Brick shakes his head no. Jesse rummages through the glove compartment then the side pocket on his door. He asks me to check mine too.
“How often you do that, man?” Brick asks.
“I’m casual. Not much. It’s not like those people,” he says.
“It’s not a big deal, Brick,” I say even though I’m not so sure.
Jesse finds a matchbook and lights up. I pick up a beer. It’s sweaty from the heat. “Will you open this for me?” I ask Jesse.
“I’m out,” Brick says.
“I’m gonna go with you,” Lakeisha says.
“Rachel?” Brick looks at me.
“I’m okay. Jesse can take me home.”
Lakeisha and Brick get out of the car. It is quiet for a long time after they leave, and smoke fills the air. Jesse passes the joint to me, but I wave it away. I keep drinking my beer.
“What did you mean it’s not like those people?” I ask after Brick and Lakeisha are gone.
“You know, all crazy. Turn into a bum.”
“Brick’s not a bum.”
“I wasn’t saying that.”
“It sounded like maybe you thought he was a bum, or even like you weren’t like the men at the center because … It sounded like you meant black people or … I don’t know.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Jesse says. “Don’t think that,” he says and takes another puff. “You’re not mad are you?” The way he says it is like an apology.
I don’t want to be mad.
“You’re different anyway, you know? It’s like you’re black but not really black,” he says. “Don’t be mad, okay? You want some? Do you want to try?” He gestures with his hand after he takes another puff.
“No,” I say, but I reach for another beer.
THE SKY IS SWIRLING. And a lovely pressure rises into my head. We’re lying on the ground again, watching stars. Jesse is talking about traveling: Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Chile.
“Brazil,” he says. “You know you’d look just like everyone else there.”
“Really?”
“Everyone’s a mulatto there basically. Brown with green eyes, gray eyes, blue eyes. It’s all the same. Exotic. Those are your people,” he says. “Wouldn’t you love to go? To be somewhere like that?”
“Like what? A place where all the people look like me?”
My bottle of beer is empty. Jesse hands me another. I drink it like I am thirsty.
“So let’s go. We’ll just go,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll take the check my parents gave me to pay the tuition, we’ll buy a couple of tickets, and backpack all over South America. You’d love it. You’d fit right in.”
“What about college?” I ask.
“When we come back, college will still be there,” Jesse says.
“It’s called running away,” I say.
“Or it’s called wanderlust,” Jesse says. “Or lust.”
And then he gives me a look that should not surprise me but it does. Because even though I thought that I was liking him, it seemed impossible until this moment that he was liking me too.
He leans toward me then and raises his hand to my lips. He touches me like a child touching a stranger’s face. He wants to translate what is happening between us to his fingertips, make sure he can trust what he is feeling by taking me in through his hands. Are you a kind person? Well, let me feel your lips. Are they soft? His fingers move across my cheeks and my closed eyes; he’s like a blind man creating me for himself. Heat grows in me in widening circles.
“Remember,” he says, “I didn’t come looking for this today.” I nod my head and then kiss him — still a little distant and safe because I have not been found.
“RUN!”
It’s not an easy thing to do. And I’m not sure why we’re doing it. But I gather my clothes up around me and pull them on real fast.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“The sirens. Don’t you hear them?”
And now I do, but before all I could hear was my heart beating fast, and his breath in my ear as he moved on top of me.
“Sirens mean danger. They mean go.”
I can’t tell if he’s serious or not, but I rush to put my clothes on and we spill out of the car.
“Race you. To the fountain. Go.”
I do everything Jesse says. I don’t even think. So I run and I run faster. I run down the hill and around the tennis court and down toward the streetlights where the big fountain stands. I’m running through the dark and not scared and not out of breath. There is wind in my hair, and I feel the wind pushing me forward, like maybe I can fly. I’m at the fountain, magically still bubbling and lit. I am the first one to tag it.
“I win.”
“You win,” Jesse says, breathless, coming up five strides behind me.
“What’s my prize?”
“This — ” He splashes the fountain water with both hands hard like the top of the water’s a drum. I’m covered in water — almost as wet as Jesse is — not only my shirt but my pants, my face, and my hair. He pulls me to him. We kiss. The fountain light is a bright halo behind us. Then suddenly he bends over the fountain edge and dunks his head in. Like he’s being saved. When he comes up he shakes his head like a shaggy dog, and I’m wet on top of wet. “You too,” he says. “Clear your head,” he says. “I can’t take you home looking lit up like you do now.”
The part that should know that glassy eyes and smoky hair would be easier to disguise than soaking wet clothes, wet hair, and the smell of dirty water doesn’t take charge of me. Instead the part that wants to be pleasing takes the lead; it’s the part of me that wants to be part of something even if it’s just Jesse’s crazy scheme. I lift myself up and over the edge of the fountain nearly toppling my whole self in. Hold my breath. Dip my head in the cold fountain water and come up for air with a shout. “Yee!” He kisses me again.
The sirens have died. But now there is a loud honking. Two or three cars, honking like they are speaking to each other. Loud rock music. A scream. “Nigger!”
“Nigger!” And then “Nigger lover!” Again and again and again.
“Assholes,” Jesse yells. The motor revs. A screeching stop and then the powering forward sound again. And laughter. They keep laughing.
“Don’t mind them,” Jesse says. But I do.
BACK IN HIS car Jesse draws a map on me with his finger. He traces a line from my thigh to my chest. Travel plans. “We really could go,” he says.
I feel cloudy-headed. My bad ear is drowning, like there is water in my ear that is swelling onto a shore.
“We’ll go from here,” he says. (My belly button is Mexico.) “To here,” he says. (Somewhere near my hip bone is the Panamanian coast.) Normally I look so light — like an ivory candle next to John Bailey, next to Anthony Miller. It’s the light or Jesse’s very white skin that makes me brown. Or maybe it is something else. Maybe it is just words.
He draws circles within circles on my middle. He makes me brown and browner still.
“I’ve never done it with a black girl before,” he says.
“Travel?”
“You’re funny.”
“Yes,” I say, “I know.”
Rachel
A wind inside me rises up from my feet to my head. I can feel my face grow hot.
“Good night, good night, mocha girl. My mocha girlfriend.” Jesse sings the last part. “Do you want me to walk you up the stairs?”
“No, no, no,” I say and hear myself talking too loudly. “I don’t want my grandmother to wake up. I don’t want her to see.”
“I don’t want to see her again like that,” he says. He laughs like he is exploding.
“Good night,” he sings too loud and off-key. I cannot hear the rest as I close the car door.
The wind that was rising within me swirls within my head. It makes me dizzy and unsteady on my feet. A melting feeling seems to be pulling me to the ground. I grab the ra
iling to hold myself up. When I’m at the top of the porch stairs, I hear Jesse sing more bad notes through the open passenger window. “Mocha girl!” He honks then. He speeds away.
“Thank you Jesus, and everybody.” Grandma’s sitting there as if she’s on her throne for Judgment Day when I open the door. She puts her hands before her in prayer.
“Little Miss, you had us worried to death.”
“Us,” she says, and that’s when I notice Drew standing in the kitchen doorway.
“You’re gonna need this,” he says. He walks toward me to hand me a coffee mug.
“Look at you — a wet mess. You’re gonna catch the death of you out in the night like that,” Grandma says.
“Brick called me,” Drew says. “He said he was worried about you.”
“No need to worry. Thanks. And good night,” I say and head for my room.
“Get back here, young lady,” Grandma yells.
“Good night, Grandma. Good night, Drew,” I say from across the room.
“Rachel?” I turn so I can see how Drew’s looking at me. I’m not a kid. He knows that now.
“It’s not my place to discipline you or tell you what to do. But I don’t think you’re doing yourself any good hanging out like you were tonight,” Drew says.
“It’s not your business.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’re gonna respect Drew. You’re gonna respect this house,” Grandma says.
“Rachel, you have a future ahead of you. Think about it.”
“You leave the mens alone, Rachel. They don’t know what to do with pretty or with special. Not at your age. They don’t know what you’re worth.”
Their voices are on top of each other. My head is spinning. I want to go to bed. I think I might get sick.
“Don’t act like trash like your mama. It’s not something a black girl can afford.”
I can feel the blue bottle shatter inside me. “You want me to be special and you want me to be yours,” I yell. “But I can’t be both. You know that better than me.” Nigger, nigger, nigger lover. “I am Nella Fløe’s daughter. That’s what makes me special — me.”
“Tell us. Go ahead,” Grandma says with a calm that she did not have seconds ago. “Tell us what a wonderful lady your mama was.”
I can see Mor’s face before me. Her wet eyes. Her unhappy stare.
“Go on and tell us,” Grandma says. “You think that baby or Robbie or Charles would agree?”
THAT DAY THE WET air swallowed us. No fence separated the roof from the sky because no one was supposed to walk up there. The pigeon man had broken the chain lock on the door a long time ago, and we stepped out onto the rooftop where we could see the whole neighborhood.
Mor’s silent misty breath seemed to fill the space between where we stood and the air before us. The wind had blown her hair into her face. It made her look messy now and not free. She led us closer and closer to the edge.
“Can we go now?” Robbie said. His face was as wet as a well-licked plate as it rained down on us.
But when Mor pushed Robbie off the roof, he didn’t make a sound — he just looked at me and reached out his hand. I didn’t see him fall — it was as if he surrendered to the air.
Mor came toward me next and I screamed. She stopped and looked at me. Then it was like she saw through me. She took her hand off my shoulder and turned toward the air. She stepped off the edge with Ariel in her arms and danced into the sky. They waltzed with a cloud. And for a moment I could see Mor smile.
I JUMPED AFTER Robbie then. I thought I could hurl myself over the edge and fall faster than Robbie — land before him, grab his hand, help him not be afraid.
I danced with that cloud too. I saw above me and around, beyond the day’s fog. I felt my cells expanding into space and felt larger and heavier than ever before. And then I met the ground.
Heaped on top of Robbie, next to Mor and Ariel’s crushed head, I lay waiting for an ambulance too. But I lived.
“I WASN’T SUPPOSED to have a future,” I say. “It doesn’t matter what I do. This is my life. It’s my life to throw away.”
Laronne
“Not a day goes by I don’t think of that woman,” Doug said. His face was sun-stained and wrinkled. His red hair wasn’t as orange or as wooly as Laronne had remembered it; it had streaks of gray at his temples and through his trimmed goatee. He was wearing a button-down shirt and khakis. His fingernails were bitten down but clean.
“Oh?” Laronne noticed he hadn’t said Nella’s name.
It had been six years since the accident, and Laronne was seated before Nella’s old boyfriend at a diner near her job. He drank coffee, added more sugar. He stirred.
Doug had reached her at work last week. He was working on his fourth step. He wanted to make amends. Did she know where to find Nella’s grave?
“I don’t know where she’s buried,” Laronne said. “I wanted to hear what you had to say.”
Doug rubbed his eyes. He stirred the coffee some more, added more and more cream until it was light brown. Then he started to cry.
“You know, I’m changed. Been sober for close to four years now. Taking it one day at a time. I hurt a lot of people with my using. No one more than Nella. Nella was a beautiful woman. It took a long time to hit bottom after Nella was gone. I couldn’t handle it. Nella saw what was good in me. I saw it in her too. I should have been better. I wasn’t.”
“You’re a piece of shit, you know.” Laronne never used that kind of language. “I should have told her that. Before.”
Laronne pulled out a copy of the newspaper article about the accident and set it down in front of him.
Doug read the headline. She could see his lips move as he read. Two minutes later, she could see from the movement of his lips that he hadn’t finished reading yet, but she grabbed the paper away from him anyway. “Police say they are continuing their investigation to rule out foul play. Witnesses indicate possible suspects …” She read the sentences as if each word had an exclamation point behind it. “So … ?” she asked. “They never found you. Why’d you run?”
“You think I did something? What? Are you crazy?” Doug said. “Oh my God. No. No. I wasn’t there. I had already left — before.”
“What are you saying?” she asked. “You came looking for her that day. At work.”
“Yeah, but that was it. I didn’t go back to the apartment until the next day. After. I wasn’t one for long-term,” he said. “Nella knew that. We both pretended it could work. We were friends first. My first time in the program. I felt good. She’d been sober for a year and ten days. But she didn’t know what happy was when I met her. It was like she was trying to make up for something. She needed fun in her life; she needed to have some fun. We had good fun. I loved her is what I’m saying, and the kind of love I had for her made her want new things. After I convinced her to move with the kids to Chicago, you know, my old friends were here. I’d go. For a night, then a night or two. I’m not proud of how I acted. I’m an alcoholic and an addict. I couldn’t stay clean. And the baby. It’d cry. When I said ‘get the paternity test,’ I was high. It wasn’t my kid. She didn’t have my kid. We got into it. We …”
Laronne looked at him puzzled.
“It wasn’t mine. I don’t want you to think any less of Nella. We got together before she left him. But the baby, Ariel, wasn’t mine.”
It was something Laronne had guessed but never asked. It didn’t matter to her.
“You know they darken up. Over time,” he said.
Laronne felt her stomach tighten.
“You won’t even know it,” he continued. “The baby can look white when it’s born and then, then — then they just get black. Black hair. Black nose. Summer makes them darker.”
“Afraid you were gonna have three little jigaboos on your hands?” Laronne said.
“That thing — word—I said, to the kids. You say the things you’ve heard growing up. And I was high. It’s not an excuse but it’s true,�
� Doug said. He had stopped crying. “I never took the test. I didn’t think about it. A few days later, I’d been out all day with my buddy. She tells me — she says: she’s his. The whole time she knew it — he’d already taken the test. And it set me off. I was going crazy. And those kids with that TV always so loud. Look, I had never hit a woman. But she kept yelling, screaming. Stay away from my babies. Get out. She wouldn’t stop. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t think I hit her so hard until I saw she lost a tooth. I just wanted her to stop screaming. I don’t mean to make excuses. What I did wasn’t right. And then, you know, I left.” He started to cry again. His face filled with red.
“I’ll never get my chance. To make it right.”
Laronne stared off into space.
Doug slid the article back to his side of the table to finish reading. He looked up, his lips still moving: “Rachel survived?”
“You don’t have a right,” Laronne said, “to say her name.”
Nella
Day 770. Today Doug came home. I do not know why I told him — he never likes to hear Roger’s name. But he is not Ariel’s father. He was so mad. The children were watching TV. The TV was too loud. He was right, but he should not tell them that way. He did not have to yell. He hit the TV with his hand. Rachel did not move. The baby started crying. He pulled the TV cord out. I didn’t know what to do. I was standing there. He hit Rachel on the legs with the cord. He said — he screamed at my kids — he said it: You damn little n———.
That word.
The way Rachel looked at me. Big tears on her face. And no sound. She was a step away — maybe the step is there forever. She knows the word. She is black. I know she is not a word. If she is just a word then she doesn’t have me.
I could not stop screaming. Could not stop screaming. It did not feel like anything to me when he hit me. Even when I felt my tooth being loose. I told him to get out! I screamed at him he better not ever come near my children, my family again.
My mouth stopped bleeding. Rachel cleaned the glass I threw at the door. Roger was right. That’s all there is for them — only what people see. Oh God I am doing it again. I cannot do it again. I promised. Charles, I’m so sorry. I cannot be sorry again.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Page 16
