Free Imani All Mine by Connie Rose Porter Page B

desert. Sometimes the windows swole shut and you can’t get them open for a breath of cool air. Your mouth be all dry, like it got sand in it, and you be real sleepy.
    Â 
    My English class one of them ones out in the desert. Mr. Toliver the teacher. He a black man who wear a suit all the time, but don’t never sweat in all that heat. He be real cool. I like him because he wear cologne that smell like burning wood. But Mr. Toliver take everything so serious. He be making us talk proper English in his class and keep on correcting us when we don’t. We have to talk that way, he say, so we’ll have a good future. Maybe he right. All I know is my head be hurting in his class when I concentrate on talking like that. It don’t come natural to me, and it seem like I’m just putting on. Like I’m trying to be white.
    Mr. Toliver act like his class the most important thing in the world, and if he see we ain’t paying attention, he stop and lecture us. Ladies and gentlemen, he say in a voice all calm, even though you can tell he ain’t calm. He say, I can stop teaching right this moment and sit down the rest of the period. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I have mine. My car. My house. My degree. And need I remind you, I get paid if you learn or not. You need to realize I’m trying to prepare you for a world that cares nothing about you. If you think it does, you’re sadly mistaken. Now let’s get back to work.
    On the day I come back to school, Mr. Toliver seemed like he was out in the desert with the rest of us, though. Tired and thirsty. His voice was all scratchy. When he seen we wasn’t paying attention, he didn’t even lecture. Halfway through the period he give up and told us to read silent at our desks. That’s when I went up to him to ask for the work I had missed while I was out with Imani.
    He told me to step into the hall, and he ask, What do you want it for, Tasha?
    So I can catch up, I say.
    Mr. Toliver ask, Oh, is that so? You don’t seem to take this class very seriously. This is the second time this term you’ve missed days at a time, and now you waltz back into my room like some belle of the ball and expect me to catch you up.
    Static. He was giving off so much, I wanted to tune him out. But I say, It ain’t even like that, Mr. Toliver.
    He say,
Isn’t
it?
    My baby been sick, I say.
    Your baby
has
been sick, he say.
    I flipped the switch to the way he want me to talk. Real slow and careful, I say, My baby
has
been sick, Mr. Toliver. She has had a fever and I had to stay home with her.
    Well, well, well, he say. So, Miss Dawson, in your absence you haven’t forgotten how to speak the English language.
    Aw, stop playing with me, Mr. Toliver.
    He say, I’m not playing with you. Do you think having a sick baby is an excuse?
    I’m not giving you a excuse, I say to him.
    An
excuse, he say.
    It’s not an excuse, I say. I’m trying to make up what I’ve missed.
    Let me tell you something, Tasha, he say. You have to do better than you’ve been doing, because the world cares nothing about you or your baby. I’ll give you your assignments. Have them in by tomorrow, he say, and pointed for me to go back to class while he went on down the hall to get some water.
    That night I did just what Mr. Toliver told me. By the time I finished up the work for his class and my other classes, it was something after three. Imani was sleeping real hard. I was working in bed, and she laid right next to me the whole while, not even moving.
    The next morning when I got up to get Imani ready for school, she was scratching herself. I ain’t see no rash on her. Just a few bumps around her neck. Mama seen Imani scratching when I was feeding her. Mama come looking under her shirt and say, Tasha, she got the chicken pox.
    I say that ain’t no chicken pox.
    Mama say, I know the chicken pox when I see them. You had