If You Come Softly

by Jacqueline Woodson

  “If my dad knew I was cutting, he’d hit the roof,” Jeremiah said. “He’d say that school is too expensive to even be missing even a half of a class.”

  “Do your parents complain about it?” I asked, my voice coming slow and shaky. We were walking along a cobblestone path, and I tried to let the old women slip from my mind. But they were there, their pinched faces scowling at us.

  Miah glanced at me, then looked away and shook his head. “My dad pays. He doesn’t say much as long as he knows I’m going every day. Just asks how it’s going and blase blase. They separated—my parents did. Whatever.”

  “That’s too bad. I mean—I guess it’s too bad, right?”

  He shrugged. “It’s whatever. Your parents together?”

  I nodded, embarrassed. At Jefferson, there were only a few of us whose parents hadn’t divorced yet. “They’ll be together forever. No one else could take either of them.”

  “Oh—it’s that kind of gig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess that’s cool.”

  “I guess. I mean—my father is—my father’s great. You like your dad?”

  “Sometimes,” he said, frowning.

  “Here is good,” I said, stopping at a wide patch of grass underneath a maple tree.

  The air around us seemed thick suddenly, hot and stifling. When I looked over at Miah, he was still frowning.

  “Yeah,” Miah said. “This is cool. You want to sit on my jacket?”

  I shook my head and spread my own jacket beneath me.

  Miah sat down next to me, so close I could see the tiny hairs growing above his top lip. They were very black—like his hair—and fine. It felt strange having him so close to me. Strange in a good way.

  He unzipped his knapsack and started rummaging through it. After a moment, he came up with a Snickers bar. He searched through it some more and came up with a Swiss Army knife and cut the Snickers bar down the middle, handed half to me and put the knife back in his knapsack.

  “Thanks, Miah,” I said, really meaning it. I pulled the wrapping away and took a small bite. The chocolate was starting to melt already. It tasted sweet and warm.

  “My father gave me that knife. He said we’d go camping soon. That was about four years ago and we haven’t gone camping yet. But I carry that knife everywhere.” He smiled and looked at me. “Never know when he’s gonna pop up and say, ‘Hey, Miah—let’s take that camping trip we been talking about.’ ”

  “You think he ever will?”

  Miah shook his head. “No. I’m too old now. And everything’s changed since he gave it to me. I guess I just hold on to it.”

  “Hoping.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hoping.”

  “When I was little ...” I said slowly. My voice felt shaky. “Marion used to leave us. We’d wake up and she’d be gone.” It felt strange hearing myself say this to Miah—hearing that she left us.

  “Who’s Marion?”

  “My mother.” I pulled my hair out of my face and smiled. “I call her that. She hates it, but she won’t call me Ellie so I call her Marion.”

  Miah nodded without taking his eyes away from mine. He looked older when he was listening, grown-up and serious.

  “I didn’t think she was ever coming back.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah. Both times. But after the second time, it was different. I was the only kid still living at home and I was scared around her—careful. After a couple of months, things kind of went back to normal. But I don’t think it was ever the same again. It was like ... like she had introduced this idea of leaving to me and I’d never even thought about it before.”

  I ate my half of the Snickers bar slowly, thinking about the day Marion returned. It had snowed that morning—a heavy wet snow. My father helped me into my coat and hat and our neighbor came to take me to the park. We built a snowman. It was the first time I’d ever built one. When I got home, wet and cold and ready for my father to make me some hot chocolate, Marion was sitting there, at the kitchen table, her hands folded like a schoolgirl. I stared at her a long time waiting for her to hug me, to start bawling and talking about how much she missed me. But when she reached out her arms, it was me who started bawling.

  “We never thought she’d leave,” I said again. “And after she came back, I never believed she’d stay.”

  “You believe it now?” Miah asked.

  “I don’t think I care so much anymore.” I folded the empty Snickers wrapper over and over itself. “I survived the first time. It makes me know I can always survive. But there’s this other part of me that doesn’t believe anyone’s ever going to stay. Anywhere.”

  “Wonder why she came back.” Miah said.

  I looked up into the leaves and squinted, liking the way the green twisted and blurred in the sunlight. I felt lighter somehow. Free. “I asked her. She said it was because our family was all she knew—all she had. Squint like this, Miah. And see what it does to the leaves.”

  Miah looked up and squinted, then smiled. “Feels like I’m spinning,” he said softly. “Or like the whole world is spinning and I’m the only thing on it that’s not moving.”

  I felt his hand closing over mine and swallowed. It felt warm and soft and good.

  I closed my eyes, wanting to stay this way always, with the sun warm against my face and Miah’s hand on mine.

  “There’s this poem,” he said, “that my moms used to read to me. ‘If you come as softly/as the wind within the trees./You may hear what I hear./See what sorrow sees./If you come as lightly/as threading dew,/I will take you gladly,/nor ask more of you.’/When you told me that thing about Marion, it made me think of it. The way stuff and people come and go.”

  “It’s pretty, that poem.” I closed my eyes. Maybe people were always coming toward each other—from the beginning of their lives. Maybe Miah had always been coming toward me, to this moment, sitting in Central Park holding hands. Coming softly.

  “You ever wish you were small again, Ellie? That there was somebody still tucking you in and reading you stories and poetry?”

  I turned my hand over and laced my fingers in his. His hand was so soft and warm. Above us, the leaves fluttered, strips of sun streaming gold down through them. I swallowed.

  “All the time,” I whispered.

  “Me too. You gonna let me kiss you, Ellie?”

  I nodded, feeling my stomach rise and dip, rise and dip, until Miah’s lips were on mine, soft and warm as his hand.

  Then everything grew quiet and still and perfect.

  Chapter 12

  His FATHER’S LIGHT WAS ON. MIAH CLIMBED THE stairs slowly and unlocked the outside door. He looked over his shoulder at his mother’s window. Dark. He wondered if she was out or sitting alone in the darkness.

  “That you, Miah-man?” his father called.

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on into the living room and meet some people.”

  Miah frowned. He didn’t want to meet some people. He wanted to go up to his room, lie on his bed, and think about Ellie. About today in the park. About the way her lips felt against his. Different. The same. Right And his hand over hers—the brown and the white, her tiny fingers, the silver band on her thumb, her eyes, the way they just kept on looking and looking deeper and deeper inside of him. No one had ever looked at him like that, like they wanted to know every single thing about him. Like everything he had to say mattered. Really mattered.

  “Miah ... ?”

  “Be right there,” he said, taking off his jacket and loosening his tie. He could hear voices and laughter—Lois’s laughter rising up higher than everyone else’s. It had always been like this-the house full of people. When his mother and father were still together, he had liked it. But heading into the room now, he realized again how rarely he got to be alone with his father for more than a short time.

  “This my
boy I talk so much about.” His father grinned. He was sitting in an overstuffed chair, a beer on the table beside him. Lois was leaning on the chair behind him, her arms draped around his shoulders. She was pretty-with curly hair and clear red brown skin. Not as pretty as his mama but pretty enough to turn heads. His father looked good this evening, relaxed and smiling, his long legs propped up on an ottoman.

  Two couples sat on the couch smiling and looking like they had been there a while. Miah mumbled hellos to them, leaned forward to shake everyone’s hand the way he had done since he was three.

  “Oh, my lord, Norman, this child is beautiful,” one of the women said, an older plump woman with short locks. “Where’d you adopt him?”

  They laughed. Miah smiled but didn’t say anything. He knew he looked a lot like his dad but mostly like his mother. His dad was tall and brown with jet-black hair that had begun to recede and a wide opened smile.

  “How old are you? Twenty-five?” the woman teased.

  “Fifteen,” Miah said. He grinned. It always made him feel good when older women flirted with him.

  “Well, I can wait,” she said.

  “You better wait until I die,” the man sitting beside her said. “ ‘Cause no one is going nowhere until I do.”

  They laughed again.

  “Sit down, Miah,” his father said. “Get yourself a soda or something.”

  “Ahm—I have a lot of homework.”

  “Percy working you?”

  He nodded to his father. “They’re trying to. I think I have it under control.”

  “You eat anything yet?” Lois Ann asked. “I can make you something right fast.”

  “Thanks. I got a slice of pizza after practice. I’m okay.”

  “Well, you go get your work on then,” his father said. “I’ll be up later on to say good night.”

  “You still getting tucked in?” the heavy woman asked.

  Miah smiled but didn’t say anything. “It was nice meeting you all.”

  “See you when you’re twenty-five,” the woman said.

  Upstairs, alone in his room, Jeremiah lay back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. I kissed her. I kissed Ellie. Elisha Sidney Eisen. He wanted to scream, to run to his window, throw it open and yell it to the world. Right there in Central Park with the sun coming through the leaves and everything around all right. Everything all right.

  Outside the sun was beginning to set. He wanted to tell somebody-not the way he and his homeboys talked, bragging about which girl they’d been with, giving all the details, lying mostly, and slapping each other five over it. No. Not like that. He wanted to sit with his head bent toward somebody, whispering-how strange and perfect it all was. How ... how precise and brilliant. Yeah, those were the words he’d use if someone was there. If someone was listening.

  Miah sighed and turned toward the window. He could hear his father and Lois Ann laughing with their friends. He could hear girls outside chanting, Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, one, ten, twenty, thirty,

  forty, two. And in the distance, he heard the vague sound of a basketball, someone bouncing it slowly, some young kid somewhere, learning how to handle the ball, how to keep it near him. How to keep control.

  He remembered those early days-the ball feeling big and unmanageable in his little hands. He remembered trying to dribble with two hands and the big boys saying, Nah, Little Miah—you got to handle it. You got to use one hand. Make the ball yours. Show it who’s the boss. And the first time he felt a leather ball leave his hands and sail into the basket—a leather ball his father had given him for his ninth birthday. How different it felt from the vinyl ones he had always known. Don’t use this playing ball in the park, his father had warned. But, of course, he had taken it to the park and played game after game there until the ball was ragged and dead.

  And he remembered being older, running along the sidewalk, feeling like he was flying, and the ball, a vinyl one again, right there beside him, flying beside him like they were connected by some invisible string.

  Last Sunday, he had helped Little Ray from down the block dribble, helped him wrap his tiny six-year-old hands around the ball, stood behind him as he lifted it toward the basket and missed. You gotta want it to go in, Little Ray, he’d said. You got to believe it can. And they had practiced shot after shot until finally, late in the afternoon, the ball sailed in smoothly, without touching the backboard or the rim. Swish. And Little Ray had grinned, jumped up and down, and slapped Miah five. Yeah, Miah had said. I know the feeling.

  Chapter 13

  A WEEK PASSED. AND THEN ANOTHER. AND SUDDENLY it was cold and the whole city seemed to be wrapped in a thin layer of wind and rain.

  Early Saturday morning, Susan called to apologize again for not making it home for Yom Kippur. I sat at the top of the stairs, listening to Marion give her a hard time. “Not one of my kids showed up,” she said.

  Marion was an expert at the guilt thing. “Don’t forget to tell her that you and Daddy and the kid that is still stuck here didn’t do anything for Yom Kippur. Make sure you tell her we broke the fast at Wendy‘s—and that you had a cheeseburger.”

  Marion put her finger to her lips and scowled at me.

  “If I told her that,” she said, after she’d hung up, “she’d find a way not to show up for Hanukkah either. You want to spend that holiday too with just me and your father?”

  I shook my head.

  “Anyway, Anne called while you were in the shower,” Marion said. “She said give her a call as soon as you can.”

  “What else did she say?” We hadn’t spoke since the afternoon I told her about Jeremiah.

  Marion gave me a puzzled look. “To call her—what—do you think she’s going to tell me what it’s about. Does anyone tell me anything about anything.”

  I smiled, tucked my hair behind my ear, and headed back toward my room. “The rumor is you have a big mouth, Marion.”

  “As if I care about commitment ceremonies and boys ...” Marion called.

  I turned and glared at her. I hated Anne. “What exactly did she tell you?”

  Marion shrugged. “That you two had fallen out over a boy. And I’m guessing it’s not because you like the same one either—since boys aren’t exactly Anne’s type.” She looked at me a moment, then grew serious. “You can talk to me too, you know ... Ellie. We can be close if you want. We can talk about things.”

  I sighed and sat down on the stairs again. How could I tell her it was too late to start growing close-that we had lost that chance years and years ago?

  “There’s nothing to talk about ... Ma,” I said softly. “When there is, I promise, I’ll talk to you.”

  Marion nodded, turned to the sink, and began washing breakfast dishes. She tucked one foot behind the other in a way that made my eyes fill up. She looked broken. Defeated. Lonely.

  Chapter 14

  No ONE AT PERCY SAID ANYTHING. IT WAS STRANGE the way the students seemed to turn away from it, from him and Ellie holding hands on the Percy stairs. From his arm around Ellie’s shoulder as they walked through the halls. Turn away from them kissing outside their classrooms. Sometimes Miah imagined their turning away in slow motion-the eyes cast downward, the heads moving slowly above the collars of Percy uniforms.

  Yeah, they looked, and once, Miah had caught two black girls staring at him and Ellie and whispering. When he looked up, the girls turned away. They didn’t seem angry or surprised or hurt. Nothing like that. Just two girls talking-saying something about him and Ellie, then getting caught. And, slowly, turning away.

  Even Braun. Even Rayshon and Kennedy. Some days Miah thought he’d ask them—try to get it going the way he used to do with his homeboys. Maybe mention the afternoons they spent in Central Park. Get them all talking about the girls they’d been with and see what happened when he got around to really talking about Ellie.
Would they turn away then? Ask what it was like with her? Maybe Kennedy or Rayshon would ask if it was different with white girls. Or Joe and Braun would wonder about the black girls at school. Maybe all of them already knew.

  “Can I take your picture?” a kid asked one morning.

  They had been sitting on the stairs, waiting for the bell to ring. There were other Percy kids around them, talking and looking over notes. Two boys were doing tricks on skateboards, jumping over the fire hydrant and twirling on two wheels.

  Miah looked at Ellie. When she nodded, he nodded too, and the camera flashed on them.

  Then the kid with the camera was gone. And the students around them were gathering their books together and heading inside. First period bell rang and the kids with the skateboards rushed past them, their boards jammed under their arms. Someone said hi to Ellie. A guy from the team tapped Miah on the head as he passed him.

  The morning moved on as if this moment, the moment of him and Ellie, had always been here.

  And always would be.

  Chapter 15

  WHEN I WAS LITTLE, ANNE USED TO TALK TO ME ALL the time about love. She said sometimes it happened slowly, an investment of work and time over months and years. She said that kind of love was sort of like the stock market-that, little by little, you put all of yourself into it and hoped for a decent return. She said there were other kinds too-the quick-fix binge love—when a person bounced from person to person without taking a bit of time out to examine what went wrong with the last one.

  “And there’s the Marion-Edward love,” she said once, sitting across from me, her fingers against her mouth the way they always were when she was thinking. “When a person thinks they know somebody inside out and then boom-one day she just ups and leaves. Thing is knowing and loving are different.”

  “Do you think they ever loved each other, Anne?”