I nodded.
How come you didn’t go hang with him then?
I watched Trevor move down the hall with his friends. I don’t like him.
Beggars can’t be choosy, Sean said, smiling and tapping my head again.
I know, I said. That’s why I’m stuck with you!
And as we walked out into the snow, I lifted my head up to catch flakes on my tongue, feeling them melting in my mouth and, somehow, warming me.
11
Late in the afternoon, I was sitting with Sean on the couch, eating pretzels and cheese. We weren’t allowed to eat sugar when the weather was real bad because Mama said it made us too crazy with all the running around and jumping up and down we did. But Sean had picked up a Hershey bar on the way home and we’d split it and stuffed it into our mouths before we got on the elevator. I felt like I’d bounce off the ceiling and ricochet all over the apartment if the snow didn’t stop.
The weather guy had said this was a record—that it hadn’t snowed this much since way back in the fifties. I’d turned on the radio and the Jackson 5 were singing “ABC.” I was in love with Michael Jackson. He was one of the cutest boys on the planet as far as I knew. I got off the couch and started dancing to the song. Mama had gotten me a rainbow peasant skirt for Christmas and when I twirled in it, the colors seemed to spread light all over the room. Sean shook his head watching me. He signed, One of these days, I’m gonna teach you some rhythm. When the music was loud enough, Sean could feel the rhythm through the vibration. When he danced, you wouldn’t even know he was deaf. But he was too busy stuffing pretzels in his mouth and making fun of me to get up off the couch and move around.
The music was so loud, I didn’t even hear Grandma come in until she was standing right near me, telling me to turn it down. Sean jumped off the couch and hugged her. I nearly jumped into her arms.
“If you all don’t get off me and let me get my coat off, somebody’s gonna feel my Bible,” Grandma said. “I heard that music down the street!” But she was smiling as she turned the radio off.
Is it still real cold out? Sean signed. It was freezing earlier.
“He said, is it cold—”
“I know a little something,” Grandma said, cutting me off. She nodded at Sean. She always said she was too old to learn another language by the time Sean came along, but most times, when I tried to translate, she already knew what Sean was signing. And she had a way of signing back that only her and Sean understood most of the times—a kind of secret language that just about burned me up.
She bent down to kiss me and I took her face in my hands and kissed her nose. She laughed and pushed me away the way she always did. She only had two wrinkles—one running straight across her forehead and one small one just at the top of her nose between her eyes. She didn’t have any gray hair like other grandmothers but Mama said it was hidden underneath years and years of blue-black hair dye. I liked the color, though—the way the blue kind of caught you by surprise. I took her hand and pulled her over to the couch. Sean had the other hand.
“Now what’s all this fuss about this new one coming?” She was talking to both of us but looking at Sean.
“I’m with you,” I said. “Doesn’t make the least bit of sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense is both of you pulling on me like you’re still my babies.” She moved away from us and took off her coat. “I love y’all both to death,” she said, putting it on a chair beside her purse. “But you’re a little big to be pulling on me so.”
She sat down on the couch heavily and pulled me into her lap. I was way too big for laps. I knew that. But me and my whole family made believe that I wasn’t. Grandma put her other arm around Sean.
“What’s this I hear about Wilt Chamberlain?” Grandma asked Sean.
Thirty thousand points, Sean signed. He had a huge grin on his face.
“And he’s the first black man to score that many?”
He’s the first any man! Sean said. In NBA history.
“Well, ain’t he something,” Grandma said.
“Argh, that’s nothing. If I was in the NBA, I’d score sixty thousand,” I said.
And then you’d wake up, Sean said.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you,” Grandma said.
“Grandma, you know this white cat’s in my class now. People calling him Jesus!”
Grandma closed her eyes a moment. “Frannie, some days I have no idea what you’re talking about. What cat?”
“You know, cat, like person. You call a person a cat.”
“Is it a cat or is it a person?” Grandma asked. “Because if it’s a person, why are you calling him a cat?”
“Grandma! That’s the language! That’s what you say. It’s the seventies! That’s jive talk.”
Grandma just laughed and looked at me.
“Maybe you should concentrate on learning some English first. Before you start learning jive talk. And what’s this about Jesus?”
“That’s what they call him. Because he looks like Jesus—I mean, that’s—”
“You don’t want a piece of my Bible on your head, now, do you, Frannie.” Grandma’s face was starting to twist into the face that wasn’t so patient.
“No, ma’am. I’m not the one saying it. It’s other cats—I mean kids.”
Why would Jesus come to your school, Sean said.
I shrugged. “I’m not the one saying! I told you that. It’s other kids.” I started getting mad myself. The trouble with this family was you had to explain too much!
“You know the world’s changing, Frannie. I don’t want to hear about you messing with that boy just because he’s white.”
“Oh, just forget about it!” I folded my arms and moved off Grandma’s lap.
“Come on back here with your stubborn self,” Grandma said, pulling me back. “Don’t go getting mad now. You just remember there’s a time when each one of us is the different one and when it’s our turn, we’re always wishing and hoping it was somebody else. You be that somebody else when you see that boy. You be the one to remember.”
“I know that already,” I said, not looking at her. “A million times I know that.”
“Good,” Grandma said. “That’s good. Just keep knowing it.”
Our living room was starting to get dark—the gray sky coming in all dim through the big windows behind the couch. We hadn’t turned on any lights and the TV was off.
For some reason, we just all three sat for a long time like that without saying anything else. After a while, I felt myself relaxing a little. It felt like there was a hundred million things being said all at the same time. Only you didn’t need words or signs or face expressions to say them with. I put my head on Grandma’s shoulder. It was warm and soft. She smelled like lavender and coconut hair grease.
I stared out the window. Snow coming down like feathers. You be the one to remember.
Sean leaned against Grandma’s arm and let out a long sigh. After a while, we all just fell asleep that way.
12
The phone rang early Sunday morning and Mama answered. I’d seen the light flashing but had just walked by it on my way to the bathroom. The light was for Sean—he had his own special kind of phone that let you type in what you were saying and messages came back to you. He didn’t spend much time on the phone, though. I heard Mama telling me it was Samantha and I picked up the extension phone in the hallway.
“My daddy said it’s okay if you come to his church today,” Samantha said.
I had tried to remember when I’d asked to go and couldn’t come up with the conversation. For some reason, Samantha thought going to church was a treat, like getting a second dessert. I wasn’t with her on that.
“I think I don’t want to come out in all this snow,” I said. I looked up at the picture of Lila on the hallway wall. In the photo, she looked stunned, like she couldn’t believe someone was taking her picture. Mama always said it was the camera flash—that Lila ha
ted it. But to me, it looked like she was just surprised to be in this world.
Casper the Friendly Ghost was on the television. He was always trying to get people not to be afraid of him, but it never worked. In the end, they always discovered he was a ghost and went screaming. And Casper always went away sad. But then the next time, he was hopeful again. And then sad again. It went on and on like that. It made me think of the Jesus Boy. The way people kind of stayed away from him just because. I leaned back against the wall and imagined him running after us, yelling, “But I’m a friendly ghost!” But just as I was thinking it, the person yelling became Sean and it wasn’t funny anymore.
“I was planning on just staying home and watching cartoons,” I said. “You know I don’t be going for that church jive.” I tried to sound cool saying it, but it came out like I was reading or something. Didn’t matter. Samantha ignored it anyway.
“You don’t have one day for God,” Samantha said, trying to sound like a grown-up.
“I guess not. I have one day for Casper the Friendly Ghost, though.”
Samantha knew the worst thing she could do was to try to preach to me.
“You know what I dreamed last night?” she said, and didn’t wait for me to answer. “I dreamed I was sitting in God’s lap. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
“Well, you must have spent the whole time looking up because Mama says I have a place right on God’s shoulder.”
Samantha got quiet, and I knew she was standing in her kitchen getting all puffed-up and mad.
“It’s not like it’s a contest, Samantha,” I said after a long time had passed.
“Like what’s a contest?”
“Being holy. It’s not like whichever cat’s the most holiest wins or something.”
“Nobody said it was.”
I wanted to say “Nobody had to,” but didn’t. Instead I wrapped the phone cord around my finger and waited for Samantha to say something else.
“Don’t you want to be saved, Frannie,” Samantha finally asked me.
“You always ask me that and I always say no because you can’t even tell me what I’d want to be saved from.”
“Yes—I do. I tell you if you get saved, you don’t have to worry after you die.”
“Yeah, Samantha, but that doesn’t make any sense to me because once I die, I’ll be done and I won’t be worrying anyway.”
Now Samantha took a deep breath. And staring at the picture of Lila, hanging on the wall with her eyes all dark and wide, it dawned on me—I wasn’t afraid of dying because dying had always been somewhere in our house, somewhere so close, we could feel the wind of it on our cheeks. Lila had died. The other babies had died. And now Mama was pregnant again and maybe this one would make it and maybe it wouldn’t. But if it didn’t, it would hurt for a while and then we’d figure out how to move on. Samantha was afraid of that—afraid of the feeling of having to move on. She had never had to before, she’d never even known anybody close to her who died. And because of that, the idea of it scared her more than anything. It made me feel a little bit sorry for the people who didn’t know much about death.
“You know something, Samantha?”
“What,” she answered, sounding all mad.
“Last night I was sitting with my grandma and I was looking over her shoulder at the snow coming down. And it made me think about you.”
“The snow?”
“Not the snow,” I said. “The feeling. It felt holy. All peaceful and quiet. All promising. It made me think that must be what you feel when you stand in the school yard reading your Bible or sit in your daddy’s church listening to him promise the whole congregation . . . something . . . something better coming along.”
“Yeah,” Samantha said. “When I’m sitting there, it’s like there’s not anything else in the whole world. Just me and God and heaven. You remember that time you came to my house and we were having corn bread and greens and you asked where the chicken was?”
I nodded. Then I said, “Yes.” I’d been so embarrassed when I left Samantha’s house that day. There wasn’t any chicken because there hadn’t been any money for chicken. But I didn’t know that until I got home and Mama explained.
“When I go to church, it’s like there’s always some chicken there, you know. Or steak or roast beef or pork chops or fried fish. It’s like there’s always something there to go with the greens and the corn bread.”
I had gone to school the next day and apologized to Samantha, but she’d just said, Forget about it, there’ll be chicken on Friday when my mama gets paid. You could come for dinner then if you want to. And that next Friday I went to her house and ate her mama’s baked chicken and we’d never talked about it again. Until now.
“If you want me to go to church with you, Samantha, I’ll go,” I said, sorry I’d gotten so mad with her.
“Can you come to church with me, Frannie?” Samantha asked, her voice so soft it was hard to hear. “Just ’cause I want you to.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
Samantha’s father’s church sat between a Laundromat and a diner. And just like the diner and the Laundromat, his church was a storefront. ONEPEOPLE was written on the big glass window and under that it said REVEREND JOSEPH H. BROWN in gold letters. Before it became a church, OnePeople had been a candy store and hanging above the window was a rusty sign that said DRINK NEHI.
As we drove to OnePeople, Samantha’s father talked on and on about how the church was growing.
“God has his hand on my arm,” he said, smiling while Samantha’s mother nodded. “He’s leading me to a bigger church, a better place.”
“Amen,” Samantha’s mother said softly.
I stared out the window, watching the snow coming down. Mama had combed my hair for me so, underneath my hat, I had four cornrows going from front to back. When she’d finished, she’d held my face in her hands and kissed my forehead. “Glad Samantha can get you to church, because Lord knows we can’t,” she said. Then in the same breath she said, “Is she making you go? Because you know you don’t have to.”
“I know. I want to.”
Mama stared into my face. After a minute had passed she said, “When I go to church, I come out feeling good—like there’s some reasons to keep on going.”
“But I thought me and Sean and Daddy are the reasons you keep on going.”
She thought for a moment. “You are, boo. But it’s more than that. I feel . . . I feel hopeful. Church makes me remember that tomorrow’s always going to be just a little bit better than today.”
I nodded.
“So that’s why I go. And that’s why I ask you and Sean to go sometimes. But I don’t know why you want to go today. With Samantha. You know I don’t like her daddy’s church.”
Mama stroked my hair. Her hand felt good.
I wanted to say, Because Samantha saw the real Jesus in the Jesus Boy and maybe I wanted to see that too. I wanted to tell Mama that Samantha always seemed to be walking around all hopeful and sure of the something better coming. I wanted to tell Mama about the boy’s eyes, how they took in every single thing and didn’t change.
“Because Samantha asked me to,” I said. I pulled my coat on and the rabbit fur hat Daddy had brought home for me. The hat had long straps with rabbit fur pom-poms at the end. Mama tied the straps beneath my chin and kissed me on the forehead.
“That’s as good a reason as any,” she said.
I was getting hot inside all that rabbit fur and wool, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet.
“Remember when I told you about the poem Ms. Johnson read us?”
Mama smiled. “Yeah, baby. I remember.”
“I guess the writer was thinking about how light feathers are and they can just float everywhere. And I guess that’s how hope is too—all light and everywhere like that. There’s hope in this house. And at your church. And at OnePeople. At our school. Across the highway and on this side too. Everywhere.”
Mama’s eyes got kind of shiny, but she kept on smiling. Then she leaned down and hugged me. Hard.
She got up, put her hand against her mouth. I saw one tear slide down before she turned away from me and walked real fast down the hall. I heard her bedroom door close.
The weekend doorman called up and said, “Someone is here for you.”
Samantha’s father pulled up in front of his church and smiled. I took Samantha’s hand and squeezed it and she looked puzzled for a minute, then she smiled too. And when she smiled, I saw the hope there—the way her eyes got soft, the way her hand wrapped itself around mine . . . and held on.
13
Monday morning, as me and Sean walked to school, two girls came up to us. One of the girls smiled at Sean and said, “What do you know good, pretty boy?” Sean’s hair was starting to get longer and that morning he’d picked it out into a short Afro. He was wearing a black turtleneck and his black peacoat, jeans and new boots. Earlier that morning, Mama had smiled at him, saying, You look like one of the Black Panthers, and Sean had given her the Black Power sign.
“Huh, pretty boy?” the girl said again. “You with the pretty hair and eyes.”
I didn’t know if I was more shocked by what she was saying or by the fact that they had just come up on us like that. I mean, girls looked at Sean all the time. And sometimes he tried to talk to them. But nobody had ever just walked up to us like that. And what if I had been his girlfriend? But Sean just smiled at her.
“You gonna tell a sister your name?” the girl asked. Her friend giggled but didn’t say anything. Sean looked at me and signed, Tell them.
“His name is Sean,” I said, not very loud either because I didn’t feel like being a translator to a girl who thought she could come out of nowhere and say all kinds of things to my brother.
“What’s wrong with his mouth?” the girl said, rolling her eyes at me.
I wanted to lie and say, “What’s wrong with your ignorant mouth?” but Sean was looking all happy about the girl, so I didn’t. “He’s deaf. Just deaf. Not stupid.”
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