The Untelling (7 page)

“Well,” she said, “it’s what everybody wants to know. Don’t nobody care who in here is double-jointed.” She touched the knee of the young woman beside her, who had offered her deformed elbows as proof of her uniqueness. “No offense,” she said before going on. “I’m just saying that we should get to tell our side of the story. That’s all people want anyway.”

“That may be,” I said, looking at the bookmarks I’d planned to give as prizes to the students who could remember all their classmates’ names and quirks. “But I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy.”

“It’s not like that,” Keisha said, turning again to her double-jointed neighbor. “Why you in here? What’s your name again?”

“Angelina,” she said, picking orange polish from her cuticle. “They found drugs in my apartment. It wasn’t a lot and it wasn’t all for me.”

And so they had gone around the room. Some girls spun elaborate tales involving boyfriends, addictions, abuse, and misunderstandings. They talked about their kids. Two or three just mumbled a charge and an apology. Many of the stories were as thin and translucent as rice paper, but a few weighed in with the thick heft of truth.

Keisha watched her classmates as they spoke, nodding earnestly and rubbing gentle circles on her bulb of a stomach. She made sympathetic comments where there were pauses: “That wasn’t nothing but racism” or “That right there was just your lawyer’s fault.” She pointed at each girl when it was time for her to speak.

When each person in the tight circle of metal desk chairs had introduced and explained herself, Keisha turned to me. “So, miss,” she said, “what about you?”

I fingered the orange and green bookmarks and said, “Well, I’m originally from here. Got my degree at Spelman. I’ve been teaching literacy for four and a half years.”

She rolled her eyes a little and glanced at her classmates. “Not résumé stuff. We want to know what’s really up with you.”

I thought about Lawrence and his warning about “boundaries.” He’d lectured me during my orientation meeting:
Do not socialize with your clients; it’s inappropriate and counterproductive. And some of the people who will come through these doors are master con artists. The rest just want you to save them. Either way, it’s bad news and it’s the reason why you need to have clear and firm boundaries.

I had tried to do it Lawrence’s way at first—avoiding lingering eye contact, offering no details about my personal life. If someone had asked me my zodiac sign, I’d have refused to reply. But then I had been working nights, teaching older students who just wanted to learn. They weren’t curious about my personal narrative and weren’t interested in sharing theirs. They just wanted to read well enough to get their GEDs or driver’s licenses. At Christmas they all chipped in to buy me a silver-plated desk set, and that was about as intimate as it got.

But on the first day of this term, I’d been in the center of a ring of girls, their faces wide-open like ceramic bowls. The twelve of them had stared at me with almost tangible anticipation.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s really nothing to tell.”

“Oh, come on,” Keisha said with the grit of annoyance and the sugar of pleading. “Tell us
some
thing. How old are you? Are you married?”

“This is a little inappropriate,” I said in a voice that I hoped was clear and firm.

The dozen young women had sighed in disappointed unison and had opened their textbooks.

Now we were five weeks into a fifteen-week term and I’d thought back on that moment several times. There were only eight girls left out of our original twelve. Tomeika got caught smoking crack, just down the block from my house. As our in-class writing assignment we wrote letters to her. I didn’t know what to write, so I sent her copies of our reading assignments, poetry by Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni. I hoped it might help somehow. Double-jointed Angelina and pretty Benita just disappeared. Lani said she was bored and dropped out.

Each time I whited out a name from my roll book, I remembered that moment and their open faces and I wondered how much blame I should heap onto my plate.

Lawrence tells me not to mourn. At least nobody died. Two people up in Reidsville had passed away on him already. On the first day of the term he had warned me that I should expect a few to recidivate, a few to vanish, and at least one to die. Some days, when my girls were quiet and hunched over their workbooks, I wondered which of them it would be.

After class today, when I’d gathered all my things and left the building, I found Keisha sitting on the porch swing. She didn’t pretend not to be waiting for me. She used to do that at first, rummaging through her large purse, looking for keys, although she always rode the bus to class. Now she sat openly, whipping her eyes toward the door when it opened. Rocking in the wood swing, she chipped layers of paint with her airbrushed fingernails. Her pooch of a belly protruded just farther than her apple-sized breasts.

“Hey,” she said, patting the space on the swing beside her. “Be careful. It’s hot.”

I eased down and felt the heat through my slacks. I sat next to her, rocking back and forth in the heavy air. From the porch I could see the roof of the Phillis Wheatley YWCA—my family’s destination on the day of the accident. I think that I like being so close to the place where everything changed. It’s a sort of daily explanation of why things are as they are. It’s like keeping a picture of Sir Isaac Newton on your desk to keep from forgetting about the fundamental nature of gravity.

My mother thinks this is perverse, and allegedly this is why she never comes to visit me. She and I agree that the past is alive and thriving in Southwest Atlanta. Mama believes that the intensity of pain is directly related to proximity. This is why she likes living where she does—close enough to ache but too far to actually bleed. She will never come to my house, and, sometimes, this pleases me. Hermione has never visited either, and this snub breaks my heart. She can’t blame it on my zip code. As far as my sister is concerned, the past has passed. Mama and I need to just move on. At least this is what she says. I find it hard to believe that someone as bright as Hermione would not see what is so obvious. The past is a dark vast lake and we just tread on its delicate skin.

“What’s wrong, Miss Aria?” Keisha said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just hot, that’s all. I can’t believe it’s only the last week of May.”

“I always pick the worst times to get pregnant,” she pouted.

“I thought this was your first baby.”

She shook her head. “I told you I got a little boy. He is in Oklahoma with my aunt. His name is Dante? Remember I told you that?”

I shook my head. “This is the first time I’m hearing this.”

She made a smacking sound and crossed her arms over her chest. “See, Miss Aria. You ain’t right. You act like you care about us and everything, but then as soon as people finish talking, poof, you forget whatever we told you.”

I was pretty sure Keisha had never mentioned another child. My memory wasn’t as good as Rochelle’s, but I would have remembered something like that. I mentally scrolled through our previous conversations. It was hard to keep track of all the confidences she shared. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be so intertwined with a student, but Keisha looped me in with the stories of her life and held me fast.

She must know how affected I am by secrets, confessions. Before the first week of class was over, she helped me carry my belongings to my car. Before I’d even opened the trunk, she told me that the man who had accused her of credit card fraud was the father of her child.

“Now, that’s a secret, Miss Aria. He doesn’t even know himself.”

Secrets flattered me, the idea that someone, even Keisha, would trust me with something so private. She told me something new each week, it seemed, until I began to think of myself as her confidante. When I listened, sometimes I pretended that I was the young girl pouring my heart out to a woman that was not old, but older than me. Wise enough to give decent counsel. When I talked to Keisha, I tried to tell her things that I wished someone had told me. Not that I would have followed any sensible advice. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t interested in things that were good for me. But I think that I would be a happier adult if I could look back on my teen years and remember that there was someone there who cared enough to try and give me a few words by which to live.

“Keisha, you didn’t tell me about Dante. I wouldn’t have forgotten about something like that.”

“Whatever,” she sniffed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Hungry?”

“Hungry for Taco Bell.”

“Let’s walk over there,” I said, glad to see her smile.

“Taco Bell is too far to walk,” she huffed, not rising from the swing.

“It’s just up the street,” I said. “Not even half a mile. Walking is good exercise.”

“I’m not trying to lose weight.” She stretched her T-shirt around her, emphasizing the small pouch of a belly. “I’m
pregnant
.”

Lawrence walked out onto the porch then, looking relaxed and slightly disheveled in a wrinkled T-shirt and pressed pants. Keisha scooted up off the swing.

“How are things going, Aria?”

“Good,” I said. “Gearing up for the GED.”

“And you, young lady?” he said. “When is the blessed event?”

Keisha placed a hand on each side of her stomach. “October.”

She looked at her yellow sneakers; Lawrence looked at me; I stared out at the boarded-up bungalow across the street.

“Well,” Lawrence said after standing almost a minute in the murky silence of an interrupted conversation. “I’m going back in. If Eric comes by, tell him I’m out back.”

“Okay.”

As soon as the front door shut Lawrence in the building, Keisha said, “Eric’s his boyfriend?”

“His partner,” I corrected. “They’ve been together six years.”

“They want a baby, don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“He asked me about my baby. He asked me if I was going to keep it.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I’m not lying,” she said. “I went in his office to do some paperwork and he started asking me all these questions about the baby. Who is the daddy, did I feel that I would be able to raise it right, and what did I think about adoption and everything like that.”

I shook my head and shrugged. I knew that Lawrence and Eric were interested in having kids, but I was surprised to know he had been quizzing Keisha. If it was inappropriate for me to take a student to lunch, certainly adopting their babies would be a breach of boundaries as well.

Rochelle and I had attended Lawrence and Eric’s “commitment ceremony” two years ago. It was supposed to be the same as a wedding, but it didn’t feel like one. It wasn’t just that there were two men standing before the preacher in matching linen suits. There was something about the vibe of the gathering that didn’t feel quite official. Maybe it was because it wasn’t in a church, or maybe it was because there were not enough relatives there. Out of the four parents, only Lawrence’s mother was present. Rochelle says that they are as married as anybody and I suppose that she is right.

“So what did you say to Lawrence when he asked about your plans?”

“I told him that I was keeping my baby. My mama’s sister in Oklahoma got Dante. That was different; I was fifteen then. She couldn’t have kids and she promised that she would take good care of him. But I am keeping this baby; I’ll be eighteen by the time it gets born. And if I
was
looking for someone to adopt, I would give it to a regular family to raise.”

“You told him that part about the ‘regular family’?”

“No, I just told him that I was keeping it.”

Keisha whined until I agreed to drive her to Taco Bell. She slid into the passenger side and ejected the cassette tape before I could even get the car started. She fiddled with the radio, quickly locating her favorite hip-hop station. The car filled with the voice of a young man waxing about bitches and Bentleys. I looked at my worn Anita Baker tape that rested in the cup holder and wondered if I was getting old.

At the restaurant I handed Keisha a clean twenty-dollar bill, not expecting her to spend the whole thing. It would take some doing to blow twenty dollars when the most costly thing on the menu was $1.19. But she managed, giving me less than a dollar in change when she came back to the car carrying four white bags stuffed with burritos (supreme and regular), tacos (hard and soft), and a couple of tostadas. There was an extra-large Mountain Dew that we would share.

“I got a lot.” Keisha grinned. “Because I’m eating for two.”

She got in the car, infusing the vehicle with the smell of greasy meat and imitation cheese. I had reinserted the Anita Baker tape and she didn’t complain. She twirled a blond braid around her finger and looked out the window. “I’ve lived in the same apartment my whole entire life,” she said. “Me and my mama.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

I swerved to avoid potholes and bottle glass in the parking area of her apartment complex. I angled toward a space.

“Don’t park there. Go around the side so we can keep an eye on your car from the window.” She spoke with her eyes focused on the bags of food. “Not that this car is all of that, but you never know what people want to steal.”

I followed her up the concrete steps to her second-floor apartment. The door was covered with red foil and bore an oddly shaped wooden sign that said “God Bless Our Home.”

“My mama made that,” she said. “You know how that vocational stuff is. When I did vo-tech, I learned how to do calligraphy.”

She opened the front door and we pushed into her living room. “You not allergic to plants, are you?” she asked me, as she asked me every time I came to visit. The tidy apartment was jammed with houseplants. Yellow and white kalanchoes bloomed in clay pots in the windows. Spider plants hanging from ceiling hooks grew and drooped. A robust shoot of ivy climbed up a makeshift trellis, completely obscuring the north wall.

“I like plants,” I said.

“Me too, but my mama is crazy for anything that can grow. She got the ivy from a social worker when I was born. It was just one little leaf sitting in a cheap pot. Now look at it.” She went to the window, swiveled open the blinds. “That’s better.”