Leaving Atlanta (20 page)

I stood outside the trailer door a second before I pushed it open and went inside. Two things I noticed right off the bat.
One, was that a lot of people was absent that day. Every single row almost had one empty chair in it. And second was the noise.
Whispering really. But when a clump of people get to whispering at the same time, it make a rumbling sound like on TV when
Perry Mason call somebody a liar. At first I didn’t notice what had happened to my row. It had one empty seat, like most of
the other rows. But when I sat down, I sat in the empty seat. So then my row was full. But how could that be? Rodney was absent,
for sure. Stanley Halliday was right behind me in his seat.

I turned and looked Stanley right in his fat face. He was almost all cheeks.

“You sitting in his seat?” It wasn’t a question. It was like when Mama stood in the doorway of my room and said, “You didn’t
make up your bed?”

Stanley looked shocked. Probably because I ain’t said two words to him since we been in school together. “No,” he said. “You
the one.”

“Uh-uh. I sit one seat from the front.”

“Well I sit one from the back.
He
sat three from the back and that’s just where you at.”

“But—” I was about to tell that fool that the same was true if you counted the other way. Rodney sat three from the front
and that’s where Stanley had his big behind. I can’t stand him. But I let it go because the problem was that Mr. Harrell had
took Rodney’s chair right out of this row. Like he was never there. That wasn’t right. When my granddaddy died, Granny didn’t
go and move his chair from the head of the table. When we went there for Thanksgiving, his place was just empty. So when we
got to remembering how much he used to love sweet potato pie, we could look at his place, shake our heads and say, “Sho do
miss him.”

Moving Rodney’s chair was just plain disrespectful.

Mr. Harrell tapped his ruler on the desk to get people to cut out all the whispering. He cleared his throat like he was about
to say something big. But he just sat down at his desk and pulled out his roll book.

“Angelite Armstrong.”

“Here,” Angelite said.

“LaTasha Baxter.”

“Absent,” somebody said from the back.

I got this nasty feeling in the bottom of my stomach. What was he going to do when he got to Rodney? Was somebody going to
say, “Dead”? Or should I say, “Absent”? Somebody should stand up and say, “Missing, like his chair!” Maybe I would do that.
Everybody would just about have a heart attack because I’m just about as quiet as Rodney was. I hardly open my mouth unless
somebody is messing with me. Like Mama say, I stay to myself.

Denise Daniels said, “Here.”

I had to hurry up and make up my mind. When Mr. Harrell called Rodney’s name, I had to say something good to let him know
I didn’t appreciate what happened with the chairs. Maybe I could say, “He not here, but who ever took his chair better have
it right back by recess.” But if I said that, I would get sent to the principal’s office. Then I got a better idea. I wouldn’t
say anything at all and it could be like a moment of silence for him.

Monica Fisher said, “Here.”

And then Mr. Harrell called my name. “Octavia Fuller.”

I said, “Here,” and then bowed my head to get ready for the memorial.

There was a quiet second while he wrote a little check in his book, but then he went on to Stanley Halliday. I snapped my
chin up and looked at Mr. Harrell like he had lost his mind. He was supposed to call Rodney’s name and we could do our moment.
But he just went on like our class was a creek and Rodney was just a cup of water that somebody dipped out.

I twised around completely in my chair and looked right in Stanley Halliday’s fat face. “You better not say nothing,” I said
under my breath, quiet but mean.

His eyes got kind of big and he looked over at Mr. Harrell like he wanted the teacher to tell him what to do.

Mr. Harrell just called Stanley’s name again, with a little edge on it like all this was trying his patience.

Stanley looked at me and I said, “I ain’t playing with you.” And I wasn’t. So many times, I seen him cheat off of Rodney’s
spelling test and neither me or Rodney said anything. Now it was Stanley’s turn to keep his mouth shut. I could almost hear
his brain sloshing around in his big ol water head, trying to decide if he should be scared of me. Finally, his voice came
out loud and on purpose like he was saying something in a play. “Present.”

I hate Stanley Halliday and every single person in that class.

I never said
here
for Mr. Harrell again. After a couple of days, he stopped calling my name and the fifth-grade creek just kept on going.

Recess is the part of the day that I hate. I know that sounds crazy since I am always trying to think of ways to get out of
class. But it’s not the class
room
I be trying to get away from. It’s the people in it. So recess is the same as being in class except we don’t got no lesson
and Mr. Harrell not telling everybody to shut up when they start talking. That’s what makes it such a bad time. I generally
hang by myself hoping nobody won’t say nothing to me.

Mrs. Grier say that’s my problem. I need to go out and make friends with people. “Octavia,” she told me one time, “just go
up to a nice young lady and tell her that you would like her to be your playmate.” I like Mrs. Grier a lot, don’t get me wrong.
But sometimes I think that she been reading too many primary readers. I can just see myself going up to Trina Littlejohn and
asking her to “be my playmate.” The only time I ever heard anybody use that word was in that clapping rhyme, “Say say my playmate.
Come out and play with me.” That was always my favorite. I like the sound of the word.
Playmate
sounds more special than
friend
. Socks have mates when they are just alike.

But in real life, there ain’t no playmates. Lots of kids go around together but they not mates, really. They get mad over
stupid stuff and don’t talk to each other for a couple of days. People think it’s just girls that be like that, but boys are
messy too. But it’s the girls that be on my mind because I don’t like to fool with boys no way.

If a girl wants you to be her friend, she will ask you to sit with her and her other friends at lunch. It’s the one with the
friends that get to do the asking. I generally sit alone and once or twice I have asked some girl to my table. She will say
yes only if her other friends are mad about something. But when they get back together, she will never ask me to sit at the
big table with all of them. That’s just the way it is, Mama says. I don’t need to worry about it. I asked Mama if she ever
got invited to a pajama party. She says when she was coming up, black folks didn’t do stuff like that. Well they do now and
I would like to get a invitation just one time.

I was sitting by myself reading my Judy Blume book. I had read it before but I had to read it again because I didn’t have
nothing else. I used to have a library card and could get a new book every week, but I accidentally dropped a hardback book
in the bathtub. I went to the librarian and told her I was sorry. She wasn’t mad at me, but she said that I would have to
pay for the book before I could borrow another one. Mama came to pay, but when they told her that it costs seventeen dollars,
she told them they must be crazy. So now I have to read what I have.

I heard somebody say, “On your marks, get set, go,” and a few boys started running but nobody was much paying attention to
them. People had things on their mind: Rodney.

Well, not really thinking about him like Mama think about Granddaddy and tell me how he used to sing “Hush Little Baby” to
her when she was a girl. Or how he brushed his teeth with baking soda. They didn’t know Rodney well enough to look back on
him like that. But they knew he was gone and they wondered where he was at and would whoever got him come back to this school
to get somebody else. Oglethorpe is the only school where two people got snatched from. Three if you count Yusef Bell, who
came once a week for gifted classes.

But I didn’t talk to nobody. I just minded my own business and tried not to be too cold. Warm is a state of mind, Delvis say.
I don’t know if I agree with him all the way, but I do know that thinking about a thing makes it feel stronger. So my mind
had its hands full thinking about staying warm and the book in my hand. When somebody said to me, “Hey, Octavia,” I thought
it was my imagination.

I looked up and saw LaTasha Baxter standing in front of me. She had on a fancy pink coat with fur around the hood and even
this little fur pouch thing to keep her hands warm. I seen the whole getup in the Sears catalog. That’s how I know that little
fur thing had to be bought separate. Her parents must got some serious money.

“Hey,” I said, putting my hand without the mitten behind me. Tasha rubbed her lips together a couple of times. What did she
want? Tasha’s one of those girls that don’t talk to you unless her other friends is mad with her. But she was nicer than some
of them. She never called me “Watusi” or pinched her nose when I walked by.

“Sad what happened to Rodney,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering why she was coming to me with this. She looked over her shoulder every few seconds, over to where
her friends jumped rope. They would be talking about her like a dog by the time she get back there.

“You think they going to find him?” She said it in a soft whisper. The wind pressed her fur trim against her face.

“No.” I felt like I was a grown-up talking to a little kid. Hadn’t she noticed that none of the kids who were
missing
never got un-missing? All
missing
meant was they didn’t find the body yet. All the search parties that went out on Saturdays and Sundays were looking for dead
bodies, not live children.

“Jashante neither?” she said.

Then I knew why she came over here in the first place. Her and Jashante had this kind of thing going on right before he got
snatched. He sat with her at lunch a couple of times, I thought. I couldn’t quite remember because I don’t like to be up in
people’s business. But evidently she was up in mine because she knew that me and Rodney had been friends too. And to tell
the truth, I didn’t mind it so much. It was like me and her were mates, having the same problem and everything.

“No,” I told her. “Me and my mama gave Jashante’s family a pound cake and everything.” I almost said “like he was dead,” but
I bit my tongue.

Tasha maybe got the message. She nodded.

“Your mama going to carry something over to Rodney people?” I asked her. I figured that all the money-people live nearby to
each other.

She shook her head. “Our parents don’t know each other.”

“Oh,” I said.

She kept looking back at her friends. One of them said her name.

“You better get back over there,” I said, like I was tired of talking to her. I wanted to send her away before she could say
“I gotta go,” and run off with her siditty girlfriends.

“Well, if you hear something about Jashante. Either one of them. Would you tell me?”

“Anything happen like that, be on the news,” I said. “You don’t need me to tell you nothing.”

She looked like her feelings was hurt a little bit. But I didn’t have time to be worried about her feelings. At lunchtime
she wasn’t going to be worried none about mine. Mrs. Grier would say, “Now, Octavia, don’t assume the worst.” But at lunchtime,
that girl didn’t even look at me when I was trying to find a seat. I stood in the middle of the cafeteria for a second, craning
my neck all around so somebody could invite me to sit down if they wanted. Nobody said anything, and I sat at the little oval
table where I always sit, always by myself.

I think that it might be nice to go to Chicago. I never been there. I never been anywhere really. Just to Macon to see my
Grandmama and one time we went down to Savannah to see the old houses and the beach. I can’t remember the Savannah trip, but
we got pictures to prove it really happened. Me and Mama sitting on the sand with our legs crossed in front of us and our
arms behind us like a couple of movie stars. I wish that I could remember it, because it might be the most fun I ever had.
Even now, when I’m doing something and kind of enjoying myself, I say,
Is this better than Savannah?
And I can’t know. I just have to trust what the picture say.

But Chicago is even better than Savannah. We got family up there. My mama’s cousin Elaine moved up there right after I was
born. She got a daughter named Nikky who is about three years older than me. I can’t remember Nikky, but Mama got a picture
of me laying on the couch and Nikky looking at me like she never seen a baby before. Even back then, Nikky was a sharp dresser.
Since I was just born, I only got on a Pamper. Nikky got on a green-and-yellow dress with bows all over the place. And right
on the top of her head was a yellow ribbon edged in white. Cousin Elaine got good taste.

Once a year, or thereabouts, Nikky sends me all her clothes that she got too big for. Pretty things. Velvet dresses with lace
collars. Or cotton ones with flowers. Some long to the ground and others just before the knee. But all of them have big ribbons
around the waist that tie in the back. That must be the style in Chicago. The Windy City. I can see all those girls walking
through the streets with their satin sashes flapping behind them. That’s where I want to go next time I get to go someplace.
Forget the beach; I don’t need to be sitting out in the sun getting no blacker anyway.