Free Imani All Mine by Connie Rose Porter Page A

it’s like chocolate pudding. He say Imani was teething and she had a cold and a ear infection too. He say not to take her to no daycare. She should stay home a few days. So I had to stay home with Imani, and she doing nothing but crying and whining and rubbing her fist in her mouth and grabbing at her ears. Mama was sick of both of us by the second day. I was wishing she would just go off with her secret boyfriend, but she kept coming into my room, asking why Imani was crying so. What I was doing to her? I told her I wasn’t doing nothing to her. She crying because she sick. Mama want to pour some warm olive oil in Imani ears. The doctor ain’t say nothing about that, so I wouldn’t let her do it. She ask if I put that teething gel on her gums. And I ain’t lie about that. I told her I ain’t put it on there because Imani bit me last time I tried. Mama laugh at me. That’s part of being a mama, she say. Pain. Sometimes you got to do things to your children they don’t like. Things that hurt them if it’s good for them. I say, I ain’t never going to hurt my child for nothing. Mama say, You don’t know what the hell you talking about. Why you think you know so goddamn much? I say, Mrs. Poole teach us how to take care of a baby.
    That was the wrong thing to say to Mama.
    Mrs. Poole? Mama say. Mrs. Poole? Who is that cockeye bitch to teach you anything? What she know about babies, what she read in some book?
    I want to say Mrs. Poole got four children, but instead I say, Mama, I know what I’m doing.
    Mama say, If you know what you was doing, you wouldn’t never have had no baby in the first place. Then she left me and Imani alone.
    I was smoking mad with Mama. Saying I ain’t know what I’m doing. Talking to me like I’m some fool! Imani was fussing. I sat with her on my bed and give her her teething ring. She bit it one time and threw it across the room. Her nose was all snotty, so I tried to suck out the snot with one of them little bulb things. She hated it and started screaming and kicking like I was abusing her, and I stopped. I started rocking her like Miss Lovey rock her, across my knees. I was jiggling and jiggling and she crying and crying. I turned on the radio. But she ain’t shut up. So I started singing to Imani “Ten Little Angels.” She stopped crying and only whined while I was singing, so I kept on.
    I wasn’t thinking nothing about them angels. I was thinking about Mama. How I want her to give me some credit about how I take care of my baby. To have her say, Imani sure do look pretty today. You sure combed her hair real neat. Got it all greased up and shining. You sure keep her clothes clean. You sure keep her smelling clean and fresh like a baby should be. You sure is a good mother.
    I can’t stand it when Mama pick pick pick. Sometimes I feel like I’m some kind of scab she trying to peel away. I kept right on singing to Imani. There was hundreds of them little white angels dangling off kite strings and falling down into bed before she fell to sleep.
    On the third day Imani was better. I don’t think she was feeling good enough to go out to school with me. But I took her on anyway. I ain’t even need to be missing no more time in class. Not with all the time I missed running from
him
. It ain’t like I be seeing him all the time in the cafeteria anyway. He hardly been coming to school. I don’t know where he be at. But I’m hoping he stay wherever it is.
    At least Imani could sleep all day in the nursery. I’m the one had to stay awake and go to my classes. Our school crazy, now that it’s cold. Some rooms don’t be having no heat in them. It’s like you going to school at the North Pole. You got to be wearing a coat and still be sitting there freezing, with your feet so cold they go to sleep and forget they part of your body. Then there’s other rooms where it’s hot like a