Imani All Mine (19 page)

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 sat 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.

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.