She laughed, her long red fingernails fanning the air like the claws on one of the lions at the zoo. “Girl, you jus’ as ign’rant as you look. Yo’ daddy ain’t in no army. He washed dishes at a restaurant until he got hisself killed in some car wreck. He didn’t die before you was born, neither. He jus’ didn’t want no wop child fo’ a daughter. Yo’ mama’s people didn’t want you, neither. They too busy up there on Greenville Avenue, servin’ up that fine Italian food at Tuscany Restaurant.”
She must’ve seen my eyes getting wider and wider, because she threw her head back and laughed. “Girl, what kinda lies yo’ mama been feedin’ you? Yo’ mama’s family jus’ a couple miles up the road, but I bet you ain’t gettin’ no birthday cards, is ya? Them high-class woppas, they don’ want no daughter gettin’ with some dishwasher boy and makin’ some little Oreo moolie. Why you think they kicked yo’ mama out when she had you?”
The lady turned around and walked off, and I stood there feeling like a house of glass was cracking all around me. People bumped into me, knocking me back and forth as they squeezed by, and I barely even noticed. After a minute, somebody laughed and yanked my backpack off my shoulder and threw it into the hall. Pencils and papers spilled and scattered around, and the school counselor came out to see what was the matter.
“Epiphany?” She waved and snapped her fingers by my face. “You all right? Epiphany?”
Epiphany.
That long mouthful of a name bounced off and floated into the air, like another trail of smoke. It didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore. Mama’d told me that was the name my soldier daddy picked for me. When he saw the ultrasound pictures from half a world away, he knew I was gonna be something special. Now
Epiphany
didn’t mean anything. She didn’t exist and neither did the soldier daddy.
There was just Epie, a skinny, long-legged, creamy caramel girl standing there getting in everyone’s way. Too skinny, too ugly, too brown, not brown enough, her eyes a strange grayish green that came from the Italian restaurant up the street. Just a couple miles away. When Mama would talk about the past at all, she always told me her parents were dead, but now I remembered that we came to Dallas once when I was little. She’d just split up with some guy, and we needed money to keep from ending up at a homeless shelter. We came to this neighborhood, and she went inside a house, and she left me in the car with some crayons and a coloring book. She came back with cash, and we beat it out of town.
She never told me she was visiting family, but now the truth was clear enough. She didn’t want whoever was in that house to see me.
I got my backpack together and walked out of the building and turned into Epie. The best thing was that Epie didn’t care what that lady thought, or whether some girls would probably try to jump her later for hanging out with DeRon. Instead of heading on home from school, Epie hung around and watched the basketball games, then waited in the alley behind the gym and found DeRon afterward. She rode in his old car, and got her flirt on, and went off to some party with him at the low-rent apartments down the street. It didn’t even bother her when everybody was getting wasted, and some ex-convict named Ray came by and smiled and wanted her to go back in the bedroom and smoke. DeRon just laughed and said, “Go on, Ray. How you be gettin’ all up on my girl like that? She with me, and you know me and my boys can’t be smokin’ that stuff. We got them drug tests alla time. You gon’ get me in trouble, my man.” DeRon and Ray bumped fists and laughed.
Right after that, DeRon and his friends got restless and headed out. Epie piled in the car and went right along with them. Next thing she knew, they were down the street in the parking lot of the old white church, and the guys were running around wild, throwing rocks at the building and tipping over benches in the memory garden. Then the police showed up, and the fun went bad in a hurry. The whole thing ended with a ride home in a police car and a parent talk on the front porch. The good news was that the preacher at the old church had told the police officer he wasn’t gonna press charges; he just wanted the damages taken care of. The bad news was that Mama was bloodred mad because she’d wasted her whole second-shift lunch hour driving around, thinking there’d been a kidnapping or something. Now she was late getting back to her job as a temp, cleaning classrooms at the university.
Epie didn’t feel a thing when the cop left and Mama dragged her into the house, then slammed the door. She figured Mama deserved this. It didn’t even seem like there was any point telling what’d happened that afternoon, or bringing up what that lady at school said about the soldier daddy in Somalia. If someone’ll lie to you once, they’ll lie again.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me
, Mrs. Lora used to say.
While Mama yelled, and Russ complained about how much gas he’d used up driving around looking for me, Epie sort of faded off. I started thinking that three more years until I got out of high school was too long to stay here. I wanted to move on to someplace where I didn’t have to worry about getting jumped at school and there wasn’t some lady who knew dirty little secrets about me, and I didn’t have relatives down the street who wouldn’t let me into their houses.
Maybe I oughta go on down to Greenville Avenue and walk right into that fancy restaurant
, I thought.
See the looks on their faces when their long-lost grandbaby shows up.
Russ got tired of the argument and headed for the door, dropping his keys on the table. “You can take my car back to work. I’m goin’ on my bike.” A minute later, his Harley rumbled from the carport and he was outta there. Russ knew Mama was ready to come all the way unwound and it was gonna get ugly.
I looked at the clock and wondered if Mama cared about anything else but her wasted lunch hour. Did she even wonder why, after coming right home after school every day for three weeks, and trying to be good, and trying to stay out of the way so her and Russ wouldn’t mind having me around, I all of a sudden went and partied till after midnight? Mostly, she just seemed mad that now she’d get her pay docked and have to work late. Like usual, she figured I was trying to make her life harder than it already was. She never thought anything I did was good. I wanted to not care.
She’s a liar anyway
, the Epie voice whispered in my head.
She’s been lying to you all your life.
Mama stood in the doorway, her hands shaking as she yanked her dark hair up in a ponytail and grabbed a rubber band from the pile of mail, newspaper ads, and other junk on the end table. Her face was wicked red from her cheeks on down, all the way to where her skin disappeared into the neck of her T-shirt. Her eyelids were droopy and slow. She’d probably calmed herself with a whiskey sour or two when she couldn’t find me. But whatever. Anything she wanted to do was her business.
“Stop giving me that dirty look.” She lifted a hand like she was gonna smack me. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but if she tried it again, she was in for a shock. I was tired of taking crap off her. All I ever did was try to make Mama like me, and all she ever did was tell me how much trouble I was and how hard it was to keep a roof over our heads and buy everything we needed. Every once in a while, she’d add that things weren’t supposed to end up like this. This wasn’t the life she’d wanted. “You’re just lucky I’ve got to get to work, or I swear . . .” She let the threat die in a growl.
I took a step back and tried to make her yelling roll right off. What choice was there, really? I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come home. I would’ve told that police officer I was a runaway or something. It wasn’t like Mama would miss me. I was the worst thing that ever happened to her. If she hadn’t gotten herself pregnant with me, her life would’ve been totally different. Better. She’d be down the road helping to run that fine Italian restaurant.
It hurt to know that—to finally really understand. I didn’t want it to hurt. I wanted to be as cold as ice to her, but there was still some part of me that couldn’t. There was still some of Epiphany in there with Epie.
“Don’t even know if I can get the classrooms finished tonight,” she grumbled, picking up Russ’s keys. “You think this is easy, after cleaning houses all day? I hope you know how much you screwed up, Epiphany. You selfish little . . . And for what? Because you want to go run around like some . . . like some . . . back-alley trash? You get yourself knocked up, Epiphany, and you’re outta here. You’re not staying in my house. You hear me?”
I wanted to say,
You know what? I won’t.
But I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there with a big ol’ lump gathering in my throat. I wasn’t gonna cry where she could see it, so I closed my mouth tight over the sound and watched her grab her cleaning company smock and head out the door. For half a second, the room felt better without her in it. After that, it just felt empty. I looked around at the matteddown sofa, and the end table somebody’s dog must’ve chewed on before we moved in, and the gold-colored carpet that was probably three times as old as I was, and I thought there had to be more to life than this. There had to be something else out there. I sank down onto the sofa and just thought about it for a long time.
I hated it here. I hated her. I hated me. I hated who I was. I hated what I looked like. I hated the color of my skin, and my stupid, long, kinky hair. All that hate was like a slow burn, eating me up from the inside. Wasn’t there anybody in this world who wanted me?
What if I tomorrow night I got looking superfine, and then took the bus to Greenville? The street would be lousy with people partying at the clubs. Guys would give me looks and stuff, and I’d smile right back. When I made it to that restaurant, I’d walk on in like I belonged there, right past the dudes in their white shirts and black ties, parking high-class cars out front. I’d stroll to the counter and find the people who owned the place and make them tell me what’d happened when I was born. I’d make them tell me all the secrets Mama kept.
Her secrets . . .
I knew where she hid her secrets. She’d crammed two boxes in the back of her closet at every place we’d ever lived. The one time I’d messed with the boxes, she’d caught me with her closet torn apart and yanked me up by the arm so quick I felt my shoulder pop. “Did you open these? Did you?” She pointed at the boxes, her finger shaking.
“I didn’t!” I said, and tried to pull away. The way she was holding me hurt a little in my arm, and a lot inside. “Mama, stop!”
She let go of me finally, shoved the boxes back in the closet, and shut the door hard. “You leave my things alone,” she hissed, and dragged me out of the room. “You stay out of here. Stay out of my room!” She headed back to the sofa to watch a movie with some guy from next door.
I was nine then, old enough to finally get it through my stupid head that I was better off keeping my distance—from Mama and her things. It was easier to stay clear of whatever was in the closet, keep my head down when Mama and me were home together, and try not to be a bother to her. It never even crossed my mind that those boxes in the closet might be hiding secrets about me.
My heart started pumping as I headed down the hall, went into her room, opened the closet door, and looked inside. The boxes were still there, a big one with a picture of a tomato can on the side, and a shoe box, stuffed in the corner behind a pile of dirty laundry and junk. I studied all of it, memorized how it looked, then knelt down and started moving things one at a time, making sure I’d know how to piece it all back together. Even though I told myself I didn’t care what Mama thought anymore, a part of me remembered what it felt like to be yanked up by the arm and thrown through the doorway.
I set each box on the bedroom floor, leaving tiny trails in the dust. My heart hiccuped into my neck. What if even that was enough for Mama to notice? What if she finally decided she was sick of me and kicked me out on the street? But I had to know. If there was something about me in those boxes, I had a right to it, didn’t I?
I slid my fingers around the lid on the shoe box, worked it upward. It popped loose, and I set it to the side, my eyes following it to the floor, then tracking back to the box real slow. I was afraid to look, but I wanted to see.
There was a plain white paper on the top, folded in half. I lifted it out, opened it, read it—the rental agreement for some trailer house we lived in before Mrs. Lora’s.
I set down the paper and took out an envelope that was underneath it. My birth certificate was inside, and a few other things—vaccination records and stuff. My father’s name was on there, Jaylon Jones. It wasn’t J. Lon Jones, like I’d always thought. It was Jaylon, all one word. I tried to picture him in my mind, but I couldn’t anymore. The hero soldier daddy, who was tall like me and looked a little like Will Smith, had walked right out the door with the nasty lady at school. Jaylon was just some lines on paper. A man I’d had all wrong, just like the name.
A man who didn’t want me.
I pushed everything back into the envelope, set it aside, and dug down deeper. There was a Valentine’s card—one of the sappy kind you pick out when you’re just falling in love with somebody. There was no way to tell whether it was from Mama or to her. The envelope was yellowed, but the flap had never been stuck down and torn open, and in the spot where it should’ve been signed, it just said,
Me
. Why’d she saved it all these years?
I dug deeper, jumping every time the house settled or creaked, even though I knew that once Russ headed off on his bike, he usually hooked up with some friends and partied for hours.