by Tayari Jones
Who was this man calling me by my given name?
“Hello?” he said. “Octavia?”
When I get scared, it feels like somebody tried to pull all my guts out through my belly button. “No sir,” I said at last. “This is somebody else.”
“I see,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “Can you give Yvonne a message?”
“Yes sir.”
“Please tell her Ray called. She has the number.”
As soon as my ears told my heart who was on the phone, it started beating a thousand miles an hour and I had to work to get my air.
“Hello?” my daddy said, like a little question.
“I’ll tell her,” I said, and hung up.
I get to see my daddy once a year in the summertime when I’m in Macon staying with my granny and Ray is in town visiting his mother. When Ray call Granny and say he want to see me, she makes me get a bath and put on a Sunday dress, no matter what time of the day or what day of the week it is. The last time he came, he was wearing a pair of brown shorts and a shirt the color of eggshells. When he sat on Granny’s brown-and-white couch it looked like he was trying to hide on there like a caterpillar on a green leaf.
“So,” he said. Ray always starts things off like that. “So. What grade are you in?”
“Going to the fifth.” He had asked me the same question last year. Did he forget or was he trying to make sure I didn’t get kept back?
“You like school?”
“Yes sir.” I don’t know what else I could have said. What he would say if I got up, put my hand on my hip, and said, “What you think? Would you like school if everybody called you Watusi because you so dark and your hair so nappy?” I looked over at him and for the first time I noticed that me and him had the very same hair. I cut my eyes at him like he did it on purpose. But it’s funny. Black and nappy look different on a man than on a girl. When a man is real black it make him look like he’s all there. Like you better not mess with him.
“So,” Ray said again. He so tall and skinny that when he sat down, his legs almost folded double. If he tried to get up in a hurry, he might knee himself in the nose. “So,” he started again.
Granny came out the kitchen and gave him a glass of Kool-Aid he didn’t even ask for. She didn’t bring nothing for me. Ray took two big swallows. “Ahh,” he said, like a commercial.
Granny smiled. She liked to say that Ray is a good man. Fine man. She said it right before he got here and I knew she was going to say it again once he was gone. And if he go up to use the commode, she was going to say it once in between while we waited for him to flush. That’s just how Granny is.
“So. What do you think about having a little sister?”
He was talking about his daughter he got with his wife. Granny sat the little girl’s picture on the coffee table so Ray could see it. I looked at the picture. The baby was nine months old, he said. I had to admit that she was kind of cute. She was as black as me and Ray, but it looked sweet on her too. It seems like my black is the only one that don’t quite lay right.
“She cute,” I said.
Ray smiled and picked the picture up. “Kiyana,” he said. “She’s pretty like you.”
I looked at him crazy. I almost corrected him and said, I’m not pretty. But that would have been rude. You supposed to say thank you when people give you a compliment.
His eyes were still all up in that picture. “I want the two of you to get to know each other,” he said, like somebody could actually know a baby.
“Yes sir,” I said.
He sat still a little longer, staring at me while he finished his Kool-Aid. He wiped his mouth with his hand. “You don’t have to call me sir.”
“Yes sir.” I felt stupid as soon as the words came out. I should have just said plain yes.
He smiled. “You can call me—” He looked at the ceiling. Then he smiled harder. His teeth were small with a lot of space in between. “You can call me Ray, if you like.”
He must be crazy. Granny would have three kinds of fits if I fixed my mouth to call my daddy by his first name. I wondered would he think it was funny if he knew that I always think of him in my head as Ray. I just say sir to be polite.
I must have been giving him a strange look because he changed the subject right quick. “Gloria and me bought you some things for school,” he said. Gloria is his wife. Delvis said that meant she was my stepmother, but I don’t think that a lady can be your stepmother until you have to live with her.
Ray went out to his car and got three shopping bags. “I hope you like it,” he said.
“Yes sir. Thank you,” I said.
Granny popped out of nowhere, smiling like she was trying to show off every tooth in her head. “Did you say thank you?” Granny said. She was so excited like the stuff in the bags was for her.
“Yes’m.”
“I didn’t hear you,” she said, still grinning, but I could hear the warning in her voice. Mama didn’t believe in beating children, but Granny didn’t have no problem with it. I looked at Ray with my eyebrows in the air so he could tell her that I did too say thank you. He just stood there stupid.
“Thank you,” I said.
It wasn’t enough for Granny.
“Thank you, Daddy,” I said.
He smiled back like this is what he came for. Granny relaxed. Ray kissed me on the forehead and left.
I stood on the porch while he got to his car. It took him a while to actually leave because everybody kept hollering at him from they porches.
“How you doing, Dr. Ray?” old people said. They like to call him that, but he’s not a doctor. He’s a teacher.
“I’m just fine, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “Good to see you.”
The way people carry on about him, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if somebody asked him for his autograph.
The shopping bags had school stuff in them just like he said. Notebook paper and erasable ink pens. There was a pencil sharpener like the one at school. I liked that and also some letter writing paper with pink ducks on it. The last bag had two pairs of jeans and a regular shirt and a green sweater that seemed like it would itch when I put it on. All of it was too little.
Good thing he left the tags on. He always did. Me and Mama end up carrying it all right back to Rich’s and got everything in a bigger size. But she never lets me switch the clothes out for a better color. I had to wear his clothes for my school picture so Mama could send him a five-by-seven.
Granny held the green sweater out in front of her. “This is nice,” she said.
“Scratchy,” I told her.
“I bet his wife picked it out. Quality.”
It didn’t look all that special to me. “How you know it’s quality?” I asked. I get tired of Granny acting like Ray the president of the USA.
“She waited until she was married to have her babies,” Granny said, folding the sweater neat like in a store.
I was confused at first, until I figured out that she was saying that Gloria was quality. I didn’t care if she was quality or not, but I didn’t appreciate what Granny was trying to say about my mama.
“You don’t even know her,” I mumbled.
“Did you say something to me?” Granny said.
“No.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“No ma’am,” I said.
I picked the phone up and put it to my ear. The dial tone made me feel stupid but I felt better at the same time. Better because Ray wasn’t still on the line some kind of way, hearing me trying to think. But stupid because any idiot knows that’s not how phones work.
But why was Ray calling over here in the first place? It wasn’t my birthday. And he didn’t ask for me. He wanted to talk to Mama. I wondered what for. Maybe they were getting back together. Like on The Parent Trap. But I can’t remember them ever being together. They not divorced. And he got a wife anyway. Gloria. Quality. Well, he got another daughter too, but that don’t mean he not still my daddy. His high-quality wife meant that the new da
ughter, Kiyana, was quality too. I wondered if somebody can be half quality. Like Patrick Fletcher in my class who is half white. But that’s the same as being black. He just light skinned. So am I quality too? Or does it work the other way around?
I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look like much quality. Why my teeth have to be so crooked? Mama got a nice smile and Ray teeth may be little and spread out, but they straight. And my hair. Even if Mama was to let me get it pressed, it would take a lot before we got to quality.
Something was up and I needed some time to think about it. I couldn’t think about it at home because the phone was there and I kept staring at it thinking Ray was about to call at any second. He had called three times in one week. He normally calls that many times in a year. One for Christmas. One on my birthday. And one more time when Mama asks him for some extra cash.
One time, when he called, I answered; the other two, Mama picked up. She tried to play it off, but I knew who it was.
I needed someplace to go, but when you don’t got no car and ain’t got no money, you can’t be all that choosy. I decided to go to the park next to our church, Flipper Temple. I could have some privacy there because hardly no kids hang out at the park ever since children started getting disappeared.
It wasn’t so far from school to the park, but by the time I got to the top of that steep hill, I was panting. I sat on a hard plastic swing to rest. Even with my gloves on, I could feel the cold chain in my hands. In my pocket I had a sharp pencil so I could stick it in the eye of anyone that might try and snatch me.
I pumped my legs back and forth to get the swing going. I was too tall for this baby swing; my toes kept scraping the ground and slowing me down. I tucked my legs tight under my behind and the swing went from front to back. I felt like a baby rocking itself in a cradle.
When I was little and my Uncle Kenny was staying with us, he used to take me to this park. Sometimes we went to Burger King across the street and got a large shake and two straws. I wish he was like he was and that he was here now.
I ain’t seen Kenny since two years ago at Christmastime when me and Mama was riding the bus going to Downtown Rich’s. I sat by the window because I liked to see people Christmas decorations when we passed by. I was straining to see if a Santa’s sleigh had all eight reindeer plus Rudolph when I saw Uncle Kenny sitting on the ground up against a rusted-out car. He was sleeping like people do in church, with his head bobbing up and down.
“Look, Mama!” I hollered, so that everybody on the sixty-six Five Points turned. “There go Uncle Kenny!”
Mama didn’t look. “No, it’s not.”
“Look, Mama.” The bus was stopped at a light. We had passed Kenny, but if she tried real hard she would still see him. “That’s him in the blue.”
But Mama still didn’t turn around. By the time she even looked at me, I couldn’t see nothing behind me but buildings.
“Your uncle is in Macon,” she said.
“But you didn’t even look.” I kept my voice low. Mama can’t stand to see kids cut up in public.
“Why I need to look out when I know what I know?”
When we got closer to downtown, Mama was the one looking out the window. “Sweet Pea, look at the Pink Pig.”
I didn’t turn around.
The Pink Pig is a roller coaster that they only bring out at Christmastime. It rides around the giant Christmas tree on the top of Rich’s. From the bus stop, Mama pointed again. “There it is.”
We went inside and took an elevator to the roof. I gave this white man the pink ticket I got at school for having perfect attendance. He fastened me in a little car built for two kids. Some other cars were filled up because a lot of kids came together. Right before we were ready to get moving, a little white boy came up with his perfect attendance ticket. The white man looked at the empty seat next to me. After a second he said, “Wait for the next trip.” Then he pressed some buttons and the pig started inching up the track with little clicks.
I’m not scared of heights. Never have been. I have rode on the Scream Machine at Six Flags and that’s ten times bigger and faster than the Pink Pig. But from the roof of Rich’s downtown I saw the whole entire city except everything was too little to really see. One of the little spots out there had to be my Uncle Kenny. If he was to wake up he might see a little spot way up here and not even know it was me.
The only thing I could get a real good look at was the Big Tree itself, and it was ugly up close. The red, green, and gold decorations were as big as baby heads cut off and hung upside down by a hook where the neck used to be. Lights flashed in between the branches and I saw my face all pulled out of shape in the shiny sides of the baby-head ornaments.
When I got off, my legs were weak as matchsticks.
“Wanna ride again?” Mama had another pink ticket in her hand. “Look what I found. We can wait a minute till the man forget you, and you can go again.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
She was looking up at the tree. “That tree is something, huh? I think it’s a hundred feet tall. I wish grown folks could ride. Was it fun, Sweet Pea?”
I nodded my head.
“I never been on a roller coaster before,” she said. “There wasn’t no Rich’s in Macon. And even if there was, black folks wouldn’t have been allowed to ride. We couldn’t even use the rest rooms in town. Did you know that?”
I nodded.
“So now that we can get on, I’m too old.” She laughed. “That’s a shame, huh?”
“Yes’m.”
“So you want to ride again?” It was like she was asking me for a favor.
I rode again. But when the Pig started clicking up the track I closed my eyes and refused to see the city or my face in the baby heads.
I pumped my legs on the swing. The cold air dried out my wide-open eyes but I tried not to blink. I watched everything get small then big again. I swung up so high that the chain gave a little jump every time I went out. Some people walking by turned to look at me. They was wondering who is this big ol girl riding that baby swing like it’s going to take her someplace. I stuck my tongue out and the air dried it too, like a towel on the line. I kept pumping my legs thinking about what I could see and what I already knew.
The swing couldn’t get me high enough. I pushed with all I had, but I couldn’t see no farther than the bread factory. I saw the tops of the soft-color projects near to where I stay at, but I couldn’t get so high that I could see the people turn into ants and teach myself not be scared.
I kept pumping anyway like it was going out of style. Then I saw a man walking by. His hair and skin was the same brown-on-brown as Uncle Kenny. He walked with a little dip when he stepped, just like Kenny, except I thought that Uncle Kenny did his pimp on the other side. But maybe I was wrong and this man was walking just like Kenny. He kept walking and popping his fingers to some music playing in his head. Maybe it was him.
“Hey!” The swing chain jerked. “Kenny!” He didn’t turn around. I pushed my legs back and forth racing to catch up with him. Then it was like my brain said to my body, You still on the swing, fool. And my hands, embarrassed, let go. For a second, I felt myself in the air with my legs moving like a cartoon. “Kenny,” I said, but I was on my way down. I called him again with all the air in my chest.
My face hit the concrete but the rest of me landed in the grass. My lip was busted open. Blood on my chin. The man stopped popping his fingers and looked over my way. He turned his head to one side like he was trying to figure out exactly what it was he was looking at. He took a couple steps over with that wrong-side pimp. I looked up over my head and a streetlight was shining on me like on a stage.
I picked myself up and he stepped back one step. I looked around me. It was getting dark. Even when kids wasn’t getting killed, Mama said it wasn’t safe to be out when the streetlights was on.
I grabbed my book bag with one hand. My knuckles were getting blood everywhere but I didn’
t care.
He took another step my way, looking around. I looked around too and didn’t see nobody. Was this Uncle Kenny? I needed to tell him that it wasn’t really my fault that Mama put him out. And that I didn’t tell her that he was looking at me in the bathtub that time because it was an accident, like it was an accident that I told her about the dope needles. I breathed hard out my mouth. If he would come one step closer, I could see if it was him. But if it wasn’t him, another step or two could be close enough for him to get me. My heart was going hard in my chest like when me and Delvis knocked over a wasp nest with a stick and took off running. The man stood stock-still like he was the one scared of me.
I couldn’t take it.
Counting three in my head, I got my hurt arms and legs together and ran down the hill toward home. I was booking, jumping over stuff like Carl Lewis and Wilma Rudolph put together. Cold air was freezing my chest together, but I kept running, forcing the wind into me and out again.
When I got to the sidewalk in front of my house, Donathan and Darlita were standing out front shaking their little fingers at me.
“Ooh, Sweet Pea, you in trouble!”
Donathan reached up toward my face. “What happened? Somebody try to snatch you?” He crumpled his face up.
“No,” I said. “But you better get yourself in the house. Streetlights on already.”
Then Delvis came running out from behind the pecan trees, scaring the mess out of all three of us. “Sweet Pea,” he said, like he had found the Easter egg with the foil on it. “People been looking for you.” He put his hand out like he was going to shake my hand or give me a one-arm hug. “What happened to your face? Did somebody—”
“Where my mama?”
“Up in y’all’s place. She was down here a little while ago, cussing people out. She said she was fixing to call the police.”
I ran toward the building. Everything hurt. I tripped up the stairs. I felt the skin on my lip pull apart and the bleeding started again. Our door was half open; I pushed it in.
“Mama, I’m okay.”
She put the telephone down. “Octavia Yvette Fuller, where the hell have you been?”
