Somebody's Someone, page 18
I think I must’ve walked miles on that man’s back. And for some reason I never told Ruby that I walked on his back and he gave me money. Something inside me said she’d never believe me anyway.
“You’re ’bout the best back walker I ever had,” Mr. Benny told me one morning as he asked me to step off so that he could turn over and face me. “Lean down here closer so I can see your eyes. What color are they anyway?”
What was this crazy man talking ’bout now? He knowed damn well what color my eyes was. I started feeling nervous in my belly. I turned myself towards the edge of the bed slowly. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” I told him. Mr. Benny grabbed ahold of my hand, and my skin went colder than a Sno-Kone.
“Ooh, look at how them nipples are perking up now! Lord have mercy, child. I know you want me to touch ’em, don’t you? How’d you like it if I told you I wanted to fuck you too?”
I pulled my arms closer to my body and stepped back from him. “You black-ass bitch!” I howled at him, not knowing where the word came from. “Do you say that to your own child? Do your li’l girl walk on your stupid back too?”
I quickly dropped to the side of the bed and slid off.
“What! What’d you just say to me?” He reached and grabbed me by my arm, swinging me round.
“Let go of me!” I yanked free and grabbed his wrist and twisted his skin, trying to give him a rug burn. I had learned that at camp. It never fazed him.
“I’ll show you something. Don’t you go talking back to me with your little cocky ass. That shit might be cute with your mammy, but it ain’t working here.”
He tried to put one hand round my neck, but I moved out his reach b’fore he could. I did the only thing I knowed to do; I ran. Since the back door was never locked I blasted through it and didn’t care that all I was wearing was my night slip. Out the corner of my eye, I could see Mr. Benny coming for me. “Help!” I screamed. “Somebody help me!” I didn’t care that the rocky driveway was hurtin’ my bare feet, I just kept on moving. I got right good to the end of our yard, and damn me! There he was.
“Let me go!” I screamed. “Help me!” He got me by the tail end of my slip. After he’d picked me up, he tried puttin’ his hand over my mouth while dragging me back inside. I kicked and hollered the whole way.
“Sit yo’ ass down and shut the hell up,” he said all quiet-like as he threw me on the couch. I started kicking him and fighting back with all I had. I caught sight of the boys looking on. Dwayne was rocking back and forth in the hallway, and Dennis sat right beside him.
Mr. Benny threatened to slap me with the same blackjack he’d let me take for show-and-tell if I didn’t shut up. The boys watched everything.
“I’m gonna tell Ruby on you, Benny. I hate yo’ ass!” I screamed, and scratched at him. I’d seen him beat my sister up and tell lies, and I was not gonna put up with no more of him and this crazy shit! Goddamn it! Why was I having to go through this everywhere I went!
“You just wait and see. Ruby’s gonna put yo’ ass out!” I screamed at him.
“Oh, yeah? Well, that’s what you think. We’ll just see about that!” Mr. Benny yelled back at me.
Ruby showed up just as Mr. Benny was backing out the driveway to leave. I later found out that it was Miss Ida who’d called Ruby down at the hospital and told her what was going on. From the minute Ruby walked through the door, she started yelling at me and asking me why come I was dressed like I was, and what the hell had I gone and done this time. Mr. Benny had already called her and told her that I hadn’t listened to him when he asked me to clean up, that instead of doing the dishes like he’d asked I flat-out refused and got sassy on top of that. He said that therefore, he was left with no option but to kick my ass.
“I cain’t believe that I leave the goddamned house and everything falls apart. I ain’t at work a whole fucking hour before the nosey-assed bitch next-door neighbor has to call me and tell me you running down the street hollering. What did you do to piss Benny off? And why didn’t you mind him? I gave him permission to treat you like you was his own! I’m the mother in this here house, not you!”
I didn’t know what to say to her, but I tried for the one thing I knowed she’d hear. “Why don’t you ask the boys what happened?”
“They’re babies, for heaven’s sake. How they gonna know what was going on?”
“Just ask ’em and see! Just ask ’em.”
“I ain’t got to ask them a goddamned thing!”
“Fine, then! Mr. Benny tried to do this to me!” I held up my middle finger and showed her the sign.
“He’s been making me walk on his back and giving me money. He also said he wanted to pinch my titties.” I told her everything all at one time, hoping and praying that she would believe me.
“Is that so?” Ruby said, standin’ in front of me with both hands on her hips and now a cigarette stick stuck b’tween her teeth. The white nurse dress she was wearin’ and her hair all crazy made her look like she had just finished workin’ on bringin’ Frankenstein back to life.
“Well, you don’t say? If I know you, and yo’ fast ass, you prob’ly brung it all on yourself, trying to be grown and all. Now get that crazy-talking shit outta my face.”
Staring at her mouth as those mean things came falling out was more than I was gonna take. I gathered up all my strength, and in a hot second, I let her know what was on my mind.
“I don’t know why you had me anyway! Everybody knows you didn’t want me or Doretha either! I hate I was even born!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and didn’t give a good god-damn what she thought. I’d come a long way, for a long time, to be with a mama that just didn’t have no mama feelings for me. I was tired and mad for wanting somebody who didn’t want me!
“I hate you!” I couldn’t believe I’d said it. I’d gone and told Ruby what was laying at the bottom of my throat for so long. No matter what happened now, I’d said it—no taking it back.
I think I can recall the hard of her fists slamming into the left side of my face, knocking the wind clear out me, and all my sense right along with it! And even though I don’t recollect pickin’ myself off the floor, I do know I fell to it. I also don’t ever r’member Ruby ever askin’ ’bout the story of Mr. Benny wanting to do what the middle finger stood for to me. All she said was she’d heard all she needed to hear, and it was clearly a misunderstanding on my part.
I believe it was then that I first felt the hate of being a girl. I hated being a thing that folks called pretty and that gave mens the notion that pretty much they could do and say whatever they wanted and nobody would do anything to ’em. I hated light brown eyes and a smiling face that told the world “Look at me, look at me—do what the middle finger sign means anytime you want.” All I could think of was what it must be like to be a boy, or a man. They was the things that made Ruby smile and know she was wanted. She had to fight for ’em and let it be knowed to all that they was the ones she loved. Far as I could see, you didn’t mean nothin’ to Ruby ’less she could take up for you and pretend like nothing ever happened. I could see how she just let me and Sister move out to Big Mama’s. She must’ve did it by saying, “They never happened. They never happened”—and I knew she believed it too.
I could finally see that Ruby was never gonna hold me in that place where a mama’s s’posed to hold her baby. Deep in the warm where we one time breathed the same air and took in the same food, a place where God watches over the two and keeps them as one. I was never gonna be one with my Ruby, the mama I’d ’magined, loved, and waited for all my life. Now I could see what my sister saw: that only a fool would sing a song to find somebody who didn’t wanna be found. Somebody who could only see mens, not girls. Right then I wished I hadn’t wasted all that time singing that song “Have You Seen Her” at the top of my lungs. Far as I was concerned, I didn’t need to see her no more.
“You going to stay with ya’ daddy in California. I already talked to him ’bout it, and he agreed that it’s time for you to go and see what it’s like to live with him. I think you gonna like it just fine.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My mind, body, and breath was all trying to be in the same place at the same time, and it wasn’t coming together too well. “Why I gotta go, Ruby?”
“ ’Cause I said so, and he finally wants you.”
“But”—by this time the tears was hauling ass down my face—“I don’t even know him, and what if he ends up not liking me, then what?”
“He’s ya’ daddy; he’s gotta like ya.”
“If he liked me so much, then why come I ain’t ever lived with him b’fore?”
“You sure is a sassy li’l girl. You should try and mind ya’ manners and not ask smart-aleck questions. You didn’t live with him ’cause I didn’t say ya could!”
It was planned that I’d leave my mama in less than a week’s time. I was told that I’d be riding a big airplane, and it would take ’bout five hours to get ’cross the whole United States. Ruby’d told me all ’bout the time changes and how North Carolina was three hours ahead a California, so if it was gonna be four o’clock in Jacksonville, then it’d be one o’clock in California. That didn’t make too much sense to me, so I didn’t give it too much mind—I had other things to concern myself with.
To keep my mind offa the time changes, the pains that stabbed through my chest, and the too many times I’d have to run to a commode to keep from shittin’ on myself from the runs, I wondered how airplanes stayed up in the sky. Whenever I could, I’d lay out near the barely running creek in the back of our house and watch to see if I could spot a airplane movin’ ’cross the sky and maybe see how the folks fit inside. For the life of me none of it made a lick of sense. Outta nowhere I could hear Odetta Fontaine telling me ’bout how God’d made birds to fly and not people, and I again ’magined if she told me that ’cause she was as scared to get on that plane as I was myself. I wondered how it was for Odetta when Glenn left her. Did he go on his own, or did she make him go on account that she didn’t want him anymore? And maybe if that was to cross his mind, then maybe it could make him want me a li’l more.
Hughes Air West, Flight 716, leavin’ Jacksonville, North Carolina, to San Francisco International was gonna arrive on time, despite the heavy fog problem, the captain of the plane told us. He went on to say it might get a li’l bit bumpy, but for us to just relax and we’d be on the ground b’fore we knew it. I looked up as the FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT signal went on and thought it was best for me to stay put. Earlier on, it had taken two air hostess ladies to hold me in my chair as the plane was taking off. They had to work real hard on account I was screamin’ all over the place. I hollered for what seemed like forever as our plane pulled away from the place where I could see Ruby standing and waving good-bye. I stared at her till I couldn’t make out her face anymore. The next thing I knowed I was dizzy and puking up and crying all at the same time. B’fore long folks was leaning over in their chairs and stopping in the aisles asking me, “What’s wrong li’l girl, you gonna be all right?”
“I...want...my...mama.” I couldn’t get the words out my mouth in one full sentence for the life of me. All I could do is hiccup, cry, and try and answer folks’ questions. As people kept coming round to ask me what the matter was, I watched their faces as I repeated to each one that I wanted Ruby, and each one would move past and say things like, “You’ll see her again soon.” Or, “Don’t cry like that. The two of ya will be back together in no time.” Person after person said the same things over and over again, till finally I let myself believe ’em and fell off to sleep.
When I opened my eyes I could see that I was not dreamin’—it was all real. I was in a plane, high up in the sky, surrounded by folks I didn’t even know. It wasn’t even like the Greyhound bus ride I took from Big Mama’s to Ruby. There wasn’t a bus driver looking out for me who would pass on to the other drivers that I needed watching, and there wasn’t a Miss Virginia Reed who made time all but disappear. No, I was by myself with the kiss that Ruby’d left laying ’cross my face. As the tears started sliding out my eyes again, I unballed the toilet paper that one of the air hostess ladies had gave me, and I was careful to only pat round the place where Ruby had kissed me.
On one hand, I was beginning to see that my mouth was real bad—every time I opened it somethin’ was sure to go wrong. On the other, I didn’t see what was so bad ’bout telling my own mama that her nasty man wanted to do what the middle finger stood for. What was wrong with that? I didn’t understand how kids could do stuff like lie and other things they not s’posed to and when they get caught, there’d be hell to pay. But when grown folks did stuff like talk nasty to kids, or even worse— touch they titties, or leave ’em, or whoop ’em for nothin’— nobody says a word. I wasn’t gonna be nothin’ like that, when I got grown. As far as my mouth goes, I had to tell Ruby the truth, even though she’d said in so many words that I was the one that made him wanna touch me. Deep down though that hurt me real bad, I was glad my mouth told on him. At least that way he might not wanna do things like that to other folks’ kids.
After Ruby stopped denyin’ Mr. Benny could do any harm, she’d started to tell me ’bout the great life I was gonna have with Glenn—my new daddy. Ruby said that Glenn was rich and worked for a Mr. Barry White—I knowed who he was ’cause all the women in the South talked ’bout how they’d only throw they panties at him, Isaac Hayes, and Teddy Pendergrass. Them women made me wonder if Glenn got panties throwed at him. For all I knowed there was gonna be panties layin’ all round Glenn’s house. I was sure I’d find out soon ’nough. The PLEASE BRING YOUR SEAT FORWARD sign was on as the air hostess ladies went ’bout the plane telling folks we was ’bout to land. I looked out my window, which I’d been ’fraid to do b’fore, and watched the clouds rush past us as the plane moved closer and closer to the ground.
Nadine, Glenn’s wife, was s’posed to pick me up from the airport. I’d asked Ruby how’d Nadine know who I was, and she’d guaranteed me not to worry ’bout it. And now that I was here waitin’, I was worried, even though if somethin’ did go wrong, it wouldn’t surprise me.
“Regina Ollison, could you please pick up a white courtesy phone.”
I thought I was hearing things. I couldn’t believe that someone knowed who I was and was calling me over a intercom. Again, I heard the message repeat itself. I stood up and went to a information desk and asked them what a white courtesy phone was, and they showed me. Apparently, Nadine’d gotten the time I was coming wrong and was having trouble finding me. I agreed to stay where I was till she arrived.
“Well, hello there. It sure isn’t hard to see who you belong to.” A white woman walked up and stood in front of me. Her skin was the whitest I’d ever seen up close, and her dark brown hair lay against her shoulders in soft curls. Even though she was a li’l pretty, I didn’t like the clothes she was wearing ’cause they made me feel funny inside. I couldn’t figure out why, but her pants, that was three inches from her ankles, didn’t look so good—they was high waters in a bad way. It felt like there was somethin’ in her being so white that made me feel “real” black all a sudden.
“Hi. Are you Nadine?”
“Yes, I am. And you, no doubt, have to be Regina?”
“Yeah. Where’s Glenn?”
“Oh, he’s working. You’ll see him later.”
“Oh.”
Nadine helped me go to the place where you claim your suitcases. I picked mine up and struggled with it as I followed her out the airport. We walked a short way and took a elevator to get to her car. And when we reached it, I had to let the words fall outta my mouth and have they say.
“This sure is a ugly car you drive. Is this the best you got? My mama, Ruby, she drives a new car every year, and they look way better than this.” I didn’t want Nadine to think she was gonna get in too good with me right off the bat. Anyways, Ruby’d already told me that I didn’t have to like Nadine if I didn’t wanna. She’d said that just ’cause Glenn decided to marry her, that don’t make her shit to me. Nadine just helped me put my bag in the trunk, and we drove off.
“Sounds to me like you already miss your mom,” was all she said, real quiet-like.
I didn’t say a word. I hated the way she used “mom.” It sounded real white to me, and what did she know anyway? And where was my so-called daddy? My belly was flip-flopping all over the place as I thought on seeing Glenn.
CHAPTER NINE
GLENN AND NADINE
I DIDN’T SEE GLENN the night I got to Richmond. As a matter of fact he was out of town then, and Nadine had a hard time getting hold of him. I knowed that she was trying with all her might to play like it wasn’t pulling on her mind that he wasn’t round, but I could tell by the way her eyes watered up when she talked ’bout him and how she didn’t look at me head-on when I asked ’bout him again that it was hard on her.
“He’s in L.A. right now working with Barry White, and he just can’t get away; but I assure you he is happy you’ve arrived and will be looking forward to seeing you.” How did he know I’d arrived if he wasn’t to be found? Later I heard Nadine calling round Los Angeles at all hours of the night, asking folks if they’d seen him.
“Hi Ruth, it’s Nadine, Glenn’s wife? Fine, and you? Well, I just wanted to know if you’ve seen Glenn this evening? Yeah, he told me he’d be working late. I just figured that maybe he and John might be together. Okay. Very well then, Ruth. Bye now!” I watched as Nadine played like she was happy to be talking to her friend, but once she said bye, her smile slid from her lips while she stared down onto the receiver. Far as I was concerned, Nadine didn’t have to go through no trouble finding Glenn on account of me. I figured if I’d waited this long to see him, a few more days wasn’t gonna kill me. Anyway only a damned fool wouldn’t be able to see that Glenn was up to no good. As far as I was concerned, him not being home was no big thing, but I felt sorry for Nadine.
