Behind You

by Jacqueline Woodson

  Now I know why he was asking. Know why we were having that talk that day. But what good is it that I know now?

  Jeremiah

  THE SOUL LOOKS BACK AND WONDERS. MINE DID. ONLY I didn’t know it was my soul—I thought it was me looking back at me. But I kept hearing my grandmother’s voice. The way she’d say that—The soul looks back and wonders —every time something made no sense to her. Or every time I did something that seemed completely outrageous. Like the time I put a plastic snake on top of her laundry pile. She got so scared, she couldn’t even catch her breath. And her sitting there with her hand on her chest breathing hard in and out made me realize—even at seven years old—that I’d done something there wasn’t any turning back from. That the way she was gonna beat my butt once she finally did catch her breath was gonna be like no butt whipping I’d ever felt before. Or would ever feel again, thank goodness. And later on, as she took the strap to my bare legs and sore behind, she kept saying, “The soul”—slap—“looks”—slap—“back”—slap—“and”—slap—“wonders”—slap.

  My grandmother could beat a behind, yo. That’s no joke. She’d get this look on her face when you got fresh, or got caught playing with matches, or put a snake on her laundry. And the look was like “Where in God’s name did you ever get an idea that that was the right thing to . . . ” And then you knew. You knew it was all over for your behind. My mom and pops never laid a hand on me, but my grandma made up for their non-whipping parenting by letting me know every now and then that

  “In order to be raised right, Jeremiah—you cannot spare the rod.”

  I was her only grandchild and she loved me with this love so fierce, my pops used to say you could feel it coming on for miles. Soon as we got a call saying she was on her way up to New York, my pops would say,

  “Stand still, Miah. You feel the love coming?”

  Desire Viola Roselind

  FOR EIGHT YEARS I WAS MIAH’S GRAM. BEFORE THAT TOO, I reckon. Feels like I’ve known him since before he got to the world—longer than he knew himself, truthfully. Seems like we’d been friends really—not gram and first-born grandson—somewhere before life on earth . . .

  Life. On. Earth.

  Think on that. Earth looks small from far’ways. I remember when I was a child and my daddy showed me a blue marble, those kind that don’t just have blue in them but lots of other colors besides. He says to me, Girl, look hard at this here marble, ’cause what you looking at is the whole wide world.

  And I looked hard at the marble and then I looked real hard at my pa and I reckon I must have been thinking that here’s a man I always loved who’s lost his mind.

  We lived in Aiken then. A little brick house. You went up three stone stairs and then you were on our porch. And there was a swing on the porch—old iron swing that squealed to high heaven every time you sat down on it and commenced to swinging. Well, you went up those three stone stairs and passed that porch swing and then you were at our front screen door. Then you were in our front room—hardwood floors, a big potbellied stove—stove warmed the house like you wouldn’t believe. One year, my baby sister set fire to her own dress sleeve standing too close to the open stove door. The skin on her arm was never the same after that, and she carried that arm sort of different from the other. When she got to be a young woman, she never wore short sleeves—not even in the hottest months—because she was ashamed. Don’t know if the shame come from the scars or from her childhood foolishness of sticking her arm in the fire. Reckon it had to be some of both. Guess that’s my first recollection of how people hide their scars.

  Girl, my daddy said, I know you think I lost my mind, but this marble is how the world looks to everybody but us humans.

  I looked at the marble. I looked at my daddy. I looked around at our little brick house. Back and forth and back and forth like that till I must have looked some kind of foolish myself.

  Sir, I said, I reckon I don’t know what you mean when you say everybody but us humans. Ain’t nobody else but God to see.

  Uh-uh, Sweet Pea, my daddy said. He’d been squatting down, sitting back on his haunches like a lot of people used to do. He’d sit that way, squatted down, ’cause he was tall—over six feet—and me and my sisters and brothers had gotten our mama’s gift for not growing tall. I was the smallest in the family—tiny hands, tiny feet and body.

  Well, my daddy stood up and looked down on me and let himself smile. He had a nice, big, white-toothed smile, my daddy did.

  Close your eyes, my daddy said.

  I did.

  And just let yourself think, Sweet Pea. Think about this world without its color and sound and smells. Let your breathing stop a moment.

  I did.

  Now commence to breathing again and open up those eyes.

  I did.

  And here is the whole wide world again. But better now, isn’t it?

  I looked around, and I liked the way it felt to have everything back in its place, the way the room came back in view and the floor felt hard again. And my daddy standing there grinning like he would be that way . . . always. . . .

  And now, here I am—way on the other side of that story and that beautiful day. I grew up and I grew old and then I got sickly and I died. But before all that happened, I had me a son, and that son had himself a son. And he named that boy-child Jeremiah.

  And some mornings, Jeremiah comes to where I’m sitting, rocking in this big maple chair, the cushion softer than any cushion should ever be, the wood smelling like it was cut only an hour ago, the air cool and gentle as a child’s hand. And Miah sits down beside me and we look out before us where the rest of the world is hustling past—people doing what they need to be doing to get through their days.

  And Jeremiah says, Tell me that story again, Grandma, the one about the marble.

  And the love in my heart for that boy-child just fills up inside me and spills all over.

  Ellie

  THE FIRST TIME I TRIED TO WALK TO THE PLACE WHERE THE cops shot Miah, it was dark. Central Park is not a safe place at night. People have been mugged. Raped. One man was attacked by a group of kids who just wanted to see if they could get away with it—rich kids from the Upper East Side. Some of them got away, but three were caught. We were just playing, they said. We didn’t think it would end that way. Well, that man didn’t make it. I don’t know what happened to the kids—kids my age—fifteen, sixteen. The news was all over the story for a while and then it wasn’t anymore. Something else must’ve happened and the media’s absolute glee followed that new thing. The park at night is dark and quiet, though. If it wasn’t for the danger, it would be a beautiful place. I wanted to see where Miah fell. I wanted to listen—hear him crying out. Two months had passed since his dying. It was late February and so cold, my hands hurt. I knew the place—the papers had reported the story for almost a month. There had been demonstrations—yet another black guy shot in a case of mistaken identity. But this had been different. According to the papers, Miah was not just some black guy. He was a rich kid. He was the kid of famous parents. He was loved and attended one of the most prestigious schools in New York City. I read every word, even when Marion tried to take the papers from me.

  “You don’t need to do this to yourself, Elisha,” she said.

  “Yes, I do,” I said back. Yes, she is my mother. But she doesn’t understand. How could she ever understand any of it? How could anyone know what it was like? It was all so damned useless. And the stupid papers—how dare they? How dare they measure one life against another.

  The first time I tried to walk to the place where the cops shot Miah, a dog ran out from nowhere, then darted back into the darkness. I stopped, a long way away from that place—in the dark and in the cold. I stopped, hugged myself hard in the darkness.

  And screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Carlton

  THAT SATURDAY AFTERNOON—I’LL ALWAYS CALL IT THAT. That Saturday. Not “The Day Miah Died.” Not “The Day a Whole Lot of Us Change
d Forever.” Not “Saturday, December Eighth.” That Saturday, the snow started coming down hard. I had been sitting on the stoop just thinking on things. That fall, I’d begun to realize this thing about me, this stupid secret thing that I knew I’d never live out or talk about. And then the fall was over and it was starting to snow. A new season. Different weather and the secret getting older and deeper. When the snow started falling, it was wetter and colder than I’d ever remembered it being. I had on a sweater and some jeans and my hiking boots. Maybe I had on a T-shirt underneath, but it wasn’t enough. Even my fingernails were cold. I looked over at Jeremiah’s building—every window except Nelia’s study was dark. I knew Miah wasn’t home, so I couldn’t go over there. But I didn’t want to go inside my own house. My mother was inside and she was probably reading on the couch. A romance novel. She was probably reading about a woman who fell in love with a man and lived happily ever after. The books with the shiny gold letters on them. Always white women. My mother’s white and I wonder if she sees some part of herself in those books—wonder if she makes wishes. Or just lets herself get caught up in them before coming back to planet Earth to make dinner for me and my dad and start ironing her clothes for the next week of working. She teaches. My father plays music. They’ve been together forever. My sister’s in England. Oxford. She wanted to get out of New York. Wanted to get away from our tiny family, I guess. Maybe I was thinking about all of this as I sat there shivering and singing real low. Maybe it’s because my dad’s a musician that I like to sing. There’s always been music in my house. That day, I was singing “Landslide”—not the remake, but the old Fleetwood Mac version where Stevie Nicks really rocks it. Jeremiah always thought it was strange that I was such a Stevie Nicks fan, but her voice—her voice—it did something to you. And no one can do “Landslide” the way she does. My father had turned me on to that song. He plays piano and guitar and a couple of other instruments. He’d sit down with his guitar and just start strumming and singing that song. Can I sail through the changing ocean tide? Can I handle the seasons of my life? And there was always such a sadness in his voice, but nothing compared to Stevie’s. When she starts going on about the landslide bringing her down, it snaps the heart. So I sat there, singing, trying to do what she did with that song.

  But then something strange happened. I forgot the words. I had been hearing and singing that song my whole life, and there I was, sitting in the heavy, wet snow, not knowing the lyrics to a song that was like the alphabet to me. And I looked around, starting to feel a panic build up. The block was empty and getting dark. The snow was coming down hard. And then I remember thinking, And where the hell is Miah?

  The Healing

  Norman Roselind

  SUNDAY MORNING, I HEAR THE SOUND OF THE TIMES HITTING the stoop. It’s still early and looks like it’s going to rain. My girlfriend’s still asleep. I look over at her as I’m rising out of bed. Her hair’s getting gray and her cheeks are starting to puff a little bit with age. Wonder what she sees when she looks at me. I look at my hands, the way they still shake most days, the way my whole body trembles sometimes until I think relaxing thoughts—oceans and forests and cool, lazy evenings. Still, my heart bangs against my chest. And my eyes, I know when a person looks into them, they see only half a man—not completely focused, not completely there. I touch my girlfriend’s back, watch my trembling hand move down over it. She’s a beautiful woman—brown skinned, dark eyed, enough meat on her bones not to ever be called skinny. Has a voice like something cool calling your name. The trembling slows, then stops, and I rise, pull my robe on over my pajamas and go downstairs to get the paper.

  When I open the door, I look up at Nelia’s window. I used to be married to her. And we used to have a son. I feel my hands start to tremble again and think, That’s the past now. Move on. There’s a dull ache in my head. I pull the plastic off the paper and look at the headlines without reading them. So much news. So many things to do in a day. So many people to remember. And birthdays and holidays coming up. Eggs and milk to buy. Miah wore a size eleven shoe. My hands. My head. Lake Erie. Lake Cham plain. The way the water laps against the shore on Mon tauk. Miah’s brown hands building a sand castle. His thin seven-year-old body. Daddy, look! And the wave coming up that afternoon. The way he laughed as the castle melted into the ocean. Where was that? St. Croix? Mauritius?

  Nelia’s curtains are pulled—they’ve been that way for some time now. The papers were piling up on her stoop, but now they’re all gone. She lives just across the street and a few houses up. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Lois Ann. Some things just happen and you feel them happening but you don’t have a whole lot of power over them happening. You have to kind of give yourself over to them. Maybe me and Nelia were moving apart for a long time. It’s hard to look back on. The edges of the past get fuzzy when I try. Moments come clear—the first time I heard my newborn son cry. The way his eyes changed to the same color as Nelia’s and him with parts of Nelia and parts of me all running together to make some strange and wonderful whole new being. He really was something.

  I sit down on the stoop and try to read the Times. The president wants a war. Some businessmen have been stealing people’s retirement funds. A baby found, left beside a grade school. The baby’s fine. The schoolkids all want her to be named after them. I read this story and even with all of its ugliness, I can’t help smiling. Kids are something. All they can see is the beauty in a moment. I sit there like that awhile—every once in a while looking up at Nelia’s window. Feel like I’ve been making films all my life and none of them can tell the whole story. I’d love to make one—just one—movie that goes from the beginning to the end—tell-all. And not that greasy talk-show tell-all kind of thing, but you know, go to the heart—to the heart’s heart—and let the world feel everything deep like that.

  Now the curtain in Nelia’s living room moves a bit. I want to say, Open the window, Nelia. Open the doors. Come outside. It’s autumn. This morning is cool and beautiful. The trees are starting to change color. Look, honey, I want to say. Look how the world is moving on.

  Nelia

  IT RAINED THE FIRST MORNING ELLIE RANG MY BELL. IN THE city, the rain makes the world gray and then the sun shines down on that gray and everything echoes of silver. Such a beautiful metal, silver is. And downstairs, Ellie stood draped in it, her thick black hair damp, her clothes wet, her long, thin body shivering.

  It’s Ellie, she said, looking up at the window. Looking up at me.

  Then Ellie smiled. Her beautiful Ellie smile and a moment, a moment from a long time ago draped itself over me: my Jeremiah and Ellie in that spot where Ellie was standing. Ellie turning toward Jeremiah and offering my son that smile. I felt old watching them through the window. Old but excited—like I was fifteen again too and turning toward some boy—who would it have been?—and smiling.

  “Ellie,” I said. “Ellie, it’s good to see you.” My voice sounded so foreign to me. An old lady’s voice. When had I become old? A birthday had passed, but still . . .

  How long had it been since Jeremiah’s last day with us—a month, two months, a year. Maybe Ellie knew. Maybe Ellie would tell me.

  But once inside, she put her hands in the pockets of her jeans and looked around. The smile gone now. What was she seeing? The gray, dusty inside of what was once a beautiful home. The darkness. One by one, the lightbulbs had burned out. Now I flicked switches and got nothing.

  “It’s kinda dark in here,” Ellie said. And then the smile was back. There was something different to it, though—embarrassment around the mouth and at the edges of the eyes. “How about we light some candles.”

  She followed me into the kitchen, where I pulled dusty white votive candles from a drawer.

  “The matches are over the stove.”

  Ellie walked over to the stove. To the left of her was the window that looked out over our block. Yellow stained-glass panes across the top of it. A yellow linen cur
tain hanging from it. Dusty. Still. Ellie pulled it back, the matches in her other hand forgotten.

  “He loved the light in this room,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. I watched her thin hand reach up to the yellow panes, her pale skin soften in their light. In the cloudy rain-light coming in from the window, I could see that her fingers were long and the nails were painted a soft pink. I wondered when she had done this. Late at night? In the morning? Was she thinking of Jeremiah as she brushed the color on? Whom did she make herself beautiful for these days?

  She kept her hand on the glass, oblivious of me. The kitchen grew terribly silent, a silence I had come to know too well. And now, with Ellie in it with me, the silence didn’t seem to belong. But I stood there in it. Watching Ellie’s hand touch the glass. I stood there, wearing the same khaki pants I had been wearing for I don’t know how many days, the same white T-shirt I don’t remember ever pulling over my head. The day after Miah’s funeral, I marched to the Fulton Street Barbershop and had them cut off all of my hair. Who needed hair? Who needed anything? But now, I let my hand reach up to my head and felt that the hair had grown in some, long enough now for me to grab a handful of it. As I did this, something strange happened—the sun, which had been watery and elusive all morning, turned sharp and bright, spreading a thin layer of brilliant yellow over everything. I kept my hand in my hair and slowly looked around the kitchen—at the yellow dust covering everything, the cedar chairs draped in yellow light, the battered, beautiful wooden table with yellow swimming across it, the white walls looking as though they’d been dipped in butter . . .