Free Imani All Mine by Connie Rose Porter

face slid right off. He walked off without saying nothing.
    I seen him the next day in the cafeteria, and he walked right on by me without noticing me. I knew I wasn’t going to cross no bridge after all. I could feel it in my heart that he ain’t know who I was. I was some girl with no name. I was some girl with no face. I was just some girl in a dream he ain’t even remember.

FOUR
Ten Little Angels
    I MIGHT have killed Imani. That’s what I come to find out from Mrs. Poole right before our Christmas break. But I ain’t know. How was I supposed to know?
    Shaken Baby Syndrome. Mrs. Poole was talking about it in the class one day but I wasn’t paying no good attention to her, I was looking at a magazine I had inside my notebook.
Seventeen
. It was a December one, full of ways to dazzle everybody at holiday parties. There was this white girl in a plaid dress that was red, green, and black that look like a tablecloth. She was at a party and there was some white boys with teeth like Chiclets and presents in they hands or standing under some mistletoe ready to get kissed. I imagined me at one of them parties in a velvet dress and fifty pounds skinnier with some braids Eboni put in. They tight and hurting my head, but I ain’t care because they looked good. I ain’t have on the earrings Eboni gave me, the ones with my name on them, because they say
projects
. They say East Side. Fruit Belt. Humboldt Parkway. Jefferson Avenue. You ride the 12
and
13 bus. They say all that with just your name spelled our in fake gold. So I had on some pearl studs. Real tasteful. I looked so good, it’s like I’m the belle of the ball like them white girls in the magazine. And then Mrs. Poole walked right in the party, talking about death.
    Shaking a baby can cause its death, she say. Shaken Baby Syndrome. Never, Mrs. Poole say. Never shake your baby for no reason. Because you mad. Because they crying and working your nerves. Even because you just playing with them and throwing them up in the air.
    I closed up my notebook with the magazine. Mrs. Poole was holding a bald naked baby doll, just a-shaking it. Some girls was laughing, because the doll big head was flopping around. Mrs. Poole stopped shaking it and say what would happen to a real baby. You could bounce they brain against the inside of they head and give them a concussion. That’s a brain injury. She say you can shake a baby so hard, you can break they neck. Snap they spinal cord. That’s how you can kill them. Everybody stopped laughing. You could hear the lights and clock humming and somebody screaming like a crazy person out in the hall.
    I was looking at the doll all naked on the desk, wishing Eboni was there. I tried to remember if Mrs. Poole say something about this before. She make me sick, talking about stupid shit like routines and schedules and burping and how often to change a diaper, but ain’t say nothing about not shaking a baby. Because I already done it.
    Â 
    I shook Imani just the week before. I ain’t shake her because I was playing with her. I was shaking her because she be making me mad and get on my nerves. We was supposed to be going to a birthday party Bett-Bett was having for her youngest baby. Her son just turned one, and I had been pinching pennies so I could go and take Imani. It was at Party Time Pizza. I had to pay my own way in and get a gift. Mama say it’s a waste of money to have a party for a baby so little. They don’t remember it. But I wanted to go. So when Imani have her birthday, some other girls and babies will be there to make it a party.
    Me and Imani ain’t get to go, though. Imani was sick for two straight weeks before the party. At first she got the runs. I was changing her once a hour. Then she started throwing up and had a fever, so I took off from school to take her to ECMC. She see a pediatrician there. He a man from India with black black greasy hair and skin so pretty,