The First Part Last

by Angela Johnson

  She walks back over to me. “Wanna dance, Bobby?”

  I do.

  part IV

  now

  MY BROTHER PAUL HOLDS FEATHER, and she smiles drooly baby gums at him while her arms jerk up and down. He’s good with her.

  He’s good with everybody.

  His two kids, Nick and Nora (he got their names from his favorite movie characters), crawl all over the floor and Mary. Fred is in the kitchen making fajitas, and if I close my eyes I can remember that this was the way it used to be.

  Paul remembers too, ’cause he looks over at me and smiles. I like having him here. All of a sudden I don’t feel so alone.

  “Cute kid,” he says, then changes holding arms. Feather keeps making happy baby noises. And when Nick and Nora run over to their dad, they start to kiss her all over her face and head. Most times she’d scream. Now she gurgles and jumps.

  “Yeah, she’s pretty cute.”

  “Does she give you much trouble?”

  I pull at Feather’s feet, bare for once, even though mom keeps eyeing her socks on the couch, from across the room.

  “Normal stuff. Too much baby sh—err crap, sleepless nights, seriously cranky me….”

  Paul watches Nick and Nora sing a song to Feather.

  “That’s it in the beginning. It ain’t pretty.”

  “You tellin’ me?”

  “Yeah, well I guess you know, Bobby. It gets better, though. I mean the crawling and first steps make you so happy. Then it freaks you ’cause you know they’re slowly getting away from you and heading for the world.”

  All I can do is shrug to that, ’cause the thought had crossed my mind at two in the morning once how I was going to be a lot happier helping this kid with homework than I was changing a bad case of formula diarrhea.

  Nora crawls in my lap and smiles up at me. She looks like Paul. Tall, skinny, black eyes, and always smiling. I can’t tell who Nick looks like ’cause he hasn’t sat still since he got here.

  Mom says it’s too much sugar.

  Paul says it was him sitting too long in the car.

  I say the boy hasn’t ever sat still in his whole life, so why are they making excuses for it now?

  I like Nick, though, ’cause he’s harder to deal with. Nora is easy to like, but I love them both.

  Nick is the six-year-old from hell. The good kind of hell, where they play music all day long and get on the nerves of everybody that was ever born, but it’s still a good time.

  “What’s up, Nick?”

  He smiles, pinches Nora—she ignores him—and tells me he helped his dad fix the sink a couple days ago.

  “How’d that go for you?”

  “It was okay till Daddy told me too late not to pour the orange juice down the sink.”

  Paul’s frowning.

  “I had the pipes out. Orange juice burns when it gets in your eyes, and besides, I almost drowned.”

  Dad starts laughing from the kitchen. Mary thinks it’s pretty funny too, and I figure they’re really laughing so hard ’cause they know Nick won’t be living with either of them, so everything he does makes them happy.

  Paul looks at them, shakes his head, and says, “It’s the revenge theory. They’re laughing at me for everything I ever did to them when I was a kid.”

  “I’m toast then.” I look over at Feather who looks like she’ll laugh any minute. I know I’m toast. It’s been a hell of a year so far for Mary and Fred thanks to me.

  Paul laughs, “Feeling doomed?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “It’s a good doomed. Even though I still think you’re too young.”

  “I hear that.”

  Paul looks sorry for me. He’s the only one that didn’t say the obvious when he found out I’d gotten Nia pregnant. I felt better telling him than anybody. He was the one person who I knew would say what I needed to hear. I don’t remember the exact words, but I felt good when he said them.

  “Want to go for a walk, Bobby?”

  I nod and take Feather from him to start getting her ready, but Mary comes over and takes her from me.

  “Your dad and I will keep all the kids. You two go off and hang out for the rest of the afternoon.”

  I must look like I’m in shock ’cause Mom never has said or done that for me since Feather’s been here. But now she’s looking at me like I’m a baby that just walked across the room for the first time.

  Maybe I just did.

  I’m laughing so hard at my brother telling me about his neighbors in the little town in Ohio he lives in. He lives near Lake Erie in a place called Heaven. He moved there to be close to his kids after he divorced his wife, Melanie.

  He says, “I never thought I could live in a small town.”

  We get pretzels on the corner and walk toward the movie theater.

  “I always dreamed of living in a small town. Green grass, creeks, cows. That all seems perfect. Especially because me and Feather are going back to Brooklyn to live with Dad. I guess it’s his turn now. Anyway, I miss the old neighborhood.”

  “What happened? Why are you going back to Brooklyn?”

  “There was a thing. I blew off school and things got stupid. Postal baby-sitter, cops, etcetera, etcetera. Mary’s out of town too much and Fred thinks I need more prison guard time. You know, the kid with the baby needs to be treated like one.”

  We sit down on the benches in the rec center playground, finish our pretzels, and watch the kids.

  Just sittin’ quiet.

  Finally Paul says, “What about college for next year? What’s the good of you being able to graduate when you’re sixteen if you’re not going to college?”

  “I figure I’d just get a Mcjob for a year and try to save some money.”

  “You’d get to spend more time with Feather.”

  I look at Paul and then at the running, screaming kids jumping up and down on the playground. Feather will be them one day, and I’ll be one of the scared, happy, mad, yelling, smiling parents who sit on the benches and watch. Just watch it all happen.

  I say it like I’ve known it forever, only now it’s so clear and I can say it: “I’ve never been closer to or loved anybody more than I love Feather.”

  Paul throws a ball back to a group of kids over by the slide and says, “I know that, kid. I know that.”

  then

  The office has babies, kids, and smiling adults hugging and happy all over the walls. I’m holding Nia’s hand. Her back’s been aching all day, and even me trying to bribe her with pizza, no anchovies, only makes her moan.

  Her mom and my dad are sitting behind us. I don’t want to turn around and see Fred’s face. The last time I looked at him in the cab, he looked a little wigged.

  Mrs. Wilkins sometimes leans forward and rubs Nia on the shoulders. I’m thinking it’s not really making Nia feel any better. Every time her mom touches her she jumps like she’s being hit.

  But it’s just a reflex.

  If we give our baby up, we could get on with it. Go to college. Go on spring break. Go to parties. Come home on breaks with dirty laundry like my brothers did, and eat everything in the cabinets and fridge.

  We could hate our roommates, their music, and their friends. Lie to our parents about our midterm grades and how when they called late on a Tuesday we were at the library.

  I want to stay up all night and meet so many people I forget their names. And I want to meet people I might get to know forever.

  I don’t want to be here.

  I don’t want to be at home.

  I know I should be listening to everything the social worker (fifth one we’ve talked to—I forget her name) is saying, but I’m not. I figure if I block it all out I won’t have to think about it.

  She’s talking about parental rights.

  Waiting periods.

  Counseling during the waiting period.

  Open adoption.

  And all I want to do is paint on the walls. Paint me running through the city and over the
bridge.

  I want to spray black, greens, and reds all over this office and cover the smiling faces of the kids and the grown-ups.

  What the hell are they smiling for?

  Do they know some secret nobody’s told me or Nia? ’Cause we didn’t want a baby anyway, and I can’t believe we’ll be smiling in some damned picture after we do the right thing.

  It’s the right thing. Everybody says so, and I want to believe the shit everybody says. I want to believe it’s unselfish. I want to believe none of this is supposed to be about me.

  Then the social worker says, “Now, do you have any questions?”

  Nia asks, “Can we meet them? The people who are going to get the baby….”

  “Well that goes back to whether you are going to have a traditional adoption or an open one.

  “Now …” Then she goes on.

  This woman is nice and looks us in the face to see if we’re getting any of it. Mostly we’re not, but she keeps on going.

  Nia’s tired and sore.

  I’m freakin’ and in shock when everybody says I should be relieved and throwing a party. The hard part is that they’re right and I should be happy. Right?

  In a few minutes we’re all standing out in the hall. Nia and me lean against the wall and look straight ahead at a billboard that talks about reproductive responsibility.

  There’s a girl, about thirteen, holding a baby.

  We keep leaning against the wall and don’t talk to our parents who are shaking the social worker’s hand and telling her that they have to make calls and whatever.

  I take out some bubble gum and hand Nia a piece.

  We’re still blowing bubbles when we walk out of the office hand in hand, then get into separate taxis with our parents and head to different parts of the city.

  now

  I THINK SHE KNOWS we’re someplace else.

  She just fell asleep on my stomach after being wide-eyed and whining all night long. I feel sorry for her. But it’s good to be back in the old hood.

  Dad’s been poking his head in the room all night, asking if everything is okay and did I need him to take her. The first time he asked I wanted to say, “Take her where?”

  But I just shake my head. He leaves my door open like he wants to hear her if she cries.

  Mom always shut hers tight. She says so she wouldn’t be tempted to do what most grandmothers would do. Take over.

  There still are a whole bunch of times I want her to take over, even more than I feel right about having. But she never does.

  She only ever changed, fed, or rocked Feather to sleep when I didn’t need her help. But she warned me. She said I was the parent. She was only the grandparent.

  “It’s your world, kid,” she said a couple days after Feather was born.

  After the last of our things were moved into Dad’s apartment, she got back into her Jeep and sat there without turning the ignition. I stood on the stoop with Feather, wondering what was wrong.

  Hell, she was always in a hurry to be anyplace but where she was. So I walked over to the Jeep and knocked on the window on the passenger side.

  She was crying.

  Damn, that scared me. I held on to Feather real hard then, and only loosened up when she squeaked.

  “Haven’t ever seen you cry before, Mom.”

  Even though she had dark glasses and a hat on, I knew it.

  “Check me out, kid, ’cause you won’t be seeing me do it again anytime soon. That crying shit is what your old man does.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He’s pretty good at it.”

  “Yep, that’s him, cooking and crying. He always was too sensitive.”

  She’s smiling though.

  “And that’s why I know you two are going to be fine with him. He’ll baby both of you.”

  “Not like you, huh?”

  She leans back, then starts the car up.

  “No, not like me, and that’s a good thing. I don’t think you and your brothers could have stood two parents like me.”

  I stand back and she rolls the window up, then blows two kisses and heads back home.

  When I turn around, Dad is standing on the stoop with a baby quilt. “Isn’t it getting too chilly out here for the baby?”

  And a cup of coffee for me.

  We walk back to the apartment and I fall asleep with Feather asleep on me surrounded by our boxes.

  I wake up to different neighborhood sounds, but it all comes back. It’s five thirty in the morning and I’m walking Feather around, looking out the windows of the apartment.

  I put on coffee for Dad and open boxes that I don’t want to think about unpacking. No hurry, Fred says. He knows how busy I am with the last of school and the baby.

  Whenever will be okay.

  I kiss the top of Feather’s curly head and hold her close. She shivers a little, so I grab my Mets sweatshirt and wrap her in it.

  She yawns and looks at me like she’s going to ask me something, and I’ll be damned if she doesn’t look just like Nia.

  She looks at me with those eyes that know me.

  I know then that even when everything’s changing, Feather’s not gonna mind as long as she’s with me.

  then

  NIA SAYS SHE’S BEEN HAVING DREAMS that she’s in a nest. When my mom says from her darkroom—which used to be a walk-in closet—“That makes sense. You know, babies and nesting,” Nia leans back on the pillows she’s propped up behind her on the floor and says, “No, it’s not like that. It was a bad dream ’cause I wasn’t a bird. I was this small person in a nasty bird’s nest with all kinds of old pieces of clothes and bones….”

  “Jeez,” J. L. says, then sucks down the gallon of soda he always has with him.

  K-Boy stares at Nia. “So what did you do when the bird tried to feed you some already chewed-on worms?”

  Nia rolls her eyes at him. “You always know exactly what to say that’s going to make me barf.”

  K-Boy puts his feet on the back of Nia’s pillow until she twists around and knocks them off. “Could you be more annoying, or are you waiting for somebody to knock you down before you do it again?”

  “Waiting.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Nia starts to rub her lower back. It’s eight months now. She must be tired of being pregnant. Anyway, in a month it’ll all be over. We decided the other day, it would all be over.

  Nia cried.

  I cried.

  My dad cried.

  But we were the only ones. My mom and Nia’s parents looked like they just got released from Oz, and not the one with the yellow brick road. I think Nia’s dad took his first real breath since the first time he found out she was having a baby.

  Her mom smiled at me—which freaked me out.

  The baby was going to one of those happy, smiling people in the pictures. It would live in a house with a yard and a dog and a swing set. All the pictures had yards and dogs.

  It would all be back the way it was before, in a month. Nothing would have changed. We’d leave school and keep on going.

  No baby in a month.

  now

  FEATHER CRIED YESTERDAY when I left her at the sitter’s. It’s the first time she ever cried for me. I didn’t know it till Jackie told me today, though.

  “Look at the way she frowns up when you walk away. She did it when you left her yesterday, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. What? Does that surprise you?” Jackie picks up a little girl who just started walking and was hanging on to her pants.

  Feather’s in her carrier, kicking and smiling now that I’m in her face. I lean close to her and smell her sweet baby head and kiss her cheeks.

  Now it’s hard to go. Now that she knows when I’m not around it’s so hard to go. And now I look at her and I see Nia. All the way through her I see Nia.

  K-Boy waits across the street at the Laundromat. J. L. is spinning around in one of the dryers.

  “Hey, man, what took you so long? J. L. got in th
e dryer when he thought he saw the principal crossing the street for a smoke.”

  I walk over to the dryer and stop it.

  J. L. starts laughing while he’s still inside. He’s all tangled up in somebody’s comforter.

  “Crazy much, J. L.?”

  He falls out of the dryer and folds the comforter and puts it on the big wooden table over by the vending machines.

  “Naw, man. Just cold and tired of not falling down when I walk a straight line. What took you so long?”

  “Uh, there’s this thing called school. Leaving it before two thirty can get you busted to detention or worse; having to tell your dad he has to leave work to talk to the guidance counselor, again.”

  K-Boy eats popcorn and reads a fashion magazine, leaning against a washer.

  “We gonna do this or what?” he says.

  J. L. keeps looking at the dryer like he wants to get back in it.

  K-Boy says, “Is this going to be a thing with you, man? I mean, you gonna be calling up your friends outside of laundries asking for change and spin time?”

  J. L. grabs the magazine from K-Boy, and we all go out the back way through the alley. It’s been our (and everybody else’s that goes to our high school) getaway since, ever.

  We head off through the city, feeling the way you feel when you just got out of something like the dentist or a test. We talk and eat junk all the way to Grand Central.

  An hour later we’re on a train headed out of the city. Heading out of the city to see Nia.

  Feather has sweet sticky marks on her face where the baby who just learned to walk’s been trying to share ice cream with her. Every time the little girl comes near her she kicks and shows her gums in a smile that’s begging for more of what’s on her face.

  I scoop up the diaper bag, Mr. Moose, her favorite thing to gum on, and Feather and head out the door with Jackie reminding me Feather has a doctor appointment tomorrow. We walk out into the sun with kids running up and down the sidewalks.

  Everybody’s out.

  It’s April and summer doesn’t feel like something so far away anymore. Feather sighs and blinks when a beam of sun hits her in the face.