I always wanted to tell them not to bother, that insults against me slid off Cora’s back like the hot water of the quick five-minute showers she took after her men left.
Cora didn’t like me. Sometimes I thought she might have even hated me. But I knew for sure she didn’t like me.
It wasn’t the hitting. All Southern black mamas hit. It’s in their nature, like it’s in a jaguar’s nature to attack on sight anything that ain’t a jaguar.
But the only time Cora ever touched me was to hit me. That’s how I knew she didn’t like me.
So when those women would come over to us in the mini-mart, I’d look at them, thinking, Don’t you see you can’t hurt her through me? She’s not even holding my hand for God’s sake.
Still, I never said anything when they called me ugly. I wasn’t much of a talker. This is actually an understatement. I should say that I never ever talked unless I absolutely had to—and sometimes not even then.
. . .
My grandmama took care of me until I was five. Then she died and Cora moved in. It actually took me a while to figure out that this woman was my mother. I had never met her before and my grandmama had only referred to her in passing as a poor lost soul who still hadn’t found her way to Jesus.
I’m still not sure when I put two and two together, but by the time I was six I had figured out who she was, how alcohol smelled, and what sex sounded like through a couple of thin walls.
Also, I had figured out how to amuse myself after Cora went out for the evening. And the night that I stopped talking was like many of the ones that had come before it.
As soon as the door clicked behind Cora, I went to get two towels out of the linen closet. These towels were my Tina Turner hair and my Tina Turner dress.
I took off all my clothes and wrapped one towel around me. Then I secured the other one to my head, using a shoelace from one of my Payless ProWing sneakers, like one of them Indian headbands.
Hair in place, I got some lipstick out of Cora’s makeup tray and put it on my lips. I made dark red circles on my cheeks and smeared it on my eyelids, too. This was my Tina Turner face.
Then I dug Cora’s red high heels out from behind the radiator, where I had been hiding them all summer. These were the magic shoes that made my entire Tina Turner transformation complete.
. . .
Cora didn’t really believe in buying me anything beyond what was strictly necessary for my ongoing survival. But a week before that night, one of her friends had given me a black Barbie with yellow wood glue in its hair.
“We can’t get the glue out,” he said, and that was all. He handed it to me and walked to the back of the house with Cora.
I ran my finger along the smooth yellow stripes that bound her strands of hair together and made her unwanted by some other black girl.
“Your name is Gloria. You can be my backup singer,” I said to her.
Gloria and I were both outcasts, which is probably why we worked so well together.
The night I stopped talking, my black Barbie introduced me to the imaginary forms of the other twenty kids in my kindergarten class.
“Presenting Davidia Jones!”
I imagined the crowd clapping, while I loaded Cora’s Ike and Tina Turner Workin’ Together album onto the record player.
Then I sang the entire side two for them, word for word, from “Funkier Than a Mosquita’s Tweeter” to “Let It Be.” By the time I got to the end, my classmates were on their feet and clapping.
“Sang another one! Sang another one, Monkey Night!” Everybody was cheering and crying and jumping up and down like they were at a Michael Jackson concert.