Imani All Mine Page 14

  No matter what Mr. Toliver say, I was going in the complete opposite direction of that fight before his class on Thursday. The problem was all these kids come running toward it. Pouring out of class and up the hall. I swear I could feel the heat of them like some wave rushing over me. I pressed up against the lockers, trying to slide and push myself toward the steps. But the bell rung before I even get off the first floor. There wasn’t no point in trying to explain nothing to Mr. Toliver. I know he ain’t want to hear no excuse from me, and I ain’t want to give him nam. He’d already wrote me up.

  When the jug list was read over the intercom at the end of seventh period, my name was on it. Bett-Bett oohed me, and I told her to shut up, and Mrs. Poole say, Now, Tasha, ladies don’t say shut up. You know better. While she was running off at the mouth, his name was called. I know I heard it. I wanted to scream at Mrs. Poole and tell her to shut up. Because I know I heard it. They was way past his name by the time Mrs. Poole was quiet. The bell rung without her giving us a homework assignment, and I ran out the room.

  It’s a good thing the hall was crowded, because I felt the craziness rising up inside me. A part of me trying to take off. To go running. To go flying down the hall. When I ain’t supposed to be scared of him no more. I kept telling myself that as I walked to the nursery. That I wasn’t scared of him. That I’d probably heard wrong anyway. Stupid Bett-Bett. Stupid Mrs. Poole. If they’d just shut up, I would know. I knew I had to quick go get Imani no matter what. If you five minutes late getting your baby at the nursery, they suspend your baby for a day. I ain’t never had that happen. I never want to have to open my two lips to explain to Mama I’m going to have to miss a day of school because Imani got suspended.

  Just seeing Imani there in the nursery took some of the craziness out of me. She smiled when she seen me come through the door. Her and another girl was playing with some blocks, but Imani dropped hers soon as she seen me. She got up from where she was playing and walked toward me.

  It’s still strange to see Imani walking. She just started last week. Me and Mama and Mitch was watching TV when she let go of the coffee table and moved away, taking these little baby steps. I started screaming. Imani fell right down and looked at me with her eyes all big.

  Mama say, What the hell the matter with you, screaming like you crazy?

  I say, Imani walked. Ya’ll ain’t see her?

  Naw, Mama say.

  Mitch, who be at our house now like he think he live here, ask Mama, Darling, where’s your camera? We got to get a picture.

  Mama say it was in her top dresser drawer, and Mitch run to get it. It had film and batteries. That was some kind of miracle all by itself. Mama usually have one or the other.

  Like when I moved up from elementary school and she was snapping snapping snapping away. She took a whole roll of me, and it turned out there wasn’t no film in the camera. Mama say, Now ain’t this some shit! Why these stupid people make a camera work like this?

  I guess Mama ain’t know because me and her don’t take all so many pictures of our lives. I don’t know why. Even with the loaded camera, we ain’t get a picture of Imani walking that evening. After Mitch got the camera, Imani wouldn’t walk no more. Mitch kneeled in the corner by the television waiting to get the picture while me and Mama kept standing Imani up and trying to get her to come to us with candy and cookies and sweet words. Imani just kept plopping right back down and laughing like we was playing some game with her.

  My silly baby decided to walk in our room the next morning. I was running late for school and pulling on some sweats when Imani went tipping across the floor. She did five whole steps before she fell. I ain’t have the camera and definitely ain’t have no time to go get it. But I ain’t scream. I was real quiet, and she fell down on her own. It would’ve been nice to have a picture.

  Aunt Mavis nem got pictures of Junior and Little Frankie from the day they was born. Whole albums with pictures of the first time they done everything. Aunt Mavis even got pictures of herself when she was carrying them. She ain’t wearing nothing but a bra and some drawers. Little Frankie say he remember the picture of him being took when he was still inside his mama. He say the flash made him blink and he seen blue spots in front his eyes. He say he can remember other things from before he was born, like this one time Uncle Willis was barbecuing and there was so much smoke it got inside Aunt Mavis and he coughed inside her. You can’t tell Frankie he don’t remember them things. That they ain’t true. That he just telling stories about pictures he seen. Telling stories about stories he heard. Frankie don’t know he just making up things in his own mind.

  I don’t always be paying attention in Mrs. Poole class, but I know she ain’t never said nothing about babies remembering things from before they was born. She all the time be talking about brain development, so I know Imani ain’t going to have no real memories, no lasting memories, for years. She ain’t going to remember nothing about her first steps or the party we had for her birthday.

  We did get pictures. But I wasn’t sure we would, so I took her down to Woolworth the morning of her party and got her picture took. Maybe someday Imani will say she remember the party. That she liked the icing on the cake or her ponytail holders was too tight or she wished for sneakers that she never did get. She ain’t never going to be able to look at a picture of her birthday and know what I wished. I’m never going to tell her. And I’m never going to tell her she seen her daddy right before her birthday.

  He did have detention. I come to the room first with Imani and got a aisle seat in the very last row. And I wasn’t scared. This girl bigger than me took a seat across the aisle from me. She sat down hard and say, I mean damn, Mr. Diaz know he out of control. He got babies up in the jug and shit. She blew a big purple bubble and sucked it back into her mouth. Then she took out what looked like was a whole pack of gum from her mouth and smeared it onto the wall behind her. All the while Imani was staring all up in the girl mouth like she was watching a show.

  I know Imani wanted some gum. Sometimes I give her a little piece to chew on. No more than I feel like cleaning up or I feel is safe for her to swallow. Mama say she never give me gum when I was a baby. She say when you swallow it, it stay in your stomach forever, making a bigger and bigger wad. Mama say she read somewhere that when this man died, they cut him open and found he had a ball of gum in his stomach the size of a cantaloupe. She say that was what killed him. I know that ain’t even true. Mostly because Mama hardly read nothing. But I still find it best that I don’t give Imani too much gum.

  I give Imani her bottle then. She looked at it and made a face, but I told her straight out, she wasn’t getting no gum. She took the bottle and stretched herself out in her stroller. I’d turned the stroller to face me, and I pulled it closer, hoping she would take a nap before he come in.

  I ain’t see him at first. I smelled him. He smelled like smoke. And I wasn’t scared. Even though I stopped breathing for some seconds when he sat in the row in front of me. When I could smell him strong. Smell the smoke. My stomach started hurting. Not real bad. But it felt like it was being squeezed. Not hard, but steady. I could se£ the side of his face the way I seen it that night. Part with light. Part with shadow. When the proctor called my name, I wasn’t scared. I stuck my hand up and pulled it down quick to let her know I was there. Then she called his close after mine. She had to call it twice, because he was all bent over a book reading. Reading. That surprised me. He don’t seem like somebody who’d read a thing. But there he was, reading like he was just some regular student with nothing on his mind but his book. I took out a book and laid it open on my desk like I was going to study, but I ain’t read nam word.

  I kept my eyes on him. I kept my eyes on Imani. It was them I was studying. Looking at the color of they skin. The shape of they heads. The grade of they hair. The curve in they ears. The shape of they hands. Nothing matched. Not one thing about them was the same. The more I looked, the more I seen what I done always knew. Imani a
in’t got nothing of his. It’s just me in her. All of me.

  Imani watched me look from her to him. She couldn’t really tell where I was looking past her. So she sat up with her nosey self and tried to turn around. I pushed her shoulders back, trying to get her lay back down. Imani ain’t like that. She bit down on the nipple of the bottle and started squealing.

  The proctor say, You’re going to have to keep that baby quiet.

  I ain’t say nothing back to her, but I wanted to ask, Or what? You going make me come back tomorrow so she can scream some more? I shushed Imani, but she wouldn’t be quiet. She started turning her head back and forth, slinging the bottle. Slinging it, slinging it, slinging it. All the time she was doing her pig squeal. I tried to pull the bottle out her teeth and she got louder. She wanted to have her a tantrum. I wanted to pop her. Like we was at home. Not hard. Just a slap on the hand. I don’t care what Mrs. Poole or nobody say. It work and it don’t hurt. I’ve hit myself on the hand to see what it feel like. It don’t even sting like when you hit somebody playing hot hands. But I wasn’t going to take no chance hitting Imani at school. Last thing I needed was that proctor to say I be abusing my baby when all I would’ve been trying to do was what she said. Get Imani to be quiet.

  So I did what Mrs. Poole say you really supposed to do like you got sense and good nerves. Distract your baby. I rambled around in her diaper bag and found some crackers. I was fenna give her one when the bottle flew out her mouth. Imani shut up real quick. I don’t think she meant to do it. My greedy baby seen them crackers and wanted them. I give her a cracker and looked to see where the bottle landed.

  It had rolled into the row in front of us. I pushed Imani aside so I could get it, but before I could, he got it. He handed it to me without saying a word. I looked right in his face. Seen his eyes. His nose. His lips. All his own. And I wasn’t scared. Until I seen him smile. Like he had smiled at me that night at the roller rink. But he wasn’t smiling at me. He was smiling at Imani. She’d turned herself all the way around in the stroller, and I looked up to see her smiling at him. When Imani seen me, she turned back around. I shouldn’t have been scared. They faces is day and night. I shouldn’t have been scared, because Imani ain’t turn back around to him no more. She’d seen him and smiled at him. Then she had crackers. She burped. She had her bottle. She chewed on my key chain. She played peek-a-boo with me, and by the time we left, she’d forgot all about him.

  Sometimes I would like my mind to work like that. To not hold on to things. To let them slip past like water. When I got home after school, I ain’t think much about him. Mama wasn’t home. She’d left a food stamp on top the television, but my stomach was still hurting, and I ain’t want nothing to eat. I opened Imani a can of spaghetti, and after I fed her, we went upstairs. I laid across the bed. Imani ain’t want to lay down, so I let her play.

  When it started getting dark, Imani come over and stood by the bed next to me. I ain’t put a light on. It got darker and darker until I could hardly see her standing there. I still ain’t put on the light. Imani was quiet. Like she knew her mama was crazy. Like I’d lost my mind. When I hadn’t lost it.

  My mind wasn’t on him, neither. I was thinking about him in other parts of me. The places where there is memory in you. Underneath your tongue. The middle of your bones. The lonesome spaces deep inside. Mrs. Poole would never say there’s memory there. I would never ask her, because I’d sound as crazy as Frankie. Crazier.

  Imani stayed next to me. Breathing soft. Before she disappeared into the dark, she got in bed with me and stayed there until Mama and Mitch come in. Maybe she thought I was sleeping, and I guess I did go to sleep, because it was almost nine when they come home. Imani woke me up. She was calling for Mama. She climbed out of bed and went to the door. There was a knock on the other side. I knew it was Mitch. Mama don’t knock.

  I say, Imani right on the other side. Don’t knock her down.

  The door opened slow, and Imani backed up far enough so Mitch could let her out. He picked her up and I could see them both in the light of the hall. Mitch ask, What you doing in bed this early with the lights out? You all right, girly-girl?

  I ain’t even feel like talking to him. I knew the best way to shut Mitch up and have him go away was to just give him a answer. I told the truth. My stomach hurt, I say.

  Mama poked her head in around him. She ask, You need a laxative?

  I say, Mama! I ain’t want her to say nothing like that in front of Mitch.

  Mama say, Don’t Mama me. She flipped on the light in the room, switched her thin hips in, and sat next to me. She sat on my pillow. For a second, I was still thinking Jesus was under there. I thought she going to feel him. But then I remembered he disappeared. Mama put her hand on my forehead. Her hand was cool. I ain’t want her to take it away. But she did and then ask what I ate and I told her I ain’t eat. She say, You must be sick.

  Mitch stepped inside the door with Imani. Mama told him, Mitch, do me favor here? Go up the corner and get Tasha a Vernor’s.

  I say I don’t want one. It got too much ginger in it. It’s nasty.

  Mitch asked, You want a Canada Dry?

  Mama say, Tasha don’t want no Canada Dry, no Schweppes, and none of that cheap-ass Fago. I don’t know how they get away with calling that damn sugarwater pop. Tasha getting the Vernor’s or she getting some Pepto. There’s some of that in the medicine chest.

  I say, I’ll take a Vernor’s and some salt-and-vinegar potato chips.

  Mama rolled her eyes at me and told Mitch not to bring me no chips.

  Mitch took Imani with him. Soon as they went out the front door, Mama folded her arms across her chest. She asked, You pregnant, Tasha? Mama ain’t act like she was mad or nothing. But her voice was all tense and her lips was drawn so tight they looked like they belonged on a white woman.

  I asked, You sent Mitch to the store because you wanted to ask me that?

  Mama say, I ain’t stupid, girl. I know you and that big-head boy you sneaking around with ain’t just holding hands. Mama meant Peanut. She knew I’d been talking to him on the phone late at night. I think she knew for a long time before she say anything to me. Probably from way back when she went to Toronto, but she ain’t say nothing to me until a few weeks ago. I had just got home from school, and we was in the kitchen.

  Mama say all casual, Mitch say he tried to call here last night and he never got a answer. Who you was talking to so important you ain’t click over?

  I was smoking mad that Mitch tattled on me. The rat. I told Mama I was talking to Eboni.

  Mama say, You talk to that heifer all the time and Mitch don’t have no trouble calling here.

  I sat down at the table and told her I been talking to Peanut. Mama picked Imani up from the floor and sat down across from me. What the hell kind of a name is Peanut? Then she told me she wanted to meet him. I asked her what for.

  Mama rolled her eyes at me real slow. She asked, You think I want you running around with some boy I ain’t never seen? He could do anything to you, and what would I know to say who even did it? Someone who name Peanut. Before you fix your mouth to ask me a stupid-ass question like that again, What I want to see him for? look in your own child face. Mama got up and handed Imani to me and left the kitchen.

  I brung Peanut home the next day after school. I ain’t tell Mama he was coming. Mama was watching a soap and Miss Odetta was there, too, in her housedress, with two cigarettes burning in the ashtray and three cans of malt liquor already on the table. The tops was popped on the cans and Miss Odetta was all kicked back and way relaxed, her feet up on the cocktail table. Look like some kind of fire was burning in her eyes.

  I don’t think Mama seen Peanut right off. I was carrying Imani, and he was behind me. Mama ask, How my baby doing? Imani reached out for Mama and I handed her over. That’s when Mama seen Peanut.

  So, who is this? Mama ask, like Peanut wasn’t even there.

  I say, This Peanut.

  Miss Odetta s
at up on the couch right then like she was all of a sudden refreshed.

  Mama started taking Imani out her snowsuit. She say, Don’t be standing all the way over there, boy. Sit your ass down.

  Peanut backed his way into a chair. I think he was afraid to take his eyes off Mama. Miss Odetta wanted another can of malt liquor. I went to get it from the fridge, and when I come back in the living room, Imani was standing next to Peanut.

  Miss Odetta was asking him, Who your mama and daddy? When Peanut say who they was, she shook her head. Of course she say she know them. I sat down next to Mama.

  Mama ask Peanut, So what are you to Tasha?

  I ain’t give him a chance to answer; I say, Me and Peanut friends.

  Mama ask, What’s your real name, boy?

  Clyde, Peanut say, but I like Peanut.

  Mama say, I’m calling you Clyde. Clyde, what are you to my daughter?

  Peanut shrugged his shoulders and looked at the floor. Miss Odetta popped open her can and ask, Ya’ll dating?

  Ain’t neither one of us say nam word. Mama looked hard at me and then at Peanut and it got real quiet in the living room. Just Miss Odetta slurping and the TV going with some white couple kissing and Mama waiting like she had all the patience in the world.

  After a while, Peanut looked from under his lashes and say, I like Tasha.

  Mama ask me if I liked him. I just sat there, not saying a word.

  Mama say, So you do like him. Mama declared right there and then that me and Peanut was both simple.

  Miss Odetta agreed. Simple, Miss Odetta say. And young. I hope ya’ll don’t call ya’ll selves being in love, because ya’ll too young to know what love is all about.

  Mama say, I don’t care what they think they in. She told Peanut if he want to come around to see me, he going to have to act like he had sense, because I got plenty of sense, and I knew where I was going in life.