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Authors: Carolita Blythe
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direction of the bathroom, where the robber was. I don’t hesitate going down the long, dark hallway that leads out of the apartment, the one with closets on both sides. Closets where a robber could lie in wait and then spring out all Jason Voorhees from
Friday the 13th–
like and pull me in with him. Nope. I just zoom by as fast as humanly possible, never letting go of that butcher knife, my knees buckling and knocking their way out the door.
I stay at Widow Mason’s apartment until my uncle Paul shows up. Two policemen arrive about twenty minutes later, and Mama maybe fifteen minutes after that. She interrogates me even more than the cops do. Once my statement is taken and the cops leave, Uncle Paul hangs around for a while. But I’m not the one he ends up having to try to calm down—it’s Mama. Once she stops running around like a lunatic, double- and triple-checking what might have been taken, Uncle Paul heads home, and it’s just her and me.
“How do you forget
to lock the door when you leave the apartment? It’s not like you have grown folks’ worries, like you have to go hustle to cook for white folks to make ends meet. Rich white folks who are so stingy, they won’t even allow you to take home a little of the leftovers they always end up throwing out anyway. You don’t have to figure out how to juggle the bills so everything doesn’t get cut off,” Mama says as she surveys the damage to my hair. It’s only been an hour since everyone took off, but I feel as if Mama and I are the last two people left on earth.
I sit on a tall stool in front of the bathroom mirror, which is just above the sink. Mama stands behind me with a cigarette hanging from the left side of her mouth. I’m not so sure the ashes aren’t falling onto my head. As she studies my hair, I study her: how long and graceful her neck is; how with her creamy brown skin, wavy hair pulled back into a bun, and high cheekbones standing out the way they do, she looks kind of like Queen Nefertiti.
“You don’t have a damned thing to worry about,” she barks out, still managing to look beautiful with her face all contorted. Just not fair.
“Where was your head, girl? What were you thinking about? Why are you always doing everything wrong?”
I don’t say anything ’cause I can’t figure out how I did what I did either. Mama stops going through my hair and starts staring at me. And I can’t figure out whether she’s trying to think of some other nasty thing to say, whether she’s going to shoot some super-villain death rays from her pupils or just haul off and backhand me. But even if she doesn’t do anything now, it’ll come later. She’ll just stash it away in her “Ways to Torture Faye” brain file. And when I least expect it, when I’ve had the last bit of lemonade she intended to drink, or I don’t finish making dinner on time, or I spill a couple of drops of milk on the counter, she’ll get me.
Mama opens up the drawer below the sink. I don’t see what she takes out, but then I hear these clipping sounds.
“He took my jewelry. That’s the only thing I had worth a damn in here. He took my good sapphire earrings and the matching bracelet your father gave me. He took that gold chain Mina Singh brought me back from Trinidad. He took all my valuables. Because you didn’t lock the door.” The clipping stops.
“Or did
you
take it? Like you did last summer, to show off to your friends. You know I don’t like you touching my things. I don’t like you playing around with my clothes, my shoes, my jewelry.”
“I didn’t take anything,” I plead.
“Yeah, maybe that’s what happened. You wanted to get at my jewelry, so you broke my door open and decided to stage this little robbery thing. Because I don’t think you could actually be stupid enough to not lock the front door.”
And now the clipping comes faster and more furiously. Then this pink blob surrounded by all these black strands lands in the sink. And then
Friday the 13th–
like and pull me in with him. Nope. I just zoom by as fast as humanly possible, never letting go of that butcher knife, my knees buckling and knocking their way out the door.
I stay at Widow Mason’s apartment until my uncle Paul shows up. Two policemen arrive about twenty minutes later, and Mama maybe fifteen minutes after that. She interrogates me even more than the cops do. Once my statement is taken and the cops leave, Uncle Paul hangs around for a while. But I’m not the one he ends up having to try to calm down—it’s Mama. Once she stops running around like a lunatic, double- and triple-checking what might have been taken, Uncle Paul heads home, and it’s just her and me.
“How do you forget
to lock the door when you leave the apartment? It’s not like you have grown folks’ worries, like you have to go hustle to cook for white folks to make ends meet. Rich white folks who are so stingy, they won’t even allow you to take home a little of the leftovers they always end up throwing out anyway. You don’t have to figure out how to juggle the bills so everything doesn’t get cut off,” Mama says as she surveys the damage to my hair. It’s only been an hour since everyone took off, but I feel as if Mama and I are the last two people left on earth.
I sit on a tall stool in front of the bathroom mirror, which is just above the sink. Mama stands behind me with a cigarette hanging from the left side of her mouth. I’m not so sure the ashes aren’t falling onto my head. As she studies my hair, I study her: how long and graceful her neck is; how with her creamy brown skin, wavy hair pulled back into a bun, and high cheekbones standing out the way they do, she looks kind of like Queen Nefertiti.
“You don’t have a damned thing to worry about,” she barks out, still managing to look beautiful with her face all contorted. Just not fair.
“Where was your head, girl? What were you thinking about? Why are you always doing everything wrong?”
I don’t say anything ’cause I can’t figure out how I did what I did either. Mama stops going through my hair and starts staring at me. And I can’t figure out whether she’s trying to think of some other nasty thing to say, whether she’s going to shoot some super-villain death rays from her pupils or just haul off and backhand me. But even if she doesn’t do anything now, it’ll come later. She’ll just stash it away in her “Ways to Torture Faye” brain file. And when I least expect it, when I’ve had the last bit of lemonade she intended to drink, or I don’t finish making dinner on time, or I spill a couple of drops of milk on the counter, she’ll get me.
Mama opens up the drawer below the sink. I don’t see what she takes out, but then I hear these clipping sounds.
“He took my jewelry. That’s the only thing I had worth a damn in here. He took my good sapphire earrings and the matching bracelet your father gave me. He took that gold chain Mina Singh brought me back from Trinidad. He took all my valuables. Because you didn’t lock the door.” The clipping stops.
“Or did
you
take it? Like you did last summer, to show off to your friends. You know I don’t like you touching my things. I don’t like you playing around with my clothes, my shoes, my jewelry.”
“I didn’t take anything,” I plead.
“Yeah, maybe that’s what happened. You wanted to get at my jewelry, so you broke my door open and decided to stage this little robbery thing. Because I don’t think you could actually be stupid enough to not lock the front door.”
And now the clipping comes faster and more furiously. Then this pink blob surrounded by all these black strands lands in the sink. And then
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