Imani All Mine Read Online Free Page A

to the doctor’s. I ain’t had nothing to eat, but the whole while me and Mama was sitting in the waiting room, I felt this clenching like in my guts. I thought I was going to have to poop. When we was called in to see the doctor and I had to put on that paper gown, I felt even worse. This one nurse had me pee in a little jar. She took some blood and then weighed me. I had gained almost ten pounds since my six-week checkup, but she say my pressure was fine. The nurse left me and Mama to wait on the doctor. I was sitting on the examining table. My stomach was bubbling like a pot. Mama heard it. She ask what’s wrong with me. I say I was nervous about the doctor looking at my private parts. She say I ain’t care nothing about some boy fucking me, so what I care about some doctor taking a look. I was going to cry right then, but the doctor walked in.
    For some reason, that made me calm. It was a black woman doctor and she pretty. Her hair was done real nice. She must have had one of them relaxers, where you can shake your hair like a white woman, and her hair was real long. Mama smiled at her real big. The doctor ask me why I wasn’t in school that morning. Because I’m here, I say. That’s obvious, she say in a real flat voice, not even looking up from my file. Your weight is up, she say. It’s not healthy to weigh so much. Don’t you exercise? I be tired, I say, which is the truth. You a young girl, she tell me. You shouldn’t be tired. You tired because you overweight. She say she run five miles every day. All the while she say these things, she didn’t even look at me. She didn’t even look at me when she ask, Why you have a baby so young? I swear I felt like jumping off that table and smacking her. Ain’t none of her business why I have a baby. Mama say, That’s what I want to know. The doctor looked at her and they started talking about me like I wasn’t even there.
    She don’t listen to me, Mama say. The doctor say she see it every day, babies having babies. It’s getting to be more than she can take. Mama say she try to tell me what’s right, but I be getting ideas from other girls. That your daughter? Mama ask, pointing at a picture on the doctor’s desk. The doctor smiled. Mama show me the picture. The girl looked around my age, and was dressed in a prom dress. She real pretty, Mama say. The doctor thanked her for saying that. That’s her debutante picture.
    She turn to me and say, That’s where your daughter comes out, gets presented to society. Talking to me like I was some natural-born fool. I know what a debutante is, but I ask her, Where she come out from? The doctor just look at me real strange, and Mama glared at me.
    Then Mama say it’s so good to see a black girl who’s about something, doing something with they lives instead of having babies like that’s some great thing. Because it ain’t.
    I had my face fixed real plain while they carried on talking. Like they was talking about something like the best place to get your hair fixed or what place sell the best Buffalo wings. But I was burning up. My thighs was sticking to that paper they be having on them examining tables, and my feet tingling from hanging up in the air. I ain’t give a damn about that doctor or her stupid-ass daughter. I know Mrs. Poole would say I’m no lady for expressing myself that way, even if it was all inside my head. That my mind was real little. But I ain’t even care. That girl ain’t mean nothing to me. I ain’t know why Mama was making over her like she’s something special.
    She look like a regular black girl to me. Her skin dark like mine. She ain’t have no good hair or nothing. She’s not fat like me, but she’s not pretty like them black girls in
Seventeen
. If you seen her on the street, you would probably throw her all in together with other black girls. You would think she was probably a