Born Blue (3 page)

Harmon come back to the house on Sunday and he had a book of photographs under his skinny black arm and he said it were his life book and it told the story of Mr. James and Mrs. James and their house and their dog and the school where Harmon were gonna go and everything else Harmon could think he might wanna know. He showed me his book, and then he showed Patsy and Pete, and then he looked through it on his own with me watchin' him, and Harmon were so full of happy he didn't see how I were dyin' all over. He told me that him and his new mama and daddy went fishin', and he showed me a picture again of the fishin' hole. He said they took him to a football game, too, and how he met a boy his same age, named Max, who lived close by, and how he were gonna have his own room and his very own
toys that didn't have to go in a box, and how Mr. James took Harmon to his office and let him play on a computer and Mr. James said Harmon be a fast learner. Harmon couldn't stop talkin' to see how every word he said were just killin' me.

I asked him to come on and listen to the ladies with me, and we got down on the rug same as always, only it weren't the same 'cause while Aretha were singin' Harmon kept on talking right over her voice like her voice didn't hold nothin' for him no more.

I stopped the tape 'cause I couldn't bear what he were doing, and I said, "Ain't we never gonna see each other now, Harmon?"

Harmon sat up and shrugged, and he hung his head down low over his lap. "Don't know." He looked up. "But you always be my best friend, Janie."

Two
WEEKS LATER
Mr. James and Mrs. James picked up Harmon for good. They had their dog in the car, droolin' on the window like it couldn't wait for Harmon to be his. But I couldn't let go. I hugged on Harmon and cried an awful mess, and Patsy kept trying to pull me off, but I just got right back on him. And Harmon were crying, too, and he whispered that he loved me most, even more than the ladies, and all of me were so tore up it felt like I was bleedin' to death.

Pete got me off Harmon and hustled him into the car while Patsy held tight to me so I couldn't latch on to
Harmon no more. The car started rolling away, and I got screaming, the hurt were so bad. Then the car stopped, and I thought they was gonna give Harmon back to me. I hushed up and I saw the back window roll down.

Harmon called to me, and I ran to the car, wantin' to reach in and snatch him through the window.

"Here, this yours now," he said. He handed me his tape of Etta James, my favorite, and I took it and sat down in the drive with the tape in my hands and cried hysterics over losing Harmon and the ladies till my voice run dry.

I
WERE SINGIN'
my own kind of blues after Harmon and the ladies gone away. I climbed into the Japanese maple tree and sung my made-up songs, holding my sound long and bending the tune with my hurt. I sang any words that come to my head, 'cause it didn't matter the song, it just mattered the singin'. All I wanted to do anymore was go down to where my songs would take me, down deep to that place that cut and healed, and cut.

Didn't hear nothing from Harmon for a long time. Then I got a package in the mail with his name on the return address. Inside I found a shoe box different from Harmon's raggedy box. This one were new. I opened it and it smelled of new shoes, only weren't shoes in the box. Were tapes. Harmon's note said he and his new dad recorded the ladies for me so we could both have them. Asked would I send back Etta James so he could make a copy of her, too. At the end he wrote, "Love, Harmon W. James." He and Etta had the same last name. I told
Patsy, who stood behind me with a baby in her arms, looking down at what I got.

"Harmon got the same last name as Etta James now," I said.

Patsy said, "James is a common name. Don't go making something big out of it, Janie. You always got to make something big out of everything."

"You think they know Etta James?"

Patsy shifted the baby onto her other hip and said, "Now, what did I just say? No, they don't know her. Woman's probably dead, anyway. I don't know why you two are always listening t:o those dead people. Now, here"—she handed me the baby—"he's put a dirty in his diaper. Go change it and don't forget to wash your hands. Oh yeah, and Doris won't be taking you to church this Sunday."

I had started out the kitchen door but I turned round. The baby were pulling on my hair, pulling it cross my face, so I couldn't see Patsy good.

"Why ain't she taking me?"

Patsy turned away and picked up another baby from the high chair.

"I got a call saying her daughter died."

"She got a daughter? She got a daughter who dead?"

"Yeah. What did you think? You think she don't have a life outside of you?"

I pulled my hair out of the baby's hands. He were stinking bad but I kept standing there.

"How old her daughter be?"

Patsy shrugged and set her baby in the sink "She's grown up. She's probably my age."

"How old you be?"

"I'm thirty-six, miss nosy britches. Now go on and change that baby's diaper before his butt stains." Patsy yanked her baby's shirt up over its head and took the dish-rinsing hose and sprayed it at the baby.

"What her name be?" I asked.

"Who? You mean Doris's daughter? It's Leshaya. Was Leshaya. Why? Don't you believe me? You think I made it all up to make your life miserable? Think I got nothing better to do than make up ways to keep Doris away from you?"

I turned and walked away with the baby, thinking on the name Leshaya. Were a pretty name, Leshaya—a real pretty name.

LESHAYA.
I
SAID
the name to myself all afternoon. I took it to bed with me and slept with it close on my tongue so when I woke up the next day it were the first word I spoke. I loved the sound of it—gentle, easy sounding, just as easy as a breath. Saying it and hearing the sound of it made me feel quiet inside, peaceful, like sitting in a empty church 'with Harmon and Doris before it filled up with people.

I carried the name with me to school that day, keeping it in my head and not saying it loud for others to hear, 'cause I weren't ready to share it yet. Just like with the ladies and their singing, I needed to keep the name to myself and think on it awhile. During math I spelled it out different ways on a piece of paper over and over, and I covered the page with it—Leshaya, Lashaya, Lisheya. It spelled out just as pretty as it sounded, no matter how I spelled it, but I picked Leshaya. I thought how I
wanted that name for me, for keeps. I wanted everybody to call me Leshaya.

Riding on the school bus that afternoon, I were thinking that when I got to the stink house I would say to Patsy and Pete, "My name be Leshaya," then see what they do, but Mama Linda were hiding in a bush near my stop and jumped out at me before I got walking far on the road to the house. Her hand shot out from the bush and clamped down on my arm and yanked me so hard she 'bout snatched me outta my shoes. She said, "Come on," and I did 'cause I had no choice. I went on with Mama Linda to a white car waitin' on the road on the other side of the bushes. She said for me to scoot on in the back, and I did. She climbed in behind me, and before I could remove my backpack, turn round and get sitting with a seat belt and all, we was outta there. I got myself strapped in and looked up to the front. A skinny-faced white lady with babylike teeth were looking back at me, smiling, and a black man with a couple of mean scars on his face were driving the car.

"Janie, this is Mitch and Shelly," Mama Linda said.

The lady up front stuck her hand out and said, "I'm Shell."

She had a wild, jazzed-up look in her eyes, almost like she were gonna eat me soon as she could.

The lady shifted a look at Mama Linda, waitin', I think, for Mama Linda to explain or say something else to me.

"We're taking you away from that stink hole you've been living in," Mama Linda said. "You're glad about that, aren't you?"

"Yes'm, I reckon," I said, and Mama Linda nodded at Shell and said, "See, what'd I tell you, polite and sweet and pretty."

I smiled inside myself 'cause I knew she were talking 'bout me. Shell nodded, then said to me, "Hey, you hungry? We got you a chicken sandwich at the Chik-fil-A."

She turned round and fished 'bout for the sandwich, and Mama Linda said for Mitch to take a left and the signs would take us out to the highway. I saw Mama Linda's hands trembling, and her eyes looked 'bout as wild as Shell's. She had on makeup, but it didn't cover up her yellow-lookin' skin, and she had on her usual strong flower oils she wore for perfume, but it didn't hide her stink—a strange kind of rotten smell.

"Where we goin'?" I asked.

"You're going to Birmingham. Won't that be nice?" Mama Linda said. She didn't look at me. She wiped her mouth. Her lips were sore chapped.

I shrugged. Didn't know nothin' 'bout Birmingham 'cept it were in Alabama somewhere.

"You want your sandwich with or without mayo?" Shell asked me.

"Don't matter," I said. "Am I never gonna go back to Patsy and Pete?"

Shell handed me a sandwich and looked fretful at Mama Linda like I said something wrong.

Mama Linda said to me, "You won't ever have to go back to that terrible place again. Shell and Mitch are going to take care of you now."

"Shell and Mitch? Do Doris know 'bout me goin'?"

"No. Now listen, Janie. This has got to be a secret, okay? Now, Mitch and Shell are good people and they love children"—Shell nodded—"and they're gonna be really good to you. All you got to do is be their daughter. See, you got to call them Mama and Daddy. Think you can do that?"

I looked at Mitch. He were keeping his eyes on the road, but I could see some of his face and I could see his arms and his hands on the wheel, and what I thought was that even if he weren't black as black like Doris, he were black right on, so I nodded.

Mama Linda slapped my leg and said to Shell, "See, what'd I tell you."

Shell reached back over her seat and touched my hands. "I love you already. I'll take good care of you, sweetheart."

I pulled my hands away from her, making like I needed to unwrap my sandwich, 'cause I didn't trust no jazzed-up white lady tellin' me five seconds after knowing me that she loved me. I looked at Mama Linda. "What 'bout you? Where you goin'? Why you ain't my mama?"

"Of course I'm your mama, little face. I'm your mama Linda and she's your mama Shell, but it's Shell now who's going to care for you. Look how she bought you
that sandwich. I didn't even think to get you something to eat. So she'll be your mama. Now that's the deal."

I wondered 'bout her saying the word
deal.
Doris used to say that word when she took me and Harmon out for Sunday lunch. She said we was always playin'
Let's Make a Deal,
'cause of the way we was always trading our food with each other. I asked Doris what a deal be, and she said it were like agreeing to do something, and me and Harmon was agreeing to make a trade with our food.

So I asked Mama Linda in that car, "You make a deal with Mama Shell?"

Mama Linda got squirmy, moving her legs like they ached and looking away from me out the window. "Well—yeah. Yeah, okay, we made a deal."

"A trade? You make a trade?"

Mama Linda leaned forward and tapped Mitch's shoulder. "You can let me out here. Here's fine. I can walk the rest of the way."

"We're almost to the exit," Mitch said. "Let me get you off the highway."

"No, it's okay. I need to walk. I need to walk, Mitch!"

Mama Linda's voice got hysterical, just like that. One minute she were saying pull over, and the next she were screaming how she needed to walk and she opened the door like she gonna jump out the car.

Mitch swerved off the road, and Mama Linda got out and walked away up the ramp of the exit.

We didn't say nothing for a long time. Mitch pulled
out on the highway again, and we rode on. I sat with my chicken sandwich unwrapped in my lap, and Shell turned to face front.

Then after we been silent a real long time, Shell turned round and said, "We've got to change your name. I have a sister named June. We'll call you June."

I said, "My name gonna be Leshaya."

Shell and Mitch snatched a look at each other, and Mitch asked, "Who's Leshaya?"

"Me," I said. "I be Leshaya now."

I
KNEW
I
BEEN
kidnapped but didn't care none. What's it matter who done the snatchin'? Them at Social Services yanked me from Mama Linda and gave me away to Patsy and Pete, then Mama Linda stole me back and did a deal with Daddy Mitch and Mama Shell. Ain't no difference, really. None of it had thing-one to do with my feelings. So what if I been kidnapped? I figured Mama Linda didn't just hand me over to any old body. She did a deal with my daddy; musta been my real daddy, 'cause why would she give me away to strangers?

Mama Shell tried to call me June and Juney, but I wouldn't come 'less she called me Leshaya, so she learned right quick I were a stubborn, pigheaded child, just like Patsy always said. But she didn't take the strap to me or make me stand on one leg, neither. She called me Leshaya.

First night in their home she caught me crying 'cause I were scared and missing Harmon and the ladies and
Doris, and she said she couldn't do nothin' 'bout Harmon and Doris but we could go to the music store and I could pick out some brand-new music for myself.

We went shopping the next day. I didn't find all the same tapes as them Harmon had, but I found some I never heard sung by the ladies, and I got a extra one by Etta James. Mama Shell got me a new tape player, too, the kind that fit on the waist of my pants and had earphones so I could listen private without nobody else hearing. I could lay in my own bed at night and listen all I wanted till I fell to sleep, and weren't nobody tellin' me no, and no babies laying in cribs next to me screaming for daylight.

Sometimes, when I were singing my songs, laying on my bed, I wondered if anybody were ever looking for me. Did Doris remember me? Did Harmon wonder whatever become of me? Were Patsy and Pete happy I were gone from them? I'd fall asleep wondering these questions, and in the morning Mama Shell would say to me at breakfast or while she were doin' up my hair, "You walked in your sleep again last night."