Imani All Mine Read online

  Peanut say, Tasha going to be a doctor. She told me when we was little.

  Mama ask Peanut, Where you going with your life?

  Peanut smiled and I hoped he wasn’t going to say he was going play in the NBA. That is exactly what he said. I just slid down the couch and pulled a pillow up over my face. I couldn’t believe he’d open his two lips and tell Mama that.

  Miss Odetta say, Huh! That’s what my son wanted to do when he was your age.

  Peanut ask, What he doing now?

  Miss Odetta coughed like maybe there was something caught up in her throat.

  I put the pillow down to see her take a long drink. I was thinking, Yeah. That shut you up.

  Mama say, Let’s just say this. He ain’t in no NBA.

  I caught Peanut eye and he looked away from me. Even though Peanut said he wanted to go NBA, his voice was all flat. It might be a dream of his, but it seemed he know it ain’t going to come true.

  Peanut stood up and say, I got to be getting home.

  Mama say, Clyde, you can come over here and see my daughter when I’m home. But don’t you be sitting your ass up in here every day like you live here. You ain’t taking one step up them steps to Tasha bedroom. So don’t you even think about it, and if I find out you been in here when I ain’t home, it’s going to be me and you.

  Peanut bust out with a laugh. Nervous. And a laugh flew out of me. But I cut it short. Imani the one was laughing all loud and long. Like she knew something.

  Mama ask, What’s so funny?

  Me and Peanut say at the same time, Nothing.

  After all that, Peanut ain’t even been back over here. I guess Mama scared him off. He ain’t say she has. I still go to his house, though. We still do it there sometime, so I been taking my pills regular. I got the whole pack in order. That’s why I told Mama that night she could take a look at them.

  I ain’t pregnant, I told her. I sat up and propped my back against the wall. I ask Mama, Is that all you worry about? Me getting pregnant?

  Mama say, Hell, no. I’m a mama. That ain’t all I worry about. It’s just one of the things, she say. You a mama. You know what I mean. Other things worry you, don’t they? Mama looked straight at me.

  I ask, Is Mitch spending the night? Mama say he was.

  I looked at her hands. How pretty they looked. Mitch pay for her to get her nails done every week. This week they was painted pearly white, each tip with a scattering of tiny silver stars. I wanted Mama to touch me again. Like she did when she come in the room. To press some coolness into me.

  I was wishing it was just her home that night, not Mitch. I like to hear her breathing in the next room. I get up and go to the bathroom, and Mama will ask, Tasha, is that you? And I say that it is. I don’t know who else she think it would be. When she hear me open my room door, she know it’s me, but she ask. I like hearing her voice say my name in the dark. I’m too grown to go lay with her, but I like when her voice come to me in the dark of the night. The way it float to me. Like a wave. When Mitch spend the night at our house, Mama never ask if it’s me when I get up.

  Mama ask, When you going to get over Mitch being white?

  I say, I ain’t got nothing against him being white. He just ain’t none of my daddy. I don’t want him thinking he is.

  Mama stood up. She wagged a finger in my face. She say, In the first place, Mitch ain’t trying to be your daddy. Shit, if your daddy want to be your daddy, ain’t nothing stopping his ass. And in the second place, Mitch ain’t none of Imani daddy neither. But who going to pay for birthday cake? Who give you the money to pay for them pictures you getting made down to Woolworth? You don’t like Mitch, then you shouldn’t take nothing from him. Get your baby daddy to do for his own child.

  That was a open door, Mama saying that. I knew any minute Mitch would be standing in that door. He’d be back with Imani, and if I told Mama, I would be all the way crazy by then. I ain’t want Mitch to see me like that. Because he ain’t nothing to me.

  I would’ve told my real daddy about everything the night it happened. About him. If I had my real daddy, maybe it would’ve never happened. He would’ve protected me. With his love.

  Back when I was in grade school, I had a project to do—my family tree. There was this sheet with a real nice tree on it. We was all supposed to color the tree and put our ancestors in the roots and present family members in the branches. I put me and Mama, Aunt Mavis, Uncle Willis, Junior, and Little Frankie in the branches in ink.

  When I told Mama I wanted to put in my daddy name, she say, Put down the state of New York.

  I say, For real, Mama, I don’t even know his name. It ain’t on my birth certificate. I’d seen my birth certificate. In the place for his name it said, Mother Refused Information. It say the same thing on Imani’s.

  Mama say, He dead. What you want to know his name for?

  I ain’t tell her I knew he ain’t dead. I just say, Because he my daddy.

  Mama sighed and she told me his name Xavier.

  That was all I needed to know. I say, His name sound romantic, Mama. Like in a book. Was he handsome?

  Mama smiled and then seem like she caught herself and stopped smiling.

  I had to fill in the roots of the tree, too, but when I ask Mama for help, she say, Ain’t none of they goddamn business who back in our roots. What the hell they teaching you in that school?

  I say, It’s our roots. We supposed to know about our family.

  Mama say, Look, my mama name Rose, and she dead. That’s all your roots. She drank herself into the ground. If your nosey teacher want to know more, tell her to bring her ass here and ask me.

  I half felt like writing just that across the roots, and the state of New York for my daddy in the branches, and taking it to my teacher to be smart. But that would’ve been a sure F and a sure-enough whipping. I wrote Rose down in the roots.

  It made me sad to think of her as drunk and dead and Mama acting like she ain’t care nothing about her when I know she did. I seen how her face got dark. How it shut off like a light. She ain’t have to say it with her lips that she loved her. That she loved my daddy. That saying his name was still sweet to her. Even if she had to stop herself. Even if she had to make her face into the dark side of the moon.

  I liked that my grandmama name was a flower. So I gave my great-grandmama a flower name, too. Lily. I named my granddaddy Otis Junior and his parents Daisy and Otis Senior. Then I worked on my daddy side. I thought it would look obvious if I kept on with flower names, so I made his mama Bertha Ann. His daddy Paul Junior. I ain’t want to push the juniors and seniors too far neither, so I stopped.

  I got me a big fat A on the assignment. I never showed it to Mama, and she never did ask to see it. But I didn’t throw it out. Not after I’d made up all them people. It didn’t seem right. So I hid it in my room. I tried to find it when Imani was born so I could start a new branch, so I could put her in the green baby leaves shining with light. But I never could find it.

  Like I can’t never find one memory of him. My daddy ain’t somebody who made me. I made him. Made him up in my mind. Made him up in my heart. I keep a space for him. Not a lonesome space. Not a dark space. But one that is lit like a night in early summer.

  When I seen Mama standing in front of me, talking about Imani daddy like she knew what she even talking about, with her hands on her hips, her hands to herself, I sat right where I was, with my two lips pressed shut. I knew anything I told her that night or any night about Imani daddy wasn’t going to be between just me and her. She’d tell Mitch. Push him. Pull him into a place in my life I don’t never want him to be. Into my daddy space. So I kept my lips closed.

  I kept them closed the next evening when Mama made me ride up to Tops with Mitch to pick up the birthday cake. She was supposed to go with us, but she was doing Imani hair, putting in a bunch of twists, and Imani was sitting still. If I was doing it, she’d be all down on the floor squirming. Mama was putting a barrette and ponytail holder on
each twist. Nothing but white and purple to match the dress Imani was going to wear for her picture.

  I told Mama I wasn’t going with Mitch. She wound a ponytail holder around a section of Imani hair and say, I ain’t stopping in the middle of Imani head to go to the store with ya’ll. You going to ride your ass to Tops with Mitch when he get here and pick out a cake or tomorrow there ain’t going to be no party, no pictures, no nothing.

  So I got in the car with Mitch later without saying poot stank to him. When he started up the car, he had that tired jazz station on. I switched it to WBLK to see what he’d do. They was playing a rap song.

  Mitch say, Come on now, Tasha. Anything but that.

  I cut my eyes at him, and I ain’t change the station.

  Mitch say, Don’t you look at me like that, girly-girl.

  I ain’t even think he seen me, because he wasn’t looking direct at me. I sat back in the seat and still ain’t change the station. Mitch looked at me, but he ain’t say nothing. When we was fenna turn at the corner, a dealer walked right up to the car. Mitch shook his head and we turned up Fillmore.

  They vultures, I say. I wasn’t really talking to him. Just talking when I should’ve kept my mouth shut, because of course Mitch started up a conversation.

  He say, No, they’re just kids. They’re not much more than babies.

  I say, I guess that make them angels?

  Mitch say, I wouldn’t exactly say that. Mitch turned the radio off. He say, If they’ve got any kind of wings, I’d say it would be hawk or falcon. They’re hunters.

  I say, Mama the one say they vultures.

  Mitch say vultures is misunderstood. They don’t kill. They just live off of the dead.

  I say, So that’s what them dealers doing? Living off the dead. That’s spooky.

  He say, No, Tasha, that’s life.

  I ask, You learn all this about life working at the post office?

  He let out a long whistle. You’d be surprised what you learn about life working at the P.O. Tax deadline is next week, he say, and we’re open to midnight. Pray for me, girl, he say.

  We rode on up to Main Street and stayed on it for a while when Mitch say, All they need is some guidance.

  By then I really ain’t mind talking. I ask, Who?

  He say, Who were we talking about?

  I say, Oh, yeah. What make you think they ain’t got no guidance? Because they black? I guess you think they ain’t got no daddies neither.

  Mitch say, I didn’t say that! You’re the one called them vultures.

  I say, I can call them whatever I want to. I’m black.

  Mitch say, Oh, I get it. I’m some kind of racist. That’s what you think about me, Tasha? You’re riding around with a racist?

  I looked out the window. I say, You the one say it, not me. You the one don’t want to listen to rap.

  He say, Me? Your Mama doesn’t like it either. As a matter of fact, she hates it! Is she some racist?

  Naw, she just old, I say. And I laughed. I ain’t mean to. It just come out of me. Mitch laughed too.

  We was sitting at a red light. He say, Well, then, darling, I’m old too. He turned the radio back on and put it on the jazz station. Now, that’s a black man playing right there. Miles Davis.

  Who? I ask.

  Miles Davis. You don’t know Miles Davis?

  I put my hand over my mouth and pretended to yawn.

  Mitch turned up the music and started waving his hands in big circles. Listen to that music. It’s art about pain, about love, about life, he say.

  I say, Green light.

  Mitch just sat there for a few seconds and a car beeped behind him.

  I say, What’s wrong with you? You know, it’s like red light, red light, red light, green light. Then you go. You on some of that stuff or something?

  He say, real quiet, Used to be.

  And I knew it. I just knew he had been. I never seen a tattoo on his hands, but I looked close at his knuckles again to be sure. Nothing.

  Mitch told me about how his daddy left when he was thirteen. Mitch say that was when he screwed his life into the ground. I ain’t even ask him. Mitch say his daddy just left. He got three sisters and none of them knew they parents was having problems. They hid them. He say they never had one fight that he knew of. Mitch say he hated that. They was real polite. Too damn polite, he say. He say maybe if they’d broke up some dishes, or had a fight out on the porch in front all the neighbors, maybe they would’ve stuck together. He say he just come home from school one day and his daddy’s gone. He’s left a note for the family saying he just needed some time to think. About life. Mitch say that was a lie. He found out later his daddy had another woman. He’d been seeing her for a long time.

  For about a year, Mitch and his sisters seen they daddy and he paid child support, but then he up and left the state. They was living in Kentucky, and he never sent another penny. Mitch ask if I could believe that. That a man would walk off and not feed his own kids. Not care if they got sat out in the street. Because, he say, they was evicted by the sheriff. He say, Everything we owned was set blowing in the wind. I was fourteen then, and things just went from bad to worse. Mitch say they got on the welfare.

  He started taking drugs then and ain’t get off of them until he joined the army. Mitch say when he was on them, he was trying to fill up spaces inside hisself. He say, You know, all those years growing up without my daddy, I always wanted him to come back. I wanted to knock his damn teeth down his lying throat. But after that, I was going to forgive him. Mitch say he know that was crazy talk. But it made sense to me.

  At Tops, Mitch helped me pick out a cake back in the bakery, chocolate with white icing. It was decorated with a teddy bear holding a string of balloons and was dripping with pink and yellow icing roses. We got Imani name wrote on it and Happy First Birthday. Mitch wanted to get balloons. But I told him Mrs. Poole say they a choking hazard, along with hot dogs and hard candy. So we ain’t get balloons.

  On the way back home, we rode quiet most of the way. The radio was on and I ain’t know if it was still Miles Davis or who it was. I was glad for the music. Whoever it was blowing on the horn is filling in the space between us. It was already getting dark and I could see Mitch face glowing a little green from the dials on the dash. I ask him, in that growing dark, You think maybe you would’ve been better off without ever knowing your daddy?

  Mitch scratched his chin, and it sounded rough. Sandy. He say, I can’t really say. All I know is, I still needed him. Some guidance. Something. Like I said about these young guys. They need it. Something real small, darling. Something simple.

  I think maybe that’s what I always wanted from my daddy. Something simple. Just his arms to hold me. Just his ears to listen. Just his two lips talking to me. Soft.

  When Mitch stopped at a red light a few streets up from our turn for home, I glanced out the window and seen a car with no headlights on stopped on the other side of the street.

  I grabbed his arm and screamed, Don’t flash them!

  He say, I’m way ahead of you, darling.

  Red light, red light, red light, green light. Mitch sat still for a few seconds and let the car pass on by us in the dark.

  At the party last night, I ain’t mind Mitch being there. When I lit the candles on the cake—one for Imani age and one for her to grow on—he flipped off the light switch and stood next to Mama. Which was close enough for me. He was with us in that circle of candlelight, and I knew Imani daddy was beyond that circle. Somewhere in the dark.

  I know one day when Imani get older, when thoughts don’t wash through her mind. When they settle to the bottom and stay. She going to ask, Who my daddy? Where my daddy at? What’s my daddy name? I don’t know what I’ll say to her.

  Last night is when I got to thinking it’d be so much easier if I can lie to her like Mama been lying to me. To tell Imani he dead. I can have a story about him with a end instead of beginnings and middles in my dreams.

  I can
hold Imani on my lap early on a night when she ask me and ask me and ask me about her daddy. I can say, Imani, me and your daddy was young. We was just children when we had you, but we loved each other very very much. I called your daddy Honey and he called me Sugar and he called you his Little Cupcake. Now, ain’t that sweet? And Imani will nod.

  Then I’ll say, But sweetness don’t always last. Sometimes it get washed away. Sometimes it get worn away. Sometimes it just disappear in the time it take to close your eyes. Now, close your eyes. And Imani will close her eyes. I’ll watch her lids flutter like she chasing dreams, and I’ll say, Now, our love was the kind to disappear. Your daddy went away from us. He died. Before Imani can ask, Why? her eyes will open. Her eyes will look up at me and I’ll wave my hand over them. Cool. Gentle. Like a wind. I’ll close them. Leave my hands there a moment so she can look inside the dark that my hands made like the sky. Hush, now, I’ll say. Don’t be sad.

  It happened sudden. When his eyes was closed. Not like you now. He died in his sleep so peaceful while he was dreaming about us, and he was happy. Don’t never cry about him. Because even when some sweetness is gone, you still sometimes taste it in your mouth when you sleep.

  Imani will nod while my story settle down inside her. Easy. Like it’s truth. Making her lids flutter faster and faster as she try to catch up with her sweet daddy in her dreams.

  My story might even seem true to me. Until I sleep. Until I dream. Knowing he still out there. Past the light. And no matter what, Imani will find out there’s no sweetness in my mouth for him. Just a bitter taste. Shame.

  So last night when I seen Imani face shining in that circle of light, I made my wish. Pressed it inside my two lips. Because I don’t want to have to even think about him being out there. I want to have a end with him. A wall between us. Death.

  That why I kept on wishing to myself last night over and over while Imani blew out her candles. First one and then the other. Leaving us quiet and alone in the dark.

  TEN