Miracle's Boys

by Jacqueline Woodson

  “Ty’ree,” I whispered. “You asleep?”

  Ty’ree shook his head.

  I looked down at the remote control, then back up at the television.

  “W’s up?”

  “Can you tell me something?”

  “Maybe,” Ty’ree said sleepily. “If I know it.”

  I tried not to think about Newcharlie’s face when he said the words, when he called me Milagro killer.

  “Can you tell me about when ... when Mama died?”

  Ty’ree frowned, then slowly opened his eyes. “It’s Friday night, Lafayette. Go play some ball.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t feel like it.”

  “It’s gonna be winter soon—then it’ll be too cold to be hanging.”

  “Said I don’t feel like it.”

  “What do you want to know about it?” Ty’ree asked. He sounded tired. After a moment he put his hand on my knee. I wanted to put my hand over his but didn’t.

  “Just ... like ... like how come?”

  “You know how come. She had diabetes. She went into a insulin shock.”

  “But ... why?”

  “ ‘Cause she didn’t have enough insulin in her. Her body just—just sort of shut down.”

  I bit my bottom lip. “Then what happened?”

  Ty’ree sighed and leaned back against the couch. “You found her the next morning,” he said. He sounded real patient, like he was talking to a very little kid. “She hadn’t got up to fix your breakfast. You were in the fourth grade. You always liked oatmeal in the morning. You tried to wake her up to fix you some.”

  “Where were you, T?”

  “I’d left for school already. I’d just graduated the day before, and I was going to pick up my diploma and say good-bye to people.”

  “And Newcharlie was at Rahway, right?”

  Ty’ree nodded. “He’d been there for two months when Mom died.”

  Once Mama had said to me that time is like a movie—something you watch real close wanting to catch every line, every action, every moment. Then it passes and you feel like no time passed at all. She said that when her parents died, time didn’t stop the way people always say it does. She said it just became more precise—every minute, hour, day mattered that much more. Charlie had been in Rahway for two months. There were four days between the time I found her and the day we buried her. The morning I found Mama, the clock beside her bed said 7:44. Mama, I’d whispered. You’re oversleeping. And now years have gone by—like no time at all.

  “You remember the last thing you said to Mama, T?”

  Ty’ree smiled. “I told her to make sure that when she ironed my green shirt, she didn’t put any startch in it. I didn’t like starch in that shirt for some reason.”

  “You like starch in the other ones, though.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I twirled the remote around in my hands. “I think I told her she was oversleeping,” I said. “But she didn’t hear me. Her hair was hanging down over her face. I moved her hair away but I didn’t call nobody. I should’ve called somebody.”

  “You did,” Ty’ree said.

  “But that was later on. It was too late then.”

  “It was too late when you found her, Laf.”

  I put the TV on mute and watched some people dance across the screen. They looked so happy dancing, like dancing was the best thing in the world.

  “I was wearing my Brooklyn shirt,” I whispered. “And jeans. Mama was wearing her yellow pajamas, the ones with toasters on them. Remember those?”

  Ty’ree nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Me and Charlie had given her those pajamas for Christmas the year before. They’d been on sale, and me and Charlie couldn’t believe we had enough money to buy Mama pajamas. With toasters on them. She always always always burned the toast.”

  “She thought we liked it that way.” Ty’ree looked down at his hands and smiled.

  “But how come?”

  “ ‘Cause none of us ever had the heart to tell her we didn’t.”

  I swallowed and stared at the TV. “Because we loved her too much to hurt her feelings.”

  We didn’t say anything for a long time. It was starting to get dark out. When I looked over at Ty’ree, he was frowning down at the floor.

  He bent over and picked up a straw wrapper. “I told Charlie to sweep. You see him sweeping?”

  I shrugged. “He could have done it while I was at school or something.”

  “He didn’t sweep,” Ty’ree said, his voice getting loud. “Look at this floor! Look at it.”

  It looked fine to me. “I’ll sweep it.”

  “No, I’ll sweep it,” he said, and got up and went into the kitchen. “I have to do everything in this house. Everything.” I could hear him in there banging around. Then I heard him sniff and blow his nose. A few minutes later I could hear him making choking sounds. I went into my room then and closed the door, not wanting to hear Ty’ree crying, not wanting to hear anything. A long time ago he had given me his green shirt. I pulled it out of my drawer and spread it across my pillow, then put my face in it.

  “Mama,” I whispered, “wake up.”

  FIVE

  AFTER MAMA DIED, MY GREAT-AUNT CECILE came up from South Carolina saying she was going to take me and Ty‘ree back home to live with her. She’s a small woman with white hair, tiny silver glasses, and hands that shake whenever she eats or drinks something. The two things I noticed right off were how she smelled like the candy part of candy apples and how perfect her teeth were. Ty’ree said it would be two thousand miracles rolled into one if they were real.

  I had met Aunt Cecile only once, when I was real small and Mama had taken us all down south for our daddy’s uncle’s funeral. Aunt Cecile was our daddy’s aunt. I didn’t remember much about that time, but Aunt Cecile remembered me.

  “You were just an ant of a thing,” she said, picking me up like I was still two instead of nine and squeezing me to her. “And look at you now, just as beautiful as I don’t know what.”

  I’d never been called beautiful by anybody, and after Aunt Cecile said that, I went into the bathroom and checked myself in the mirror. Ty‘ree always said I looked like our daddy. He was dark and curly-headed with brown eyes. My eyes are more black than brown, and my hair’s more kinky than curly. Ty’ree makes me keep it cut short, sort of a fade. And when it’s real short, you can see where it starts out as curls. I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to smile like Ty’ree, but one of my front teeth overlaps the other in a way that makes me look a little bit meaner than I actually am. Still, maybe Aunt Cecile was right. Maybe I was beautiful underneath it all.

  ALL DAY LONG, PEOPLE HAD BEEN COMING IN and out of our apartment, bringing us food and juice and talking about how sorry they were and how big I was getting. Someone even brought by a pound of bacon, two cans of Spam, a dozen eggs, and a loaf of Wonder bread in case we got up in the morning and didn’t want to eat the other stuff. Ty’ree and Aunt Cecile took everything everybody brought us and thanked them. I sat in the living room mostly, staring at the television set and wishing everybody would just leave us alone. I wanted Mama to come home. Wanted to hear her coming up those stairs singing that “Me and Bobby McGee” song the way she always did.

  Me and Ty‘ree were both wearing black suits. Mine was too short at the wrists ’cause Mama had bought it the year before for me to wear on special occasions like school assembly and church. Since there hadn’t been that many assemblies and I usually wore pants with a shirt and a tie to church, the suit had hung in my closet until Ty’ree pulled it out the day before Mama’s funeral.

  They had let Charlie come to the funeral and stay with us for a few hours afterward. When Aunt Cecile saw him with those two guards from Rahway, she crossed herself and pressed her handkerchief against her mouth. Charlie stood real stiff while she hugged him, his eyes sweeping over everybody, checking us all out. There wasn’t any feeling in them. Just hard, flat eyes that didn’t belong
to the Charlie they had taken away.

  “Charlie,” I whispered, trying to hold his hand, “Mama died.”

  Charlie snatched his hand away from mine and glared at me. “How come you ain’t save her, huh?” he said. “If I was here, I would’ve saved her.”

  I stared at the guy standing in front of me. It wasn’t Charlie. Charlie would never talk that way—never blame me for anything. This was somebody different. New. Newcharlie.

  “I tried,” I whispered, taking tiny breaths to keep from crying.

  “I would’ve saved her.” Newcharlie turned away from me, went over to the corner, and crouched down against the wall. He stayed that way, glaring at his hands.

  The two guards watched him the whole time. By the time he had to go, I was relieved. I didn’t kill her, I kept wanting to say to Newcharlie, but I couldn’t. And on the way out of the house, when Newcharlie looked back at me and Ty‘ree, then punched the wall, I felt like he was punching me. Ty’ree had his arm around me, and when Newcharlie punched the wall, he pulled me closer. We stood there listening and could hear Newcharlie crying all the way down the stairs.

  “Charlie,” I whispered. Because he sounded like I remembered, like he did when that dog died. Hurt and small and lonely. “Charlie, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.” His crying sounds kept coming though, but they got softer and softer, moving farther and farther away from us.

  “Charlie,” I whispered, burying my head into Ty’ree’s arm. “Where’d you go, man? Where’d you go?”

  SIX

  THAT NIGHT, THE NIGHT OF THE DAY WE BURIED Mama, Aunt Cecile sat down in Mama’s chair at the table and told me and Ty’ree about her plan to move us back home with her.

  “We’re already at home,” I remember saying.

  Aunt Cecile smiled her perfect-teeth smile and shook her head. “You’re just two boys,” she said. “And Charlie won’t be home for at least another two years. When he gets out, he can come on down south too.”

  “You want to go live down south, Lafayette?” Ty’ree called to me.

  I shook my head.

  Ty‘ree raised his hands and gave Aunt Cecile his St. Ty’ree smile. “Guess we’ll be staying here then.”

  He and Aunt Cecile went back and forth for a long time, Aunt Cecile saying Ty‘ree was too young to try to raise me and Ty’ree telling her of his plans to work full-time now that he’d graduated high school.

  While they talked, I felt Mama sit down beside me and I laid my head against her shoulder. It was warm and soft and smelled like the honeysuckle oil she liked to put in her hair. But when I looked a few minutes later, it was just an orange pillow underneath my face, the pillow Mama had sewed back up after I had picked a hole in it.

  After a while Aunt Cecile went into the kitchen and asked if me and Ty‘ree wanted something to eat. We both said yes, and she fixed us each a big plate of food. I ate mine in front of the television halfway listening to Ty’ree and Aunt Cecile talk about how me and Ty’ree would and wouldn’t get by living on our own.

  Ty‘ree had been accepted at MIT. I knew that was good, ’cause people made all kinds of fusses about the school and about Ty‘ree at his graduation. Every time we turned around, he was going up onstage to get another award. He was good in science and stuff. Sometimes he’d take me to the park with him, and I’d get to watch him and his friends launch rockets they’d built. For a long time he’d talked about wanting to work with NASA. After Mama died, he changed his mind about everything. Even stopped going to the park to launch rockets with his friends. Most of the guys he hung with went away to college. Ty’ree had gone to a special high school for smart kids. He was the only guy in our neighborhood to get in. Before Mama died, some guys used to make fun of him and call him Professor. But later on, once he started working full-time and taking care of me, people started showing him respect, saying, “W’s up, Ty,” when he came home in the evening. Slapping him five and asking after me and Newcharlie. Ty’ree said he didn’t really care about not going to college, that keeping his little bit of family together was the most important thing. But once in a while he’d go over and visit some of his old homeboys who were home for Thanksgiving break or Christmas vacation. When he came home those nights, he didn’t have much to say, just sat at the dining-room table slowly going through the pages of his high school yearbook, looking lost. Looking like he’d left something big behind him.

  AUNT CECILE STAYED WITH US FOR TWO WEEKS. By the time she left, all of Mama’s stuff was gone and Mama’s room had become Ty’ree’s.

  “At least you won’t have to fuss about me sleeping on the couch during your Saturday-morning cartoons,” Ty’ree had said when he caught me standing in Mama’s room looking around for her things.

  “I liked you better on the couch,” I said. “I liked it better when Mama was sleeping in here. Where’s her stuff?”

  “Took it down to Goodwill this morning.”

  I opened the closet door. Ty’ree’s basketball sneakers were on the floor where Mama’s green sandals used to be. His shirts were hanging where Mama’s dresses used to hang. Her black winter coat and yellow wool scarf were gone. I sniffed the closet. It still smelled like her.

  “If I had a bad dream, Mama’d let me come sleep with her.”

  “You can come sleep with me now if you have a bad dream,” Ty’ree said.

  “It ain’t the same, T.”

  “Do you remember the time she—”

  I closed the closet door and looked at Ty’ree, waiting for him to finish. But he just shook his head. The whole room still smelled like Mama, like coffee and perfume and... It smelled like the way she laughed. Tinkly. It smelled like the memories of her—like how she used to try to hold my hand when we crossed the street. Even when I was nine, she was still trying to hold my hand. And I’d snatch it away from her and frown. Then she’d laugh and pull me to her. Sometimes I let her do that—walk across the street with her arm around my shoulder while men whistled at her and asked if I was her boyfriend. She was real pretty, my mama was. And some Friday nights she’d put on music and me and her would dance and dance....

  Me and Ty‘ree hadn’t cried yet. At the funeral we’d sat up front and let everyone give us hugs and pats on the backs and sorry looks without even flinching. But that day, after we’d put Aunt Cecile on a bus heading back down south, we stood in Mama’s room that was now Ty’ree’s watching the sun coming in through the window. Ty’ree had left up the flowered curtains Mama’d bought downtown, and for some reason this was sadder than anything to me. It seemed wrong—a big, blue-plaid boy comforter on the bed and Mama’s lady curtains at the window. I went over and rubbed the curtains against my face.

  “This is all, huh, T?” I whispered. “This is all we got left of Mama.”

  Ty’ree shook his head. “Nah, Lafayette,” he said. “That ain’t all.”

  I didn’t know what he meant but I couldn’t ask. My throat was starting to fill up with all the days Mama had been dead and me not crying. All the tears were jamming themselves together and pushing their way out.

  Ty’ree came over to me and looked at my face for a minute. Then, without saying anything else, he pulled me to him and we stood there crying until the sun was gone.

  SEVEN

  I HAD FALLEN ASLEEP ON TY‘REE’S SHIRT AND woke to the smell of chicken frying and Ty’ree singing “Me and Bobby McGee” in the kitchen. I could hear him moving around, lifting the covers on pots and getting things out of the refrigerator. I rolled onto my back and thought about the dream I’d just had. Ty’ree and Aunt Cecile had agreed that I’d spend every summer down south with her, and when Newcharlie came home, he’d spend summers there too. The first summer I went, Aunt Cecile had pointed me down a path that led to a stream chock-full of rainbow trout. I had been dreaming about that stream, about trout jumping up onto the fishing pole Aunt Cecile had given me. In the dream the fish wiggled and wiggled, their rainbow scales flickering in the sun. I pulled a fish off my line and let it dance its l
ast dance against the bank, then put it in a pail half filled with water. I was carrying the fish back to Aunt Cecile, and she was going to fry it up. Then a shadow came over the path, and when I looked up, I saw Newcharlie standing there frowning down at me. He knocked the pail out of my hand and the fish lay on the ground between us, its eyes wide and glassy. When I opened my mouth to say something to him, no words came out, and me and Newcharlie just stood there. That’s when I woke up.

  It was dark out now, and a steady rain was pinging against the window. I wondered where Newcharlie was, wondered if he’d gotten home yet. I closed my eyes and tried to remember more stuff about what it was like before he went to Rahway. Sometimes me and him would sit out on the stoop waiting for Mama to come home and he’d tell me about girls who liked him and guys who thought they were bad. Sometimes me and him would get to laughing so hard about something that we couldn’t stop. I remember this one day we were laughing like that and Aaron came up to the stoop and asked what we were laughing at. Me and Charlie just looked at each other and busted out laughing even harder. I don’t think we even answered Aaron. We probably didn’t even have an answer. And sometimes Newcharlie walked down the block with his arm around my shoulder bragging to everybody about how smart I was.

  Him and my big brother’s gonna be rocket scientists, he’d say. Better watch out, or else I’ll get them to send your butt to the moon!