Somebody's Someone (33 page)

I let his stupid words sink into the back of my mind and secretly wished that somethin’ bad would just happen to Glenn and he would just go away forever.

“Anyway, it is God’s job to love you, not mine. His love is pure and incapable of running out. Therefore, my dear, he can never ever leave you. Believe me when I say that he’s the only one who could possibly give you what you need. And I fear that you need a lot. And not only do I not love you, but your mother doesn’t as well. She can’t love you or anyone else for that matter, due to her selfishness and jealousy. Ruby simply can’t look you in the face and not feel contempt for you. Looking at you only confirms her own sense of self-hate; therefore, she’d rather not. Can’t you see that? It is as clear as water. Furthermore, not only do we not love you, Regina, but it is high time that you grow up and learn that no one can or will ever be able to love you like Jesus. It is time that you learn to love yourself with the help of the Lord. He’s the only one who can help you. After all, you are the one who’s decided to stay with the enemy. And believe you me, if you continue to choose to consort with the enemy, you shall suffer greatly.”

When Glenn finished talking, my body felt like the devil hisself had crawled down my back and snatched my breath. It took all the words I could find to try and say somethin’ to him. “The enemy?”

“Yes, the system that you are now a part of is going to fail you. All they want is to say that you are just another li’l nigger girl who isn’t wanted by anyone—
so what!
Just remember, you are not the only one suffering, and nobody really wants to hear it anyway.”

By then, I was like a mad baby that wants to say something out loud for the first time but cain’t find the words to say it. All the words I was trying to grab hold of got caught in the breath I couldn’t take. I hung up the phone on him and his words and asked myself what kinda man would be so mean to say something to me like that. But on the other hand I kinda thought that maybe he was right. Maybe that’s why God was making things so hard for me—he was figuring that I was being selfish in wantin’ a mama and daddy when there was kids round the world who didn’t even have nothing to eat. I hated me for being so stupid and selfish just like my mama. I hated Glenn for showing me how stupid I was. I wanted to go away to a place where nobody could find me. Not even God if he strained his big ole eyes. I wanted to go where you close your eyes and don’t come back from it and everybody would be sad and cry. I wanted to be gone. Just plain gone.

The next day I told Miss Forde what was said b’tween me and Glenn. She told me he didn’t mean it and for me not to believe a word he said. She was wrong. I knowed that he meant what he said, and any fool with half a sense left to hisself would’ve knowed too. She said Glenn had somethin’ called a semantics problem and twisted words round so that he could come out looking good. She told me that I shouldn’t take too much of what he said to heart. I didn’t know what all that was meaning and didn’t rightly care. But I sho’ was getting mad at her for wanting me to keep on fooling wit’ that man.

Miss Forde fixed it so me and Glenn could see each other. Ever since he told me the truth, it seemed like he wanted to come round more than ever. The first time I seen him, he came round to the shelter. Lord have mercy, the man had gone from bad to worse. His hair was all growed up high on his head, and he’d grown lip hair to match it. Not only that, but he’d let the hair in his nose grow till it touched the lip hair. I didn’t know how he could breathe. If that wasn’t bad ’nough, he’d somehow got one of his front teeth to be longer than the other, making him look like a snag-a-tooth fool. I sho’ did hope none of the other kids seen him, ’cause I didn’t want nobody to think I knowed him, let alone was related to him.

During our meeting time, we sat in a li’l visitin’ room that was connected to the main office at the shelter. Glenn could’ve taken me out for a while if he’d really wanted to, like to McDonald’s or the park, but I don’t think he wanted to be with me by hisself, so we stayed at the shelter. We never talked ’bout much other than him tellin’ me how I was joinin’ with the enemy if I was thinkin’ I was gonna find love in the world. And that I was in cahoots with the devil for the way I acted towards him. He talked about Jesus and some man named Roy Masters for what seemed like hours. And if that wasn’t ’nough he told me I was gonna burn in hell for being a rotten child. The nerve of him! I just got right up and walked out the room on his sorry ass.

Anytime I had anything to do with Glenn—whether it was a call or one of his li’l raggedy visits, it seemed like I got worse and worse at the shelter. I knowed it, but I just couldn’t help myself. I would do stuff that was plain ole mean. Like this one time when I peed on the floor in my room and took a girl’s Raggedy Ann doll and smeared her face all in the piss. I even ran away one time, but was brought back fifteen minutes later—I didn’t know that a police station was right next door to the shelter whose main job was to keep watch for runaways. I’d never listen to what the counselors said, which meant that I never made it to the prize closet. They all said I was failing— all except Claire. She’d tell me that I was in a situation that was very challenging for a child to manage, but that I should continue to want to do better than I was doing.

I started just ’bout every mornin’ with a red mark. And by the evening, I was “ir-redeemable,” which meant that I would have to try again the next day. Only the next day never came. Seem like every time I had a chance to do a li’l better, I’d just get mad and think, Forget it! Since I wasn’t nothing, that meant that whatever I did cain’t hurt nobody, so I did just what I pleased. I even went as far as to do the worst thing that I could do at the shelter—I started smoking again. I learned to wrap tobacco butts that I stole from the counselors’ ashtrays, or picked up from sidewalks, in the paper that covered tampons. I didn’t even know what tampons was, but I’d convince the counselors that I needed ’em, and they’d give them to me. I learned these things from the older girls who came from north Richmond. This was also the start of me taking pills. The shelter was full of kids who could get they hands on anything you wanted, since most of ’em came from families who messed in drugs.

I took pills that made me feel like I’d been dumped in Big Mama’s sometimes running washing machine or the dryer in the Laundromat I used to go to. I didn’t like them pills too much, ’cause I was good for nothing after they wore off; so I decided to never, ever take ’em again. Somehow I knowed that I would never come back if I got too far out on them drugs.

Glenn came to the shelter to see me one more time. He brought me a bag full of candy with Pop Rocks, and a Coca-Cola along with that. I thought it was kinda nice until I heard from one of the other kids that if I mixed the two, I would die. I told the social-work lady I didn’t wanna see him no more, which came as no surprise to her, ’cause he had told her the same thing.

After that, Glenn called me once more. He brought bad news: he told me that Ruby had called and said somebody named Aint Bobbie had died of the cancer. I asked him if Ruby asked ’bout me. He said nothin’. I didn’t cry one tear—I had no feelings left for her. What came to my mind instead was the way I’d watch Aint Bobbie feed her babies. She’d take whatever food she was eatin’—be it chicken, greens, or corn bread— chew it up good, and put her mouth to her child’s and spit the food right in. The baby, knowing no difference, would gum it some more and swallow, all the while looking in its mama’s eyes. That’s how I r’membered Aint Bobbie.

Aint Bobbie’s dying wasn’t so hard for me, but I couldn’t believe nobody from south Austin called to tell me themselves. I never cried. I mean I tried to push a tear out my eye, but it wouldn’t come. Finally I figured that I wasn’t s’posed to care ’bout her dying, and instead I should just see that maybe God took her away ’cause of the time she’d beat me till my knee swoll. Hearing ’bout Aint Bobbie made me wanna know how that ole stank-dog Lula Mae was feelin’—was she sick too for bein’ so evil? I kinda wanted for her to have died instead of Aint Bobbie, but I told myself that since I didn’t have to see her any ole way that maybe it shouldn’t bother me. I figured that all of south Austin was gonna be dead to me, so I should just get used to not hearin’ from them and not caring.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BUTTERFLIES KISSING

I CAIN’T SAY I
rightly r’member when Miss Claire Kennedy started wanting to do more for me than she did for anybody else. But I do know I must’ve planted myself right inside her heart by the way she seemed to smile whenever I’d come round. Maybe it was when I first came to the shelter and she called me pumpkin. Or when her and ole Miss Sandy would take me and learn me how to swim. I don’t know when it was; I’m just glad it happened. And even though I tried not to let on, I couldn’t help but let myself fall all out for her. Whenever she’d leave the shelter to go home, I wouldn’t want to let her go. I’d always try and find a way to make her stay longer. Sometimes I might play like I had a stomachache, just so she’d take the extra time to call up the nurse—and wanting to know what the matter was, she’d stay on a li’l longer. Or maybe my arms would hold on to her neck and not wanna let go when she’d give me a hug good night—even if I told ’em to. No matter what, something in me couldn’t get ’nough of her. I even went as far as to ’magine that maybe one day she might b’come my new mama. After all, the last home I went to visit had a li’l white girl in it and the woman was black, so maybe Miss Forde could let Claire take me.

If anybody was to ask me, I’d tell ’em I liked how Miss Claire told me how to speak better than I did. If I said, “I cain’t help myself,” she’d say, “You mean, ‘I can’t help myself.’ ” At first I thought her to be picking fun at the way I saw things, but she was so tolerating and smiley I knowed it couldn’t be true. “There’s no such word as
cain’t
,” she’d tell me. “And if you don’t believe me, look it up in a dictionary.” I went and looked it up in a dictionary like she showed me, and sure ’nough, there was no such word. Everything seemed to sound better when Claire said it. I even got to loving to hear her call me them sweet names she liked to use.

When I asked Claire why she called me names like “sunshine” and “pumpkin,” she said that whenever she looked in my face, my smile was so bright, it reminded her of the sun. And the reason she called me “pumpkin” was ’cause she was fond of me. Whatever that meant. I asked her why she called other kids “sunshine” too—she told me she had to call everyone that so that they didn’t notice if she only said it to me. “But don’t worry,” she’d say, “you’re my very special pumpkin.”

Whenever I tried to use Miss Claire’s words, some of the other kids poked fun and said that I was acting all white, and that wasn’t too cool. They also told me that black people wasn’t s’posed to wanna be like white folks. So I stopped using her words out loud. Most times I’d think on the way Miss Claire said things in my own head, and then I’d tell myself to save as many of her words as I could, just in case I’d need ’em one day. Secretly, I learned to tuck her way of talking away in a li’l pocket of my mem’ry.

Miss Kennedy was what I was told to call her. Us kids couldn’t call on the grown-ups at the shelter by they first names on account it wasn’t seen as respectful. I didn’t mind that—it made me r’member being in the South and having to put “Miss” in front of all the names. Even if us kids couldn’t say grown-ups’ names out loud, I loved to listen to the other counselors call each other by they first names. That way I got to hear Claire’s name as much as I wanted. Many times when I was just sitting by myself and thinking, I’d whisper the name “Claire” over and over underneath my breath in the hopes that somehow it would help me change into her li’l girl.

I was one of the few, if not the only, children left behind in the shelter on weekends. But I didn’t mind too much ’cause this is when I could have Miss Kennedy all to myself, if I was lucky. If Claire wasn’t s’posed to work, I’d hang out with whatever counselor was left to tend to me. But when it was her turn, things was special. She loved to go for rides and show me all the nice sections of Martinez, Concord, and my favorite—Walnut Creek, which is where she lived. The only hard part of the rides was that we had to travel round in a white county van, which I hated ’cause it made us stand out for everybody to see. Sometimes it seemed like people was pointing at us and saying things like we was retarded. When I asked Miss Claire ’bout why we had to ride in a big ole white “retarded” van, she told me ’cause we was special. I told her the only folks I’d seen ride in “special” vans wore helmets on they heads and slobbered on the windows. In our school back home, “special” was the ones to always get to school first, and everybody could see ’em get outta those yellow vans and make fun of ’em or try and get away from ’em in case they carried retarded germ cooties. Claire just looked at me and said not to worry myself ’bout that kinda stuff. Secretly though, I always felt sorry for the kids who rode them buses, and I promised God I’d never poke fun at ’em. I sure hoped that if folks seen me riding in a van, they wouldn’t laugh at me.

There was this one time that I went to Claire’s house and we didn’t use the van. I r’member she had to get special permission from the higher-ups to use her own car ’cause there was no county van that weekend. Her car was blue, and it was big, and I got to sit in the front seat with her just like I did with Big Mama. While we was riding down the road on this particular time, Claire handed me a present—just like that.

“Here, sweetie, I have a little something for you. I wanted to wait to give it to you because you know I can’t do it in front of the other kids.”

Yes, I knowed that. Miss Kennedy had gave me lots of nice things by then, and I knowed not to rub it in nobody’s face. We had worked out a understanding that whatever I got as a gift would have to stay in the big yellow envelope with my personal belongin’s till I got into a permanent placement. Right then, I could see that Miss Claire was wanting to love me—just like I’d seen other kids loved when they had mamas, and like Nadine was with her girls. I’d also seen it and felt it while watching folks on the TV, but I never thought I’d ever have it for myself in real life. Maybe God was no longer sittin’ down and laughing at me and pointing at how stupid I was. Maybe now he was trying to do good by me.