Leaving Atlanta (24 page)

Just as soon as Mama had got out the door good, the phone rang. Girls are supposed to love the telephone, but I hate the thing.
It sits on the hall table with the cords curled up next to it like a tail. Just ringing. It’s scary how any fool with a dime
can get right in your house with you. It could be some crazy like in that movie
He Knows You’re Alone.
I didn’t go see it, but the commercial by itself did things to my stomach.

“Hello,” I said.

“Yes, may I speak to Yvonne please?”

It was a black man on the phone. But it wasn’t Uncle Kenny. The only other men that be calling over here are bill collectors,
and all of them is white.

“She can’t come to the phone right now.” I wonder if people know that when a kid say that, it means they home alone. Maybe
I should get a new lie.

“Is this Octavia?”

Who was this man calling me by my given name?

“Hello?” he said. “Octavia?”

When I get scared, it feels like somebody tried to pull all my guts out through my belly button. “No sir,” I said at last.
“This is somebody else.”

“I see,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “Can you give Yvonne a message?”

“Yes sir.”

“Please tell her Ray called. She has the number.”

As soon as my ears told my heart who was on the phone, it started beating a thousand miles an hour and I had to work to get
my air.

“Hello?” my daddy said, like a little question.

“I’ll tell her,” I said, and hung up.

I get to see my daddy once a year in the summertime when I’m in Macon staying with my granny and Ray is in town visiting his
mother. When Ray call Granny and say he want to see me, she makes me get a bath and put on a Sunday dress, no matter what
time of the day or what day of the week it is. The last time he came, he was wearing a pair of brown shorts and a shirt the
color of eggshells. When he sat on Granny’s brown-and-white couch it looked like he was trying to hide on there like a caterpillar
on a green leaf.

“So,” he said. Ray always starts things off like that. “So. What grade are you in?”

“Going to the fifth.” He had asked me the same question last year. Did he forget or was he trying to make sure I didn’t get
kept back?

“You like school?”

“Yes sir.” I don’t know what else I could have said. What he would say if I got up, put my hand on my hip, and said, “What
you think? Would you like school if everybody called you Watusi because you so dark and your hair so nappy?” I looked over
at him and for the first time I noticed that me and him had the very same hair. I cut my eyes at him like he did it on purpose.
But it’s funny. Black and nappy look different on a man than on a girl. When a man is real black it make him look like he’s
all there. Like you better not mess with him.

“So,” Ray said again. He so tall and skinny that when he sat down, his legs almost folded double. If he tried to get up in
a hurry, he might knee himself in the nose. “So,” he started again.

Granny came out the kitchen and gave him a glass of Kool-Aid he didn’t even ask for. She didn’t bring nothing for me. Ray
took two big swallows. “Ahh,” he said, like a commercial.

Granny smiled. She liked to say that Ray is a good man. Fine man. She said it right before he got here and I knew she was
going to say it again once he was gone. And if he go up to use the commode, she was going to say it once in between while
we waited for him to flush. That’s just how Granny is.

“So. What do you think about having a little sister?”

He was talking about his daughter he got with his wife. Granny sat the little girl’s picture on the coffee table so Ray could
see it. I looked at the picture. The baby was nine months old, he said. I had to admit that she was kind of cute. She was
as black as me and Ray, but it looked sweet on her too. It seems like my black is the only one that don’t quite lay right.

“She cute,” I said.

Ray smiled and picked the picture up. “Kiyana,” he said. “She’s pretty like you.”

I looked at him crazy. I almost corrected him and said,
I’m not pretty.
But that would have been rude. You supposed to say
thank you
when people give you a compliment.

His eyes were still all up in that picture. “I want the two of you to get to know each other,” he said, like somebody could
actually
know
a baby.

“Yes sir,” I said.

He sat still a little longer, staring at me while he finished his Kool-Aid. He wiped his mouth with his hand. “You don’t have
to call me sir.”

“Yes sir.” I felt stupid as soon as the words came out. I should have just said plain
ye
s.

He smiled. “You can call me—” He looked at the ceiling. Then he smiled harder. His teeth were small with a lot of space in
between. “You can call me Ray, if you like.”

He must be crazy. Granny would have three kinds of fits if I fixed my mouth to call my daddy by his first name. I wondered
would he think it was funny if he knew that I always think of him in my head as
Ray
. I just say
sir
to be polite.

I must have been giving him a strange look because he changed the subject right quick. “Gloria and me bought you some things
for school,” he said. Gloria is his wife. Delvis said that meant she was my stepmother, but I don’t think that a lady can
be your stepmother until you have to live with her.

Ray went out to his car and got three shopping bags. “I hope you like it,” he said.

“Yes sir. Thank you,” I said.

Granny popped out of nowhere, smiling like she was trying to show off every tooth in her head. “Did you say thank you?” Granny
said. She was so excited like the stuff in the bags was for her.

“Yes’m.”

“I didn’t hear you,” she said, still grinning, but I could hear the warning in her voice. Mama didn’t believe in beating children,
but Granny didn’t have no problem with it. I looked at Ray with my eyebrows in the air so he could tell her that I did too
say
thank you
. He just stood there stupid.

“Thank you,” I said.

It wasn’t enough for Granny.

“Thank you, Daddy,” I said.

He smiled back like this is what he came for. Granny relaxed. Ray kissed me on the forehead and left.

I stood on the porch while he got to his car. It took him a while to actually leave because everybody kept hollering at him
from they porches.

“How you doing, Dr. Ray?” old people said. They like to call him that, but he’s not a doctor. He’s a teacher.

“I’m just fine, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “Good to see you.”

The way people carry on about him, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if somebody asked him for his autograph.

The shopping bags had school stuff in them just like he said. Notebook paper and erasable ink pens. There was a pencil sharpener
like the one at school. I liked that and also some letter writing paper with pink ducks on it. The last bag had two pairs
of jeans and a regular shirt and a green sweater that seemed like it would itch when I put it on. All of it was too little.

Good thing he left the tags on. He always did. Me and Mama end up carrying it all right back to Rich’s and got everything
in a bigger size. But she never lets me switch the clothes out for a better color. I had to wear his clothes for my school
picture so Mama could send him a five-by-seven.

Granny held the green sweater out in front of her. “This is nice,” she said.

“Scratchy,” I told her.

“I bet his wife picked it out. Quality.”

It didn’t look all that special to me. “How you know it’s quality?” I asked. I get tired of Granny acting like Ray the president
of the USA.

“She waited until she was married to have her babies,” Granny said, folding the sweater neat like in a store.

I was confused at first, until I figured out that she was saying that Gloria was quality. I didn’t care if she was quality
or not, but I didn’t appreciate what Granny was trying to say about my mama.

“You don’t even know her,” I mumbled.

“Did you say something to me?” Granny said.

“No.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“No ma’am,” I said.

I picked the phone up and put it to my ear. The dial tone made me feel stupid but I felt better at the same time. Better because
Ray wasn’t still on the line some kind of way, hearing me trying to think. But stupid because any idiot knows that’s not how
phones work.

But why was Ray calling over here in the first place? It wasn’t my birthday. And he didn’t ask for me. He wanted to talk to
Mama. I wondered what for. Maybe they were getting back together. Like on
The Parent Trap.
But I can’t remember them ever being together. They not divorced. And he got a wife anyway. Gloria. Quality. Well, he got
another daughter too, but that don’t mean he not still my daddy. His high-quality wife meant that the new daughter, Kiyana,
was quality too. I wondered if somebody can be half quality. Like Patrick Fletcher in my class who is half white. But that’s
the same as being black. He just light skinned. So am I quality too? Or does it work the other way around?

I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look like much quality. Why my teeth have to be so crooked?
Mama got a nice smile and Ray teeth may be little and spread out, but they straight. And my hair. Even if Mama was to let
me get it pressed, it would take a lot before we got to quality.

Something was up and I needed some time to think about it. I couldn’t think about it at home because the phone was there and
I kept staring at it thinking Ray was about to call at any second. He had called three times in one week. He normally calls
that many times in a year. One for Christmas. One on my birthday. And one more time when Mama asks him for some extra cash.

One time, when he called, I answered; the other two, Mama picked up. She tried to play it off, but I knew who it was.

I needed someplace to go, but when you don’t got no car and ain’t got no money, you can’t be all that choosy. I decided to
go to the park next to our church, Flipper Temple. I could have some privacy there because hardly no kids hang out at the
park ever since children started getting disappeared.

It wasn’t so far from school to the park, but by the time I got to the top of that steep hill, I was panting. I sat on a hard
plastic swing to rest. Even with my gloves on, I could feel the cold chain in my hands. In my pocket I had a sharp pencil
so I could stick it in the eye of anyone that might try and snatch me.

I pumped my legs back and forth to get the swing going. I was too tall for this baby swing; my toes kept scraping the ground
and slowing me down. I tucked my legs tight under my behind and the swing went from front to back. I felt like a baby rocking
itself in a cradle.

When I was little and my Uncle Kenny was staying with us, he used to take me to this park. Sometimes we went to Burger King
across the street and got a large shake and two straws. I wish he was like he was and that he was here now.

I ain’t seen Kenny since two years ago at Christmastime when me and Mama was riding the bus going to Downtown Rich’s. I sat
by the window because I liked to see people Christmas decorations when we passed by. I was straining to see if a Santa’s sleigh
had all eight reindeer plus Rudolph when I saw Uncle Kenny sitting on the ground up against a rusted-out car. He was sleeping
like people do in church, with his head bobbing up and down.

“Look, Mama!” I hollered, so that everybody on the sixty-six Five Points turned. “There go Uncle Kenny!”

Mama didn’t look. “No, it’s not.”

“Look, Mama.” The bus was stopped at a light. We had passed Kenny, but if she tried real hard she would still see him. “That’s
him in the blue.”

But Mama still didn’t turn around. By the time she even looked at me, I couldn’t see nothing behind me but buildings.

“Your uncle is in Macon,” she said.

“But you didn’t even look.” I kept my voice low. Mama can’t stand to see kids cut up in public.

“Why I need to look out when I know what I know?”

When we got closer to downtown, Mama was the one looking out the window. “Sweet Pea, look at the Pink Pig.”