Ellen Foster (9 page)

I will let her sleep but I’ll wake her up if she starts to die. I hope she can give me some warning. That is what I should have done with the first one.

Go ahead and stir yourself awake. I might have woke you by accident but all the good sleeping I let you have should count for something. Go ahead and cough hard. You wake up now.

I want to ask you a question.

Like what?

Well I know why you hated my daddy but what about me? Why can’t you see I am not like him?

All I know is when I look in your face I see that bastard and everything he did to my girl.

But I did not do anything I say back to her and wonder at the same time why I said that because we all know it is not what I did to her but what I did not do for her.

And her gate is flung open and there is nothing left but the hearing of all she has left to say to me.

Why you little bitch. You set up in that house like the world owed you a living. In cahoots with your damn daddy. I know all that went on. You laid up all in that house with your daddy’s buddies. I’m surprised you don’t have some little nigger
baby hanging off your titty. But you left before I could get the both of you at one pop. You and your daddy let her take them pills or more than likely drove her to it. And then you left her to die. And then somebody comes to my house and tells me how they found you all laid up next to her like a little idiot. But hi ho I got you now. You might have run out before that bastard got what was coming to him but I swear you will never stop paying for your part.

All the people who said things about me were wrong I told her.

But it was no use just like when you are standing there with the smoking pistol you found beside the bleeding man and you try to tell the police you found him there and you have a good reputation and this is just a terrible accident.

So I decided to spend the rest of my life making up for it. Whatever it was. Whatever I decided one day I actually did. One day if I ever sorted the good from the bad and the memories of what I wish was true.

You just remember you are mine now she said and she eased back down on her bed and slept.

And while she slept I read by the window or watched her bed until it was an ocean and the blankets were waves I had never seen except in my head. And I thought of how far I am from the water rolling but I am here with an old woman breathing at the same time with her.

I could wake her up and ask have you ever been to the ocean? but I already know the answer. She has not. You can tell.

It would humble you I whisper to her sleeping if you for one time stood by something stronger than yourself.

And while she sleeps I think this would be a perfect time for her to die.

I sit by the window and fan the curtains back and forth to keep some air moving on her. She sleeps better cool. I fan those curtains that are heavy and figured like a oil picture. They weigh I know more than my own skinny self I know much more than the sheets my mama sewed for curtains. She would hang them over the windows and look at them sad like she wished they were out of a book or these that do not let in much light.

My mama’s mama sleeps most of the time. All she says clear for me to understand is you best take better care of me than you did of your mama. And each time she says that I promise loud I will so we might not hear the other one who says kill her.

But I did not kill her just like I did not kill my mama or my daddy.

She died in spite of me.

I tried to make her keep breathing and when she stopped I blew air in her like I should have. She did not live but at least I did not slip into a dream beside her. I just stood by the bed and looked at her dead with her face pleasant now to trick Jesus. I said to her the score is two to one now. I might have my mama’s soul to worry over but you’ve got my daddy’s and your own. The score is two to one but I win.

I stood over her hoping she was the last dead person I knew for a while.

12

Wake up! It’s time to go to school! my new mama yells.

It is good to feel refreshed on Monday morning. Not like when you are in a job you hate. I sit up in my bed and flip the pillow over for the cool side. Sometimes I even say to myself this feels very good and I count up what I like about the way I am living now.

Number one is that I do not plan to leave here until I am old. If somebody does try to make me leave I will chain my arms and legs to the bedpost and throw a fit.

Number two and three is that I do not owe anybody any money and I can count on food to eat that I do not always have to fix or be guilty eating.

And the best one number four is my new mama saying good morning to me like she means it.

All that bothers me about Monday morning is school. Julia always said it took her a while to get back in the groove.

While I eat my breakfast I compare it to the one featured on the side of the cereal box and it all matches. Toast. Egg. Juice and milk. Cereal.

That much usually holds me until lunch.

Got your books everybody? she checks.

Got your lunches?

Remembering my lunchbox is automatic for me.

Every time we get ready to leave for school the baby Roger cries and reaches his arms out for Stella to take him.

You can go to school when you are a big boy is what my new mama tells him but it is not school he wants but Stella.

I’ll be back in a little while. You be a good boy she tells him.

He still does not listen to Stella or my new mama and he rolls his little fists in his eyes and screams louder.

But he does not have an attention span and soon after we leave my new mama will rock him and read a bear or rabbit story to him and he will be still. I do not know that for a fact but if I was in his shoes that is what I would do.

His mama Stella is in the seventh grade and she is the youngest girl I have ever seen that had a baby. That amazes me.

She is the official mama but she does not do it around the clock. That is when my new mama comes in.

If you just saw Stella sitting in the back of the school bus teasing with the high school boys you would not know she was a mama. Last week she dyed her hair yellow like corn and my new mama took her to the beauty shop and paid them to make it black again.

My new mama says Stella tries her patience.

Stella sits in the back with those boys and I hear her giggle
and say to them you better stop. Then she will giggle again. I always bet one is feeling up her shirt but I do not turn around to see for sure.

I wish I had eyes in the back of my head.

I sit in the front seat of the bus by myself because I think this is a ride to school not a circus. Stella looks already wore out when she gets off the bus at school.

Monday is always music day.

I cannot carry a tune so I do not sing out loud for somebody to laugh at me. I just move my lips to the words and try to look eager and in tune. There is enough people to sing so that my not singing does not make a drop in the bucket.

We always go to the auditorium to sing because that is where they keep the school piano. And we always march past Starletta’s classroom. I wave to her and she sticks out her tongue at me.

Lord sometime I wish I still had Starletta. Last month she took her hair out of the plaits and I had to say Starletta is that really you? when I saw her at school. I figured she would always have the plaits but that is because I always thought she should be little and fast forever.

She has hit the growth spurt they talked about in my health book and she is getting tall. She has been away from me so long now I feel like she grew behind my back and when I think about her now I want to press my hands to her to stop her from growing into a time she will not want to play.

She told me during lunchtime one day she has a crush on a boy and she pointed him out to me and he was a sassy old white boy. And she would not listen to me tell her she would have to pick out another boy to love.

She is very sweet on Tom the white boy. A boy is a boy to her and this is the one she decided on.

But I know Starletta is not a fool. Her body is growing fast and so is her thinking.

Nowadays you can count on her to have some things figured out for her own self. But I still know her good enough to tell what is running through her head.

It is no use to snag a colored boy she would think when the white ones are the ones that have the cars and the money to set you up in style. Why do I want to chop all day and make quilts all night? she would think. What can a colored boy bring me for a Valentine present but some cheap candy or some paper he cut out and glued into a heart? But that white boy Tom could tell his mama to pick up something nice in town and she would put it on her account.

That is the way Starletta was thinking.

I know Starletta is getting a itch way down deep and low where a colored boy cannot afford or reach to scratch.

I always think about her while I stand in the middle of the singing.

The songs match whatever season we are in. Turkey in the Straw. Ghosts. Oh Christmas Tree. Easter Lily Fair.

If there is not a special season going on we sing about America.

I mean they sing about America. I just move my lips and think about how sly I am.

We both keep lists of what we need to tell each other. We started when I moved to Julia’s. My list is usually more exciting than hers but that is just because I can go to movies and the grocery store. Hers might just say my daddy is building a inside the house toilet. Or my mama has a boil on her neck.

I wonder how long she will be interested in keeping the list with me and something tells me inside that one of these days soon she will forget me.

So I have to make a big very big good time with her that she will not forget when she is riding in a car with her white boy or dancing at his party.

I know for a fact I would not ever forget her but you can never be sure about how somebody else thinks about you except if they beat it into your head. At least that is how I am worried about Starletta who never has said much good or bad to me but before long I will have to know I am in her head like she is in mine. It is good to have a friend like her.

All the way home from school I wonder if my new mama would let Starletta come to my house and spend the night.

That is brave to think about because I am not sure if it has been done before.

That is something big Starletta would never forget and she would think back on me and how she stayed in the white house all night with Ellen.

I wonder to myself am I the same girl who would not drink after Starletta two years ago or eat a colored biscuit when I was starved?

It is the same girl but I am old now I know it is not the germs you cannot see that slide off her lips and on to a glass then to your white lips that will hurt you or turn you colored. What you had better worry about though is the people you know and trusted they would be like you because you were all made in the same batch. You need to look over your shoulder at the one who is in charge of holding you up and see if that is a knife he has in his hand. And it might not be a colored hand. But it is a knife.

If you let somebody tell you anything else you are a fool because what I have told you is right.

Sometimes I even think I was cut out to be colored and I got bleached and sent to the wrong bunch of folks.

When I stayed with my mama’s mama I made a list of all that I wanted my family to be and I put down white and have running water.

Now it makes me ashamed to think I said that.

All I know now is that I want Starletta in my house and if she tells me to I will lick the glass she uses just to show that I love her and her being colored is just the way she is. That is all.

I know my new mama will let her come. She will say something on the order of your friend is my friend.

That might sound made up but she means it.

I open the door to my house and look around for somebody to squeeze. And she is there each day in the kitchen and that is something when you consider she does not have to be there but she is there so I can squeeze her and be glad.

That always tops off my days just right.

She squeezes me extra hard on Tuesdays because she knows that is my tough day of the week. Every Tuesday I try to think of an exotic disease that will sound deadly enough to keep me out of school. That is the day when the man comes and asks me questions about the past.

I always dread him.

I walk behind him to the school nurse’s office where he tells me to relax and let’s chat. The nurse is not there to listen in because that is the day she goes out in the field to give migrant babies booster shots. One day though she got back early and we caught her outside the office with her ear to the door.

He always starts out the same with how important it is for me to relax and say what I feel.

I do not think I have a problem but he gets paid good money I am sure to find whatever ails me and cure it.

So how are you today? he always wants to know.

Fine I always say back nice and genuine as I can make it because if I tell him the truth like I had rather be digging a ditch than be here today he asks me why I am defensive.

And then he will not let go of a word but he has to bend and pull and stretch what I said into something he can see on paper and see how it has changed like a miracle into exactly what he wanted me to say.

Then he will smile all pleased at his self.

Then he can move on to some new business like why I am not a social being. That was what he said last month. I told him I was not social because I did not want to be but next year I might after I got my own business straight.

He was not pleased with my answer. Or at least that is what he said. But I think he liked it because it was not as friendly as it could be and that meant he had his job cut out for him.

If everybody was friendly and sweet he would not have a job. You look at it that way upside down and the world will start to make some good sense.

Ellen? he says to get my attention.