Blue Sky

by D. Bryant Simmons

  My eyes dropped to the floor. “Mama didn’t wanna be separated from us…”

  “How you know?” she snapped. “She tell you that?”

  “Lots of stuff people can’t say. Doesn’t make any of it less true.”

  “Exactly. She disappeared! Walked straight out the door and ain’t come back!” Mya finally choked out, “Least she could’ve done was let daddy take us…” And then it happened. My sister—the beautiful smart strong one, who never let anybody see her sweat—cried. Fell over into the fetal position, sobbing quietly. “I miss him.”

  Made sense. I didn’t miss him, but it made sense she would. He’d loved her.

  “Shh…,” I said, stroking her hair softly. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” she choked out. Shaking her head vigorously. “Not okay…it’s not…”

  I returned to find Mama asleep on my bed. Her mouth hung open with drool sliding down her cheek. Made me want to hit something. So, standing in my bedroom, watching Mama snore peacefully, I knocked over the cup which held my pencils. She snorted and sat straight up.

  “Mya.” She wiped the slobber away with the back of her hand. “Where you been, baby?”

  “Out. Obviously.”

  “What you doing?”

  “Getting my stuff for school.” I needed to change into clean clothes, get my books and things together.

  “Come sit next to me?” Her hand hovered over my bed like she was afraid to touch it. She could sleep under the covers but couldn’t touch them.

  Pissed me off even more.

  “Mya? Please, baby?”

  “I gotta go.”

  Her eyes began to water, and I thought I might explode. What did she have to cry about? She got exactly what she wanted.

  “I’m still your mama. You not gonna get another one. I’m it.”

  “Great.”

  “Baby…,” she whispered as I turned my back to her. “I’m so glad to have you home. You know that? I missed you girls. I love y’all. Love you so much—”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Her mouth dropped open again only this time wasn’t any sound.

  “I had sex a bunch of times and now I’m pregnant.”

  “No—”

  “Yeah. And he’s in a gang. And he sells drugs.”

  “Mya!” She erupted and shot to her feet. She lifted both hands to her hairline, pulling her hair back as she uttered nonsense.

  Didn’t matter to me what she said anyway. I won. The bitterness drained from my fingertips one drop at a time. Surely that was cause for celebration.

  “Stop smiling! This ain’t funny!”

  Mama hadn’t caught on yet but I finally had a victory. Me, Mya Morrow. She paced from the window to the door, breathing heavy and murmuring about the new rules she was gonna impose. She didn’t see I was done with all her rules.

  “We can fix this. Mama will—You young. You made a mistake. Y’all been through a lot. It’s okay. Okay? Mama’ll help you.”

  Red flashed before my eyes, like the fire burning under the surface of my skin got a burst of oxygen. “Didn’t ask for your help.”

  She stopped pacing. “What? Oh. You want to…well…’course, it’s an option too.”

  “No, I’m keeping it.”

  I’d made up my mind finally. Looking at Mama, I couldn’t do what she did. I wouldn’t leave my kid for somebody else to raise, leave her in the world all alone, and I wasn’t gonna become a murderer.

  “Don’t need nothing from you.”

  Mama’s hand flew to cover her mouth, and her chest caved in like I’d hit her there. Another victory.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Mya…”

  I stuffed the contents of my bureau into my book bag. Dragged my suitcase from the floor of my closet and flung it open.

  “You gonna need me!”

  I shook my head no. I needed her four years ago. Now, I didn’t need anybody.

  “Yes, you are!” she cried. “You girls think everything so easy….Think you can do whatever…well, you ain’t grown! Not yet. You—”

  “Don’t have to be grown to work out the truth.”

  “Is that so? And what exactly is the truth, huh?” She struggled to find a natural-looking pose. Folding her arms, shifting her weight, trying to give the impression she was in the right. “I know you loved your daddy, but he…he…I…things just happened the way they had to…I’m sorry, but—”

  “You not sorry! You ran off! Ran off with Heziah and started a whole new family!”

  “Mya, baby, that ain’t what happened.”

  “Then what happened? Huh? You get amnesia? You forget about us? What kinda mama just disappears on her kids? What kinda mama choose her boyfriend over her kids?”

  “That ain’t what happened! Your daddy…he…”

  But she didn’t have an excuse. Just stood there staring at me, her lips moving but not finding any words.

  “You ruined my life.” I said under my breath.

  “When you older we’ll talk about this.” She finally said. “Not right now. When you older.”

  “How old I gotta be?”

  “Mya—

  “How old I gotta be for you to tell me why…why you killed my daddy?”

  I waited, milking every second of silence. Watching her features for even the slightest indication of remorse. But Mama ain’t deal in apologies. Would’ve been like paying bills with promises. More than that, she’d never loved him. We all knew it. I used to wonder what came first—him hitting her or her not loving him. More questions that would never be answered. Not that it mattered. It all came down to this one point: she made the choices she did in spite of what those choices did to us.

  “How could you? When you knew…you knew what it would do to me!”

  More silence. Weighed more than the last one. So heavy, it seemed improbable for it to be hanging on by a thread, but it did. Swinging gently back and forth, taunting me. The moment of no return had finally come. If anything was unforgivable, this had to be it. Some things folks just don’t get to come back from.

  Ramon’s family spread far and wide, and none of them had a better grasp on their lives than he did. His sisters, nine and ten, ran in and out the house on a constant basis. Which made his mother and grandmother incredibly tense, yelling for somebody to shut the damn door every ten minutes or so. And his brother was hardly ever home, but he had two cousins who occasionally slept on the floor of whatever room they passed out in. All of which, I could handle. At least they were real. Nobody in his family tried to be anything other than what they were: gangbangers, dope fiends, ex-dope fiend alcoholic mothers, whatever the case may be. His people didn’t have all those complicated layers to be pulled back to get a straight answer. Of course, their unambiguous nature came with its own issue. None of them could make heads or tails of me.

  “Morning.” Ramon’s grandmother’s voice croaked out into the earliness of the kitchen.

  I nodded, closed the basement door quietly behind me, and moved on to whatever was sizzling on the stove. His people were good about always having something cooking.

  “Where’s Baby?”

  “Getting ready,” I swallowed my first and second bite of a sausage patty.

  Ramon was a middle child, but they all called him Baby for some reason. Could’ve been because they favored him. Nobody could stand the girls. They were horrible vicious little things and not even their mother denied it, but Ramon was different. His mama said it was because he had a different daddy. His daddy was about something, not like her other kids’ daddies. Ramon’s daddy worked for the Chicago Transit Authority and had a wife and two other kids on the west side. Ramon never saw fit to comment on it even when his mama would bring it up, so I left it alone too.

  “Some eggs on the stove too if you want.” His grandma studied me. “Can’t eat only meat. Gotta have something else to go with it.”

  “Eggs meat too.”

  “No they ain’t. Eggs is eggs.
All you do is eat the meat. Don’t want nothing but some meat.”

  The last few weeks I couldn’t seem to get enough meat. Didn’t matter what animal the meat came from. At the mere mention of a chop or strip or patty, my mouth started watering. I finished off the second sausage patty at a slightly more subdued pace.

  “At least get some toast.” The old woman stood shakily and hobbled over to the bread box on top of the fridge. “You know meat expensive. Tell Baby he gotta bring some more home or you gonna eat us outta house and home. Got six mouths to feed now you here. You think about getting yo’self a job?”

  I shook my head and took a seat at the tiny kitchen table in the corner. The fridge hummed so loud next to me I could pretend well enough I didn’t hear the woman and all her nonsense. I’d moved outta Mama’s house, but I still went to school every day. Did my homework. Hung out with Jackie. She’d even talked me into joining a few after-school clubs. Said not running didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun. After school I caught up with Ramon, and we headed home together. I wouldn’t complain if the rest of my life followed the same pattern, at least until graduation. Didn’t matter how much his people kept saying I needed a job to contribute. Ramon said the opposite. Said I was going to school and that was all. He contributed enough for the both of us, and I agreed with him.

  “Hey, Mama.” Neferteri didn’t have much going for her in the looks department. She traipsed into the kitchen, dragging her slippers along the way. Years of drug abuse had taken its toll on her body. She drooped from head to toe more than her age should’ve allowed. Cursed with missing teeth, incessant scratching, and random dark spots too big to be freckles, Nefeteri wasn’t a catch by anybody’s standards. The dirty pink slippers swished across the mustard yellow laminate floors. It was better to focus on something specific when Nefeteri came into the room. “What da fuck happened to all the fucking sausages?”

  The two women communicated silently then turned on me.

  “Look here, lil’ girl, I know you think you special, but this here is my house. Don’t nobody be eating up all my shit b’fore I can get to it.”

  “Still some left.”

  “I told her. I told her she gonna have to get a job. Contribute ‘round here.”

  The creaking of the stairs above our heads put an end to the conversation. Ramon hurried into the kitchen, smelling fresh and clean. “Morning,” he announced to all the female energy in the room. “Mmm. I smell sausages?”

  “Here, Baby. You can have these two.” Neferteri wasn’t shy. She batted her eyes when it suited her and draped herself against any man who held the keys to something she wanted. Didn’t matter to her if it was some guy she met in a club or her own son. Her game stayed the same. Her grasp on her robe relaxed long enough to give her chest some air, and she handed him a grease-stained paper towel with the two lumps in it.

  “Can I get one more?”

  “Sure, you can…we gonna need some money to go shopping though.”

  Ramon nodded, eased a wad of bills into her hand, and kept his eyes trained on something safer than the view of his mother. “Mya, you eat?”

  “Don’t she look like she ate? Or ain’t you noticed?”

  I took it to mean I had sausage grease on my face and went to grab a paper towel.

  “She sure is healthy. Eating all the time.” Grandma’s lips wished around against her gums as if to reassure herself she still had her two precious teeth.

  “You know, Mya…if you ain’t careful, you not gonna get that cute lil’ figure back. Then what you gonna do?” Neferteri planted a wet kiss on her baby’s cheek and headed upstairs with her plate.

  The walk to school was a little longer than usual. I checked my watch at the halfway point to confirm it. Ramon wasn’t walking his usual speed. He still had the sausages wrapped up in the greasy paper towel, clutching his fingers tightly around them. Staring at nothing in particular, it seemed. Just the sidewalk.

  “What you thinking about?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He seemed to shake out of the trance long enough to offer me one of his sausages. I chewed and swallowed, watching as the other kids hurried past us, running just so they wouldn’t be late.

  “I’m gonna be late.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” With a loud suck of my thumb, I drew his attention finally, but he was still concentrating on something else. “You look mad. You mad at me?”

  “No. You mad at me?”

  I shrugged and helped myself to his last sausage. “Why I’m gonna be mad at you?”

  “‘Cause,” was all he said. His eyes drifted down my body, and he said, “Can’t tell all that much. ‘Specially when you wear big tee shirts. I can go by the mall…get you some more…”

  “Okay. And some bacon. I want some bacon.”

  A hard whistle blew, the leftover vibrations ringing in our ears. The crossing guard wasn’t the patient type. She waved us on persistently, but Ramon didn’t budge. Held tightly to my hand and kept me planted firmly at his side. His lips parted, but only silence came out.

  “I gotta get to school.”

  “I know…wait, okay? For a second?”

  Given the woman in the neon vest’s impatience, I wasn’t sure I could wait much longer. “Okay. What is it?”

  “Maybe you oughta go back home.”

  I dropped his hand without a word and reset my steps in the right direction. We’d gone three months without him saying it, but there it was.

  “Mya! Wait!”

  The regret on his face wasn’t enough to temper my emotions. They were wild and unpredictable, my emotions. They grunted inside me and shoved him with undue force before taking off toward the crosswalk.

  “Mya!” he called again, running to catch up. “I’m just saying…maybe you’d be better off…”

  “I hate you!” Of course, I didn’t but I said it anyway.

  “I just…I dunno…I’m just saying they can take care of you.”

  “You wanna break up with me? Just say so and I’ll go!“

  “Huh? I’m just trying to look out for you. Make sure you okay. It’s my fault…”

  “What?” My chest rose and fell, finally finding a steady rhythm, my feelings calming to a simmer instead of a raging boil. “What’s your fault?”

  “That.” His finger made a clear arrow to my growing stomach. “I should’ve…I should’ve been careful. I got rubbers. I just didn’t…”

  “Rubbers?”

  Ramon let out a groan that drew attention from the last few students running through the crosswalk. I turned casually, curious if I recognized any but I didn’t. Whenever anybody said the word rubber, I automatically thought of rain. Rain and my rubber boots. I did not think of sex. So, I waited anxiously for him to draw the connection between the baby and rubbers, but Ramon was too embarrassed. His fair complexion burned bright red, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why.

  “You gotta go. You gonna be late.”

  “I’m already late. You gonna tell me?”

  “I…yeah…”

  I waited, both hands on my hips. “Tell me already! What’s rubbers have to do with babies and sex?”

  “They are…protection. You know, like condoms. Come on, Mya! You really don’t know this?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know why you’d call them rubbers. They not made of rubber.”

  “Yeah they are.” He frowned.

  “Not all of ‘em. Not the ones you got.”

  “Forget it.”

  I shrugged. “You the one brought it up.”

  “Forget I said anything!”

  “Fine,” I said, happy to get back to walking.

  Folks always making up words that didn’t make sense. Didn’t they know there were enough words in the English language? Why couldn’t they say exactly what they meant? It confused me. Meant I had to think twice about things I, otherwise, understood.

  “I gotta go to school. See ya later.”

  One thi
ng school had taught me was for every question, there was a book with the answer. I was already late, so I wandered into the library and began searching. Didn’t find anything about rubbers, and when I asked the librarian for her assistance, she had the same reaction as Ramon. After an hour with the card catalog, I found one book with illustrations, black and white, of course, but I didn’t mind. Learned all the technical names for areas were once-vague ideas—like uterus, fetus, placenta. By lunch time, I was immersed in another book detailing everything could possibly go wrong during pregnancy, and it was there, I felt the first pangs of motherhood. I eased my hand under the table to rest against the bump, which was suddenly more than just a bump. A baby. My baby. The book said my baby had ears and nails. The thought made me giggle in my quiet corner of the library.

  Tiny little ears and tiny little nails filled my dreams. Followed by endless black waves and eyes the color of the darkest chocolate known to man. So pleasant the dreams were I didn’t mind how often they came. I couldn’t seem to sit still for more than ten minutes without drifting off into one of those dreams. It frustrated my teachers nonstop, but eventually they understood.

  “Mya, have a seat.”

  The principal’s office hadn’t changed at all since I’d been sent there with Jackie. Tall windows matched by equally tall stacks of files and papers. Sitting in the middle of it all made me nervous. So much disorganization. Even in the basement, me and Ramon managed to do better with our things.

  “Your teachers tell me you’re one of our brightest students.” The woman sat down, almost disappearing behind a mountain of paperwork.

  Worried I’d have to have a conversation with pages instead of a person, I scooted my chair to the left.

  “Mya? Are you pregnant?”

  It seemed like a trick question. The answer was obvious, but the woman stared at me over the top of her glasses while holding her breath.