Somebody's Someone (25 page)

There was this one time that me, Nadine, and her two girls was out doing some shopping at the local Kmart store and we ran into a friend of Nadine’s. The lady stopped us and started being nosy by asking all kinds of questions.

“So Nadine, how are these lovely little ladies of yours? Aren’t they the cutest things since ponytails? Their skin is so pretty and bright. And what wonderful hair they have.” Nadine just stood there, smilin’ at the woman. The woman didn’t say a word to me. I played like something had caught my attention, making me look off into the yonder. Then “Miss Nosy” turned her head in my direction.

“And what do we have here?” My breath got caught in my belly. I waited to see what Nadine was gonna give her.

“Oh, uh, this is my husband’s, Glenn’s, other daughter, Regina.”

“Oh, you never mentioned to me that he was married before.”

I watched as the two women rested they eyes on the other. The woman gave me a fake smile, the kind that Howdy Doody wore all the time, and continued to talk with Nadine for a minute. I turned my head the other way. It seemed like whenever I was with a grown folk that had to explain me, they had to scramble for words and take what they could, like roaches when the lights was turned on ’em. I couldn’t wait for the day that a stranger would ask who I was and somebody would return with, “Oh this here is my pride and joy.” I knew it might happen one day, if I was good.

While Glenn was gone, Nadine signed me up for school. Downer Junior High was located in San Pablo. I really didn’t want to have to go to another school and get to know more stupid kids that I’d prob’ly be leaving any ole way. I’d been to more schools than I wanted to let anybody know ’bout. The lady who was helping me wanted to know ’bout my ole school. I decided to not be too helpful.

“What’s the name of your last school?”

“I cain’t recall on account I been to too many.”

“Oh, I see.” The lady looked at Nadine over the top of her glasses and gave her a small, tight li’l grin.

“If you want the name of the first school I went to I can give ya that.”

“Oh. And what would that name be?” The lady sucked her teeth at me like Flo did on Alice’s TV show. I told ’em the name of the first school I went to so that they could send for my records. I figured the folks at Molly Dawson would know me a whole lot betta’ than anybody in the schools of North Carolina.

I was given a readin’ test and afterwards, the school people told Nadine I was smart and that I tested way higher than my grade level. I overheard that I was to be put in a class for kids who could do their work without a lot of help. They also said that I would need some work on the way I said things, but that that would come in time, with extra reading at home. They talked to Nadine like I was nowhere to be found or as if I couldn’t understand a word they said just ’cause I had a backwoods-sounding accent. If they thought I was so smart, why come they didn’t think I could hear? I was twelve years old, not some li’l baby, and I was sitting right there, listening. They should’ve just flat-out told me that I talked country. That way I would’ve understood ’xactly, and tried to do somethin’ ’bout it.

For the most part, I came to like being in my new school. I was in some special kind of program. The counselor explained that the program was designed for kids who s’posedly learned at a faster rate than other kids. We got to take field trips to the Standard Oil refinery and learn how oil was made. I also got to learn how electricity was discovered and the way it was put together so that stuff could run—like cooking and lightin’ up a house. I s’pose I was real glad to learn that the word
electricity
was good for something, since it had made me lose the spelling bee contest in my old school, Molly Dawson, when I forgot to connect the
city
part to the rest of the word. I also learned how to make a transistor radio with my own hands, which I got to keep and take home. There was nobody to show it to there, but that didn’t matter so much anymore. Nothing really mattered too much. Not only did I make stuff and learn a lot, but I got to read whatever books I wanted to. Mostly I’d just read the same things over again, like
Huckleberry Finn
and
Tom Sawyer
. I liked them the most—it was like they was old friends who made me feel like I wasn’t all by myself.

I made two friends at Downer. One was brown—the color of the Topaz perfume that Big Mama liked to wear. Her name was Anica. And my other friend was Italian, which accordin’ to her really wasn’t white. Her name was Marlena Ballentino. When I asked Marlena how come she got to be Italian instead of plain ole white, she didn’t have a good answer for me. She told me to ask her folks.

“Why cain’t you tell me?” I asked her.

“Why are you so worried about it?” Marlena answered.

I couldn’t find a reason other than wanting to know if I was something other than black. The way I seen it was, if Marlena was the same color as any other ole white person, but she didn’t have to claim white, then maybe I could claim something else, even though I was s’posed to be the color of black.

When I told Marlena ’bout my thoughts, she told me that wasn’t possible: “Everybody knows that black is just the color black, and it can’t ever be anything else.” When I wanted her to tell me why, she told me that black was black and that was that. And that her father said that she could have black friends come over as long as they wasn’t boys. I didn’t even waste my mind to tell her that Nadine and Glenn had kids that was white even though they was black, and that made them something else. What, I didn’t know, but they was definitely something else.

That night I went home and took off my shoe that had a black bottom and held it up to myself while I stared in the mirror. I also got a black crayon and put it to my face. I didn’t look nothin’ like either one. My own mind could see that no matter what Marlena said, I wasn’t just black. As a matter of fact, my skin was as far from being black as Marlena was from being Italian. No, I wasn’t gonna let her make me believe that I was black like the rubber sole of a shoe that was only good for shuffling bodies to and fro—and for leavin’ dirty scuff marks nobody wanted on they clean floors. I was more than just that. I was brown-skinned with pretty eyes, just like my mama. I was also good at crab ball and knowed that there could be somebody somewhere who was gonna one day want me. And even if there wasn’t, I was meaning to be somebody on my own. One day I was gonna be something else more than just a color.

I spent most of my time at Marlena’s, ’cause she had a big family and I just fell in with all the noise and commotion that was already going on. I think it took many whole weeks ’fore her folks ever knowed I’d come round. Lord knowed I didn’t wanna be with Nadine too much. Mainly ’cause it seemed like we felt the same way for each other. More and more her girls was the centerpiece of her life. Like when Big Mama used to put a lace doily on the table for company, and tell us that if we got something on it she would kill us. The doily was only for the company, not us, and we had to guard it with our lives from getting dirty. That’s how I felt when I was with Nadine, like her girls had to be guarded with her own life.

Nadine read stories to her li’l ones, right after she’d put ’em down to bed in they room with the matching beds and sheet sets, and curtains and dressers that had piggy banks shaped like a goose. She read ’bout Cinderella and the Little Red Ridin’ Hood, and each night finished one story and started the next— sometimes reading the same page over and over ’cause somebody loved the way it sounded. For a while I’d sit and wonder what it would be like to be treated that nice. I convinced myself that those was the ways of the white folks. And I couldn’t stand that Nadine’s girls was half being black and the other half white and they got the white mama like the one I wanted so bad. Some nights I’d just watch her girls and wonder if they would ever know what it felt like, not to have the same mama love them or want them for the rest of they lives. Even though Nadine didn’t treat me like I thought she would, I told myself that at least I should be happy that she never wanted to hit me or feed me the remaining parts of picked-over food, like Big Mama and them sometimes did.

After a while, I stopped wonderin’ ’bout all the foolishness that Nadine did for her girls and just started hanging out with my friends. I told myself that I ain’t wanting no mamas, white or otherwise, ’cause as far as I can see they all is the same: good for nothin’ but the ones they choose for they favorites. And that favorite wasn’t me.

On Sundays Marlena’s family loaded up they kids and went to visit her daddy’s mama. Marlena told me I couldn’t go with her family to visit the woman who lived in a place called Sonoma. Marlena told me it was ’cause her gran’mama hadn’t seen a lot of colored folks, and it might upset her to know her grands kept company wit’ the likes of ’em.

I didn’t know the word
colored
was something that I could be called. In all my natural-born days nobody’d ever called me such a word. Plus, what did it mean? How could I be colored and black, and something more than a color? I didn’t know how to put my mind round that. So I just said that was fine by me. I knowed that Marlena’s gran’mama was prejudice and she just didn’t know how to say so.

I was learning in school ’bout prejudice. We learned ’bout Martin Luther King and slavery. I’d heard of folks who hated people like me ’cause we was dark skinned. But then I didn’t understand why they put a white baby with brown skin and a white bottom on a bottle meant for white folks to use so they could get dark. I seen it in Nadine’s bathroom under her sink. It was called “Coppertone Sun Tanning Lotion.” I asked Nadine what it was, and she said it was to make folks with pale skin look betta’. When I asked her why folks who hate us wanna look like us, she told me that a lot of times people hated what they couldn’t have, and that not all white people hated dark skin. I figured white folks was mad at God for not givin’ them they fair share of dark skin, so they had to mix up some color of they own.

I decided right then and there that it was the color part that Marlena’s gran’mama hated and not me, and I was never gonna act black or colored, whatever that meant. Even though I secretly wanted Marlena to take up for me and tell her gran’mama ’bout me and how I was different than just a color, I decided that it was all right that she didn’t stick up for me, as long as she didn’t act too much like her gran’mama.

On the Sundays when Marlena was gone, I’d just hang out wit’ my other friend Anica. She was never my first pick of friends, but I figured she’d do when Marlena wasn’t round. Anica was a girl without many friends to call her own, and she really got on my nerves in no time a’tall. I thought her to be selfish and greedy—she ate up all my food on any given day wit’out thinking two times ’bout it. I guessed that was why she was so fat. Plus, her mama was “a foot soldier for Jesus” and didn’t seem to care too much for kids who didn’t know the whereabouts of they own peoples. But at least being with Anica and her strange mama wasn’t as bad as being with Nadine— they always included me in they conversations and showed me it was all right I was with them.

One day ole Miss Bushfield the “foot soldier” asked me how come I was always at they house, and where my folks was. When I told her I didn’t know, she kinda looked at me all bug-eyed and spooked, like she had seen the dead. “What kind of folks let their children run the streets anytime they wants to?”

I dodged her questions like they was meant for the air. Then she’d start recalling Bible verses that damned sinners to hell, as she put it. I’d just laugh her off as funny, not realizing, till way too late, that she was a stone-cold monster ’bout the word of God. On occasion, I was invited to go to church with the two of ’em. Anica told me it would be a good idea since her mama thought me to be a li’l bit strange. She said going to church would show her that I was from good stock. Anica’s mama said that all that came into her house needed to be clean. And standing before the Lord was the best way to clean the spirit. I didn’t mind so much, seeing that I used to go to church most Sundays back home.

My first visit to the Church of God in Christ had the dickens spooked right outta me not outside of five minutes. I ain’t never, in all my natural-born days, heard nothin’ like the stuff those folks was going on ’bout up in there! This is how it happened: First, we’d get inside the church building and find us some seats—we had to be right up under the preacher’s nose. I think ole Miss Bushfield had something going with the preacher, the way she flashed her teeth at him the whole morning. After taking our seats, we’d have to get some hand fans so we could cool ourselves off, in case the Holy Spirit made you too hot, in which case he might want to jump on you to clean your body of sins. This was news to me. At the Church of the Nazarene, they never talked nothing ’bout no Holy Spirit jumping on you and burning your sins outta you. Sometimes, while I was sittin’ there in that pew, I would start repeating the books of the New Testament, just so my mind would be busy with other things, in case Mr. Spirit thought he was gonna pay me a visit. I would try and r’member the names of the books startin’ with the ones I knowed well. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Romans were ’bout all I could recall. So I’d say ’em over and over again.

Then there was the music. The organ, piano, drum sets, and tambourines would join the choir and start warmin’ the souls up so that the Spirit wouldn’t have to work that hard to get in them. Now you knew when the Spirit had jumped on somebody ’cause of the way they shot outta they seats and run round the whole church full speed, whooping and hollering Jesus’ name at the top of they lungs. Many times they would hop on one or both legs and look like they was stepping in sticker bushes, or like Jesus hisself was beating the daylights outta ’em with an extension cord. On a good day, if the Spirit had got all the demons out they bodies, they could then start speaking some words that nobody but the Lord hisself could understand. Miss Bushfield told me it was called speaking in tongues. After all the cutting up was done the poor soul would fall down on the floor like Donna Janine did when she had one of them fits. That’s when the minister and his deacons would gather round the fallen soul and ask them to turn they life over to the Lord. It took as long as needed, ’cause the preacher wasn’t gonna take no for an answer.