Hush

by Jacqueline Woodson

  And later, Cameron with her braces on, sneaking looks in the mirror when she thinks no one is watching—at eleven, twelve, and then thirteen, and the braces pliered off, her teeth cleaned, her lips spreading across her face to grin every time she could think to. And in the evening, back in the mirror, whispering to herself, “I am beautiful.”

  Mama in the kitchen, older now, too, but still glancing out the window on the nights when Daddy’s late getting home.

  2

  WE LEFT DENVER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT with some clothes and some family pictures, toothbrushes and combs, all in plastic bags since our suitcases were monogrammed. The morning before we left, two Jehovah’s Witnesses rang our bell. Mama answered the door but unlike the other times Jehovah’s Witnesses came by our house, she didn’t say “No, thank you” and close it again. She bought a Watchtower, an Awake! and a small brown book called Reasoning the Scriptures.

  But you don’t have a religious bone in your body, my sister said to her.

  What do I have? Mama asked. Then she shook her head, brushed the hair back from Cameron’s forehead and tried to smile. You know I don’t mean that. But she packed the literature into her bag.

  This morning, I tried to remember my grandmother’s face. I tried to remember the evening she came by to say she couldn’t come with us, that Denver was the place she’d always known and she couldn’t see herself at seventy-five going to start a new life somewhere.

  “Look at these hands,” she said, holding out her hands to show us the way the veins pushed up against her dark skin. “These hands belong to an old lady. At night, my teeth go in a glass and the arthritis feels like it wants to get the best of me. Denver’s the only place I’ve ever lived. And I never planned on not dying here.”

  Mama’s eyes started tearing, but Grandma put a finger to her lips. “Hush now,” Grandma said. “Don’t start that. You’ll see me again,” she said. “You will.”

  The afternoon before the men came, we kissed my grandmother good-bye as she sat rocking slowly in her blue chair. I’ve never seen my grandmother cry, but that day, her chin quivered just the tiniest bit before she sniffed and said This isn’t how I want you all to remember me.

  I stood a little bit away from all of them—Mama, Daddy and Cameron—remembering how Grandma used to say This rocker will belong to you one day, Toswiah. I watched everyone doing what they could not to cry, thinking That day’s never gonna come. Even then, though, it wasn’t a hundred percent real to me. As I stood there in the middle of my grandma’s living room with the Denver sun coming in through the thin yellow curtains, I thought This is all just a game, a stupid game. Tomorrow Daddy will say, “I changed my mind. This is all too much to leave behind.”

  But what I know now is this: Look at your grandmother’s face. Remember the lines. Touch her cheekbones. Hold the memory of her in your fingers, in your eyes, in your mind. It might be all you get to keep.

  Left behind is that rocker and one Toswiah Green, standing with her arms folded, on a tree-lined street in Colorado. If one of my old classmates shows a group picture around, someone might ask Who’s that? And the classmate will answer That was Toswiah. She just disappeared one day. Weird, huh?

  MAMA SAYS THE LIES WE’RE FORCED TO TELL are God’s will. She believes God sent His Witnesses to our door that morning for a reason. He knew I’d need them, she says.

  Mama’s wrapped her arms around God’s legs, Anna says. I guess she figures He’ll drag her to a better place.

  These days, Mama prays and prays. One day the end is going to come, she says.

  I don’t tell her it came a long time ago.

  PUT YOUR FEET DOWN ON MY OLD FLOORS IN Denver and keep walking. See the pictures of the four of us—Mama, Daddy, me and Cameron, smiling. Those are cool names, you say. Cameron and Toswiah. If you want, you can have them. They don’t belong to us anymore. Take the gray-carpeted stairs two at a time, the way me and my sister used to do. See the spot at the top of the stair that’s flattened? Matt Cat used to sleep there because the sun came through the skylight and shined right on him. Listen. Can you hear him purring? Go to the right and you’re in my room. Pretty. Plain. The room smells of pencil shavings. The stack of journals that I’ve kept since I was old enough to write haven’t yet been destroyed. Open the top one to the last page:They don’t know I hear them talking late at night when they think me and Cameron are asleep. Daddy says Mr. Dennis and Mr. Randall killed that boy. He wants to be a witness to it—break the Blue Wall of Silence. That’s what he calls it. I never thought of silence that way—blue. A whole wall of it. Like a swimming pool gone wrong. Like blue gelato ices that me and Lulu scrape with wooden spoons. Eat till our lips and tongues are dark blue-black as aliens’. Or dead people’s.

  The letters and birthday cards, monogrammed towels and the toys we played with when we were little kids. The green sweater with TOSSY knitted into it in yellow letters, the TOSSY T baseball cap I used to wear backward. TGIF—TOSWIAH GREEN IS FABULOUS on a pillowcase—a gift from Lulu for my twelfth birthday. Gone. Gone. Gone. Keep walking. Down the long carpeted hall into Cameron’s girlie, pink room with its frilled white curtains and huge GIRL POWER poster on the ceiling. In the corner of the left window, you’ll find a heart painted bright red with a black Magic-Markered arrow through it and the letters C & J. Joseph—the boy she used to love.

  These are the things we left behind.

  When they sell our house, the new people will ask, “Who lived here before?” and the Realtor will give them someone else’s name. She will say, “It was a nice single man, I hear.” Or maybe she’ll say, “A young couple, I think—no kids of their own, but lots of nieces and nephews often coming to visit.” They won’t ask why that bedroom at the end of the hall is painted pink and still smells of Cameron’s Love’s Baby Soft perfume. The journals on my desk will be long gone, so the wife won’t pick one up and flip through it. Won’t say to her husband, “Honey, listen to this . . .”

  MY NAME IS EVIE NOW, AND HERE IS EVIE’S story. She grew up in San Francisco—Pine off of Di visadero. Kind of the border between Pacific Heights and Western Addition. Yeah, of course she knows where Golden Gate Park is. She used to go there all the time. Did you ever see the two-headed snake at the Exploratorium? Did you ever go to the Pork Store Restaurant? Yeah, Evie loved shopping in the Haight, too. They have the coolest clothes over there! But you know what she really misses? Ghirardelli’s at the Wharf. And good sourdough bread and clam chowder. Don’t you?

  3

  IT IS SATURDAY. RAINY. MY FATHER SITS BY the window, squinting down at something. I know there is nothing there. He is whispering the Miranda rights—You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—over and over again until maybe he believes it now. I sit on the couch watching him secretly, my book open on my lap. When I look back down at the book, the words are spilling over the page and off. The story is about a little girl who finds a dog. The girl in the story is white. The dog isn’t. They love each other instantly, and when she brings him home, her parents smile and say Of course you can keep it.

  There weren’t a whole lot of other blacks in Denver. Cops were our family. Cops were our friends. Daddy was the only black one in his precinct. It was different there, though. Black. White. It didn’t matter. Cops were cops. We were all one big family. All on the same side of the law. We were the good guys. For years and years that was true.

  My father lifts up his arms and lets them fall. He gets quiet again. There is nothing in his eyes anymore. Anna sees it and turns away. Mama sees it and opens her Bible. There isn’t any other place for me to look. In the novel the girl and her family and her dog will live happily ever after. Even though I know what the ending’s gonna be, I keep reading.

  The rain slams against the window. The panes rattle. The gray here isn’t like anything I’ve ever imagined. It is heavy and thick and feels like it’s never going to go away. I turn the p
age of the book and stare down at the floating words. The tears hurt when they finally come, spilling down onto the pages. I am not the girl. I am not the dog. Who am I?

  Who

  Am

  I?

  Daddy’s patrol car pulls up beside us. Cameron has her cheerleading uniform on under her coat. She is shivering. It is dark. The air smells like snow. We climb into the back, and Daddy turns the heat on full blast. When I press my hand against the metal grate separating us from Daddy, I shiver and try to imagine what it’s like to be under arrest. Daddy drives slowly. I press my head against the glass until my face feels like it’s going to freeze. At school today, our teacher asked us who we were. She said, “Describe yourself to someone who’s just meeting you.” When my turn came, I stood up and said, “My name is Toswiah Green. My favorite color is blue. I am tall for my age. My best friend is Lulu. These are the facts,” I said. “The facts speak for themselves.” The class laughed. Some even clapped and cheered. When I sat down again, I felt my whole body get warm. “I am Toswiah Green,” I whispered. “That’s a fact!”

  Daddy’s car moves slowly through our neighborhood. Some people smile and wave. Little kids run along the curb, yelling “Hi, Policeman!” and waving crazily.

  Cameron chants her cheers softly—“We are the mighty, mighty Tigers. You can’t beat the mighty, mighty Tigers. . . .”

  4

  IN FIFTH GRADE OUR TEACHER ASKED US TO write about the most wonderful thing we’d ever seen. I sat in class tapping my pencil against my head trying to remember the colors of butterflies’ wings and how the deep blue-green water of Glenwood Springs made you think of something that went on forever. But none of the things that came to my mind was the prettiest. When I started writing, it was about my father, the year he won the police department’s Medal for Bravery for rescuing a mother and her baby son from a man who was holding them hostage. He’d been a cop all of my life, and I had never really thought much about what he did or what it meant. On the morning of the ceremony, my father wore his other uniform—a dark jacket with a leather belt, brass buttons and gold epaulets at the shoulders. When he walked into the living room, my sister and I stopped fighting over the TV remote and stared at him. We had never seen him dressed this way, and he looked like the tallest, proudest, most beautiful man that ever lived.

  Why are you copper pennies sitting there with your mouths open? he said, laughing. You act like you’ve never seen me before in your life.

  And we hadn’t—not like that. Not standing there looking like someone who would protect us from the world ending. Someone who could, if he had to, push us behind him then stop an oncoming bullet with his hand.

  Daddy . . . , my sister said, you look awesome.

  That morning, as I sat there between Cameron and Mama in the audience listening to the lieutenant go on about my father’s bravery, I felt like I was someone special. Like all of us were special.

  THINGS FALL APART. I KNOW THIS NOW. Sometimes it happens fast—like the time my sister came down wrong on her ankle and missed a whole season of cheerleading. What I remember is her sitting in her room every night, crying. Or the time my mother cut her finger with a steak knife. While my father rushed her to the hospital, Cameron and I were left to finish dinner, get it on the table and sit there for two hours, staring at our food. Scared that Mama would come back one finger short of the hand she had left with.

  But sometimes things fall apart slowly. When the lieutenant pinned that medal to my father’s chest, it was the beginning of the Greens ending. Months later, my father would say When I saw you all sitting in that front row cheering me on, some little seed started to grow in my brain. He said it was a seed of faith in his family and the Denver Police Department. A seed that made him believe in the possibility of perfection . . . and trust . . . and loyalty. As my father looked out at us from the stage while reporters flashed pictures and other cops shook his hand, he smiled and winked at me. I winked back, not knowing that what was growing in his mind was a seed of justice that would one day lead to the biggest decision he’d ever have to make in his life.

  Mama raised her hand to her lips and blew Dad a kiss. Then we were being called up to the stage, all of us, hugging Daddy and smiling for the press. Perfect, one reporter said. Absolutely perfect.

  And for years, I believed we were.

  The night after the shooting, I came downstairs to find my father sitting on the couch staring into the darkness. I sat beside him and we talked quietly—about school and friends and Cameron and Mama. We talked around the shooting until he made me go back to bed. After that, I came downstairs every night, after Mama and Cameron had gone to bed. Maybe it was because I insisted on sitting awhile in the dark with him night after night. Maybe it was because I was his baby daughter, the one who’d still be there after my big sister was gone. Or maybe it was just because he needed someone to talk to. For whatever reason, my father began to reveal what happened in bits and pieces. What I learned in those late-night talks was that my father had witnessed a murder. A fifteen-year-old boy had been killed by two cops who were close to our family. My father wouldn’t tell me their names at first, but he said over and over, Something’s got to be done, Toswiah. It isn’t justice. It isn’t right.

  I knew something had to be done, but more than that I knew if the cops were in my daddy’s precinct, they’d been at one of my birthday parties, had given me a lift home from school, had pulled my braid at some point in my life and handed me a toy or book or lollipop. I’d grown up with the cops in Denver and couldn’t imagine any of them shooting a boy. Again and again I saw the ghost-boy falling but couldn’t see the face of the cop who held the gun. Again and again I tried to think of which cop it could be until the hand holding the gun followed me into my dreams, to school, even to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

  The boy was an honor student, the only child of a high school English teacher. A single mom. The boy was only in tenth grade but was already getting mail from colleges. My father knew all this from newspaper reports he’d read and research he’d done. Even though the cops had said they thought the boy reached for a gun, my father knew it wasn’t true. As my father talked about the boy, he became more real. I didn’t know his name, but I felt like I didn’t have to. He was black and I was black, and maybe somewhere along the way we would’ve met. Maybe we would’ve become friends. I imagined the boy holding a basketball above his head, saying Like this, Toswiah. Just let it roll off your fingers and fly. I imagined us riding bikes around the neighborhood, stopping to buy ice-cream cones double-dipped in rainbow sprinkles. When he smiled, his whole face melted into something soft and amazing. People waved and smiled back. People called out to us. I imagined his mother walking into his empty room and calling his name, standing there all night long waiting for him to answer.

  My father said What would you do, T?

  I shrugged, and stared down at my hands. What’s the right thing, Daddy?

  Exactly, he said, frowning into the darkness. He sighed and kissed my head. Both choices seem so damn wrong.

  Then he sent me off to bed.

  I lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling all night. I thought about my father—how the love I felt for him some days made my throat hollow out. I thought about his smile, the way it always came, shy and slow, and the way his eyes lit up when me and my sister appeared suddenly, riding our bikes alongside his patrol car. I thought about the way he used to braid my hair on Sundays, how his hands felt soft and sure. Wherever he went, I’d go. I couldn’t imagine a world, a life, a day without him.

  I closed my eyes then, trying to imagine what it felt like to watch someone die, someone innocent and scared. Pictures flashed in and out of my brain—that boy crying out then falling; my father running to him; the other cops standing there, their hands dumbly hanging at their sides. The echo of the gunshots. Everyone’s surprise.

  Outside my window, the moon hung down low, close to the mountains. Every now and then, a cloud moved pa
st it.

  Cops murdering. Cops murdering a black kid. White cops murdering a black kid. My father turning at the first shot to see the kid standing there, his arms raised above his head. The second and third shots. The kid falling. My father’s face, first surprise, then anger, then fear maybe—that his friends could do this, could be so afraid of a black boy that they could shoot without thinking, without remembering that he, Officer Green, was black, that black wasn’t a dangerous thing. “No . . . ,” my father said softly, the way he says it now when he sits alone at the window. “God, please, no. . . .”

  Outside my window, the night got darker, then slowly faded to gray.

  OFFICER RANDALL, MY FATHER SAID SLOWLY when I asked him for the fifth time who the cops were. Randall and Dennis, Toswiah. That’s who killed the boy.

  As he said their names, the floor began to slide out from beneath me. Mr. Randall and Mr. Dennis. Men I had known my whole life. Officer Dennis, who always had a silly joke to tell (Hey Toswiah, what do you get when you cross a skunk and peanut butter? Something very smelly sticking to the roof of your mouth!) and Officer Randall, who was tall and gray-eyed and had a son named Joseph, who Cameron was in love with.

  “He came out of nowhere,” Officer Randall had said, his hands shaking, his face crumbling with the horror of what he’d just done. After a moment, he added, “He startled us, Green.”

  Officer Dennis was there, turning toward my father, easing his gun back into the holster, his voice unsure. “We thought he had a gun. He was going for something.” Then cursing, his bottom lip starting to quiver with the weight of it all.