Imani All Mine by Connie Rose Porter

her. I know she don’t trust her. Maybe that’s the best kind of friend to have, though. Some bitch you can’t trust behind your back. You never have to worry about her stabbing you in the back, because you ain’t going to let her get that close to you.
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    While Miss Odetta sneakers was making more work for me, she say that June Bug sell to the preacher at New Covenant. He try to say he off that crack, but he ain’t. All he is is a hype, Miss Odetta say.
    Me and Mama, we ain’t say nothing. Mama smiled and Miss Odetta ran her tongue over her teeth and blew out a mouthful of smoke up at the ceiling.
    Miss Odetta say, I can tell you don’t believe me. Hey, but even a broke clock right twice a day.
    Mama say, Uh-huh. Now ain’t that the truth. I don’t care nothing about who preaching in there. Ain’t nothing going on in a church got anything to do with God.
    Wait a minute, Mama say. God a man. Odetta, you know him?
    I bust out laughing and cut a fart at the same time. Excuse me, I say. Mama laughed too. You a pig, Tasha, she say.
    Miss Odetta ain’t even laugh. She lit another cigarette even though the other one was still going in the ashtray. Drunk.
    Hey, now. I don’t even joke about no God, Miss Odetta say. She took a drag off her cigarette and put it in the ashtray. Matter of fact, I
do
know him, she say. He know ya’ll asses too.
    Mama say, He don’t know me.
    Yes, he do, Miss Odetta say. And he know who you sneaking around with.
    Mama say, I ain’t sneaking around with nobody. And even if I am, he ain’t nobody husband.
    Miss Odetta say, Simpkin ain’t nobody husband, neither. Even though he married.
    Mama and Miss Odetta both laughed and Miss Odetta lit another cigarette. Drunk.
    Ain’t that some shit, Miss Odetta say. I’m going to hell over some man. She reached for her malt liquor and knocked the ashtray on the floor. I rushed and got up the two cigarettes that was still burning. One of them had rolled under the couch.
    Damn, Odetta, What you trying to do? Burn my goddamn house down? Mama sent me to get something to clean up the ashes. When I come back to the room with the whiskbroom, a dustpan, a wet rag, and a roll of paper towel, I was hoping Miss Odetta already was gone.
    But she was still sitting there, and Mama was saying to her, You ain’t going to no hell, girl. Nigger hell is right here on earth. We living it right here in these streets. Shit, if God cared anything about us, we wouldn’t even be living in no ghetto. Mama looked up and seen me then and say, God ain’t done nothing for me. He ain’t done nothing for you neither, Tasha.
    I don’t really know what God done for me or ain’t done for me. In the woods that night. In the dark. In the trees and quiet, I don’t know if he was anywhere around. I ain’t feel him inside my heart. I ain’t had his name on my tongue. I ain’t call on him for no help. When Mama say that about him not doing nothing for me, I was thinking she could be right. Maybe she was some broke clock ticking off two truths a day about my life. On that day I was a pig and somebody God ain’t even care about.
    I was thinking about what Mama say about God the morning of the christening, when I got to the New Light of the Covenant Church and seen it used to be a store. Organ music was coming out of it, leaking out from under the door like water. I ain’t know if I want to go into that water with Imani. Can’t neither one of us swim. We had took two buses to get to the church, and was late because we missed one of the buses and had to wait a half hour for the next one. I had Imani all stuffed in her snowsuit. It was so much snow on the ground, I couldn’t take her stroller. So she was in my arms, heavy like a bag of groceries. I wanted to go right straight back home. But it was cold and I was tired. And most of all, I ain’t want to find Mama mouth wide