Leaving Atlanta

by Tayari Jones

  “You girls need to do something productive,” Mama said, putting down newspaper to protect the floor. “Since Father’s Day is right around the corner, you all can make cards.”

  Tasha thought that it was a good idea. She loved arts and crafts.

  “I’m not making a card for Rex,” Ayana said, loud as back talk.

  Tasha looked at Mama, expecting her to be mad, but Mama only touched the girl softly on the back of her neck.

  “You can make a card for anyone. Your granddaddy, or an uncle.”

  “I don’t want to make a card for anyone,” Ayana murmured.

  “Okay, you can just draw a picture.”

  Ayana didn’t draw a picture. Instead she ate paste and then threw up all over the table, ruining the paper Tasha had neatly folded and glittered.

  Mama had put a cold towel on Ayana’s forehead and made soft clicks with her tongue.

  Separated was regurgitated glue and sour spangles.

  Tasha went to her room to wait for Mama to come home.

  “LaTasha Renee Baxter,” Mama bellowed. “Come down here right now.”

  When Tasha got down to the kitchen, DeShaun was pleading innocent.

  “I had some juice, but I rinsed out my cup and put it right here in the dishwasher. And those aren’t my footprints neither. My feet are littler than that; see?” She put her foot beside one of the dirty marks.

  Mama, satisfied with the evidence, waved DeShaun into the other room.

  “You are really trying my patience today,” she started. She had taken off her high-heeled shoes and was gesturing with them. “What is your problem, Miss Lady?” She aimed the pointed toe of her pump at the empty juice glasses and the dirty floor. “I just mopped this floor last night. There is a mat—” She realized that Tasha was not paying attention. “Look at me when I talk to you.”

  Tasha raised her eyes to her mother’s face. She tried to talk with her teeth closed like grown ladies did when they were really mad. “You didn’t tell me you were separated.”

  Mama was caught off guard. Tasha could tell. “What?”

  “Monica said that her mother told her that you were separated. You didn’t tell that to me.”

  Mama sat down heavily in one of the wooden kitchen chairs and patted the one beside her.

  “I don’t want to sit down.” She could hear her heart beating in the sides of her head.

  “Tasha, Daddy and I told you and Shaun both that we would be living apart.”

  “But you didn’t say separated!” Tasha had never raised her voice at an adult before.

  Mama’s face changed and Tasha ran, frightened, to her room and shut the door.

  Half an hour later, Mama’s voice climbed the stairs. “Dinner’s on the table!” Tasha didn’t answer and no one came upstairs to see about her.

  The sounds of silverware clicking against plates she could endure, but the whirring of the blender made her put her face into her pillow and scream; Mama and DeShaun were downstairs enjoying milkshakes. Last week, DeShaun had refused her cabbage and Mama had coaxed her into eating it. Just one little bite. It was such a big deal that DeShaun might not get all her vitamins but no one cared if Tasha went to bed without any dinner at all.

  She dug around in her closet until she came up with a small package of peanuts that Nana had given her from the airplane and a stale marshmallow egg left over from last year’s Easter basket. She swallowed with great difficulty, choking on salty sadness and thirst.

  I will not eat with them again, she promised herself. They can have milkshakes from now until kingdom come and I will not even eat one bite.

  For two days Tasha kept her word. She ate ravenously at lunchtime and spirited away granola bars under her bed to tide her through the evenings. She chewed each bite slowly, trying to make it last.

  “Tasha will eat when she gets hungry,” Mama said into the telephone. “She’s not going to sit up in that room and starve to death.” She was quiet. “That’s easy for you to say … Um-hum. Hold on.” She hollered up the stairs. “Tasha, pick up the phone.”

  She went into her parents’ room. “Hello.”

  “Hey, Ladybug.” Daddy’s voice was dark and smooth like a melted crayon.

  She wanted to cry. “Hey, Daddy,” she whispered.

  “Your mother says you don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “She’s really worried about you. Why don’t you just eat a little something so she won’t have to worry.”

  “She’s not worried about me.”

  “Don’t say that,” he said. “Your mother loves you.”

  “She don’t act like it.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So are you going to eat?” The timbre of his voice masked an undercurrent of pleading, as if her refusal to eat dinner made an adult difference.

  “Yeah,” Tasha said. She couldn’t bring herself to disappoint or disobey him.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to eat dinner at the table set for only three.

  The next day, Mama stopped ignoring her.

  “Tasha, come down here and eat.” She accented each angry syllable with a tap on the banister with a spatula.

  “I’m not hungry,” Tasha yelled through her closed door.

  “Well just come down and sit at the table.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “You looked pretty healthy ten minutes ago.”

  Tasha didn’t answer. At the sound of Mama’s feet tiredly coming up the stairs, she kicked off her shoes without undoing the buckles and sprawled across the bed, hoping to appear at least a little queasy. Mama came in, disregarding the handmade signs ordering PLEASE KNOCK and ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  “Tasha,” Mama said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m tired. Come down and eat. I know you miss your daddy, but a hunger strike is not going to solve anything.” She searched Tasha’s face for a smile. “Come on, Tash, get up. I fixed cheese-dreams just for you.”

  Tasha sat up on her elbows, looking at her mother with a quizzical half turn of her head. Mama was blinking her eyes about a million miles an hour, like DeShaun did when she was about to cry. Tasha lowered her brows and pursed her lips. What was going on here? Was all of this an elaborate ploy just to get her to eat?

  “Don’t you want cheese-dreams?” Mama put her elbows on her thighs and leaned her face against her hand. The softness of her cheek bulged brown and gentle through the cracks between her fingers. Shutting her eyes, she said, “Don’t you want cheese-dreams?”

  Tasha heard it, a subtle change in pitch, the precursor to tears. She wanted to put her shoulder against whatever door was threatening to open and press hard. She wished she could put her finger in the hole like the Little Dutch Boy and save what was left of her life from the flood.

  “I didn’t know you made cheese-dreams,” Tasha said, hoping to make it seem like her refusal to eat had been a standoff over menu. She started toward the door, more spry than she felt, refusing to look at her overtired mother still sitting on the bed in her work-crumpled blouse and skirt.

  “Come here,” Mama said softly.

  Tasha stopped walking but she didn’t turn around; she didn’t want to see.

  “Give me a hug,” Mama said.

  Tasha could hear her exhausted misery. Turning on the balls of her feet, she moved toward her mother’s unsteady voice. Mama’s hug held a desperate fierceness that Tasha had not felt since she had narrowly missed being hit by a car four years earlier. Mama had gripped Tasha then in a melting embrace until she had felt herself disappear. She had been aware of the heavy pressure of Mama’s lips on the part between her braids, her forehead, each of her cheeks, and her quivering lips; then she knew nothing but the outdoor smell of pine and Mama’s neck.

  Mama squeezed Tasha today with the same famished affection. She felt, this time, the intensity of grown folks’ emotion and gasped with the heat of it. The hug lasted several unendurable mo
ments more before Mama released her.

  “Let’s eat,” she said.

  Tasha and DeShaun sat at the table, staring at each other with curiosity. Having cheese-dreams itself was odd enough. Mama had declared more than once that grilled cheese sandwiches made with French toast and smothered in raspberry syrup was not a balanced meal. On the rare occasion that she would consent to serving this treat, the girls were forced to eat a green salad first. But today, not only were they not required to choke down anything leafy, but they evidently were going to be allowed to ration their own syrup. Tasha poured a generous dollop on the center of the sandwich. It rolled down the sides of the bread. No response from Mama. She squeezed the bottle, releasing another raspberry globule. No response. She squeezed a little more. Then she realized that she had no idea how much raspberry syrup was enough. She didn’t stop pouring until the design on the plate was concealed and DeShaun was begging, “Give me it!”

  Tasha carefully cut a triangular section of the cheese-dream and popped it into her mouth. She was overwhelmed by sugar and a faint food-color bitterness. Mama looked at her daughters, struggling with too much of a good thing, and laughed.

  Her laugh was clean but heavy. The power of it shook her bosom, bouncing the gold locket around her neck. Tasha laughed too, although her favorite meal was all but ruined, drowning in sweetness. DeShaun giggled too.

  Mama rescued the sandwiches from their gooey beds and set them on clean saucers. Putting them down in front of the girls, she said, “I do believe that we are going to be alright.”

  “Ouch,” Tasha protested, as her mother fastened an elastic around a small, neatly partitioned section of her hair. It didn’t hurt, but she howled as a preventive measure. DeShaun never complained and, as a result, often went to school with her hair pulled back so tightly that her eyes slanted.

  “You know this is not hurting you,” Mama said, but she used a lighter touch.

  “Why can’t I fix my own hair?”

  “Because you can’t part straight and I can’t have you going out of this house looking like a little pickaninny.”

  Tasha sighed, resting her face on the inside of Mama’s thigh and running her hand up and down her pecan-colored shin, enjoying the texture of the stocking.

  “Tasha, let my hose alone. I don’t have time to change them when you put a run in them.”

  Tasha moved her hand, feeling rejected.

  “Okay,” Mama said, patting her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m done.”

  Tasha went into the bathroom to inspect the job in the mirror over the sink. Her hair was just like DeShaun’s. Evidently, Mama thought that it was cute for the two of them to be small and large versions of the same thing, like those dolls that nest inside each other. But it was entirely inappropriate, not to mention humiliating, for a fifth-grader to have the same hairdo as a little bitty third-grader.

  Assuming an air of maturity, Tasha wiggled the silver key hanging on a shoestring like a pendant, from under her blouse to the outside. This, at least, would separate her from her sister; no little kids had keys and Tasha had only gotten hers this school year. Instead of staying with their neighbor, Mrs. Mahmud, she and Shaun went straight home after school and stayed alone until Mama got off from work.

  Those two hours were Tasha’s favorite time of day. She was in charge. Each day, she gravely insisted that she be the only one to touch anything mechanical.

  “It’s too dangerous,” she had told her sister, as she adjusted the thermostat to seventy-four degrees.

  She looked in the mirror a little longer. If the weather had been better, Tasha would have demanded some modification of her coif. But it was raining outside and she would be forced to wear a stupid hat anyway.

  Tasha was sitting at her desk when her nose started to run. There was a long piece of bathroom tissue in her pocket, but Forsythia Collier, across the aisle, was dabbing at her nostrils with tiny Kleenexes from a cute little pouch. Too embarrassed to tear off a piece of crumpled toilet paper, Tasha inhaled deeply through her nostrils, hoping to reverse the flow without making noise.

  Mr. Harrell looked at her with disapproval from in front of the class. “Miss Baxter,” he said, “if you need to blow your nose, please go to the lavatory.”

  Tasha skulked out of the trailer appearing to concentrate intently on the white tile floor, flecked with black.

  Although the walkway connecting the fifth-grade trailers to the main school building was covered, it was not enclosed. Wet air blew into Tasha’s face. Just as she shoved her hands into her pockets, she saw Jashante Hamilton leaning against a pole. He rested his weight on one leg and angled his chin.

  “What you get sent out here for?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m just going to blow my nose.” For some reason, Tasha felt as though she were pleading.

  He was good-looking. Not in the same way as Roderick Palmer, who had pretty eyelashes like a girl, cute bow-legs, and skin soft brown like the wood around a pencil lead. Jashante was tall and brown-red like a pair of penny-loafers. His hair, shaved low to his head, was pomaded and brushed into rows of even waves. There was something grown about him. Tasha knew he was much older than the average fifth-grader. (Way older than her, since she had a late birthday.) Roderick Palmer claimed to have somehow seen Jashante’s permanent record, which said he was fifteen.

  “Don’t you have one of them little bitty Kleenexes in your pocketbook like all the other fancy girls?” he asked. His voice was slippery and almost deep.

  Tasha was flattered that he thought that she was of the same caliber as Forsythia Collier; in reality, she didn’t even carry a purse. She stuffed whatever she needed into her pockets or in the front flap of her book bag.

  “Oh. I left them at home.”

  Jashante didn’t say anything. He looked at her slowly. Tasha was fragmented as she watched him seeing her. He took in the babyfied hairstyle, seeming to count each plastic barrette. Eyes lingered on the faint outline of an undershirt over a chest almost ready for a training bra. Her bony wrists, a generic brown with no warming hints of red, sticking out from the too-short sleeves of a striped turtle-neck, narrow hips fastened into pink jeans.

  “I gotta go,” she said. “It’s cold out here.” She wanted the sanctity of the girls’ room where she could reassemble herself. She walked past him.

  “Say,” he said.

  She pretended not to hear.

  “Say, Fancy Girl. What your name is?”

  By then Tasha had reached the swinging door. She pushed it and went inside. Inside the warm, safe building, she made an effort to breathe slowly. She felt tingly, itchy, and warm all at the same time, like she was loosely bound in a wool blanket.

  The television, a small black-and-white with long antennae tipped with foil, was perched on top of the refrigerator. Tasha noticed it immediately when she and Shaun came down for dinner.

  “What is that TV doing up there?” she asked. It hadn’t been there an hour earlier, when Tasha had come home still crackling from the electricity of her hallway encounter.

  “Surprise,” said Mama.

  “I thought you said we didn’t need a TV in the kitchen.” Her good mood was losing voltage fast.

  “Well,” Mama said, “I knew how much you wanted one. And I saw this one on sale …”

  This was bad, Tasha knew. When she had first brought up the subject of a kitchen television, three years ago, it was after she found out that Monica Fisher watched cartoons in the morning while she ate her breakfast. She could imagine Monica giggling contentedly as she downed countless bowls of Lucky Charms. Tasha, on the other hand, had to amuse herself by endlessly rereading the back of the box of Shredded Wheat. When she brought this inequity to her mother’s attention, her request was unequivocally denied.

  “This family,” Mama had sniffed, “talks to one another while we are at the table. We don’t need TV to keep us company.”

  “But what about in the morning? We don’t talk then. All you and Daddy do is
drink coffee. Me and Shaun end up reading the cereal box.”

  “Shaun and I,” Mama corrected, and the case was closed.

  Reversal of opinion was not Mama’s style. This TV thing had to do with the separation. That was obvious. Since Daddy was gone, dinner conversation had dwindled to “pass this” and “eat your broccoli.” The TV meant he was not coming back to lively up the evening meal with knock-knock jokes or funny stories from work. Daddy was gone for good and in his place was a raggedy little TV that probably couldn’t even get Channel Forty-six good.

  And Mama didn’t even let them choose what to look at. She insisted that they watch the news at dinnertime.

  “But we wanna watch The Flintstones,” DeShaun whined.

  “No, The Dating Game,” Tasha complained.

  “We are watching the news,” Mama said, in her that’s-final voice.

  “But—”

  “But nothing. You need to know what’s going on in the world, or else, white people could reinstate slavery and you wouldn’t know it until they came to take you away.”

  That was something that Daddy liked to say. Mama had been doing that a lot lately. Like in the morning when she woke them up, she said, “Get ready to greet the world!” instead of “Rise and shine.” It was depressing to hear Mama say Daddy’s lines. It was a pitiful substitution, like the time when she lost her shower cap and had to bathe with a freezer bag on her head.

  As it turned out, the news wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as interesting as The Dating Game, but it was neck and neck with The Flintstones, since she had seen all of the episodes already. At least the news never played a rerun. There was a black lady on Channel Two whom Mama liked to call by her first name and critique on her appearance like she was somebody they actually knew. “Monica should know better than to pull her hair off her face like that,” Mama might say, pouring melted Velveeta over broccoli.