Imani All Mine by Connie Rose Porter

Author:Connie Rose Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

SEVEN

Peek-a-Boo

JESUS WOKE ME this morning way before the sun come up. Poking me all in the back. I had him under my pillow, but somehow he got loose from there in the night. The thing is, I never set out looking for Jesus, never set out wanting him. It was the last angel I went looking for last night when Mama was out with Mitch, I went rummaging through the Christmas box down the basement. I felt like I needed the angel. Like I needed something, someone to look in the face of and see eyes with love in them. Eyes with protection. Eyes to remind me my blessing had took. That it ain’t fall away like water.

Since the angel wasn’t there, I decided on Jesus. I started out with him on the dresser. He could see both Imani and me real clear from there. Look right at us and have no doubt about who he should be watching, but then I thought I better hide him. If Mama seen Jesus on my dresser instead of where he belonged, she’d ask what he was doing up there. I know Mama. She can take Jesus for a week at Christmas staring out his manger, but then she want him back where he belong, in the dark in the basement in a box. I took a long look at Jesus before I put him under the pillow, set his eyes in my memory so I could see them still staring at me after I put him under the pillow. I felt better knowing he was there after I had seen that body.

Day before yesterday there was a body laying on the sidewalk in front of the store by Lincoln. It wasn’t covered up or nothing. I ain’t know it was there at first. I was rushing with Imani because I was running late. From down the street, I could hear first bell ringing, which meant it was five minutes until second bell. I still had to drop Imani at the nursery on the first floor, go to my homeroom on the third so I wouldn’t be marked absent, and then get down to the basement for Latin so I wouldn’t be marked tardy. One more tardy and I’ll get detention. Imani too. So I ain’t pay much attention to the two police cars and this cop at the corner acting like he was directing traffic. Except he was directing kids.

Keep moving, he say. That’s your bell. You’re late, keep moving. Kids usually be on both sides of the street, but everybody was on this one side, so I looked to the other side and seen the body laying right out in front of Abdul’s. I slowed down. And I looked. Not because I wanted to see, but because my eyes wanted to know there wasn’t some trick being played on them. That they wasn’t looking in on some nightmare instead of out on the world.

Seeing all the blood in front of Abdul’s made everything real to my eyes.

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