Leaving Atlanta (6 page)

Tasha watched him propelling himself forward, sweating though coatless; she wondered with envy what it felt like to be fast
and to be a boy.

“Let’s do relay races,” Monica suggested.

“Mixed teams,” Forsythia added. “Girls and boys.”

The two of them had on blue jeans and tennis shoes too. They had planned this. Tasha was wearing a navy blue jumper and her
good coat. Why did Ayana have to go to private school? She and Tasha had been friends ever since kindergarten. Tasha looked
down. She couldn’t run in the shoes she had on, nice leather ones with side buckles. And mixed teams? What boy would want
to run with her? Roderick had already made his way over to Forsythia. Tasha saw him pull on one of her long straightened braids.

She turned her back to the kids who were milling about trying to find partners. She saw Rodney Green, the weirdest kid in
her class, maybe in the whole school even. He was the only person not watching the races. Some kids pretended not to watch,
but Tasha knew they monitored the proceedings covertly. But Rodney was locked inside his own head. He sat alone on the cool
red dirt with his back against the school building, pouring Alexander the Grapes into his mouth. Rodney had even fewer friends
than Tasha, but he was so weird that he didn’t even care. Maybe that was better.

She turned in response to a tap on her shoulder and saw Jashante standing there. “You want to be my partner, Fancy Girl?”
he asked, reminding her of their walkway encounter.

He smiled, showing a chipped front tooth. He reached for her hand as if she had already agreed. “Come on.”

“Oooh,” Monica sang out omnisciently from somewhere. “Tasha and Jashante sitting in a tree—”

Tasha pulled her hand away. Jashante’s sweat-and-grass smell was suddenly suffocating and she wanted to be away from him.
“Somebody already asked me.”

“Who?” The cute smile was gone.

Tasha couldn’t answer.

“Ain’t nobody ask you,” he said, “ugly as you is.” He put both of his hands on her shoulders, amplifying his green odor.

“You better get back from me,” she said, hitting at him.

Jashante held her fists tightly and pulled her close to his chest. The buttons on his sweater pressed her face. “Why you don’t
want to be my partner? You think you too good to be my partner; that’s what it is.”

Tasha was pulling away from him with all of her strength and suddenly, he released her, causing her to fall backward in the
red dirt. There was a rip as the pink thread underneath her arms gave way. She was aware of people laughing at her. She looked
behind her and saw Roderick laughing so hard that fat tears sat on his pretty-as-a-girl lashes. Jashante was cracking up too.
“You not too good now,” he said.

Tasha got up and pushed her chest into Jashante’s. The pressure of his body mashed the zipper on her shirt painfully into
the space between her small breasts. While their faces were close she said, “I hope you die. I hope the man snatches you and
…” She searched her mind for the word she had heard on the news. “I hope you get asphyxiated and when they find you you are
going to be …” What was the other word? “Decomposed.”

Jashante stepped back. His smile was gone and he looked at her with something that might have been hurt feelings. Then the
sad expression vanished and he pushed her down easily with a swift thrust of his arms. “Forget you, then.”

“What’d she say?” Tasha heard the students ask. “What happened?” The laughter was over. Tasha heard a few uneasy titters like
the last drops of water trickling from the faucet as they put together the ugly words she had said with what they had seen
on the news.

“She put a curse on him!” Roderick spat out.

The entire fifth grade was shocked into silence until Monica spoke. “I never did like her anyway,” she said.

“Me either,” agreed Forsythia. “We were just trying to be nice to her, but my mama says that you just can’t
be
nice to some people.”

Tasha wished that she had gone ahead and run the relay race with Jashante like she wanted to in the first place. Being teased
about going with a project boy wouldn’t be as bad as being the one that nobody liked. Even Rodney Green had turned his attention
away from his candy to stare at her in openmouthed horror, his tongue and teeth stained blue with candy. Tasha caught sight
of the red stain of Georgia clay on the sleeve of her pretty coat. She twisted her arm around for a better look. Hot tears
came. She should have just told him that she didn’t want to run a relay race in her good coat. She sat crying and sweating
on the concrete when the bell rang calling everyone back into the building.

Tasha was the last one into the cafeteria. She stood at the end of the line behind two girls that she didn’t know very well.
Their names were Tracie and Demetria, but she had never jumped rope with them or played jacks.

Tracie said, “That’s the one.”

“Her?” Demetria said. “I can’t believe Shante was trying to talk to her in the first place.”

Project girls were the only ones who shortened Jashante’s name like that.

“He wasn’t trying to talk to her. He was just asking her to run with him in the race.”

“And then she said
that
to him?”

Tracie nodded, one hand on her hip.

“See, that’s why I don’t fool with siditty girls.”

“If I was Shante I would’ve slapped her right there.”

Tasha endured the abuse silently. She didn’t know what to say to these girls who moved their necks when they spoke and chewed
gum brazenly, even popping it, although it was against the rules to bring gum to school.

“Who she think she is, anyway?”

“I didn’t mean it,” Tasha managed to say.

Demetria spun around. “Excuse you.”

Tracie followed suit, swiveling her neck with each syllable. “It is
rude
to get into other people’s conversations.”

Tasha took her tray and looked for a place to sit. She would have liked to have sat alone, but all of the tables were occupied.
There was no choice but to share. She surveyed the scene. Monica was sitting by Jashante and was even eating French fries
from his plate. He was sitting where she normally sat. Where to sit? Tracie and Demetria had an empty seat at the table where
they were but that was out of the question. Rodney Green had a table all to himself. His blue book satchel occupied one of
the empty chairs like a companion. She thought about sitting with him, but even he hated her now.

“Miss Baxter, please find a seat,” Mr. Harrell ordered.

Little bubbles of laughter popped all over the room.

“You can sit with me.”

She moved in the direction of the kind voice. She looked at the faces of the kids she passed, trying to figure out who had
invited her.

“Right here.”

The offer had come from Octavia, the one the kids called the Watusi.

Tasha hesitated; if she was the person that nobody liked right now, then Octavia was the person that nobody ever liked. If
she sat with Octavia today, she could never eat with Monica and Forsythia again. Unpopularity was terribly contagious.

“You don’t have to sit here,” said Octavia. “I was just trying to be nice.”

Tasha set her tray down and slid onto the red stool. “No. I want to sit with you.”

She shrugged as Tasha opened her milk carton.

“Thank you,” Tasha said, eager to demonstrate that she was a person somebody could be nice to.

Tasha watched Octavia pick translucent pieces of onion off of her slice of pizza. She should turn her attention to her own
plate before Octavia looked up and said
What you looking at?
and sent her away. But Tasha was suddenly consumed with an intense curiosity about her new lunch partner. Octavia was black—
black as night,
Roderick had said, laughing. That’s why kids called her the Watusi, because she looked like a black African. Tasha had never
really looked at Octavia closely enough to see more than that darkness. But now, two trays apart, Tasha saw that Octavia wasn’t
ugly. Her hair was a mess, though. It was all trying to go back into one ponytail but the hair around the edges wasn’t long
enough or straight enough to make it to the red rubber band; that hair stuck out around her face like the rays of the sun
in a kid’s drawing. Last year, Mrs. Willingham got so tired of seeing Octavia come to school with her hair all over her head
that she took her into the teacher’s lounge and plaited it herself. Or that’s what Monica had said. But she had also said
that Octavia smelled worse than a black African because she didn’t have soap at home to wash with. But Octavia smelled like
lemonade.

Tasha carefully lifted the droopy rectangular slice of pizza to her mouth but put it down, embarrassed, observing Octavia
cutting hers into neat triangles.

“So why you not sitting with all your friends?” Octavia asked.

Tasha shrugged and looked down at her green sectioned plate. “I don’t know.”

Octavia gave Tasha a look that was so much like Mama’s that Tasha felt herself starting to confess in spite of herself. “Jashante
wanted to be my relay partner and I said no. So then he pushed me down. I got up and said something bad to him and now everybody
is mad with me.”

Tasha waited for Octavia to finish chewing.

“How come you didn’t want to be his partner?” she asked.

Tasha didn’t say anything right away. Her big mouth had gotten her into enough trouble for this one day. And besides, the
truth was humiliating now. She opened her mouth to say, “I didn’t want to run in the race with my good coat on,” when she
noticed Octavia’s wrists protruding from the sleeves of her turtleneck sweater. When Tasha’s clothes started fitting like
that, Mama would pack them up and send them to cousins in the country or to the Goodwill. How could she even mention fur-trimmed
pink satin, now marked with red clay, to someone so obviously poor? Tasha couldn’t say anything in her own defense. She felt
hopelessly lost and unsure. She wanted her father.

“How come you didn’t want to be partners with Shante?” Octavia asked again. Her voice was challenging.

“I just wasn’t feeling well. That’s all,” Tasha said.

She had never been sadder. The tears came suddenly and deeply as the enormity of everything pressed her chest and stole her
air. She cried for her father’s empty dresser drawers and the TV pictures that had brought him back. Her tears were for deserted
playgrounds, clothes that didn’t look like they did in catalogs, and words that wouldn’t be taken back. There was no air.
Her mouth was open but there was no noise. No air. Asphyxiation. Octavia was out of her seat, shaking her shoulder, shouting,
“Mr. Harrell! Mr. Harrell!” Tasha inhaled. Lemonade.

Mama came to pick Tasha up with the rapid worried clatter of heels against tile and the nervous jingle of keys.

“Tasha—” She said her name almost like a question as she entered the sick bay and sat on the edge of the narrow bed.

“Mama, it was such a bad day.”

Mama pulled her onto her lap. Tasha was getting taller; her feet touched the ground as her mother rocked her gently. She smelled
like coffee and peppermint. Tasha shut her eyes.

Mama whispered to the nurse, “Where are her things?”

“In her classroom,” the nurse replied, looking up from her paperback.

“I don’t want to go in there,” Tasha said.

“It’s okay,” Mama said, rubbing her back in tiny circles.

“Will you stay home with me?” Mama was in charge of the payroll department at Pitman and Sons. She often complained that the
whole place would fall apart if she took even a day off.

“Of course I’ll stay with you.” Mama kissed the top of Tasha’s head.

“Mr. Pitman said it was okay?”

“You let me worry about Mr. Pitman. Family comes first.”

Tasha closed her eyes until there was a tiny polite tap on the door.

“Come in,” Mama said.

Monica came in carrying Tasha’s book satchel. She put it on the cot.

“Hello, Monica,” Mama said in a friendly voice.

Tasha squeezed her eyes tight. There was nothing she could do to keep Monica from witnessing her curled up in her mother’s
lap like a baby, but she didn’t have to see Monica seeing her.

Mama felt Tasha stiffen and held her a little closer. Tasha never wanted to go to school again.

Monica put the red-and-white satchel on the floor near the bed. “I hope you feel better, Tasha.”

She didn’t open her eyes or reply, although she could feel Monica standing there, all innocent looking, waiting for some sort
of response.

There was another knock. Tasha wiggled from the warm lap. She wasn’t going to be humiliated twice.

Octavia opened the door. She looked a little startled to see so many people in the cramped sick bay.

“Her coat,” she said. “Monica left it.”

Mama said, “Thank you, young lady.”

Octavia returned the smile and then looked at the floor. “I got to go. I got to get this hall pass back before I get into
trouble.”

Monica, standing by the door, mashed her lips together as if it were taking all of her strength to keep from lying on the
floor laughing and banging her fists like kids in cartoons. Tasha wished that Monica were as concerned about returning
her
hall pass.

Mama said in the voice she used to talk to Tasha’s friends, “Thank you very much for bringing the coat.” Then to Tasha, “Is
this nice young lady a friend of yours?”

Monica looked like the force of laughter held in would make her eyeballs shoot from their sockets. Tasha hated Monica. After
all, she was the cause of all of this. If it hadn’t been for Monica saying
separated
that day, none of this would be happening. And now, Monica standing by the door biting her lips was keeping Tasha from saying
Mama, this is my new friend, Octavia
.

Monica made a sound like the first noise of laughter breaking free from her glued-together lips.

“Is there a problem?” Mama asked Monica.

“No’m,” Monica said.

Mama said again, “Is this your friend?”

“Kind of,” Tasha mumbled.