Read Leaving Atlanta for Free Online

inside.
    “Ta-dah!” Daddy said, with a grand swoop of his arm, motioning toward the bed.
    Tasha eyed the rose-colored satin incredulously. She whispered, “Did Mama see this yet?”
    Daddy winked and shook his head.
    “What about DeShaun?”
    “Nope.”
    She giggled deliciously, sliding into the coat as Daddy held it. She turned on her toes in a complete circle before the full-length
     mirror twice before Daddy said, “Don’t get dizzy and fall.”
    Monica Fisher was going to pass out with jealousy. This coat was not only trimmed in genuine rabbit fur, as the label verified,
     but it came with a matching muff to keep her pretty little hands warm.
    Tasha had to let that fabulous coat rot in her closet for a month and a half as she waited for the weather to cool off. She
     was afraid that she would have to wait until Christmas and who knew how many girls would have new coats by then? But October
     brought a little nip to the morning air. Tasha wore the heavy coat although DeShaun only had on a windbreaker.
    Mrs. Mahmud said, “Let me hang up that gorgeous coat in the hall closet by itself so that nothing happens to it.”
    Tasha wiggled out of the coat and headed to the living room and sat outside of a group of three kids playing Monopoly. They
     had all gotten to Mrs. Mahmud’s at least an hour before since their school was in walking distance. She thought about asking
     them to start the game over so that she could play, but she didn’t really know them all that well. Besides, she wasn’t a big
     fan of Monopoly. She didn’t want to play a board game. She wanted things to be like they were before, when she was in charge
     of her own house for two wonderful afternoon hours. This felt like being demoted to kindergarten.
    Tasha quickly got tired of watching the Monopoly game. She wished she had brought something to read. She wandered into the
     kitchen where Mrs. Mahmud was on the telephone, laughing. When she saw Tasha, she shooed her away with a wide hand decorated
     with nail polish. Mrs. Mahmud was the kind of grown person that Tasha didn’t really like, the kind that thought that kids
     weren’t supposed to talk unless someone talked to them first. Her Great-Aunt Reatha was like that. She even went so far as
     to say, out loud, that “children should be seen and not heard,” like they weren’t really people at all.
    Mama and Daddy were even getting to be like that now. Tasha didn’t like it, but she kept quiet at dinner now. It hurt her
     feelings not to be allowed to contribute to the conversations, but it did have benefits. It seemed that when she was not heard,
     she was not seen either.
    That night at dinner, she sucked saltine crackers until they were mushy and quietly swallowed them. Mama and Daddy were talking
     and she didn’t want to disrupt their illusion of privacy. They spoke more freely when she and DeShaun were not part of the
     discussion, so she let them have their space.
    “It’s got to be somebody white,” Daddy said, shoving his peas around his plate with a slice of light bread.
    “Might be,” Mama said.
    “Might nothing. Think about it. You ain’t never heard of nobody black going around killing people for no reason. That’s white
     people’s shit.”
    “Daddy,” said DeShaun, “you’re not supposed to say bad words.”
    Her little voice broke her parents’ intensity. They both looked across the table at the girls as if they had forgotten that
     they even had children.
    Tasha wanted to thump DeShaun right in the middle of her shiny little forehead. She never could just shut up and listen. Tasha
     would have gone ahead and crunched on her crackers and slurped her milk like a regular person if she had known DeShaun was
     going to butt into the conversation, demonstrating beyond a doubt that little pitchers have big ears.
    “Girls,” said Mama, noticing their empty plates, “go to your rooms and finish your homework.”
    “We already finished,” Tasha said, although she