by Danzy Senna
I sat still with my knees drawn in, chewing on a strand of hair and drumming my fingers against my legs. I heard myself say, “I’m not coming, Mum.” I saw myself look at her and say with a calm that surprised me: “I’m not going back to New Hampshire. You’ve got Jim. You’ll be all right.”
“Oh, Jess,” my mother said, her voice cracking. “I know you’ve been miserable up there. But I can’t lose you. Yeah, I’ve got Jim. But I don’t know,” she looked up at me, glanced toward the kitchen door. “He’s scared. I’m not sure he wants to be in on this for much longer. I’m not sure I even trust him some days.”
I kept my eyes on the floor. I thought if I looked at her, I’d be swayed. She was pulling out every trick in the book. She continued, in a breathless plea: “You’re the only person in the whole world I trust, baby. You’re everything to me. We can leave New Hampshire. We can go somewhere out west. To Berkeley. There’s a lot of folks out there who would help us. You’d be happier there. It’s not so whitewashed. I know that’s been hard for you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. We can go anywhere you want. And if Jim wants to follow, fine. But it’s you I care about. You’ve kept me alive. I would have died, sweetie. Don’t you know that? I would have died without you. I had nothing else to live for.”
I heard her words but fought hard against feeling them. I said, “I have to find them, Mum.”
There was silence for a moment, then she stood up, smoothing her jeans with her hand. It was the freckles on her hands that made me hide my face. I knew her hands as well as my own, the pattern of the freckles and the dirt under her nails. I could see them clearly with my eyes closed.
“Come on, Jess. Get your things together, sweetie. We’re leaving.”
I sunk back a little into the beanbag and said in a small voice, “My name’s not Jesse. It’s Birdie Lee.”
Then she came toward me. I had seen the expression on her face before. It meant she wasn’t playing, that she had had enough. It meant that she was going to take you, force or no force. She reached for me, and in one motion I ducked under her arm and dashed across the room, out the front door of Dot’s apartment, down the long staircase, outside into the cold, which hit my face like a much-needed slap. A barely perceptible drizzle moistened the air.
I heard her behind me, then felt her hands in my hair, her grip on my arm.
We tussled out there like two female mud wrestlers, not really hurting each other. She tried to get me onto the ground, while I tried to break out of her hold. We were on the sidewalk now, and a couple of people had stopped to watch the scene.
“Get in the car,” she said to me between gritted teeth. “Get into the car, or I swear—”
I broke loose momentarily, and as she swung to grab me, she ended up belting me across the face. I saw yellow spots, darkness. Before I could get my balance, she had me in a headlock. I saw some lights go on in apartments around the street, silhouettes emerging at windows. Her arms were like steel clamps around my neck, and though my arms were free, I couldn’t loosen her grip. She was stronger than she looked.
“Let go of me, Mum,” I whimpered.
Just then Jim and Dot came rushing out the door together.
Dot tried to pull my mother off me. “Sandy, let go of her. We can talk this out.”
Jim tried to reason: “Sheila, calm down. This isn’t the right way to handle the situation.”
She barked back, “Get lost, Jim. Just fuck off. This is between me and my daughter.”
I struggled for a few minutes more, and just when I thought I was losing the battle, I felt her arm release my neck and looked up to see a police car cruise up beside us.
It rolled to a stop. I stood up straight and began to fluff my hair.
The driver was a chubby Puerto Rican with wavy black hair and pale skin, and beside him sat a redheaded younger officer with acne. They got out of the car slowly, adjusting their belts.
As they loped toward us, the Puerto Rican one said to my mother, “Ma’am, step away from the girl.”
She forced a laugh, high-pitched, as she said, “This is a mistake, officer. She’s my daughter. She was trying to run away from home and—”
The policeman put his hand on his holster. “I said, step away from her. We’re getting complaints of assault and battery out here. That a blond lady was beating up a teenage girl. Now, who’s gonna tell me what’s going on?”
Jim spoke first, using his we’re-all-good-guys tone. “Hi, officers. We were just having a little family game of tackle out here. Nothing serious. No problem.”
The officer was looking past Jim, at me. I tried to control my breathing, which was coming out in rasps.
He said, pointing a chubby finger at me, “You, kid. What seems to be the problem?”
My mother started to talk for me: “She’s just—” but the officer cut her off, wagging a finger as he said, “I’m not talking to you, lady. One more word out of you and I’ll have to book you. Now, kid, what seems to be the problem?”
I stuttered, “No, sir. No problem. I mean, we were just playing around.”
The younger redhead piped out from behind the other, “Playing around? You were causing a disturbance in the neighborhood. Do you know this woman?” he asked me, putting his hands on his hips. He was showing off to his superior.
“Yes, I know her,” I told him, glancing at my mother now, who was standing in the crook of Jim’s arm.
“What’s your relationship?”
“She’s—she’s a friend of the family.” I felt my face heat up. My mother was watching me with her mouth slightly parted, incredulous.
“Do you live here?”
“Yes, with my aunt,” I said, motioning to Dot.
The cops looked back and forth between Dot and me, confused for a moment. The redhead said, “This lady’s your aunt?”
I hadn’t seen that double-take since I had last been with my father—that look of skepticism mixed with embarrassment. The look had once been followed by “Oh, she must be adopted.”
I repeated, “Yes, she’s my aunt.”
The Puerto Rican cop seemed bored by the discussion and said, “All right, come on, Mike. Just keep the noise down out here. Or we’ll be back.”
The two men left without taking our names.
After they drove off, my mother turned to me.
“I’m going to say this one more time, Jesse. Get in the car. Jim, get our coats from upstairs.”
“Mum, I’m not going with you. I can’t do this anymore.”
Jim’s voice: “Jesus, Jesse. Stop it now. This isn’t cute anymore. Just get in the car. We can’t stick around.”
“No. I don’t want to be with you anymore. It’s over, Mum. Sorry.”
Dot said in a hushed voice, “Birdie, you don’t mean that.”
When I didn’t say anything, Dot let out a deep sigh.
There was a long silence while my mother and I just stared at each other, taking in each other’s hair and skin and bones. It seemed at that moment that we had never really looked at each other like that, like strangers.
Finally Dot said quietly, “Sandy, I’ll take good care of her. I promise.”
Jim went upstairs to get their coats, while the three of us women stood out in the darkness, Dot holding my mother to her chest while she cried softly. I wouldn’t look at her.
After a moment, Jim came out of the apartment with the coats piled over his arm. Taj peeked out of the doorway like a nymph, wearing just her pajamas.
Dot helped my mother put on her coat and whispered to her in comforting tones, “She’ll come around. She just needs time.”
When they were ready I stood with my hands in my pockets, staring at the pavement, not daring to look or move till they were out of sight.
I heard the slamming of doors, the sound of them kissing Dot good-bye, the sound of the engine, some muffled music—my mother’s old Linda Ronstadt tape—coming from their radio. I allowed myself to look up only then, as their car pulled away
from the curb.
She was looking back at me from the passenger window. Our eyes caught, and I saw her as she had been and would always be, a long-lost daughter of Mayflower histories, forever in motion, running from or toward an unutterable hideaway.
I stood outside for quite a long time, hugging my body, which was trembling now, transfixed by a spot of oil on the street below, where their car had been parked. I said aloud, “They have an oil leak.” I stood, staring at that spot, which looked like a map of some distant nation, long after Dot and Taj had gone upstairs, until I was shaking with the cold and a soft rain came down around me.
A feather touch on my wrist made me turn. It was Taj, looking a bit frightened. I bet she had never seen a family like this one. She had come down to fetch me and was holding an orange in her hand.
“Are you crying, Birdie?”
I touched my face. It was wet.
“No, that’s just the rain, Taj. I’m okay.”
She patted my arm daintily, imitating her mother.
I laughed. My cheek still throbbed where my mother had hit me.
“Did the bad lady leave?” she asked.
I said, “She’s not so bad. She’s just scared.”
“Scared of what?”
I looked at Taj, trying to think of the answer. “Scared of—I don’t know. Something big and bad.”
“Flying monkeys?” Taj suggested. She had been watching The Wizard of Oz the night before.
I laughed. “Yeah, flying monkeys.”
Taj took my hand. “I want you to live with us forever and ever.”
With her other hand, she was sinking her teeth into the skin of the orange, but not breaking through to the fruit. I squeezed her little hand. “Yeah, well, that would be nice.” Taj had never really known her father. I wondered if years from now she too would be standing on some rainy street corner, searching the faces of strangers for the reflection of her own. Or maybe it would be easier for her. Maybe her father and her mother would share her between them and she would become the perfect blend of two rich cultures, moving effortlessly between the two worlds.
She said, “My mother said you should come upstairs or you’ll catch pneumonia.”
“I need to walk. I need to be alone. Tell your mom I’ll be back later.”
She nodded, but stood outside, watching me as I made my way down the street. I kept turning back and waving at her to go inside, but she would just wave back, opening and closing her fist.
I walked quickly, assuredly, though I had no idea where I was going nor how long I would be gone. Most of the children had been called in for dinner, and the streets were fairly quiet, though in the distance I could hear a joyful shout, and beyond that a siren. I was still shaken from the fight, and my mouth and cheek felt sore from the trauma of her punch. As I walked, I thought about my mother, her face in the car. She was the person in the world who was closest to me, the person who had been my other half all these years. But it hit me now how little I knew about her. In some deep way, she had remained a mystery even to me.
high soul burn
It was almost six o’clock when I found myself at Downtown Crossing, searching among the lean, slouched teenage boys for a pair of painted hands, for Ali’s high cheekbones and soft eyes. I scanned the huddle of teenagers who loitered in front of the food court, scrutinizing their faces for something familiar. There were several imitations of Ali’s general look, but none was the real thing. I tried to catch their eyes, but found no response. They didn’t seem to see me. The girls wore scowls of indifference, helmets of straightened hair, and the boys stood posed in their candy-colored parkas, talking into the air, not to one another, with bashful smiles.
They all seemed to be waiting for something important, their faces tilted toward the sky. I followed their gaze to see what was coming, only to find the gleaming top of the John Hancock building. At this angle it appeared one-dimensional, a sheet of glass. A boom box on someone’s shoulders played a song sung by a scratchy-voiced boy in the throes of puberty.
This was where he had said I could find him, so I wasn’t surprised when someone touched my elbow and I turned to see Ali. He wore a green Army parka, a pair of paint-splattered combat boots, and a red scarf wrapped around his face so that only his eyes told me he was smiling. A small neat scar interrupted the dark smooth line of his eyebrow. I hadn’t noticed it before. It saved him from being pretty. I glanced down at his hands to make sure it was really him. His fingers were tinged with gold, blue, and silver spray paint, though the colors had faded.
He frowned at what he saw on my face, his eyes moving over me with a slow dismay. “What happened to you?”
He reached out and gently touched my lip. I could feel that it was swollen. My scalp was still sore where my mother had pulled my hair.
“Who did this to you?” He looked protective all of a sudden.
I mumbled, “Just a crazy lady.” I paused, calculating how much I could tell him without risking her safety. Then I felt silly for even hesitating. “I mean, my mother. She did it. But she’s gone now.”
A body emerged from behind Ali just then, a slim yellow girl with her hair neatly coifed into an elaborate twist, baby curls pressed into her forehead, lipstick bright and pink. “Ali,” she said, snapping her gum and avoiding my eyes, “we’re going to die movies. You coming?” She was sucking on a Slush Puppy, and when she opened her mouth I could see that her tongue was stained blue. She glanced at me. I had been caught staring. Her eyes were dark green, like sea glass—the color of Cole’s eyes. She looked away quickly, and it struck me that I must have appeared a little out of control, with my fat lip and dirty blue jeans. She said, quieter now, to Ah, “We’ve got to go if we’re gonna make it.”
Ali glanced toward the girl, then back at me, as if trying to gauge how serious my situation was. I suspected that he had a crush on the girl, that he wanted to go to the movies, and I felt like a pest all of a sudden. He didn’t know me anymore. I was just some strange girl who had gone to elementary school with him so long ago. And even then we hadn’t really known each other. Now he was an ordinary teenager who had grown up in one place. The last thing he probably wanted to talk about were missing fathers and wayward mothers.
But he said to the girl, “Naw, Marcy. I’ll catch y’all later. I gotta talk to Birdie.”
She stood for a moment, indignance rumpling her features, then said something I couldn’t decipher under her breath as she turned and clipped away. I watched her catch up with another girl, then the two girls whispered and looked back at us over their shoulders.
Ali watched them too—a little longingly, I thought—before turning to me. He shoved his hands into his parka pockets, the fur around his hood rippling in the cold wind as he said, “So, you want to go somewhere? To talk. You don’t look too good.”
“Okay. You lead the way.”
He bought me a hot chocolate first, at the Friendly’s across the street, as if he could tell that I needed something sweet just then. It warmed my hands as we made our way across the Common, our feet crunching in unison on the frozen grass. I wore only my thin denim jacket that still smelled of horses and New Hampshire and Mona’s clove cigarettes. I wondered if the smell would wash out.
We reached the top of the hill. Across the street the gold-domed State House shimmered even in the fading winter light. My father once had told me that a little man polished it every morning to make it stay so shiny. Next to us sat the war memorial that my father had taken me and Cole to see as children. It was a sculpture of Robert Gould Shaw on horseback, colonel of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts, surrounded by his “foot-bound Negro battalion” who, according to the inscription, died with him on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 18, 1863, in the name of “this great union.” Shaw’s name was the only one engraved on the stone, and a poem underneath him described his death.
But the High Soul Burns
On to Light Men’s Feet
Where death for Noble Ends
My father had pointed to the foot-bound black soldiers behind Shaw and said, “These little nigger boys died in vain. And that white boy got all the credit.”
The sun was setting around us now, and a diffused orange light hung over the city. It would be dark soon, but for now the sky was a dusty pink. My mother said dusk was the most beautiful time of day, filled with the possibilities of night. But I thought it was dreary, the bright colors that filled the sky somehow washed out and depressing. I liked the night better, when there was a clarity to the darkness.
If I squinted my eyes and ignored the modern cars and the Cheetos wrapper by my feet, I could have been in any moment of history. Beacon Hill was well-preserved, a virtual museum of culture and class. It was the home of Boston’s blue-blood elite—or at least those who could afford to pretend they were. My mother’s brother, Randall, used to live on Beacon Hill, in the old family house on Louisburg Square. I wondered if he still lived there. And if he ever thought about his chubby younger sister with the appetite for trouble, the little sister who had once, in a fight, told him that he was “as effete as the rest of the Lodge boys.” Or had he erased her from his history, and all the trouble that came with her?
Ali and I sat on the granite bench beneath the memorial. He turned to me and said, “So, I thought you said your mother disappeared. What’s the story? You been telling lies?”
I hadn’t been speaking because I was afraid I would cry, but the cocoa had comforted me. I looked at him. He was watching me, waiting, with a slightly suspicious smile. He was the same Ali who threw a spitball at me my first day at Nkrumah and hissed, What you doin’ in this school? You white? His face had been rounder then, but his eyes were the same. I was feeling that itch—an itch I had felt many times before—to tell my story, the truth of where I had been. So far, Dot had been the only one to know, and even she didn’t know the whole story. And now her words came back to me. Sandy’s not running from the law, baby. She’s running from herself. And if this were true, there had never been a danger at all. We had been hiding from only ourselves. And it was safe, then, to speak. This boy was waiting, and something in his face, the familiarity that brought me back to Nkrumah, to the chocolate milk drunk straight from a carton and the sound of sneakers against linoleum, made me speak.
