Angel Over My Shoulder (2 page)

Leslie blinked her brown eyes. The woman in the casket had her eyes closed, yet this time she merely looked as if she were sleeping. It was her mother! There was a slight smile on her face as if she was at peace. It was different then the husk of a person that she’d seen before.

The horror was replaced with anguish which almost brought the little girl to her knees. “Mamma, I don’t want you to be dead!” But Mama just lay there with that peaceful smile on her face. Daddy! She remembered him suddenly and rushed to the second coffin. “No, no, no!” She screeched. Daddy was there looking the way he did when he fell asleep on the couch while watching TV.

Leslie looked over at the figure of her crying grandmother sobbing in the pew and she turned in that direction to fall into the comfort of her arms. Suddenly hands were grabbing her and holding her back. She looked at the face of the man that had always been her guide and protection and she threw her arms around his neck and sobbed against his chest. He lifted her into his arms and paced back and forth. When the sobs resided he placed her back onto her feet.

She looked up at him. She was shaking and frightened tears streamed down her face. “I want to wake up now.” It seemed that he tried to stare at the caskets but eventually he looked at her and took her hand again.

“Who are you?” She was staring at him for the first time that she could remember. He wasn’t black like she was, but maybe he was still in her family. He felt like family. His brow raised and he looked at her as if he didn’t understand.

“Are you my Guardian Angel, like they talk about in bible school?” Mrs. Blankenship had taught them about an Angel over your shoulder. He was the only person that had ever been over her shoulder…

“You need to say goodbye to your Mama and Daddy,” he spoke, looking at her intently. A fearful expression crossed her face, yet she couldn’t really be very afraid because she was so focused on his accent. He said yo instead of your. White people always talked proper like her teacher. They didn’t say yo instead of your.

She looked at the caskets with trepidation and turned back to him. “Come with me, Angel.”

He did without hesitation.

She stared at the bodies in the caskets. They were again just the empty shells of what her parents had been. “My Mama and Daddy are already gone.” She looked up at Angel for confirmation. He didn’t respond. Then she brightened. “They’re at home! When I wake up they’ll be at home!” She looked at him beaming brightly. He smiled slightly.

With a sigh she took his hand and together they walked out of the room. He didn’t want to talk and that was fine. She just wanted to wake up and go home.

When she woke up Leslie’s little t-shirt was soaked in sweat and her cheeks were still wet with tears. She threw off her covers and ran into Mama and Daddy’s bedroom. When she saw them sleeping; real sleeping and not dead sleeping, she felt total relief. She scurried into their bed and they made room for her without coming fully out of their sleep. She snuggled between their bodies in their big bed and she found comfort in the fact that she could feel Mama pressed against her body on the right and Daddy on her left. She tried not to think of the dream but couldn’t help it and for a few minutes she feared falling asleep. But before she knew it, the feeling that all was ‘right’ overwhelmed her fears and she fell asleep. Before she knew it, she was waking up and the sun was shining brightly into the room. She jumped up to begin her day, forgetting her dream completely.

~1979~

Leslie was running. She could run for a long time and never get tired. But sometimes she got sidetracked. She was trying to get home. She hadn’t been home in so long. If she could get home Mama and Daddy would be there. It was the way things worked in dreams. Once Angel had taken her home and it had been wonderful, she had not wanted to leave. She had almost forgotten what her Mama and Daddy looked like.

When she tried to tell them about how they had died in an auto accident and how she now lived with Grandmama they pretended not to know what she was talking about. Funny thing is that when she was at home she could talk again. That was good. And it was good that they pretended not to know. She could pretend to.

She was running to get back home and to that good feeling, but holes kept appearing in the ground, like land mines, but with flames shooting from them. She almost fell into one but Angel was suddenly there and he grabbed the back of her shirt, yanking her back to safety. She was so happy to see him. She hugged him and he smiled; something he rarely did. Neither of them talked, she only talked to her Mama and Daddy. She knew Angel would help her find her old house. She took his hand and began running. She was so close.

Over the years Angel had taken her many places. Now that it was just her and Grandmama she never got to go to the circus, or the zoo. And Grandmama never went took her to the drive-in and then carried her into the house when she pretended to be too sleepy to walk.

But in her dreams Angel rode the carousel with her. They always got on one of the horses that went up and down and he always rode with her; her in front and him in back. They waved at the faces of the people that flew by. And at the zoo he held his nose when they went into the ape house. Dreams like those weren’t real, weren’t going to be real. She knew the difference. And sometimes when she woke up after one of them she would wish that Angel was real. She could almost wish for him to be her new Daddy but he was too young. He was just a teenager, maybe he could be her big brother, even though he was a white boy and she was a black little girl…well maybe all she needed was for him to just be her friend.

As they ran to find her old house they passed the house that she lived in now with Grandmama. It was filled with people who were drinking and dancing and listening to music. She was curious as to why Grandmama had so many people in her house.

Grandmama never had parties. Sometimes the ladies from church would come by for a women’s meeting but that was about all. She went up the walk with Angel following right on her heels.

The entire house was counting down 10…9…8…

Ahh! It was New Years Eve and Grandmama was having a party! She was talking about that in real, since they’d be starting another decade. Grandmama said it marked an important milestone. She would pinch her cheek and say, ‘Maybe you will talk for the new decade.’ But she didn’t push. She never pushed.

When Leslie looked across the room she suddenly understood. This was no longer a dream, this was going to happen. This was going to become real. She and Angel stood right in the doorway, and she didn’t worry about the cold air coming in or the hot air leaving because she wasn’t really here. She knew this because she saw her other self sitting on Uncle Monty’s lap. Then, as sometimes happened, Leslie became her other self and she could smell the alcohol on Uncle Monty’s breath and his wet kisses on her cheek.

Uncle Monty was speaking drunkenly into her ear. “It’s 1980 now. You aren’t going to speak for the new decade? It’s been three years since your Mama and Daddy died.” She looked at the door where Angel was still standing, alone now and watching her. Leslie looked back to her dream Uncle and he was looking at her real funny.

“Give Uncle Monty a big New Years kiss.” Leslie didn’t want to. He smelled funny and was acting funny. But she did as she was told and leaned forward to kiss his cheek and he turned his head swiftly and she kissed his wet mouth instead. She immediately wiped her lips of his spit.

He laughed like he had told the biggest joke. Leslie slid off of his lap but he clamped his hand on her wrist.

“It’s after midnight, young lady, time for you to go to bed. Your Grandmama said that you can stay up to midnight only.” The drunken man stood and then swiftly lifted her into his arms. He carried her up the stairs and Leslie watched the rest of the people in the room continue their dancing and drinking in slow motion, oblivious to her and her dream Uncle. The only person that didn’t seem to be moving in slow motion was Angel. He didn’t move at all, but his eyes were glued to hers.

~1989 Summer~

The telephone was ringing and her hands were covered in black sticky hair gel. “Shit!” Grandma was going to have a shit fit if the phone woke her up. She quickly wiped her hands on her jeans. They needed to be washed anyways. This was her third straight time wearing them. She sprinted out of her bedroom, hurtling over the ottoman until she reached the phone on the end table.

“Hello?!” She said breathlessly. She’d caught it on the third ring and was half listening to the voice over the phone and for her grandmother’s movements in the other room.

“Leslie! Girl, April’s mother is spending the night at her boyfriend’s house and April has the place to herself! I’m on my way over there now, I’m a come pick you up-”

Leslie scowled. “You know I don’t like April and she don’t like me.” April used to be one of the girls in school that made fun of her when they were both back in elementary-- back before she had began talking again. The kids used to pick on her, calling her retarded. April had even gouged her with her sharp nails because she wouldn’t yell out.

She heard her friend sigh over the telephone. Missy was her best friend, but that didn’t mean she was a good friend. It wasn’t as if Leslie could tell her that April made her feel like the lost little girl that she had once been…a girl that she had fought hard to bury down within herself.

“Come on, bitch! You can steal some of yo Grandma’s liquor and pain pills.”

“Hey!” Leslie said in a hushed yet hard voice. “I’m not stealing pain pills for everyone. She will start missing those.” But the liquor was easy. For a while now she had been responsible for managing the household. Grandma’s check would get deposited into the bank account and Leslie had the ATM card to withdraw the cash when she had to do the shopping or the checkbook when she had to pay a bill. She had celebrated her eighteenth birthday by getting herself a fake ID that said she was 21. And Grandma had plenty of pills that she stole for herself and Missy when she wanted to share. Leslie didn’t even really look at it as stealing. Grandma couldn’t do things now that she was sick. It wasn’t really stealing when Grandma didn’t use the money…

“Look Leslie, come to the party. I don’t want to go by myself.” She heard Missy’s voice become sly. “Derek is going to be there.” Leslie felt an involuntary chill run down her spine at the mention of his name.

Derek made her want to keep her eyes downcast and to duck out of sight. Nothing much made her feel that way these days. Most of the boys she knew were hard; into drugs and stealing and skipping school. Derek wasn’t, and yet he was still cool.

“I’m not going because Derek is going to be there, alright?” She finally consented, “but because I need to get pissy DRUNK!”

Missy laughed. “I’ll be there in ten!” Leslie hurried back to her bedroom and looked at her hair. Every black girl in school wanted long hair except her. She had cut her hair short into a boy cut long ago. And before the phone had rang, she had been experimenting with making a faux Mohawk the way she’d seen the punk kids wearing on MTV. Instead of combing it out she turned to and fro in her mirror and decided to keep it.

Living in a mostly black neighborhood, Leslie knew that others thought of her as the freak—and not just because she had spent several years as a mute. She wore all black; black eye shadow, black nail polish and proudly sported facial piercings and short hair with spiky bangs. Some kids in white neighborhoods dressed like this, but not in her neighborhood and not in her school. She quickly pulled off her dirty jeans for a pair of black ones that hid the dirt better.

She sniffed her armpits and then liberally rubbed on deodorant. She did brush her teeth but mainly because she’d had onions on her burger for dinner. Afterwards she put on black lipstick to match her heavy black mascara. She didn’t have time to put in all of her piercings but did get in her tragus and replaced her rook, her labret always stayed in below her lip unless Grandma made her remove it. She put in the septum because she knew Missy hated it and would call her ‘bone nose’; she was just putting in the lip ring when she heard Missy blow the horn.

She spritzed cologne on her neck and then hurried to Grandma’s room. She paused and took several deep breaths before she could enter. The room smelled of sickness. It was almost overwhelming to her. The television emitted the only light and for a moment her grandmother’s sleeping form looked lifeless.

Leslie felt a moment of panic before she noted the slight rise and fall of Grandma’s chest. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and looked at anything but her. She tipped over to the bedside table and picked up one of the many bottles of pain pills. She snuck four pills…Grandma wouldn’t miss four. She checked the label. Fentanyl--the good stuff. She shoved them into her pocket grimly.
Just make me numb
, she thought as she tipped out of the room as quickly as she could.

As she left the house, Leslie grabbed her leather jacket. She wore a black t-shirt that said simply; YUCK FOU written in bold white letters. As she locked the door behind her she could already hear The New Edition’s, If It Isn’t Love blaring from the sound system of Missy’s parent’s car. Leslie smirked. She was listening to The Clash and The Sex Pistols. She shouldn’t even be born in the United States with her style and likes. She was in the wrong time and place. They would accept her in The UK just the way she was.

Missy paused to stare at her once she was buckled into her seat. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?” Leslie touched the hardening spikes on top.