Somebody's Someone (8 page)

Monday came round soon ’nough, but instead of going to school like Odetta had said, she took me shopping for new clothes and supplies. Lord knows the clothes I came with was fit to be tied and burned. First we went down on Congress Avenue to find shoes and a couple pairs of socks. Then on to S. H. Kress five-and-dime store, and last we went to Newberry’s.

Aside from that time with the too-big coat, I couldn’t r’member going shopping b’fore, and now I could actually own things that I had only seen other kids wear. I bought a pair of bronze sandals that had a piece of leather that went b’tween my toes, and a smaller strap that held my big toe down. The buckle at the ankle kept the shoes on my little skinny feet. The pants I tried on was larger at the bottom than they was on top, and the shirt had puffy sleeves with little holes that looked like cutout petals all over it, and a drawstring neck tie. I’d seen the folks on
Soul Train
and
American Bandstand
dress like this, and I’d longed for the day when I’d have my own. The shirt had to be long sleeves—Odetta said we had to hide my scabs. She said we didn’t wanna give nobody reason to talk. I didn’t see any harm in folks talking. Maybe somebody would talk loud ’nough for Lula Mae to hear, and she would know that what she did was shameful. I listened to Odetta, though, and I got the long sleeves. When we was through shopping I had the first whole outfit I could ever recall getting without having to beg my school’s Salvation Army office for free vouchers to use at their distribution center. For now, I was happy.

My first day at the new school was like a commotion straight outta a book. The folks that really knowed me would say that I read more than the presidents did. At least that’s what Daddy Lent said ’bout me. “Johnnie, you ought to watch out for that gal there; she reads more than the president I ’magine, and if ya don’t watch her, there ain’t gonna be nothin’ left for her to read.” As a matter of fact, Big Mama’d told me that even when I was little as four years old, I’d much rather read a book than eat my favorite sandwich: butter and sugar smashed b’tween two pieces of white Safeway bread. I did like them sandwiches, and that was the truth; but now I could eat the sandwich while reading the books.

After Odetta made her way through all the papers they had her sign in order for me to attend Roosevelt Elementary, I was sent to find my new homeroom. I was told to go down the hall, make a right then a left, and follow that to the end of the hallway. I did just that and made my way to the room. For a while, I held on to the little piece of paper that had 108 scribbled on it and waited by the doorway. The room was opened, so I looked round the class and started counting desks. I wondered which one was gonna be mine and hoped there was ’nough to go round.

Thirty-three chairs plus the teacher’s desk was my count. As I waited, my eyes landed and stayed on a chair that was at the back of the class. It was the one I wanted. I thought if I stared at it hard ’nough, then just maybe I could make it mine by puttin’ a jinx on it. What made the seat specially good was that it had a big window on the side of it—with clear glass so you could look out and see for a long ways. I loved to stare outta windows. At my old school, Molly Dawson Elementary, I wasn’t allowed to sit by no windows. For years my teachers would call Big Mama and complain ’bout how my daydreamin’ inna’rupted the class and my learning. Sometimes it got me into trouble. Not because anybody knowed what I was thinking, but that the teachers said it was all I did. Sit and stare. It was true. It was all I did. Anytime I was s’posed to be going to the reading circle or standing to salute the flag, followed by three verses of “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” I was nowhere to be found.

After year four, Big Mama’d grew tired of them teachers whining at her ’bout me. She finally flat-out told ’em to move the damned desk ’way from the window and stop calling her ’bout that daydreamin’ mess. She also added that if they wanted to give her the job to run the class, she’d be happy to oblige them if it meant they’d stop hounding her. From that day on, I had to sit at the front of the class right next to the teacher. So here I was in a brand new fifth-grade class. I prayed I didn’t have to sit next to no teacher. Anyhow, I needed to sit by the window. I needed to sit there so I could keep an eye out for my mama, just in case she changed her mind and decided to come and get me. Maybe I’d get a window seat since here at Roosevelt nobody knowed the first thing ’bout me and my staring. I crossed my fingers and wished on ’em that I’d get that window seat and my mama would come find me by it.

One by one the kids brushed by me and piled into the classroom. I watched as they found desks and took their seats. Some fiddled with opening desktops, while others pulled books out they bags and started reading. I just watched ’em while I tried to keep an eye out for the chair I wanted.

It didn’t take long ’fore I noticed a long, string-bean-thinlike white woman standing next to me and softly scooting me into the room. She grabbed the piece of paper out my hand and walked quickly to her desk. I watched as she balled my note up into her fist and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

“May I have y’all’s attention please?”

I watched as the slow-mouth-moving teacher tried to get the kids to listen to her. At first everybody kept right on talking, as if that teacher had never uttered a word. But by the time she repeated herself, and snapped out “Please!” like a bullwhip, everybody stopped.

“Now that’s mo-er like it.”

I watched as her small pink mouth wrinkled on the word “more.”

“Now, let’s all start over. Good morning, class.”

“Good morning, Misss Frannncisssss.” All the kids repeated her words back together.

“This morning, we got ourselves here a new pupil.” Miss Francis, who was sitting on the front of her desk, turned towards me, brought her hands together at her chest, and grinned. All eyes was on me.

“Sugar, why don’t you go on and introduce yourself to the class?” I could feel my cheeks suck themselves in to where I looked like a fish. And at the same time my body started making these half-round twists like I was trying to mimic a washing machine.

“Hi, y’all. My name’s Regina.”

All the kids repeated my name back to me the same way they’d said good morning to the teacher: “Hi there, Reginnnaaa!”

Other than getting into some serious trouble, no teacher’d ever made such a deal of me in they class. At least not since Miss Schenkel, my teacher who thought I handled words real well for my age, but even then she didn’t make it such a deal in front of the whole class.

“Is there anything you’d like to share with the class about where you’re from, Regina?”

“Nah. Not right now,” I told the teacher. By the time she was through with me, I had one foot stepping on the other, and my hands was having a wrestling match of they own behind my back.

“Well then, welcome. Welcome to homeroom one-oheight.”

Miss Francis pointed me to a seat that was empty. It was the one I wanted. I took the chair and sat down, as the weight of my smile was almost too much to bear.

Odetta’s exact words to me, as she pulled me to one side, right b’fore leaving me at the school was, “Don’t go telling folks nuttin’ that might let on that you a runaway.” Runaway? I couldn’t believe that I was now just like Jim the slave, Huck’s friend. And Odetta was kinda like Huck—hiding me out so I’d be safe from the bad guys and Huck’s ole drunk pap. Well then, I told myself, I should do my best to keep a tight lip and not spoil our little secret.

One thing ’bout me, was that I’d learned good to concoct a story real quick-like from scratch. Donna Janine had been good for those kinds of teachin’s. So, when these kids at my new school started askin’ me questions, I started spreading lies quick as a whip.

In one story, I told them that I was the ringleader in an all-girl gang and had to be put out of my school to break up the pack. Five minutes after that, I said that my mama was a movie star working in Hollywood and had to send me away so that I wouldn’t get kidnapped for a ransom. By the time the kids made they rounds to try and know my business, I’d told so many stories, I couldn’t tell where one started and the other ended. Most of the kids would just stare at me all bug-eyed and mysterious, but there was this one fat boy who flat-out called me a liar. Now, we both knew that them was fighting words, but I let him slide on account of Odetta trying so hard to help me out. I didn’t want her to see no trouble ’cause of me. Lord knows how many times I had been put out of my old school for acting the fool. They said I was bad. This time I wanted to try and do different.

I guess you could say everything was going good until I got to gym class. It was then that things seemed to take a turn for the worse. It started when the PE teacher, Miss Marks, asked me how come I didn’t change into the matching short set she gave me. I fibbed and said that the clothes was too tight, on account I didn’t want nobody to see my welt marks. Instead, I rolled my pants legs up just ’nough to keep from tripping on ’em. I convinced her I was fine and was allowed to go on and join the kids on the track for a running test. Miss Marks said it was President’s Physical Fitness Week and even though I was new, I’d still have to participate. No one there knowed it, but running was my favorite thing in the world other than reading.

I took the test, and as the Lord would have it, I beat everybody in the class by a good distance. At my old school, folks would’ve been hooting and hollering up a storm. They’d have been used to such things happening, but here, my luck had run out. After the race, the same fat boy that had called me a liar brought his mangy li’l group over to where I was and walked up on me. He took his finger and poked me in my shoulder to get my attention.

“Hey, where you be from for real?”

“None ya,” I told him. I don’t know who he thought he was, but he didn’t scare me.

The boy looked at me with his eyebrows raised up and said, “ ‘None ya,’ what’s that s’posed to mean?”

“None of yo’ business,” I said back to him as I rolled my eyes and neck at the same time.

“You think you is betta’ than us, jus’ ’cause you can run, huh?” the boy asked, with his straggly lot standing beside him.

“Nah,” I said, with my feet spread wide apart and my hands on my hips, letting him know that I wasn’t scared of him a’tall. “I don’t think I’m betta’. I’ve just run my whole life, that’s all.” At my old school, I was known as a bully. I would beat up anybody that sassed me or talked the dozens about my mama. Sometimes I would even take up for the little kids who couldn’t help themselves. My beating folks up got so bad the principal took to sending me home from school one half hour earlier than the other kids. They said it would give me a chance to get home way ahead of everybody else. That worked fine for about a week, which is how long it took me to scout out a hiding place in the bushes in front of the school, where I would jump out and get whoever thought they could sass me and get away with it. So this boy standing in front of me, him and his friends, they didn’t bother me none.

“Well you might’ve been running all yo’ life,” he says, “but I know one thang, you betta’ watch yo’ back, ’cause you neva’ know who’ll be pushing you into somethin’.” Then, him and his friends busted out hollering and laughing. They just thought that was the funniest thing in the world to say.

I watched as they went on making fun at being so smart. But I didn’t wanna get in no trouble so I let them have they silly fun. And I bent down to unroll my cuffed pant leg.

“Oooh! What’s that on her shoulder, y’all?” I heard somebody saying, and, “Look at her neck!”

My shirt ribbon must’ve came loose while I was running, showing my shoulders and my upper back. Nobody noticed b’fore now ’cause they was too busy laughing at themselves. B’fore I could say anything, the bigmouth girls had run off pointing at me as they made their way inside the school building. They had seen my scars and scabs. Now I was in for it.

The bell rang, and everyone that was left outside slowly started making their way back to they classrooms. I walked into mine and took my seat. I had managed to tie my shirt strings back together, so that if you tried to look you couldn’t see anything was wrong. I picked up my number two pencil and started writing my name in the top left-hand corner of the paper, followed by the room number and teacher’s name, just like I’d been told to do earlier that morning, but I’d got sidetracked by the big window. I printed my name perfect b’tween the two solid lines, making sure the smaller letters stayed underneath the broken-up line. As I started writing in my homeroom number, I heard the teacher call my name out loud.

“Regina Louise Ollison, could you please step outside with me for a moment?” This time her voice wasn’t so slow-moving. And she looked at me straight in my eyes, as if I was staring at a picture of Jesus hisself. Oh, Lordy. I sat and watched as the teacher lady stood up and headed for the door, motioning with her hand for me to come along. I couldn’t quite make myself believe this was happenin’ to me, but then my body started to fail me as I half heard the other kids laughing and whispering. When the teacher had reached the square of the door she turned round to see if I was behind her. I wasn’t. At first I got up slowly, like I was in slow motion. I heard the teacher call my name out again, and I realized I might be in a heap of trouble, so I left the class as fast as I could.

Outside, the teacher reached to put her hand on me, but when I saw her motion towards me I flinched and put my hands up like I was protecting myself.

“Whoa there!” the lady said as she quickly moved her hand away and stepped back. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just trying to make you feel comfortable, that’s all.” I watched as her face tightened up and she looked at me with questions running through her mind. Her voice changed, and she got real serious-like and lowered herself down to meet my eyes.

“Now, Miss Regina, this brings me to why I asked you to come out here in the first place. Is everything all right at home?” she asked me. But she sho’ didn’t wait long for me to answer back.

“Some of the children said that you had what looked like cuts on your body, is that true, Miss Regina?”