Leaving Atlanta (16 page)

You put your hand to the double doors and give a tentative shove. They yield easily and you walk inside. The room is much
cleaner and quieter than it will be at twelve-twenty, lunchtime for fifth-graders. You make your way toward the serving line
as a bell rings. A cafeteria lady is wiping down the counter with a stained rag.

“Can I help you?” She is eyeing your penny loafers suspiciously.

“I wanted to get some breakfast.”

“Come again?” She plants her hands on her hips to brace herself against any foolishness of yours.

“I wanted to have some breakfast.” You clear your throat and add, “Ma’am.”

“Breakfast’s over.”

“Already?” There is a small lake of steaming water where vats of grits, eggs, and bacon had been warmed.

“Your mama didn’t fix you nothing before you left the house?” Her eyes soften slightly.

You should be loyal to your mother and explain that you refused the meal she offered you. But to explain this rejection requires
that you betray Father. You shrug.

“We got some toast left.” She puts two slices on a plate.

You do not reach for it.

“What? Ain’t nothing wrong with that toast.” She’s looking at your loafers again.

You cry. Hard, shoulder-shaking sobs bring her from behind the serving bar. She kneels before you. Her uniform smells of fried
food and fabric softener.

“What’s wrong, baby?” She lifts your chin and dabs your face with a clean corner of apron. “What you crying for? You sick?
You need to call your mama?”

You shake your head vigorously from side to side.

“It’s alright,” she says. “We don’t have to call her.” She hugs you, and you allow yourself to sink into the space between
her arms. This is a guilty pleasure you have not enjoyed since before Sister was born. The cafeteria lady’s body is as firm
and comfortable as a good mattress. She rubs your hair in wide spirals. “Shh.” Her kiss on the top of your head is as gentle
as music.

Finally, you struggle in her embrace. You should tell her that you will be late for class. Embarrassment tangles your words
like twine and you cannot speak.

“Better?” she asks, as if she has just adjusted the brakes on your bicycle.

You nod, glad to avoid words.

“Hold on,” she says, disappearing momentarily behind a metal door. She returns and presses a banana into your hand. “You can’t
go all day without something on your stomach.”

At recess you sit under the sliding board and carefully pull back the yellow peel. The banana inside is the clean color of
eggshells and soft as a kiss. You hug your knees to warm yourself after you eat. The slanted metal above you blocks the wind.
You pretend to be in a cozy attic room and fall asleep.

You are shaken awake by a seventh-grader, Lumumba Jones. His sister is in your class.

“You alright?” he asks.

You nod.

“He’s okay,” Lumumba says to Delvis Watson, another older boy. “You in the fifth, right?”

Another nod.

“Man, you must have stayed up late last night to be sleep all this time out here on the cold ground.” He pulls you up. “You
got dirt all over your pants.”

Delvis starts to laugh. “His name need to be Black Van Winkle.”

“Leave him alone,” Lumumba says; he turns his head to one side. “You sure you okay? You want us to take you to the nurse?”

“Where’s my class?” you croak.

“They just getting out of lunch. If you hurry up, you might get to class before they notice you cut.”

You thank him and run toward the building. You hear Lumumba say to Delvis, “Little man sho do run flickted.”

You are able to fall in with the rest of your class as they leave the cafeteria. You file into the classroom and slide into
your desk. “Mr. Green,” says Mr. Harrell. “Please step outside.”

What does he want? Is he angry that you missed lunch? You stand before his desk, waiting for him to rise and follow you beyond
the trailer door.

“You have a question, Mr. Green?”

You shake your head no and leave the trailer alone.

Father stands on the covered walkway. His filthy coveralls stink of oil and anger.

“Sir?” You draw your cold hands up into the sleeves of your sweater.

He looks at you for a long appraising moment and then glances around as if searching for someplace to spit. “Virginia Lewis
called me on my job today.”

Your heart falls hard in your stomach like a missed pop fly tumbling past your glove to the ground.

“I don’t know what your problem is.” Father shakes his head in what seems to be genuine bewilderment.

“Did you hear one word I said to you this morning?” The outdoor air coaxes a thin transparent trickle from his nostril. “Do
you think I take the time to tell you things just because I want to exercise my face?”

“No sir.” But you have no idea why he says what he does.

“Virginia told me you been hanging with the wrong crowd. Coming in her store and stealing candy.” He pauses.

“I didn’t,” you begin.

“Don’t lie to me, boy. I didn’t come way out here to listen to you lie. I came out here for you to listen.” He takes a breath.
“Then I call up to the school and they tell me you ain’t where you supposed to be. I come running up here and then you seem
to have found your way back.” His voice rises in the damp air.

“But—”

“You can hang out with your friends when you supposed to be in school. You can hang out with the crowd and steal from Virginia.
But let me tell you this, the crowd ain’t going to be there for you when it matters. When you have to make something of yourself,
you stand alone. You hear me?” His stained index finger grazes your nose.

“Yes sir.” But you have never been part of a crowd. It is even difficult for you to recall being in the presence of more than
one kid at a time. “Can I—”

“What I just tell you?” Father says. “I didn’t come here to hear you lie. I came here to show you that
I
am your father and you do what
I
say do. Not what your friends want you to do.”

Now you notice the belt rolled tight and stashed in his palm.

“We going to go in that classroom and I am going to beat your behind. And you’ll see that the crowd can’t do nothing to help
you.”

You are required to stand before Mr. Harrell’s desk, which he has cleared to accommodate the impending ritual of humiliation.
The room is silent as death when you lean over the oak desk and grip its opposite edge with your quivering fingers. You are
not the first child to be humiliated before his peers. Twice already this year, mothers on lunch breaks have snatched unsuspecting
youngsters from their chairs, flogged them briefly, apologized to Mr. Harrell for disrupting math lessons, and dashed off
to work again while the children sobbed and sucked snot.

But there had been no preamble to the other beatings. No agonizing suspense. The mothers were not their own bosses and would
hardly waste hired minutes announcing what would soon be apparent anyway. But Father has plenty of time.

“I’m sorry, sir, for disrupting your class,” he says to Mr. Harrell. “But Rodney has got to learn not to go running off without
no one knowing where’s he’s at. These days are too dangerous for that.”

The class behind you emits a sudden murmur of comprehension. The tension in the room snaps in two like a pencil as the full
import of Father’s words settles. Everyone understands that he is punishing you for putting yourself in harm’s way. You know
this is a lie. You release the edge of the desk and fill your lungs to scream, “I stole!” but Father has begun swinging his
belt.

The licks are not as hard as the ones last night, but the leather against your behind smarts. You open your mouth wide to
shout above the whisk of the belt and Father’s grunts, “I STOLE!”

“I,” you say as loud as you have ever said anything.

Father interprets this utterance as a cry of pain or an admission of defeat. He stops whipping you.

“Stole,” you finish, but Father speaks louder than you and the word is lost.

“Mr. Harrell, I hope this takes care of the problem. If there is any more trouble, just call me.”

You walk back to your chair on legs as unsteady as spaghetti. Your classmates look at you with faces splashed with horror.
“What he do?” someone asked. “He went off by hisself and almost got snatched.” There were no clucks of sympathy. No one said,
“He didn’t have to whip him like that, all in front of everybody,” like they had when the tired mothers invaded the classroom
with their violence and fury.

You put your head on your desk and wrap your face with your bony forearms.

“Mr. Green, do you need to excuse yourself to the lavatory?”

You don’t answer.

“He said no,” Octavia says. “I heard him.”

You are grateful but do not lift your head. With closed eyes you try to trace memory to its origin, to the instant you were
born. And then maybe you could take your recollections back a single moment earlier to the place before. To the time when
you weren’t even thought about.

You are awakened by the final bell.

“Wake up, Rodney.” Octavia pats your arms with hands that smell like lemons. “You alright?”

You open your eyes. Her face is dark as pencil lead and shiny as a new penny.

“I stole.”

“You told?” she says. “Told what to who?”

“Never mind.” You reach into your pockets and give her the two cherry lollipops.

You are cold without your tweed coat. You should return to the classroom and retrieve it from the coat rack. No one will be
there. All the kids are gone. Sister will be ready to walk home now. You must turn back. Nothing you know is in the direction
you’re heading. Home is the other way. You keep moving, ignoring the blistering rub of your sock, which is twisted inside
your loafer. There is the sting of rain in the air that beats you around the ears. You would be much warmer wearing your good
tweed coat.

At Martin Luther King Drive, you dart across four lanes of traffic against the blinking warning of the cross signal. Car horns
scream, but the drivers accelerate when you find yourself alive and disappointed on the north side of the road. Carillon bells
sing from the college campus nearby and you walk toward downtown. Home is the other way.

A blue sedan pulls up beside you.

“Excuse me,” says the driver, lowering the passenger-side window. “I’m a police officer. There has been a bank robbery in
this area. We need to get all the civilians off the street.” A tree-shaped air freshener swings back and forth from his mirror.

“You’re not a real policeman.”

“What did I just say? Hurry up, kid, and get in the car. I don’t have all day.” He produces a U-shaped piece of metal. You
run your finger across the metal. It is as smooth as chocolate and fake as a glass eye.

The car burps sour exhaust onto the November day. You inhale deeply, tasting the gray poison. “Which way are you going?”

He points toward downtown. Against the overcast sky, you make out the lights rimming the Peachtree Plaza Hotel. When you enter
the car, you press your eyelids against your eyes until you see only dancing spots the color of marigolds. The door shuts
and the sedan vaults away in the direction opposite of home.

Sweet Pea

M
y mother tells lies.

She tells them all the time. For all kinds of reasons. Some of them make sense and other times it’s like she lies just to
hear herself talk. It gets tricky because she can mix a lie and the truth together so it ends up like Kool-Aid, and you can’t
really separate what’s water, what’s mix, and what’s sugar. Like she told me there wasn’t no such thing as a Easter Bunny,
which is true. But then she turned around and told me that my daddy had sent me my Easter basket, which wasn’t. She went out
and bought the thing and put his name on it. I know this because I found out that my daddy doesn’t go to church or celebrate
any holidays that got to do with God. And also she told me the truth about Santa right up front. I heard her explaining to
her best friend, Miss Darlene, my friend Delvis’s mother. “I told Sweet Pea right up front that there wasn’t a Santa Claus.
Why should she think some white man sneaking in here to give her presents? I’m the one that working double shifts. And the
sooner she know ain’t no white man ever gonna give her nothing, the better.” So that makes sense. But a whole bunch of other
times, she told lies that I still can’t understand why.

Like the time she told me that dope needles was the same as doctor needles. That was a lie she didn’t have no reason to tell.
I was little then, about six maybe seven. We were walking to the bus stop when I saw a needle hiding in the grass. I thought
that it was a quarter at first so I bent down to get it.

“Don’t touch that,” Mama said.

I pulled my hand back. “I was just looking at it.” It looked like a toy except that there was blood in the part where the
medicine go.

“A doctor must’ve dropped it out of his bag on his way to the bus stop.”

I believed her. Back then, I didn’t have sense enough to know that doctors don’t catch the bus. They ride around in big blue
Cadillacs.