Leaving Atlanta

by Tayari Jones

  I paused a second. I wasn’t supposed to be in people’s houses if they mama wasn’t home. But Delvis said, “Come on,” again. So I followed him. What could Mama do to punish me now?

  Delvis squatted down about six inches in front of the TV. He had the sound turned down extra low. He waved his hand for me to sit down.

  “Turn up the volume,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t want the twins to see what’s on.”

  I looked hard at the screen. There was a lot of static, but it looked like they were showing a forest. Like the kind on TV when families go to chop their Christmas tree by hand.

  “What is it?” I said, knowing that the words SPECIAL REPORT didn’t have nothing to do with the holiday season.

  Delvis put his ear to the speaker. “It was out in Decatur.”

  “Somebody else got snatched?” I pulled at the dry skin hanging from my bottom lip.

  “Naw,” said Delvis. “It’s a body.”

  “Who?”

  Delvis said his name right when they showed his photo.

  You can’t be surprised by something that you already know.

  “Aw, Sweet Pea,” Delvis said. “Why you crying? You didn’t think they was gonna find him still living, did you?” He put his hand on my shoulder, then took it back and put it in his pocket.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not stupid. But—” The tears started coming heavy. I wanted a Kleenex so I could blow my nose and stop swallowing snot. “It’s not fair,” I said.

  “What?” Delvis said.

  “Just get me some tissue,” I told him.

  I was cleaning off my face when he said, “You think you’ll get to go to the funeral before you go to South Carolina?”

  I stared at him with my teeth clamped tight together. He knew this whole entire time that I was leaving and he had been spending time with me every day like wasn’t nothing going on but the rent.

  “You know that?” I said like a dummy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why you didn’t say something?” My ears were heating up with anger.

  “Don’t be hollering at me,” he said. “You the one perpetrating like you ain’t going nowhere. I just didn’t want to bust you out in your lie.”

  Sticks and stones are not the only things somebody can throw at you. Telling a lie is bad enough. It’s embarrassing in a private way. Like if you wet the bed but can change the sheets before anyone gets home. But when someone takes your lie and throws it in your face, it’s embarrassing like catching a whipping in front of your whole class.

  Mama was going to go to the wake, but not me. That don’t make no sense, since I’m the one that knew him.

  “Wakes are not for children,” she said, putting on her earrings.

  “Tell that to Rodney,” I said, going into the living room and flopping on the couch. The Christmas tree was gone already. She took it down right after dinner on Christmas Day. Most people leave theirs up until New Year’s. But most people don’t give their children away.

  “Sweet Pea, how many times do I have tell you to put your things in your room? Come and get your shoes from in the bathroom.”

  I went where she was. I kept my eyes on the ground so she couldn’t see how red they were. I picked the shoes up by tucking my fingers in the laces. I used to really like these shoes, canvas ones that everybody called “white girls.” Mama washed them with bleach when they started getting dingy and now they look like moths got to them. They were cleaner, but how much longer would they last? If I wore colored socks, you could see them through the holes.

  Mama was still walking around messing with stuff. Now, she was in the kitchen peeking in the cupboards like she wasn’t sure the glasses were still in there.

  “You alright, Sweet Pea?” Mama said, without turning around.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  But that was a lie. I just didn’t want to talk about it. When somebody die, people like to sit around and say all the things the dead person used to do. Like with Grand-daddy. But I didn’t really have that much to say about Rodney in that way. We only really talked three or four times, but I could tell that we were fixing to be friends. And not just because he didn’t talk to nobody and I didn’t really have no friends either. But because we liked each other. I don’t mean like people that be going together. When a girl go with somebody she start acting like somebody else. Putting all this Vaseline on her mouth and stuff like that. But when you just friends with somebody you start really acting like yourself. You can be in public the way you can be at home. And that’s how it was with me and Rodney. Well, that’s how I think it was going to be, at least. And when somebody die, you not supposed to sit around talking about shoulda, coulda, woulda. You got to say what actually happened. And I didn’t have nothing to say.

  I took my sneakers to my room and shut the door.

  Mama had just left when the phone rang again.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello Miss Sweet Pea, let me talk to Yvonne.” It was just Granny.

  “She’s not home,” I told her.

  “She working?”

  “No ma’am. She at the wake.”

  “Wake?” Granny said. Mama told me not to tell Granny about Rodney or Jashante. She was still trying to act like nothing was going down where we live at.

  “Yes ma’am. She gone to the wake for one of them children that got killed.”

  Granny caught her breath. Then she said, “Somebody y’all know?”

  “Yes’m. One of my friends from school.” Granny was breathing with little shocked breaths. Mama was going to be mad when she found out that I told, but I didn’t care. She needed to learn something about the truth.

  “Bless your heart,” Granny said.

  “And Jashante who stay next door to us, dead too. Snatched.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Granny said. “Baby, you alright?”

  “No’m,” I said. I was meaning to say I was fine, but once the truth gets rolling it’s hard to stop it. “I’m sad.” Granny didn’t say nothing right then and the truth kept coming. “I don’t have that many friends at school. They pick on me. I got Delvis, but he not in my class. My library card got took back because I dropped a book in the bathtub. It was a accident. The librarian said it cost seventeen dollars to make it right and Mama can’t pay. I’m too shamed to even go back in there.” I was talking and crying at the same time. “And the one who died was getting to be my friend. He gave me candy and stuff.”

  Granny said, “Let it out, baby.” But by then I didn’t have no choice. It was like when you have the flu and start throwing up. Ain’t no stopping it.

  “I didn’t mean to make Mama put Kenny out. I was trying to do something nice. I liked having him here. It was like having a daddy in a way. A fun daddy that like to talk to me without having to say so all the time. He used to kiss me too hard, though. But I was so little then.”

  “What?” Granny said. “Say that again.”

  “I gotta go, Granny,” I said. I was glad to have the words out of me. It was like drinking the last of the juice. Selfish, but those last drops taste good in your mouth and cool when it runs down your throat. But the empty bottle makes you shamed of yourself. “I’ll tell Mama you called, alright?”

  “You alright, child?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Alright. Tell Yvonne I’ll call her later.”

  Mama got back from the wake at nine o’clock. I was already in the bed when I heard her turn the lock, but I wasn’t sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to look peaceful when she came in my room. She took off her shoes to be quiet but I could hear the rub of her stockings on the floor and I could smell her perfume. When she got closer I could smell cigarettes too. It was like roses were on fire. The floor creaked as she got down on her knees beside my bed and started kissing me. She kissed both my cheeks, touched her lips to my eyelids. There wasn’t no use in pretending to be sleep. She was trying to wake me up. I opened my eyes.

  “Mama,” I said. The
light coming in from the hall made her face shine. I wanted to feel her cheeks to see if what I saw was tears, but my arms were pinned under the covers.

  “Sweet Pea,” she said, not like she was calling me but like she was talking about me to somebody.

  “Ma’am?”

  She sniffed. I knew for sure she was crying. I could just tell it from the way her shoulders hung low. “You scared, baby?”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know how much truth I could tell without telling all of it.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered.

  She stood up, slipped her dress over her head, and hung it on the back of my chair. I scooted over to make some room for her in my skinny bed.

  “It was so sad,” she said, laying down. “That little boy.” She started crying hard now. “And that lady. How do you say good-bye to your child?” I didn’t have to touch her face to know it was slick with makeup and saltwater. She cried loud, not all quiet like TV ladies who have to wipe their eyes to show that something was wrong. My mama laid on my bed and cried like kids with their head busted open. She cried like she was the one who knew Rodney Green and I laid stone still like I was the mama.

  At ten o’clock, she got up and changed clothes to go to work. She kissed me again before she went. When the door closed, I put my hand on the wet place where her face had been. But I didn’t sleep.

  Once you seen your mama cry, everything is different. Kind of like when you see a picture and it looks like one thing. But then you find out there are twelve apples hidden in the drawing. Once you find the apples, all you can see when you look at the picture is apples. You forget the main picture you were looking at in the first place. That’s how it was with Mama. When I look at her now, I can always see the tears.

  The day I was leaving, my picture was in the paper. On page three. I couldn’t hardly recognize myself. I knew it was me because I saw the white trim on my dress, my black shoes with the strap. The girl on the paper had her hair like mine, curled up tight with a headband holding it back. But it was like the pictures they draw at the Omni for three dollars. I looked like a joke on myself.

  “Mama, that’s me?” It was the first words I had said to her all morning.

  We were in my room. I was wearing a new cotton slip that itched. Mama was looking through my new suitcase trying to figure out which one of the dresses in there I should put on. She had changed her mind twice already.

  “That’s you.” She pulled out a blue wool one that looked like something a deaconess need to be wearing.

  If she asked me what I wanted to put on, I would have told her to let me wear my soft blue jeans. I would have told her to wash my hair so I can get my naps back. But nobody asked me nothing so I just squinted at the gray picture of myself. I know my shoes were not as nice as they were last Easter, but in print they looked like they had been handed down a thousand times; but Mama had bought them new from Baker’s downtown. And Nikky’s dress didn’t look like I just needed to grow into it. It hung off me like I was starving to death. “But I look funny.”

  “No you don’t.” Mama came to the side of the bed where I was sitting and took the pink rollers out of my hair. “You look fine.”

  “Ouch!” I said, when she touched my ear. It didn’t really hurt, but I wanted her to remember that she burned me there with the curling iron.

  Didn’t none of us look fine in the gray photos. We looked poor as a whole neighborhood of church mice. The only people who looked the same on paper as they did at Rodney’s funeral were the people who be in the paper all the time. All the people who worked for the city looked like they worked for the city. But all the rest of us were all over page three looking crazy.

  I turned over to page one. There was a picture of Rodney’s mama with crying eyes.

  “Mama, did you see Rodney mama crying?” Every time I looked over at her, she looked beautiful and calm as Coretta Scott King. She had the same long hair and the same black hat with a little net over her face. And even a little girl laying across her lap.

  “No, she wasn’t crying,” Mama said. “She was too busy trying to be Jackie Kennedy.” She turned the brush as she pulled it through my hair, making the curls smoother.

  Why did she sound so irritated? Granny always said that Kennedy was the best president we ever had. He was even friends with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I thought we liked the Kennedys.”

  “Jackie not crying is one thing. When your husband die, and you don’t cry, that’s good. That’s strength. You see what I’m talking about?”

  I nodded my head. “Like Coretta Scott King?”

  “Hold your head still,” Mama said. “But when you lose your baby and you don’t cry? Then you got a problem.”

  “Why everybody always say you lost somebody? Rodney not lost. They make it sound like you mislaid your lunch box or something.” Now I was the one irritated. People need to say the words they mean. Rodney not lost, he dead. And Mama need to stop tearing up because she not about to lose me, she throwing me away.

  “Sweet Pea.” She pressed her lips to the top of my head. “You lose your child not like you lose a watch. You lose your child like you lose your sight. Lose your mind.”

  “Like Miss Viola?” The sadness in her voice pressed against my chest, stealing my air.

  Mama let me go and pulled a cigarette from the pack on my dresser. “Just like Viola.” She turned her lips to the side so as not to blow the smoke right in my face.

  From the church’s balcony, Rodney’s funeral was like a service for Jashante too. Everyone knew Jashante was dead, but since they didn’t find him yet, Miss Viola couldn’t have a funeral for him. Rodney’s family and all the money people were down on the bottom floor where the casket and choir was. But everyone that stay where we live, took a place in the balcony. When we got there, Mama didn’t even check to see if there was any seats down below; we just climbed the stairs. When we got up there, that’s just where our people was. Nobody up there knew Rodney Green except for me. But all of them knew Jashante and Miss Viola, his mother.

  When Cinque Freeman starting singing “Lord I’m Not Asking” in a voice so full of tears that the music sounded wet, the ushers downstairs stood four on each end of the family pew. And Miss Darlene and another neighbor moved in closer to Miss Viola. Cinque didn’t get too far into the song before he started crying all the way. It spread like measles.

  I had never heard a whole room full of people cry before. The sound is loud and rolling, like when I cross the street halfway and have to stand on the yellow line while cars whoosh by on either side. A dangerous sound. I wiped my face with my sleeve and looked down from the balcony. Almost everybody held a fan with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the front and the funeral home on the back. As the fans flapped, the crying got louder like it was a train and the fans pushed it on.

  Then Miss Viola said, “Jesus.” The first time, she said it like He was standing at the front of the church and she was trying to get His attention before He went back up to heaven with Rodney. I looked at the black Jesus in the window glass. Then she hollered it out how like when you call after somebody and say you know you hear me. The window Jesus wasn’t black like anybody I know. His skin was just a little browner than a regular Jesus and His black hair hung straight to His shoulders.

  The casket that Rodney was in was silver-gray and closed. I knew he was the one in there because, after all, it was his funeral. And the program in my hand had that same photo of him on the cover. But if you don’t think too hard about it, it could be anybody in that box. Anybody that you don’t know where they at.

  Miss Viola didn’t wear a hat with net, but her sadness covered her face just as well. And her daughters looked like mourning women, not seven- and eight-year-old girls. Each one sat on one side of their mama, wrapping themselves around her like kudzu. Miss Viola held her hands up in the air. “My child.” She heaved forward like she trying to get up to go downstairs. But the girls held her tight like they were trying to hug
each other but their mama’s body was in the way.

  Miss Darlene and the other ladies from our neighborhood moved in around Miss Viola as she called Jesus out of His name, and the little girls reached for each other. Then my mama held me to her. She grabbed me fast and suddenly like she was sweeping me out of the way of a crazy driver. She squeezed the air out of my chest and I thought that maybe she was killing me. “Lord,” she said into the top of my head. Then she sang one of the songs we sing at our church. Moaning songs that don’t have words.

  Mama sang her song until everyone around us joined in. Downstairs, the choir sang, “I’ll Fly Away,” but the people sitting around me paid it no mind. The music from the balcony was the kind of music that was meant for crying like some other kind of music was meant for dancing. I was crying too, now. I wanted to keep my mind on Rodney so my tears would fall for all the right reasons. But I cried because it seemed like everything good in the world was locked in a box, like a backward Pandora. “Mama, let me stay,” I whispered.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t.” She pressed me closer to her, hurting my neck. I felt tears dripping from her chin onto my freshly pressed hair.

  Tears dripped from her chin right now too. But they weren’t landing in my hair. Mama caught these tears in her own empty hand. I watched her like she was someone on TV. Not like she was my own mother sitting here on my own bed crying like somebody just died.

  I got up from the bed and stepped into the heavy blue dress. I reached around my waist to scoot the zipper up. Then I stretched my arm over my shoulder to finish closing it but I couldn’t reach.

  “Come here,” Mama said. “Let me help you.”

  She was still sitting on my white bedspread and I stood between her knees. She pulled the zipper and I felt the dress tighten around me. Mama hugged me hard at my middle, leaning her face against my shoulder blade. “It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered. “I’m not sending you up there to be nobody’s maid. Nobody’s baby-sitter. You his daughter. You family.”