rest of your life here, is you?

  I say, Don’t even be cracking on the east side. You lived here up until last week.

  June Bug say he never coming back to live here. Which was fine with me.

  He say, What you should do is let me take you out. Show you some things. Take you some places.

  I say, You asking me out for a date?

  He say he was.

  That’s when I had to bust him and tell him I knew he had a girlfriend. I reached over and swatted him upside his head. I say, I told you Miss Odetta done told your business.

  Imani seen me swat June Bug and she started laughing.

  He say, Don’t you be laughing at me, you crumb crusher.

  I say, You leave my baby alone. Don’t you be calling her names.

  June Bug say, I ain’t stutting your baby. She cute, though, like you.

  I rolled my eyes. I mean really, he was rapping so weak.

  He told me he did live with a woman and he had other women. He could get a woman whenever he wanted one. He say he could get them like that, and he snapped his fingers. Not just them female hypes that would do anything for a hit. He say they would even do it for kibbles and bits.

  I say, Get out of here. They do it to you for some dog food?

  He say kibbles and bits was little pieces of broke-up crack. Crumbs. He say he respected them. People think they hos. But they ain’t. He say they some of the most honest women he done ever met. They all about business. You got something they want, and they willing to pay for it. He say them other women he know is hos. Even the one he living with, because all they want is your money.

  June Bug say, I know she living with me because I’m living where I’m living. Because I got me a Trooper.

  He say, I want to take you out because you for real, Tasha. You honest.

  I nodded. I say, I see, I’m honest. Like them hos who ain’t hos.

  June Bug shook his head. He say, You for real, Tasha. Like that time when we kissed.

  I say, I never kissed you! Lying. Lying like a dog. When I know good and well he kissed me in between our houses one night.

  I was only eleven and that would’ve made June Bug fourteen. It was the Fourth of July, and Miss Odetta had took him up in Canada somewhere and got fireworks. Legal. All we had before they showed up was some caps we was popping with bricks, some firecrackers that was mostly duds, and some corny sparklers. June Bug had all kinds of bottle rockets, cherry bombs, and some big big firecrackers about as thick as your thumb. He had threw one of them big firecrackers between our houses. He thought it would sound louder going off there. But it ain’t go off.

  I raced to get it, and he came right behind me. I can’t even say what we thinking. How we thought we was going to find it in the grass in the dark. We didn’t. It found us. That thing boomed like a cannon. I ain’t have time to scream. I grabbed hold of June Bug and he kissed me. Right on the mouth. Maybe he seen it in a movie or something. But I done been to the movies, too. So I slapped him. I say, Let me go. I just peed on myself.

  When June Bug reminded me of what I’d told him, I had to laugh. I pulled a pillow up over my face and say, I never say that.

  He say, Stop ly
ing, Tasha. I liked that you say it. I can tell you, ain’t no other girl ever say nothing like that to me. He ask, You that honest with Peanut?

  My heart started bamming all hard. I wanted to know what he knew about me and Peanut, but I wasn’t about to ask. I threw the pillow at him and say, Your time up, June Bug. Its four-thirty.

  He say, All right. Cool. I say I was going to leave, and I am. You must still be some little girl if you messing with him, Tasha. Because he ain’t nothing but a boy.

  I stood up, trying to give him a signal. But he sat there.

  I say, You don’t know what Peanut is.

  June Bug stood up then. He say, I do. I don’t even know him and I know what he is. Me and my partners got boys like him working for us. We buy and sell little niggers like him.

  I sucked my teeth. Yeah, right, I say. Peanut too smart for something like that.

  June Bug picked up the bag off the floor. Laughing. He say, Who got the money, girl? And, oh, by the way. June Bug opened the bag. This ain’t nothing but a prescription for my mama. Some allergy medicine. I ain’t want to leave it out. The hypes, you know.

  I looked at the bottle. It was sealed. I say, You could’ve told me what was in it in the first place.

  He say, You could’ve asked. You know you can trust me, girl. With your life. At the door, he say, Tell your mama hello for me.

  I locked both doors behind him, knowing right then I wasn’t going to tell Mama he say nothing. She was off with Mitch. Mama be with him all the time now, and I don’t like it. But I don’t say nothing to Mama with my two lips about her and Mitch. If I do, she might slap me.

  Mama sometimes say she going to slap me clear into the middle of next week, but most of the time she just be talking. Even when she beat me the day I had Imani. I didn’t go traveling through time. I stayed right there in the room with her.