Thirteen
“I WANT TO MAKE A COLLECT CALL. MY NAME'S Rebecca.”
I woke up the next morning to Rebecca's voice coming from the hallway and sat up in my bed. She hadn't even asked if she could use our phone!
“Danny! It's Rebecca! Accept the charges. . . . Danny!”
I heard the receiver slam and immediately heard Rebecca pick up the phone again and dial. “A collect call . . . Rebecca.
“Accept the charges. . . . Danny!”
The phone slammed down again and again I heard Rebecca dialing.
“Danny!” she cried. “What's wrong with you, man!”
There was a pause. “I don't care what your mama said about the phone bill. Tell your stupid sister to stop making all those nine-hundred calls! Now I'm gonna be owing these people money on their phone bill here and I ain't got it.” She sucked her teeth. “Yeah. Yeah. Like you gonna send me everything else. Like we gonna run away and have this baby. Now I'm sitting up in these people's house and . . . Danny! You should see this house. They got those new kind of faucets with only the one thing and you turn it left for hot and right for cold and they got
two
bathrooms! You know what else? They got that leather couch like you said we was going to get when you got everything together. They're rich, I'm telling you!” She listened for a while.
“She's okay. I think she's like eleven or twelve, but she acts like a baby. I don't even think she knows where babies come from. Her mother's nice, but the girl doesn't seem like she has any friends. I feel sorry for her.”
“Me?” I said out loud, bolting straight up in bed.
She
was the pitiful one!
“Her old man cut out on them, then went somewhere else and started all over again. You know how that goes.”
Telling our business to some stranger! I bounded out of bed and headed for the door.
“She's a pretty girl, though, in that innocent way. But I think she got one of those evil streaks in her, so I don't mess with her too much.”
I stopped with my hand on the knob.
“The moms is pretty too. How's my old lady? She doing okay? You been by there to see her?” Rebecca paused again.
“I really 'preciate that. I miss you, Danny. You look after my sisters and brothers too. Let me give you the number here. These people seem cool, but call me in the day when the moms is at work.”
She gave him the number, hung up, then dialed again.
“Collect to Clair from Rebecca . . . Thank you.”
She whistled off-key while she waited. She couldn't whistle to save her life.
“Hi, Ma. How you feeling? No, I'm real good. Uh-huh, they're okay. Yes, Ma, I said thank you. I promise. You taking your nerve medicine? Is Dee's nose still running? That's good. Ma . . . tell everybody I miss them so much, okay? Tell them I'm going to come home soon. You take care of yourself too. I miss you the most.” Rebecca sniffed and hung up the phone.
I leaned against the door and sighed, not knowing what I was feeling anymore. I had never hated someone and felt so sorry for them at the same time.
When I heard the bathroom door close, I opened my door and headed downstairs. Ma had left for work two hours earlier. There was a note for me and one for Rebecca. My note said,
FeniâGet to school on time. Here is some lunch money. Have a good day.
Beside the note there was a five-dollar bill. I stuck the money in my bathrobe pocket and crumpled up the note. Rebecca's note explained how to use the microwave and the contents of the refrigerator. There was no money beside it.
Rebecca came downstairs as I poured a bowl of Rice Krispies, her eyes red rimmed from crying. Her stomach stuck out from underneath her T-shirt, and light brown stretch marks showed on either side of her navel.
“You're staring again,” she said dryly. I ducked my head and she set the teakettle on the stove and lit the burner beneath it.
“How far away is your school?”
“About five blocks. Why?”
“What grade does it go up to?”
“Why?”
“God, can't I just ask a question without you âwhying' me to death?”
I began munching my cereal silently.
“Just 'cause I want to know, Feni. Is that better?”
“Goes to twelfth.”
Rebecca nodded and searched the cabinet.
“Tea is in that canister on the counter. We don't drink coffee.” We didn't say anything. After a while, the kettle whistled.
“Anyways,” she said, taking a cup from the mug rack and pouring hot water into it, “I was in the ninth grade before that stupid school gave me the dropkick. When I started showing, that pointy-headed principal called me into his office.” She turned back toward me, leaned against the counter, and folded her arms above her stomach. “ âWell, now, Miss Rebecca,' ” she said, deepening her voice, “ âseems to me you've gotten yourself into a little trouble.' By the time he finished talking all that junk, I would have left anyways, even if they hadn't kicked me out.”
“You're going back to school after this, aren't you?”
“Of course.”
“Then it's good that Bernadette's going to tutor you.”
“Then it's good that Bernadette's going to tutor you,” Rebecca mimicked. “You're a pain.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“But you have beautiful eyes. Anyone ever told you that?”
I blushed. “No.”
“Well, you do. You got what they call âbedroom eyes.' You know what that means?”
I shook my head.
She laughed that superior laugh of hers and finished fixing her tea. When she turned back toward me, I narrowed my “beautiful” eyes into slits.
“Uh-oh. I knew you was evil. Look how you looking at me. You could probably kill somebody. How come you so evil?”
“I'm not evil.”
“What goes on inside your head when you walking around this house quiet as a snake, not saying nothing to nobody?”
“Nothing.”
“You thinking evil thoughts, that's what you doing.”
I rolled my eyes at her and put my bowl to my lips the way Ma hated. What right did she have coming into this house and trying to tell me what I thought?
“Your ma said after your grandmama died, you got all closed off and wouldn't talk to nobody.”
“My mother didn't tell you that!”
“Sure did. In the car on the way here from the airport she said she took you to one of them specialist doctors and they said wasn't nothing wrong with your mouth. Then when people stopped worrying about it, you started up talking again. Now, why you just stop talking like that and drive your ma crazy?”
“Your mother's crazy, mine isn't.”
A shadow crossed Rebecca's face. She swished her tea around in her cup without saying anything. After a moment she went on as though I hadn't spoken. “If I had all this you got, I'd be talking a mile a minute.”
“What all do I have?” I yelled, slamming my bowl against the table. Rebecca jumped, then calmly brought her cup to her lips and looked at me above it. “You come into my house and take half my room, then you and my mother and Marion get all chummy-chummy....” I sat back, wanting to be anywhere but where I was.
“So that's what your problem is. You jealous. Well, I don't want your moms. She's cold. She doesn't care about people. She thinks life is a bunch of little notes and meetings. She thinks dinner is a waste of time. If I'm gonna have any mother, it's gonna be my crazy moms in Manhattan, because she loves me. And I ain't giving this baby up to no family that I think ain't gonna love it! I know they will. I would never have no kid that I couldn't love, and that's what your mother did, ain't it? Went and had a kid she didn't even want and can't give a hundred percent to. If I was you, I'd get on the phone with my daddy right now and say, âCome get me, 'cause there ain't no love here for me'!”
“If she was all that, you think she would have taken your pregnant self in? Nope! My mother's strong! She's quiet and strong. And youâyou're so stupid, you don't even know what love is!”
I left the kitchen while she was thinking up a smart remark and made my way up to my room. The last thing I wanted was for Rebecca to see me crying. Behind me, I heard her take a loud sip of tea and set her cup down heavily.
Fourteen
“I WANT TO GO LIVE WITH DAD,” I SAID TO MA IN THE den that night. I had waited until dinner was over and Rebecca was stretched out in the living room in front of the pregnancy exercise video Marion had brought over.
Ma's pencil froze in midair. “What are you talking about? You barely speak to your father, and God knows what it takes to get you to go out West for a visit.”
“Well, I want to speak to him now and I want to go live with him . . . in Colorado,” I stuttered, nervous all of a sudden.
Ma stared at me. Then her face fell and she held her head in her hands. “Why, Feni? What's wrong with the way things are here?”
“Nothing. I justâI just think I'll be happier in Colorado. That's all.” I had not seen her cry in a long time, and now my arms hung uselessly at my sides.
“Are you and Rebecca not getting along?”
“She's okay.”
“If you're upset about the bedroom situation, I guess I can move her into the guest room. It's just so cold in there.”
“Ma, it's not Rebecca or the room or anything. I just want to live with Dad!” My palms were beginning to sweat.
“I thought we were finally becoming friends, Feni.”
When did that happen? And anyway, mothers aren't supposed to be your friends.
“Can I call him?”
She sighed, then pulled out her address book. Seeing how dejected she looked made my stomach queasy. I held my breath for a moment, then exhaled.
“I've been trying to do everything I could to make it comfortable for you here,” she said, turning the pages slowly. “I've worked my fingers to the bone so that you could have everything you wanted....”
“I do have everything . . . almost.”
Ma stopped turning. Without looking at me she asked, “What's missing, Feni?”
I shrugged, and when she didn't turn around, I said, “You don't want me anyway. You want a career and stuff. You don't have time for a daughter.”
Ma's chair swiveled around and she reached over and pulled me to her. “You listen to me, Afeni Harris. And you listen to me good!” Her breath was hot and angry against my face, but I didn't dare to pull away. “You know I grew up in a family of seven children! Seven children and one mother. No father. No anything! And before I was twelve years old, three of the seven children were dead. Before I was thirteen, my mother had died. I did everything I could to hold what was left of that family together. And we never hugged and kissed and goo-gooed âI love you' to each other. But every one of us knew in our hearts how the other felt! And when the state came in and separated me from my three brothers, I knew that was the last I'd see of them, but we all knew we'd love each other for a long time. Don't you ever let me hear you say I don't love you, because if I'm not showing it with words, I'm showing it with actions! I didn't grow up saying it, so I can't start now. But âI love you' is in every meal you eat, every piece of clothing you wear, and every clean sheet you sleep on!” She opened the address book and tore out the page with my father's address and number on it. “Here!” she said, thrusting the page into my sweaty palm. “Call him and maybe he'll say âI love you' with words. But if he does, ask him to show it too!” She let go of my other hand and I walked toward the door.
“But . . . everything is about
you,
” I said. “Work and AA meetings and bringing Rebecca here. It's all about what you have to do for yourself.”
“No, Feni, you're wrong. It's also about what I do for
you.
I stopped drinking for both of us, but especially for you. I work so you don't ever have to do some fast-food something after school, so you can have dance lessons if you want them, skating and skiing and vacations and food. So you can have nice clothes and private schools and Jack and Jillâ”
“I hate Jack and Jill.”
“You just don't understand Jack and Jill.”
“It's just about a bunch of kids being snobby.”
“Feni, Jack and Jill is about black people taking care of ourselves. When those Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and Four-H clubs weren't letting our kids join, we made our own clubs just like we've always been doing.”
“I guessâ”
“Jack and Jill is about taking care of our own, and that's what bringing Rebecca here is about, what the Seton chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous with its all-black membership is about, what black sororities and fraternities are about, and the sooner you learn all of this, the better.”
“I still don't like Jack and Jill,” I mumbled.
“You don't have to. Just like you don't have to like dancing and skiing. That's why I don't always make you go. I just want you to experience it all, to get a taste of every little bit of the things I didn't get a chance to sample when I was a girl. If you think what I'm giving you is not enough, then fine, go live with Bernard.”
“I don't want to anymore. I'm sorry,” I said.
“Don't be,” Ma said wearily. “I just want you to know that I
do
love you, Feni, and I
do
want you here with me. I'm just not the kind of mother who goes around saying it every day.”
I backed out of the den and stood outside the door. The words began sinking in and settling my stomach. They made sense to me now. We were not some TV family where everything was perfect all the time. Dad wasn't here anymore, and it really didn't matter because when he was here, he was a stranger anyway. It was only me and Ma, and maybe we weren't so close. The thought made me sad. Other girls were close to their mothers. They did things together. But I liked being by myself and thinking thoughts no one else knew about, not even Ma. I was a true-blue loner, and maybe Ma was too. So we fit together like a jigsaw and came apart just as easily.