Imani All Mine (15 page)

 

R.I.P. STEPHAN RICHARDSON

A.K.A. “SWEET”
1977–1996

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
.

 

Seem like memorials be everywhere now. On the sides of buildings. On phone booths. On street signs. Inside the girls' bathroom at school. R.I.P. Little Man. R.I.P. Hakeem. R.I.P. Boo Boo. R.I.P. Zave. R.I.P Tia. R.I.P Red. R.I.P Greg. I open my eyes to them and then I shut them. Even with my eyes shut, I can still see the ages. I ain't never seen a memorial where the person resting in peace was older than twenty-one. I do the math real quick in my head, and it's always twenty-one or under.

I don't know who be putting up the memorials. You don't never see nobody doing them. I know it's got to be the friends of the kids who get killed. But you don't see them. Maybe some of them work way in the deepest part of the night when everybody else sleep. The part of the night so deep, even drug dealers be sleeping. Dreaming theyselves into some other world where there ain't no names on walls.

I know the kids who write the memorials put them up to make people remember even when they want to forget. To forget the names. To have amnesia. Or pretend like they do and look away. Maybe I see and don't see them memorials because I never knew none of the kids killed. I ain't know Sweet, but he seemed real to me because I seen his blood. Seen his body. Seen how quick the next day everything can be erased. How Abdul was back open for business, his sidewalk all clean, and how at the end of the schoolday even Sweet name was gone off the side of the store. His memorial painted over. White.

I felt a need in me to cry when I seen his name gone. Maybe Sweet was a dealer. Maybe he killed somebody, like Mama say. But most kids who got they name up in a memorial ain't done nothing to nobody. I know that. God must know it, I figure.

That's why I went to find my angel last night. To find somebody closer, to look right straight in the eye and have it look back at me. So I could be remembered to God. So he wouldn't forget my blessing. I don't know if he blessed them kids who was killed. If he saved any of them, or if he just watched them die. If he just peeked and then turned away with them in the back of his eyes. Fading.

EIGHT

J
UNE BUG
came by here today with his mind all confused. He must have been thinking it's already April and I ain't nothing but a fool. I can't believe there is some other reason for him thinking I'd go out with him. On a date. He should've been happy I even let him in the house in the first place. That I didn't just hold the curtain back and look at him and walk back over to the couch and sir down.

But it was snowing and blowing and real cold out, so I opened the door. The storm door was locked and I talked to him through it. I say, If you looking for your mama, she ain't here.

He say, I know. Let me in.

I say, Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.

June Bug say, Dag, Tasha, stop playing. It's cold as a mug out here.

I say, My mama ain't home. What you want in here?

He say, You.

I say, Goodbye and pushed the door up while he was steady saying, Wait wait wait. Let me just leave this for my mama.

I looked to see him hold up a plastic grocery bag with the handles tied.

My mind started zip-zip-zipping. I know he wasn't even coming here trying to leave some package at our house. All I could think it was was some crack. June Bug must've shined some light inside my head while I was standing right there wide awake, because he say, Girl, You need to quit. I told you it's for my mama.

June Bug say Miss Odetta got the locks changed. He ain't have a key and ain't want to leave the package on they porch or inside they storm door. I know she got the locks changed. She got robbed almost a month ago, a little before Mama and Mitch took a trip to Toronto.

That night Miss Odetta come running to our house around midnight all loud and wild, blamming on our front door. Screaming out for Mama like she was crazy. Mama got up. I could hear her cussing all the way down the steps. I got up too because I ain't know what was going on.

Miss Odetta pushed right on in past Mama, heading for the living room. Girl, some nigger done broke in my house and turned the place upside down, Miss Odetta say.

Mama walked on in behind her and I sat down at the top of the stairs. A light come on in the living room. Mama ask, When did it happen?

Miss Odetta say, all loud, When did it happen? How the hell I know when did it happen? What I look like? A psychic? I been out with Simpkin until just a few minutes ago. I come home to see shit throwed everywhere. Did you hear anything?

Mama say she ain't.

Then Miss Odetta say, Maybe Tasha woke. She might have heard something.

I say I was up. Like I could sleep through all that loud talking.

I went down the steps. The light was brighter in the living room and it made my eyes water. Miss Odetta was all dressed up, sitting on the couch and holding tight to a big old pocketbook. Like she thought me or Mama was going to steal it. I don't know if she was drunk or what. She smelled like she had been drinking, but she ain't act drunk. Maybe getting robbed make anybody sober. I told her I ain't hear nothing. Which was the truth.

Miss Odetta say, Whoever it was come in through the back. Climbed over top of my porch and come through the bedroom window. The nigger left footprints across my white bedspread like he was walking on the floor. Your bedroom around the back, but you ain't heard shit?

Mama threw one hand up to Miss Odetta like she was directing traffic. And the sign she was throwing was one to stop. Mama say, all loud, You hold it right there, Odetta. I'm sorry you got robbed, but don't you even be thinking you coming up in my goddamn house and talking to my child any old kind of way. She ain't no goddamn watchdog.

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.