Born Blue (23 page)

Mrs. Trane said how Mama got into drugs round age
fifteen. She said were a tragic story 'cause Mama were a real sweetheart before then.

She sat with me on the wicker couch with all these pictures we was passing between us and told me what she knew 'bout Mama. Weren't much.

She said, "She used to be a cheerful child. She had a real good sense of humor. Always the first to laugh at herself. Not many people are willing to laugh at themselves the way she would. And she loved children. She used to be every parent's pick as baby-sitter. But she was best at science. We all thought she'd go into science, maybe be a biologist. When she was just eleven years old she created an environmental cleanup program, and that was long before that kind of thing was popular. She used to put up signs on telephone poles, inviting people to help clean up streets and streams and ponds, and she offered free coffee and doughnuts to anyone who showed up. Paid for it with her baby-sitting money. Then, I don't know what happened. She just changed, and all her baby-sitting money went to paying for her drug habit. Then that money wasn't enough and she was robbing stores and snatching purses. Nobody knew how it happened. Nobody knew what happened."

Mrs. Trane passed me the last picture of Mama. She were standing on the beach holding up a dead stingray in her hand and smiling into the camera.

I said, "Guess we ain't never gonna find out what happened."

Mrs. Trane looked at me, and it were like she be angry with me all the sudden, and I set the pictures down and stood up, thinking I might need to run.

She pointed her finger at me and said, "You've got a little girl. You tell her. You tell her about your fife. And you be honest with her. Don't let her make the same mistakes. Break the pattern, Leshaya. Change her destiny. She doesn't have to grow up just like you. I heard all you said to your mama. You and she are just alike."

"No, we ain't!" I backed away from her. "I ain't nothin' like Mama Linda."

Mrs. Trane shook her head. "Maybe you never meant to be, but you are. You've followed in her footsteps all along. You're both bridge burners."

I said, "No, I ain't What that mean? I ain't never burnt no bridges."

Mrs. Trane looked up at me so serious and mad, her tiny eyes blinking at me. She said, "What happens when you cross over a bridge, then you turn around and burn it? Can you get back over the water?"

"No, not on that bridge you cain't."

"That Paul person you told your mama about. You had a good thing working with him. Then you burned your bridge by going against your agreement, taking those drugs, getting involved with his best friend. You see? You made it just about impossible to return. You make it impossible for anybody to have a relationship with you. You use people up. And that poor Harmon boy." Mrs. Trane shook her head and clicked her tongue.

I shrugged 'cause I didn't know what to say. Then a sound come from Mama Linda's room like Mama suddenly come awake from her coma. We both of us hurried to the room, but it weren't the sound of Mama Linda waking up, were the sound of her last dying.

WHEN MAMA LINDA DIED
, Mrs. Trane took all the hoses and stuff out her body and out her mouth. All the machines stopped making their noises.

I looked down at Mama Linda laying flat on her pillow, and she looked real peaceful. Never seen her look that way before. Looked like dying be just the right thing for her.

The medical people who brung all the equipment to the house come and took it all away again, and more medical people come and took away Mama.

We didn't have no funeral. Weren't nobody left to come to it, anyway, 'cause like Mrs. Trane said to me, Mama Linda used people up and burnt all her bridges.

Mama Linda got cremated and I got the ashes in a urn. Didn't know what I were gonna do with them. Seemed a pain to haul them round with me all the time.

Mrs. Trane said I could sprinkle them somewhere or I could leave them in the urn at the beach house, 'cause
the beach house were left for me to have. Weren't no money 'cause Mama Linda spent everything, and the beach house couldn't be mine for real till I turned twenty-one. Mama Linda wrote out a legal will, and Mrs. Trane and some lawyer was in charge of it together.

Mrs. Trane said I could come live with her. She said she could help me. She told me about a fine arts school in Birmingham that were free to go to, where I could study music. She said if I didn't want that, I could take a test and get a diploma and go to a community college.

I didn't say nothin', but I already knew 'bout music. I could sing. Didn't need no college or school to sing. I were on the radio! Anyway, I couldn't be goin' to no school, 'cause it were time for me to go get my sweet Etta back. I loved my baby, and I knew if you love a baby, you's'posed to keep it and take good care of it, not give it away so it be adoped and lost, the way I been. I come to understand that, spending all my time with Mama Linda. I seen how losing Mama meant losing my own self, too, and finding her, learning something 'bout her, that give me a Utile bit of myself back A mama's'posed to take care of her baby. So I made my own plans, kept secret from Mrs. Trane. I were gonna go get my baby back, then go find Mick Werner, the producer, and make my own CD with my own made-up songs.

I went home with Mrs. Trane to her house after we picked up Mama's urn, and she fixed me a dinner while I played her piano. She had a real piano in her house, and she didn't never tell me. I could really play songs I
couldn't play before, 'cause I practiced on the cardboard, but Lord, it were so much better hearing the music. I played till it were time to eat, then I played till Mrs. Trane gone off to bed.

When I were sure she be asleep, I went to her purse she kept hanging on a doorknob in the kitchen and took out all her money. The lady were rich. She had a hundred and fifty dollars in her purse. I put it back on the doorknob and went to bed. I didn't sleep 'cause I wanted to be awake and gone before Mrs. Trane waked up.

Round five in the morning I called a taxi to come out to the house. I waited outside for it. When it come I climbed in and told the driver to take me to the bus station. I closed the door and looked up at the house.

Mrs. Trane were standing at her bedroom window looking down at us. The taxi pulled away and Mrs. Trane waved.

I didn't wave back. I just stared at her till I couldn't see her no more.

I
BOUGHT ME
a bus ticket to Tuscaloosa. I were gonna go get my baby back. My Etta Harmony James. I were gonna take her. Weren't like I be kidnapping her, though, 'cause I weren't gonna give her to nobody else. I were gonna keep her, and she already be mine. I give birth to her. I be her mama, and someday she gonna hear 'bout all my mistakes like Mrs. Trane told me to do so she don't do them, too.

I got on the bus and sat down next to a white dude who kept wanting to talk to me. He said I be real pretty. He touched my hair, but I didn't pay him no mind. All I wanted to do were get my baby back and get singin' again.

Were dark by the time I got to the Jameses' house. I felt shaky walkin' up the long driveway, and kinda sick to my stomach 'cause I were nervous 'bout how I gonna get my baby. The house looked extra giant in the dark.

I went up to a kitchen window and looked in, and
there be Mr. James cookin' at the stove, and there be a little girl standing on a step stool and shoving paper plates on the table. I wondered who that be and thought at first Mr. James and Mrs. James adopted themselves another little child.

Then I knew. It just come to me,
bam!
My baby, Etta, don't be no little baby no more. She be more 'n two years old. That girl going round the table be mine, she be my Etta Harmony James. I felt all swolled with pride and had to step back a bit from the window to think 'bout it. I forgot how she were gonna grow up while I been away. She were walking already. She like a real, whole person already. I peered back in at her, and I seen her skin had got darker and her hair were brown and had curls in it She had fat little legs and arms and fat cheeks, and I felt so proud in my heart to see her. My Etta Harmony be so pretty and smart, the way she could do them plates at the table. She were perfect. She were the perfect little girl.

Then Harmon come into the kitchen. He didn't look no different Same old Harmon. He picked up Etta and lifted her high. I could hear her squeal clear through the window, and my heart got all excited. She were gonna be a singer like me.

Harmon put her down, and in come a grown girl I ain't never seen before. She went round the table, fixing the paper plates so they be in place, then went to a drawer and pulled out some forks. I figured she were the new maid. She give Etta a fork to put on the table, and
Harmon come up behind her and rubbed at her back. She give him a quick kiss on the mouth. Weren't no maid.

Mr. James dumped a load of spaghetti into a bowl and set it on the table. Harmon poured out the sauce in another bowl, and he put that on the table, too. The girlfriend finished setting the table, and Harmon leaned over to say something to Etta, putting his arm round her to do it. Etta run out the room, and I heard her squeal again. Then back she come, and so did Mrs. James and their other little boy, Samson, looking taller and thin. All them sat at the table, and Etta had her a special seat set in her chair just so she could sit high like everybody else.

I didn't think how she gonna need one of them. Maybe when I took Etta back I could grab up that seat thing, too, and maybe some clothes; she gonna need clothes, and that step stool so she could set me a table the way she done them.

They got to eating, and I saw Harmon rock back in his chair and reach out his arms and put one round the back of the girlfriend's chair and one round Etta's.

I pulled away from the window. I didn't want to watch them people no more. I stood out on the lawn, not knowing how I were gonna get Etta away from them. Seemed like they hung awfully close to her. Then that picture I saw of Mama Linda and her family sitting round a table at a restaurant in Italy come to mind. They looked like a nice family in that picture. My Etta, she be in a nice family, too. She got her a good daddy and a
grandmama and a grandaddy and Samson—all them folks lovin' her. And she got a special seat for her chair and pretty clothes on and a big house to live in. She got all that.

I looked at the kitchen window, at the bright light shining from it. What if I didn't take her? What if I left her? But if you love your baby you's'posed to keep her and take care of her. I stepped up to the window again, and there Etta be with a doll, feedin' it spaghetti. She were takin' good care of her baby just like I's'posed to do so she don't grow up lost.

I stepped back and turned round so I don't be seeing that cheery lighted window no more. I needed to think. What be the right thing to do? Mrs. Trane said how I got to break the pattern so Etta don't grow up like me and Mama. How I gonna do that if I don't take her? But she be so perfect. She be exactly what I always wanted to be. She got black skin. She got real African American blood running through her. She be African American—I took in a deep breath that seemed to draw on my heart and squeeze it—and all I be is a wigga.

I felt tears on my face but I brushed them away and shook my head. It time to face the truth of that. Alls I be is a wigga. I got no black in me 'cept what 1 put there my own self. Etta, she got it all. She got just what I always wanted—black skin and a black family to love her. Only way she gonna feel lost in her life be if I take her. Don't matter if I love her and a mama's'posed to have her. It ain't right. It don't feel right. Leaving her be loving her
the right way. I know it. I feel it in my heart. I done the right and loving thing the first time, leaving her with Harmon.

I lifted my head, looked at the dark sky. And maybe it be the only right thing I ever do in my whole life, but that be okay, 'cause I think it be the one thing that matters most—that and singin'.

I brushed off the tears that kept wantin' to pour out, even when my mind told them not to. Weren't gonna cry. This be right. I gotta leave Etta and go my own way. Maybe someday I'll write her, tell her my life story. Maybe she'll hear 'bout me in the news, how I be a famous singer.

I looked cross the yard to the house next door. It looked far away through all them high bushes the Jameses had. I headed out cross the lawn toward that house, hoping the people there would let me call a taxi. Then I stopped, thought a second, and turned round and went back—right up to the Jameses' front door.

I touched the door handle. Then I reached into my pack and pulled out a cloth sack Inside were Harmon's silver stopwatch, the only thing I stole that I didn't never lose. I stared at it a long time, thinking how I should tie the sack to the door handle and go on.

Were too much to give up that night, though. Harmon had Etta. He got the better deal. I stuffed the watch back in my pack and set out cross the lawn.

1. Why does Janie change her name to Leshaya?

2. What is it about blues singers like Etta James and Billie Holiday that touches Leshaya?

3. Why isn't Leshaya happy with the James family? Why does she steal from them?

4. Twice Leshaya decides to leave Etta with Harmon. What is her motive the first time? The second time? Why doesn't Leshaya leave her bag of stolen items?

5. Paul tells Leshaya, "You don't let anybody care about you. You don't let anybody get close enough!" Why do you think Leshaya pushes people away?

6. How does taking care of Mama Linda at the beach house change Leshaya?

7. Do you think Leshaya is following her dreams or running away from things?

Chatting with Han Nolan

Question:
How long have you been writing?

Han Nolan:
I started writing stories as soon as I could write, or so my mother says. What I remember is reading Nancy Drew mysteries and wanting to write some of my own mysteries. I was about nine years old at the time.
Harriet the Spy
also influenced me back then. I started spying and keeping a journal. I soon realized that I didn't make a very good spy (I kept getting caught), and that I wanted to write more about my own thoughts than about the people I spied on. Still, that was the beginning of keeping a journal, and I've kept one ever since. I wrote my first novel-length story in the hopes of getting it published back in 1988.