Leaving Atlanta

by Tayari Jones

  Leon Simmons sings, “Rodney and Watusi sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

  Octavia stands suddenly. “You better shut your mouth, ol’ ugly boy.” She picks up a small rock from the ground and pitches it toward Leon’s pointed head. She misses.

  Leon laughs and performs a jerking parody of an African dance. He chants, “Watusi, Watusi. Wa-Wa-Watusi!”

  Octavia hurls another rock. Leon ducks.

  “I ain’t no Watusi,” she shouts, looking around for more ammunition.

  There are two small stones near your shoe, which would be perfect to chasten Leon. But handing her a rock will fall short of chivalry. And besides, her aim is terrible. But if you are a gentleman and throw the rock yourself, Leon will no doubt respond with his fists, and you can’t fight.

  She finds the rocks on her own and connects with the side of his head, just above his jutting ear.

  “That didn’t hurt,” he declares, though the spot is turning red fast. Then he addresses you. “You better be glad it’s daytime because she so black that you can’t even see her at night.” Encouraged by Candida’s affirmative gum-popping, he adds, “When she walk by, the streetlight come on.”

  Octavia is furious now. She picks up a handful of pebbles and flings them, showering both Leon and Candida with a barrage of stinging pellets.

  “So,” she hollers, “your hair so nappy that the BB shots in the back look like you screwed them in one at a time.”

  “Least I don’t live in the projects.”

  “Least my mama ain’t had to come up to the school to beat my behind because of stealing.”

  Octavia’s face glows with perspiration in spite of the nip in the air. “I got him good, didn’t I?”

  You stare at her in wonderment. How could she react so quickly, compellingly, brazenly, and conspicuously? Not once did she look to see who was watching. She didn’t measure her words but shouted with irresistible spontaneous rudeness. The vicarious thrill heats your face and fogs your glasses.

  Octavia takes your openmouthed silence as disapproval. “He started it.”

  The bell rings and the breathless fifth-graders file into the building. You have stood behind Octavia in the lunch line as you have for as long as you can remember. But today you notice that the soft hair at the back of her neck grows into a gentle V. She is taller than you. Has this always been the case or is it only recently important?

  “Chili-mac?” asks the woman behind the counter.

  “Yes’m,” Octavia says. She is given a large portion generously topped with gooey cheddar.

  “Chili-mac?”

  You nod. Your plate is served with an austere scoop of reddish casserole. Cheeseless. You look at the woman with a face full of hurt, but she ignores you.

  Octavia pays her dime after whispering the word “reduced.” You pretend not to notice as you fumble in your pockets for a quarter, dime, and nickel.

  The cafeteria buzzes with complicated conversations. Today you don’t want to sit at the last table on the right where you normally take your lunch alone. Octavia looks at you welcomingly; her face brims with a frightening expectation as she nods slightly toward the empty stool beside her own. The strap of her new training bra peeks pink below the sleeve of her shirt. To sit beside her requires a bravery you can’t muster.

  But there is an empty stool beside LaTasha Baxter. You move in her direction. She doesn’t seem horrified. As a matter of fact, she looks away with disinterest and rifles through her little red-and-white purse. As you relax your arms to set your tray down, Leon appears from nowhere, bumping your elbows as he plunks down gracelessly beside Tasha, who pulls a round mirror from her bag and studies her own lips.

  “Go and sit with your own girlfriend,” he says, aiming the top of his pointy head at Octavia. Thirty pairs of appraising eyes wait for your response.

  “That ain’t none of my girlfriend,” you squawk.

  The cafeteria explodes with concentrated laughter. You wish that you had only said that you didn’t have a girlfriend. But the words tumbled out just as you felt them.

  Octavia rises from her stool, walks to the front of the cafeteria, and dumps her dime lunch into the large trash can without taking care to see that the tray is saved. The cardboard in her shoe is slick and she nearly loses her footing as she walks to the door. But Octavia doesn’t fall. As she leaves, the door shuts almost silently in the mocking laughter.

  Back in the classroom, you clandestinely place two rolls of Life Savers and a purple ring candy on her desk. Octavia sweeps the candy to the floor like the debris from an eraser; sitting as if she has somehow found herself in the room alone.

  Mr. Harrell announces that there will be a spelling test ten minutes before the bell. Until this moment you stared at the clock, attempting to move the hands along by the sheer force of your guilty will. Now, you concentrate your energy in the opposite direction.

  You have not memorized the word-rules that will ensure you a passing grade. You have tried, even allowing Mother to drill on the proper order of letters in words you never use. But the information will not adhere to your brain. It falls off like over-licked stamps.

  But still you try to write the words as Mr. Harrell reads them in his hearty baritone. He pronounces the words slowly, emphasizing their sounds, encouraging you to write them out just as you hear them. You do, but he has chosen the list deliberately to defy phonetics. You will fail. Again.

  The bell rings at three o’clock as scheduled.

  You linger a moment at the coat rack, hoping to see Octavia. The antidote for words must be a spoken one. You stand between her and her coat and say her name.

  She looks up and says, “Rodney Green, you better get out of my way before I have to hurt your feelings.”

  Although her face suggests that her feelings have been injured, you are shaken by this threat and don’t disturb her as she retrieves her balding corduroy coat.

  Across from the school building, in the middle of the block, is a corner store. Lewis’s Market is a poorly lit box stuffed with overpriced miniatures of the products your mother buys at the large Kroger near Greenbriar mall. A tiny jar of mayonnaise good for no more than ten sandwiches sits beside an even tinier jar of mustard. One of the small cartons of laundry detergent has fallen from the shelf and burst, emptying a cup or two of white powder flecked with blue onto the black floor. The entire place smells like clean sheets. Mrs. Lewis, the shopkeeper, looks up from her Jet magazine when the brass bells attached to the door handle announce your arrival.

  “Hello there, Rodney,” she says.

  “Hi, Miz Lewis,” you reply, heading for the back of the store, ignoring the sign demanding that patrons leave all bags at the front counter. She doesn’t object. After all, you are not the type of boy who steals. Boys who steal do not attend Greater Hayes AME Zion. They are not members of the Youth Branch of the NAACP. Boys who take things from stores without paying don’t wear corrective lenses for astigmatism, say ma’am, or fear their fathers. In other words, they are not well brought up. Mrs. Lewis has known your father since the two of them were barefoot children in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, so she is convinced that your honesty is guaranteed by superior genetic material reinforced by corporal punishment.

  The candy on the back row isn’t shrunk to doll-house proportions like everything else in the store. Full and even king-size sweets are stacked carefully in bins and buckets. You steal a glance at Mrs. Lewis, who holds her magazine inches from her face as if she plans to lick the words right off the pages. You cross your eyes. She turns the page. You scratch the side of your face with your middle finger. You lift the finger cautiously from your temple and give Mrs. Lewis the bird. She looks up.

  “You need something, Rodney?”

  “No’m,” you tell her, putting your hand on a mysterious palm-size candy that is pink and studded with peanuts.

  Father once came into the store and chuckled at the sight of this odd-looking confection.

  “Virginia,�
� he exclaimed, “tell me this ain’t what I think it is.”

  Mrs. Lewis laughed from behind the counter. “Claude L, don’t tell me you got so old that you don’t know a peanut patty when you see one.”

  Father laughed so deeply that he became unrecognizable. “I haven’t seen one of these here since Hector was a pup!”

  Mrs. Lewis said, “Go on and get one. Take one home to Beverly, too.”

  “Naw,” Father said. “She from Chicago. She don’t know nothing about this here.”

  “Well, let lil Rodney pick something out for himself.”

  Father nodded toward the candy display. “Pick something.”

  You looked up and down the aisle slowly. No decision is inconsequential. You pointed in the general direction of the bottom shelf, hoping your father would betray some suggestion as to the nature of this test. He set his jaw to offer you no clues. What is an appropriate desire? Not the dainty jewel candies. Laffy Taffy? Too soft. You put your hand on a small box that features a drawing of a grape dressed for combat.

  “What’s that?” Father wanted to know.

  “Alexander the Grape.”

  “See, Virginia,” he said with a disdainful sneer. “This boy is standing right here in front of this good peanut patty and he wants some mess called Alexander the Great.”

  “The Grape,” you corrected him.

  He made a nasty sound, indicating his opinion of this semantic distinction.

  You attempted to put the tiny box back on the shelf.

  “No,” Father said. “That’s what you say you wanted. Don’t get shamed now.”

  “Claude L, let that boy alone,” Mrs. Lewis said, enjoying your humiliation.

  While Mrs. Lewis put Father’s peanut patty in a tiny brown paper sack, you slipped a box of Boston Baked Beans into your jacket pocket. You felt a jolt as if the sugar had somehow passed directly to your bloodstream from the pocket of your red windbreaker, bypassing your mouth and stomach. Your heart churned. Your shallow panting breaths were sweet.

  Now you stare at the peanut patty in your hand and ponder the previously unthinkable oxymoron of an unappetizing piece of candy. You put it back in its place, pick up three boxes of Lemonheads and drop them silently in your book satchel.

  The doorbells clang as Leon Simmons enters the shop. You use the brassy jangle to drown out the cellophane crackle of the half-dozen Chick-O-Sticks packed into your pencil pouch.

  “Leave that bag right here,” Mrs. Lewis says.

  Leon’s eyes are on you as he extends his arms behind him and squeezes his shoulder blades together, causing his green army-surplus backpack to slither to the floor.

  “I wasn’t going to steal nothing,” he lies, walking toward you. He plants his sneaker in the spilled laundry detergent; the smell of artificial spring rises to your nose.

  “Say, miss,” Leon calls to the front of the store. “You need to sweep this up before somebody fall and call they lawyer on you.”

  “Don’t track that washing powder all over this floor, boy.”

  “I’m just trying to help you,” says Leon, as if his feelings are hurt. “Some people around here believe in some suits.”

  Leon approaches you as he speaks. His body radiates heat and a saltwater smell detectable over the scent of the detergent. Will he expose you? Your fingers are wrapped around a fistful of jewel candies but you don’t put them in your pocket. He nods slightly, freeing you from paralysis. You put the candies in your pocket.

  He smiles and heads to the counter and begins to tell Mrs. Lewis all about his litigious relatives and neighbors.

  “Some people just aren’t willing to work for what they want,” she tells him. “They think the world owes them something.”

  Her speech is crisply enunciated and grammatically flawless. There are no traces of the easy vernacular she used when talking to your father that day about those nasty peanut patties. She speaks to Leon with the deliberate correctness that some people reserve for speaking to bill collectors or other white folks. You leave the store as Leon demonstrates an affected limp.

  The autumn wind shuts the door hard behind you. It is cold for November. You want to fasten your coat, but pulling the brown tweed together will crush the translucent lollipops carefully stashed in a hole in the lining.

  You return to the school door just as Sister exits holding her teacher’s hand. She likes to stay late to pound the erasers and clean the blackboard. With her missing front teeth, Sister looks like an advertisement for Sealtest ice cream. When you were her age, you resembled a jack-o’-lantern carved by an arthritic hand. Your baby sister smiles and you wonder how your father’s eyes look so sweet in her little face.

  “Brother!” She races toward you in saddle oxfords. When she sees your parents she will greet each of them with the same unchecked glee.

  You give her a candy necklace and an Astro Pop. She cannot help being good.

  Although you don’t hold Sister’s hand as you walk to the bus stop, you hover protectively near. A parental mandate recently issued requires that you actually wrap your fingers around hers to thwart child-nappers. You understand the sentiment behind the decree but you are too well aware of the flaws in its logic.

  You’d have assumed that your parents would have noticed by now that nearly all of the bodies found in Atlanta’s woods, creeks, and fields are male. Someone should be assigned to hold your hand. Nevertheless, you keep an eye on Sister. Last spring, she came close to being flattened by a dilapidated Impala as she darted into the street to retrieve a runaway dodge ball in a burst of near-fatal altruism.

  You are in sight of the bus stop when you become aware of the regular thump of footsteps on cold red clay. The earth absorbs the sound but you feel the tremors through the thin soles of your loafers. Sister, looking for her reflection in a lollipop, doesn’t notice. You take her hand. Lining the street are small wooden houses in need of paint. Should you run onto one of the porches? Maybe not. Officer Brown is right: If you don’t know who it is, you don’t know who it’s not. The noise of running feet behind you is more urgent. Sister looks up at you with a question on her heart-shaped face.

  “Don’t look back,” you tell her.

  The only choice is to flee on foot, although you are the second-to-the-slowest boy in the entire fifth grade. Some even say that you run like a girl; poor Sister runs like a little girl, but you’ve no other recourse.

  “Sister, we have to—”

  The hand on your neck is not as heavy as you imagine the hand of death to be. Nor is it particularly clammy.

  “Rodney! Wait up.”

  You turn around to see Leon smiling broadly. Although the air is cold enough to turn his panting breaths white against the gray day, Leon’s jacket is open; little drops of sweat stand out on his face like beads of water on the waxed hood of Father’s car. His skinny ankles poke beneath his too-short trouser legs before disappearing into huge sneakers.

  “That was you behind us?” You are relieved enough to weep.

  “Yeah. Who you thought it was?”

  He looks at your faces and knows. Leon looks at his big shoes for a respectful and apologetic moment. Then he abruptly announces the reason for his intrusion.

  “Say,” he says. “Ain’t you going to give me some of that what you got?” Leon leans closer and speaks almost without moving his lips.

  “Huh,” you say.

  “You should give me some of that candy seeing as I’m the one who kept that lady busy while you was handling business.”

  He speaks cryptically for Sister’s sake. You appreciate his discretion.

  “But—” you begin, meaning to inform him that you take candy from Mrs. Lewis’s store at least thrice weekly without any help.

  “What?” Leon says. “You mad ’cause of what I said to Octavia today? I was just messing with her. She live down the street from me. Where you stay at?”

  “Over by Mosely Park,” you say, pointing west.

  “All the way over there?
” Leon is incredulous.

  “It’s just a little while on the bus,” Sister tells him. “We get home right before Family Feud.”

  “That what I’m talking about,” Leon says to you. “All the way over there, you don’t know how we do it over here. Octavia know I was just fooling with her. Both of us, we just stay around the corner from here.”

  “She—” You want to say something on her behalf.

  “Anyway, I was just trying to look out for you. You don’t want people going around saying that you going with the Watusi.”

  “She’s not—”

  “I know she not your girlfriend. That’s what I’m saying. Anyway, she’s mean. Maybe even crazy. Look at my ear where she chunked that rock at me. That hurted.”

  “She’s nice.” This is inadequate but it is all you can muster.

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Leon gestures toward your bag. “We gonna be friends or what?”

  This is quite a proposition. You have never had a friend before, at least not one formally declared. What would this alliance involve? You are not sure that you even want a running buddy. Will Leon approach you at recess while you are working on your drawings, putting his salty, sweaty arm around your shoulder declaring you to be his “ace boon coon”?

  “Man,” Leon says, turning with an angry flourish. “I can’t believe you gonna do me like that.” He kicks the brown leaves as he heads in the other direction.

  “Wait,” you say. “Get whatever you want.” New friends are much easier to accommodate than new enemies.

  “Dang!” Leon exclaims, opening your bag. “Did you take the whole store?” He is easily impressed. “Mike and Ike’s, Bit-O-Honey, Gobstoppers. You got everything.” He unwraps a blow-pop and puts it between his teeth and cheek. It juts from his face like a tumor. “That old lady so busy watching me that she let you clean out the place.” Leon shakes his head. “Don’t know why she thinks you don’t like candy as much as everybody else.” Leon makes a basket out of his shirttail. “She even makes girls leave their bags up front.”

  This bit of information smarts, but you don’t comment. The implication hangs in the air like smoke.