Who Am I Without Him?

by Sharon Flake

  I screamed before he had the top off good.

  Six baby birds—all dead. Two yellow chicks, hard and stiff as raw spaghetti. Sixteen butterflies, baby bees, two tadpoles, and a baby mouse—legs stuck in the air like toothpicks with feet.

  He rubbed one of the dead chicks. “I like babies.”

  “Not me,” I lied.

  He sat a baby bird in his hand. “They was already broken when I got ’em.”

  I stood up, held on to my belly like he could stuff Isaiah in that box too. “I gotta go.”

  His hand pressed my stomach so I couldn’t go nowhere. “Is it broke already?”

  I just looked at him.

  “I wasn’t broke at first,” he said, taking his other hand and fingering his face and head. “Then I jumped in the pond, and the ground hit me in the head.” His hands went back to my belly. “Don’t let the ground hit him, okay?”

  “He’s mine now,” I told Willie. “But soon he’ll be somebody else’s.” Then I explained how I was being paid for the baby.

  Willie’s slow all right. ’Cause even after twenty minutes of trying to make him understand, he still didn’t get it. After I was done, he closed up his box and took his sweet time walking up the stairs. A few minutes later, he came back down with his mother’s pink knit purse. He handed me some dollar bills and a jar full of change.

  “This is for the baby.”

  I was glad for the money, so I took every cent. Before I was out the door though, Willie asked, “It’s mine now, right?”

  I stared at him, then at my belly.

  “But don’t break it,” he said, “’cause I don’t want no more broken babies.”

  My hand turned the knob. His hand took hold of mine.

  “I bought it . . . the baby . . . so it’s really, really mine, right?”

  I pulled his fingers off me and headed out the door. “Sure, Willie.”

  Two days later my water broke and the baby came early. Mable Lee said it was a bad sign. She was right. Things just got worse after that. I changed my mind about passing Isaiah on, and the lawyer woman didn’t like it one bit. She phoned Daddy. He phoned me and said if I didn’t do like I promised, I couldn’t come home. Then I called Oscar. He made a whole lot of sense when he said we could use the money to go live in another town and start over. So I signed the papers.

  “Never shoulda named that baby,” Momma said. “That just make ’em real.”

  They kept me in the hospital ten days, ’cause the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Willie came by that last day. I was still green under the eyes, and he told me so. Willie said he saw Isaiah through the glass. “I got me a pretty baby,” he said, smiling. “Green-eyed and everything.”

  I wasn’t talking much. I was too tired. Willie let me know, though, that Isaiah was his. “Paid for already.” He stood over me. “He broken, though. But they say he gonna get fixed.”

  I told him Isaiah was gonna be good as new soon. “But he’s going away. We ain’t gonna see him no more.”

  You gotta tell Willie Greentea some things twice. So I repeated myself. He went out the door. I heard him at the nurses’ station trying to get his baby. Telling ’em that he ain’t care if it was broken, just so long as they turned it over to him and “not nobody else.”

  I made Willie come back to my room. I’m sorry now that I did. ’Cause I would still be alive if I hadn’t. It’s easy, I guess, to kill people when you ain’t got nobody around to make you see things different.

  “You lied,” Willie said, pushing me into the wall.

  I tried not to be scared. “Lied about what, Willie? About what?”

  He told me exactly how much money he had paid me for the baby. My fingers covered my mouth. “Oscar got that money. But I can get it back.”

  Willie don’t know Oscar. He didn’t care nothing ’bout him neither. He just wanted the baby— his baby. I ain’t no fast thinker, so it took me a while to tell him I’d get the baby for him tomorrow. No matter, he ain’t believe me. He asked again, real quiet like, for his baby. Then his soft, pretty hands went to my throat.

  “You broke it, now you want to keep it too,” he said, squashing my voice box with his thumb.

  I could hear nurses walking past my room. Feel my fingers scratching at the baby ducks on the wallpaper. “Willie,” I heard myself say finally. “Isaiah needs me, Willie.”

  Willie Greentea smiled. He didn’t look broken then. He looked strong and tall and sweet, even. “I bought him,” he said, squeezing harder.

  My head was light and fuzzy. And after a while, even though I could feel Willie’s fingers on my neck, I couldn’t hear what he was saying and I didn’t even hurt no more. “One, seven, ten,” I said, counting ducks one by one. Then all of a sudden the hospital room disappeared, and me and Mable Lee was sitting in her kitchen sipping dandelion tea. “You think a girl like me could be a angel up in heaven?” I heard myself ask. ’Fore Mable Lee could speak, Daddy pulled up a chair and sat down too. “Don’t be silly, gal. God ain’t got no use for broken angels.”

  I was all set to cry after he said that. Then in walks Isaiah. He takes me by the hand and leads me to a room all lit up like Christmas. “It’s all right, Momma,” he says. “Heaven’s got all kinds of angels in it.”

  Then I hear this twinkling sound, like I’m surrounded by wind chimes. Before I know it, Isaiah’s gone, and my throat hurts worse than ever. I look around and Willie’s crying, and somebody’s doing push-ups on my chest. I close my eyes and head for the Christmas lights, ’cause I wanna find out for myself if Isaiah’s right ’bout them angels.

  Hunting for Boys

  THERE ARE TEN girls my age at the church that I attend, and only one boy. His name is Jeremiah. He carries a Bible everywhere he goes, so we all decided long ago that he was not the one for us.

  Our church is small. Only a hundred members on the books. That means maybe forty folks show up each Sunday. So we girls are like sisters. We sleep over at each other’s houses, paint one another’s nails, and lie for one another when we have to.

  We figured God wasn’t being fair putting us in a church with just one boy and giving us parents so strict that boys at school are too afraid even to speak to us, let alone ask us to the school’s annual Mardi Gras festival. So we got our heads together and decided to change things.

  We were in the church basement. Our parents thought we were planning Teen Sunday, which was a few weeks away. But we were really trying to come up with ideas on how to get boys to take us to Mardi Gras. Our parents already said we couldn’t go. “Card games, wild dancing, crazy costumes, no way,” Pastor said. But we have to go. Everybody goes! And only the losers go without dates.

  My friends and I are fourteen years old, in the ninth grade, and this is our first time in public school with regular kids. We went to the church school from K through eighth grade, then the state shut the school down. They said the building didn’t meet state code, and our teachers weren’t certified, even though we’re all three grades ahead of most kids in our new school in math and reading. Anyhow, now we go to school with the neighborhood kids, but we’re still not allowed to do like they do or go where they go.

  Satina has it worst of all because Pastor’s her father. They don’t own a TV set or listen to the radio. But Satina still knows how to dance. And she knows all the words to the latest rap songs. Satina made it clear. “I’m going to that festival. And I’m going with a boy!”

  China is the one that came up with the best idea for meeting boys. None of us would have figured it, though. She’s shy and hardly opens her mouth unless it’s to stick gum in it. “The hoop courts. Boys always hang out there.”

  Satina hugged her. “But we can’t go to the ones around here. Everybody knows what my father will do to them if he catches them around us.”

  I thought about it a while. “Let’s just get on a bus and ride till we find one.”

  Jamaica was scared at first. “Pastor says we can’t date until we graduate. And we can’t
dance. Period.”

  “‘The devil’s in that music,’” Satina said, mocking her dad. She cleared her throat three times in a row, same as he does every Sunday morning. “‘And the devil ain’t gonna have his way with nary a one of you,’” she said, pointing to each girl.

  Jamaica told Satina to stop disrespecting Pastor. “We are not supposed to be like everybody else out there, shaking our butts and showing our . . .” She wouldn’t say the word. But we all knew what she meant, so we stared at our chests while she talked. “Pastor says it’s all there to distract us.”

  I tried to be smart. “What’s there to distract us?”

  “You know,” Jamaica said, sitting in a chair and squeezing her knees tight like the church sisters taught us.

  I knew. Gold jewelry. Tattoos, toe rings, tongue and belly piercings. Tight tops, short skirts, boys with eyes that looked right through you. Dancing . . . sweaty, close dancing in rooms with hardly any light and no adult supervision. I knew, so did Jamaica, China, Satina, N’kia, Karen, Anna Belle, K’ya, Daylea, and Lisa. Pastor tells us all the time. And he’s right, I think. Only sometimes, like now, we get tired of missing out.

  Satina ignored Jamaica and headed for the stairs. “I’m sick of being cooped up in church all the time. I wanna have some fun,” she said so loud I had to cover her mouth with my hand. “Y’all coming?” she asked the rest of us.

  One by one we headed for the steps.

  “Jamaica. You gotta come,” I said.

  Jamaica was the only one still sitting down. “God ain’t gonna like it. Neither is Pastor.”

  My eyes went straight up to the cross high up on the wall with Jesus hanging on it. “We don’t mean no harm,” I said. “But we wanna go to the festival with boys. Just once, anyhow.”

  China ran over to Jamaica and pulled her hand. “If we do something dumb and you’re not there to stop us, God’s gonna blame you for it.”

  Jamaica believed her. She is the oldest, and Pastor and the church sisters always hold her accountable for what the rest of us do. So she came along, too. And that’s how all ten girls from the Calvary Church of God’s Blessed Example went hunting for boys—and found something a whole lot worse.

  “God don’t like ugly.” That’s what my mother always says. So I guess that’s why the bus never came to take us to the hoop court. We waited for an hour and a half. By then, Pastor had shown up, wanting to know where we were off to.

  “Nowhere,” K’ya said, tying her black sneakers at the curb. The rest of us stared at the ground, bit our nails, or scratched places that didn’t really itch.

  Pastors can read minds, you know. So right then ours gave us a mini sermon on boys. He pointed to a really cute guy on the steps across the street. “I see him looking over here every time you girls step foot in church.” He took Satina’s hand. “I don’t blame him. We got a whole church full of pretty gals.”

  “Thanks, Pastor,” we said, blushing.

  “But don’t be fooled. That’s trouble sitting on that step.” He pointed to Jamaica, then to me, K’ya, and finally Satina. “You looking for trouble?”

  “No.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Pastor, I ain’t looking for nothing,” K’ya said.

  Pastor smiled. “Good. Life has enough trouble without you all chasing it down like a two-for-one shoe sale at the mall.”

  I wanted to look him in the eyes and say, “Amen,” like I do in church sometimes. But I couldn’t, ’cause I figured he would see what I was really up to. So I followed him back into the church, like everyone else, and folded paper towels for tomorrow’s supper with the congregation from Bethel Hill Church across town.

  “Maybe. Maybe we should forget about the festival,” Karen said, laying plastic forks and knives on towels. “I mean, if Pastor finds out what we’re up to . . .”

  Satina looked at her baggy beige skirt. It was below her knees, just like ours. “What’s wrong with playing cards or dancing?” she said, pulling her skirt up to the middle of her thighs and turning in circles. “What’s wrong with meeting boys and having fun and being normal like other kids?” she asked. She threw some forks on the floor and crushed ’em with her shoe.

  “Y’all working down there, or playing?” Pastor asked from the top of the stairs. We shut up and got back to work. But Satina’s words stayed in my head. Why can’t we be like other girls? Why can’t we dance and wear makeup and be with boys—kiss ’em, even? That’s what girls our age do. That’s all they wanna do, really.

  The adult women’s choir only has three members, so they make me, China, Satina, Jamaica, and K’ya sing along with them every third Sunday. We sing, but mostly we sit behind Pastor and write notes to each other.

  “It’s a sign,” Jamaica wrote on the back of the church bulletin. “What Pastor said yesterday about boys is a sign from God that He knows what we’re up to and He don’t like it none.”

  She was right. All night long I had been thinking the same thing.

  “I’m scared God’s gonna punish us for going after boys,” China wrote.

  I tried to tell her God wasn’t gonna punish us for just talking to boys. But I didn’t tell her that last night in my dream I was kissing one on the lips.

  “Jesus sees everything. He knows everything, too,” China wrote.

  “So He knows you’re up to no good,” K’ya said in my ear. Then she laughed. I didn’t think that was funny.

  Satina leaned forward and played with the collar of her starched white shirt. “I don’t know if I wanna go now.”

  Satina’s dad prays with her at home every morning. Today, when he was done, he said he knew it wasn’t easy being a minister’s daughter and he was proud of how she handles herself. Before they left home, he kissed her on the forehead. “You’re a good girl,” he told her. “No one’s ever been able to say different.”

  K’ya pulled out the bulletin for today and wrote up and down the sides in red ink. “It was your idea, Satina, for us to go meet boys. So don’t chicken out now.”

  Sister Berta grabbed the paper from Satina. “You here to chitchat, or serve the Lord?”

  Satina didn’t answer.

  Sister Berta is seventy-six years old, with brown wrinkled hands that look like beef-stick skins. “Pastor’s gonna see how you spend your time up here,” she said, eyeing us five. Then she lay the paper in her lap like a handkerchief, and rocked.

  Satina looked scared. “Get it back,” she said— like K’ya could do something about it. When it was time to sing, Sister Berta stood up and the paper fell to the floor. I grabbed it and handed it to K’ya, who gave it to Satina, who stuck it in her purse right when Sister Berta’s mouth opened wide and she started singing off-key:

  Yes, Jesus, yes.

  All that you ask, I will do.

  Show me the way. Make it clear every day.

  And I’ll say yes, Lord, yes, yes, ohhh yesss.

  “No,” I told Karen. We were standing in front of the church, waiting for the bus. “It’s coming in a minute, and we can’t miss it.”

  Two weeks after Sister Berta took Satina’s note, we stopped being scaredy-cats and headed for the hoop courts again.

  When we got on the bus, all we did was talk about boys and the tight, short shorts Satina, K’ya, Lisa, and Daylea had on. They had bought them at the store a few days ago. The rest of us didn’t have the nerve.

  We sat in the back, so it was easy for them to unzip their long granny skirts, pull them off, and stuff them in their backpacks. But when Satina pulled off her long-sleeved shirt and showed off a pretty orange tube top, Jamaica got loud. She said we weren’t allowed to show our legs or go out without proper tops.

  Why? I thought, smearing raspberry-red lip gloss on. Our legs are as pretty as any other girl’s at school.

  Daylea covered her thighs with her skirt. “If it’s not in the Bible, God doesn’t care if we do it or not, right?”

  Jamaica rolled her eyes and turned up the music on her CD player.
I asked what she was listening to, and she put her headphones on my ears.

  Keep me pure, Lord. Keep me pure.

  Help me do the things that you adore.

  Make me perfect, make me strong.

  Keep my eyes on you, where they belong.

  I felt like dirt after hearing that song. So for the rest of the trip I didn’t talk much. I watched Jamaica, Karen, and Anna Belle read scripture cards and sing out loud every now and then. And I prayed a little. Asked God not to let me do nothing too wrong while I was out here. But when I wasn’t praying, I was thinking about boys. Wondering if they would think I was pretty.

  “There’s a basketball court!” Anna Belle said, standing up and running to the front of the bus. We ran behind her, almost falling off the bus into the street.

  The neighborhood we were in wasn’t like ours. Dirt and trash were everywhere. Houses had rusted gates surrounding them like Lego pieces snapped tight and painted white. We weren’t scared, though. Our neighborhood isn’t so great either. And when you spend all your time in church, you feel safe even when you have to walk past crack houses to get where you’re going.

  Satina saw the boys first. Tall sweaty boys with muscles and big mouths, who pushed each other on the court, or yelled at one another from skinny wooden benches. Satina is prettier than the rest of us. She’s five-foot one, with black hair and giant black eyes that make her look like a baby doll. So naturally the boys yelled for her first.

  “Hey! You! Come here.”

  Daylea started pulling at her shorts, like she could make them longer. Satina stuck out her chest and smiled. “Okay,” she said, taking me by the arm and heading their way.

  My feet didn’t move. Neither did K’ya’s, Karen’s, or anyone else’s.

  “We should leave,” K’ya said.

  My heart beat so fast I couldn’t think.

  “Too late to back out now,” Satina said, swinging her hips and glossing her lips.

  Jamaica is a tall, dark-skinned girl with long dark wavy hair that makes her look Indian sometimes. The boys could tell, I guess, ’cause one of them yelled for her, too.