Somebody's Someone (42 page)

“Claire,” I called out to her, surprised at myself but not giving a damn if anybody heard me call her out by name or not.

She looked up at me with eyes that was swoll and the color of cherries too ripe for the picking. Trying to put herself back together, she moved a li’l and slung her hair back out her face. There was a small piece of hair layin’ by the side of her mouth stuck in the wetness on her cheek. I reached down and moved it away and asked her what the matter was. She dropped her head back in her hands and started hollerin’. I could feel her cries pulling on something way down deep in me. So I sat down next to her. She was shaking like a baby who wanted a bottle that was right in front of it, but it couldn’t get it no matter how hard it fought. No sound was coming out.

My heart hurt for her from the front through the back. Like somebody had took a hammer, maybe like the one that judge was holdin’ earlier, and hit me clear through my body, then wrapped me in a strange heaviness and left me for dead.

“What?” I asked her. “What you want? Whatever it is, just tell me. I’ll get it for you!” My own eyes was startin’ to water.

With what sounded like a deaf and dumb person trying to get the words out they mouth and all outta breath at the same time, Claire gave me soft grunt words with no meanings. It was like she was fallin’ from something and couldn’t catch herself. After a minute, she finally said something.

“I want you to know that I tried, sweetheart. I really tried. I was there for you today; I was there. I want you to know that I did the best I could. I did everything I could do to try and make it happen. I did everything the way they told me to do it. I tried to do it right, just like they’d asked me to do. I even met with your father, to ask him to just give you to me.”

I tried to make heads or tails of what she was saying, but it wasn’t making no sense to me.

“What are you talkin’ ’bout?”

“Oh my God, Regina, I want you to know how much I love you and what you mean to me.” She looked in my eyes, and I saw what she said to me. “I tried to get you for my foster child today. I tried to become your foster mother, but they wouldn’t give you to me. I wrote letter after letter and tried to get someone to listen to me, but they wouldn’t listen.” She was slobbering all over herself by now.

“They said that I wasn’t what you needed. They said you needed more than I could offer you. Oh my God, sweetheart, I am so sorry. I know that I’m not black, but what does that have to do with anything? Can you tell me that? I just wanted to give you a better chance at this life.”

All sound came to a rest. It was like the first time I dived into the water with Miss Claire, and my ears and everything filled up fast with a stinging feeling. I was floatin’ up high. High in the air, where nobody could see me. Then all of a sudden, I started to fall. Fallin’ through my whole life fast, and there was nothing to catch me. I kept on goin’ and goin’—more and more slowly. From where I was, I looked down at her, and I didn’t see nothing. No tears. No sad eyes. Nothin’. I was light. Light as a feather that fell off a bird. No, I was a butterfly—yeah, a butterfly. Claire had told me all ’bout them. I lifted my wings and wrapped ’em round her neck and breathed air out at her as I tried to quiet her heart. I wanted to take those eyes and rub ’em with a salve, so the hurt could go back to where it came from. Or maybe I could take the tip of my wing and brush it against her face, back and forth, so that Claire could again believe in butterfly kisses—and let them make her feel betta’, like she’d done for me.

I tried speakin’ the words that was runnin’ through my mind, breaking their neck to get to her and rest in the creases of her pain, sending that ole nasty sadness back to its grave where it belonged. I was wantin’ to tell her that it was all fine. It was all rightly fine. In the whole of my life, nobody had ever did what she’d done for me. I wanted to let her know that for the first time someone had stood up and fought for me, just plain ole me. Not for the money they would get from the county, or who-ever—but b’cause they just liked me. But most of all I wanted her to know that no matter what—no matter what—it was more than good ’nough to know that finally, finally somebody had wanted me for their own someone, just like I’d ’magined. I wanted her to know that this was more than anybody had ever wanted for me.

Sometimes when you in a dream, you think it’s real, and you believe you said what you was thinking. That’s how it was for me. That’s how it was.

I packed up all my things in boxes and green Glad garbage bags. After all the moving I’d done up till now, I still didn’t have nothing nice to carry my belongings in. The county wasn’t allowed to spend funds on stuff like suitcases and so forth. After all, they wasn’t in the business of vacations and traveling. That’s what Miss Forde told me. I didn’t really care too much ’bout what she had to say.

I’d already been to visit the facilities I’d be stayin’ at in Redding. Miss Forde had put that together for me real quick-like. I could tell that she really wanted to get rid of me—but I wasn’t gonna let her stupid self bother my mind. I was gonna go to Redding and do whatever it was they wanted me to do.

My visit to Redding showed me that there was no black folks anywhere to be found—except for the two other girls and me that lived in the home, which confused me ’cause I thought Miss Forde was real concerned ’bout that. But I didn’t care anymore. The new placement I was s’posed to be living in was called Guideways, and it could take a lot of girls at one time. There would be twelve girls to every staff person—that didn’t matter to me either. All I could see was that Guideways was ’bout as far away as they could get me from the shelter—and Claire. When I asked why I had to go so far away, Miss Forde told me that it was one of the last stops for me b’fore they’d consider me for a place called Napa State. Wherever that was. She also said that it was as far away from Martinez as she could get me. Deep down I know Martinez wasn’t the only reason she wanted me far away. No matter what, though, I wasn’t gonna show her that it mattered to me, I just said I wanted to leave Martinez anyway.

That day came soon ’nough. On the day I was leaving, I overheard the staff talking. They said that Claire was gone on a work leave and that the big boss had told her she had crossed the professional line and that she had broke something called ethics. Plus, they said that it was awful how she’d been accused of maybe being gay and un-pro-fession-al with a minor. I didn’t even care ’bout that either. My body was empty for caring.

My body was now tired, and I couldn’t seem to make it wanna do nothing anymore. The place b’tween my bosom seemed dry. I don’t know—maybe I was just finally all dried out. There was no more tears to cry.

The white county car with the ugly gold sticker was waiting outside the door. Everybody was waving bye to me, and I couldn’t even tell what they was saying—and deep down it really didn’t make no mind to me. Earlier that day, Miss Forde had told me that if I could just be good, then she would try and arrange for Claire to visit me in a few months—after I settled in and all. She finished up by saying some real encouragin’ words: “But most important of all, Regina, you have to be good.”

I had to be good. I listened to her words, and they made me think on the times that Lula Mae would beat the shit outta me, then say, “You betta’ not cry, or I’ll give you somethin’ to cry for.” Even though what she was doing would hurt me so bad, I wasn’t s’posed to let on that I didn’t like it. That’s what Miss Forde’s words felt like to me. I held in all that Miss Forde said to me, knowin’ well and good that it wasn’t her words that made my mind wanna ’magine what good could be like. Right then, I was r’membering the time just b’fore I left to go and visit Redding. I seen Miss Claire as she was leaving her shift, and we said good-bye. Her eyes was small and drawn up like she’d been crying for a long time. Just looking at her made me wanna die right there and become the next bit of air she breathed in. I didn’t know how I was gonna be able to go on.

“I’ll keep fighting for you, pumpkin,” she said to me as she placed her hand under my chin to hold it up. “I’ll always be here for you, and I love you more than words could ever convey.”

It felt like I died right then—or maybe I did; I don’t know. I wanted to know how somebody could get that close to love and have to say good-bye. I just stopped feeling. Miss Claire started to walk outta the big orange doors that led out the shelter, and I just stood right where she left me.

“Hey.” She turned and looked at me. “I know I don’t have to say this to you, but for me, and more so for yourself, please be good and take care of yourself, sweetheart, and I’ll miss you. And most of all know that God loves you and will never leave you. He’s the one that really counts.”

I made up my mind. It would be for Miss Claire that I could be good. Not for Miss Forde.

I was imaginin’ that no matter what, I could do and be whatever it took to make Miss Claire proud. I wanted to make her prouder than anybody had ever hoped they could be for me. She’d been the one to show me how to have hope when there was none—she’d told me it was all in how you seen things. Deep down inside me I knowed that no matter what happened here on in, I’d forever know what feelin’ special really was. It ain’t had nothing to do with the color of nobody’s skin, but it had all to do with just saying kind things to folks and believing in ’em. That’s what love was: when somebody did everything in they power to make someone feel special—and that’s what I got. I got to feel just like them li’l white girls I’d seen on TV, and nobody could take it back from me—it was all mine.

Miss Claire also told me that everybody was full of good and that we all had a way to choose to make it come out anytime we wanted—and I believed her. When I thought on what good was, I could still see myself with her—maybe we was in Hawaii or her apartment in Walnut Creek—it didn’t make no mind to me. I was always gonna have her with me. Her words was still tucked in the pocket of my mem’ry, and they would be there when I needed ’em. For the life of me, I ’magined that God wasn’t done with us. And for that, I told myself, I could be good. For her I would be good.