Roger
“I hope she’s gonna get better.” The boy’s voice startled him awake. Roger had been sleeping with his head bent over Rachel’s bed. He looked up and then stood and saluted the boy.
“How’s it going?” Roger ushered Brick into the room. The mud was still wet on the boy’s jeans.
“Little wet outside, huh?” Roger said. “Here.” He took his jacket from the back of the chair and wrapped it around Brick like a cape. “Better?”
Roger wanted to erase yesterday. He wanted to hug the boy, but instead he patted his arm and said, “They say she’s doing better.”
“Maybe it’s the song that’s making her better,” Brick said.
Roger swallowed audibly and turned away.
“Sir?” Brick asked.
Roger’s stare into space was unbroken.
“I didn’t see a man,” Brick said.
“What? Where?”
“On the roof.” Brick took from his pocket the newspaper folded in neat squares. He handed it to Roger, who read only as far as the headline.
“I don’t want to read that shit.” Roger thrust the paper back at Brick.
“I said I saw a man,” Brick said. “But I didn’t. But I think maybe there was a man there.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn what you think,” Roger said. “You a detective now? You think some man did it? Maybe you did it. Maybe I did it. Maybe I was the man. The police came here asking me the same shit. You know what I care about?” He paused. “I care about my little girl getting better — if she gets out of here — keeping her safe from everything. Including me.”
ROGER AND NELLA held their wedding on a Saturday at a brick red Lutheran church in her Danish hometown, where it was legal for coloreds and whites to marry. Not much later they had a son. Charles. Roger felt like he’d done something. Taken hold of something in the world even if it wasn’t himself. He loved that boy. But the Little Man, as Roger called him, was broken. There was nothing exactly wrong with him. Ten fingers. Ten toes. He had the necessary parts and his mind was alert. But he was always sick. His stomach hurt. His nose bled without reason. His palms were always sweaty since he ran three degrees hotter than everyone else. And his eyes had the dark circles of a thirty-five-year-old man.
At first Roger thought he could talk Little Man into being stronger. “Wasn’t it just you and the goose?” He held Little Man on his lap.
“N-n-no, Pop,” Little Man would say, pretending to struggle to get away.
“Now, you don’t even remember being there, do you? I remember. I remember that night you were born. Your mother was eating and drinking like no tomorrow. You see she never lost those pounds you put on her, don’t you? You’re the one gave your mama a nice black girl’s ass.”
“Roger? What are you saying?” Nella would call to “the boys” from the kitchen, her accent still heavy.
“Yeah, now you, Little Man, you stronger than you think. Now, as I recall, it was you or that goose your mother was eating. So you came right on out. Feet first.”
“N-n-no, Pop,” Little Man would giggle and try to tickle Roger at the waist.
“Now, you remember. You’re a Morse. The Morse men are a strong bunch.” Roger would pick up Little Man then and hold him in the air, jostling him.
“Put me down. P-p-put me down.” Little Man would laugh.
“Roger, stop the horseplaying. His nose will start to bleed again.”
“Will it Little Man? Will it?” Roger would toss Little Man into the air a bit higher each time he asked.
Little Man would laugh hysterically until Nella came into the room to stop it. Roger thought if he could will some strength into that small body, Little Man would overcome the nosebleeds, and the colds and stomach pains that no doctor could ever cure. But Roger grew tired of Little Man being sick, of Little Man’s sickness. Roger got tired of being careful, of seeing how weak his son really was. Roger would beat him when his nose bled. His hands would twist the tender yellow skin on his son’s arm. Roger would use his military voice. “Stop that. Boy, you better quit.” He loved that boy. He could kill him.
ROGER TOLD BRICK that in the seventies the best thing to be was black. The white people thought you had moves. They thought you knew music better and deeper than anybody else.
As the only black boy in a family of Danes — and because he got the discount on liquor with his military ID — Roger was always the center of the party. They’d play some Stevie Wonder, drink some beer, drink some Seagram’s, and then some schnapps to top off the night.
That’s how they spent all their holidays. Roger, Nella and the boy would drive north to Denmark to see her sister’s family, or her sister’s family would come visit them on base in Germany. This visit Nella’s sister, Solvej came without her husband, a seaman.
“Watch out now, Nella,” Roger said. “We gonna have to move tonight.” Roger had never moved so good. Go on, Stevie, sing! Roger loved the harmonica interludes. He put his hands to his mouth like he was holding one.
Roger moved. He danced — and damn if he didn’t start to sing too. Solvej joined in. She was a choir girl and a woman without her man around. She was cutting loose.
Roger’s duet and slow dance with Solvej ended the night. But then there was the kiss good-night that lasted a little too long. It was the first time Roger had heard Nella raise her voice. She called her own sister a whore. It was also the first time Roger hit a woman — really. No, really. He didn’t know how it happened. But Nella fell into her sister’s arms crying, and she left with her sister. Roger was silent and drunk and watched them go.
Roger grabbed a cigarette and sat down. “My little Danish girl will come back. Won’t she? Won’t she, Little Man?” he said. Little Man stood behind the couch.
“Come here, boy,” Roger used his cotton voice. But Little Man just stood there. “Boy, I said come here!” Roger’s voice was all gravel. With that the boy sat by his father, made his father’s arm around him not a noose but a wing. “We just gonna wait. My little Danish girl will come home soon. She’ll come home.”
It was late, so late and the music was gone. The man and the boy fell asleep together on the couch, waiting, the cigarette still lit in Roger’s hand. Burning.
Roger didn’t know how much time had passed when he woke coughing from the fire’s smoke. Where was Little Man? He’d wriggled out from Roger’s hold. Roger kept yelling into the flames. Little Man was small for his age. He could hide good. He could hide anywhere. Where was he?
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The fire licked through the walls and inhaled the back of the wooden house in a quick blaze. Little Man was nowhere to be found, Roger told Brick. Still, he kept screaming his son’s name into the flames.
“NOOO!” ROGER SCREAMED as if he were reliving that night.
The nurse rushed in, faster than she did when the alarms would ring. She checked the tubes and looked at the lines on the monitor above the bed. “What’s the matter?”
Roger was holding the flask in his hand and looked at her blankly, unsteady on his feet.
“I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to go now,” the nurse said. “You’ll have to go.”
Roger stuffed the flask, now empty, in his duffel bag and placed his hat on his head. He put on the jacket that was keeping the boy warm and lifted the bag to his shoulder. Roger paused for a moment before the boy, then handed him the harmonica.
“This is for you, a gift.”
He turned and kissed Rachel’s forehead.
“You tell her,” he said, pointing a finger at the boy like it was a gun. “She’ll want to know that story. Tell her what she never knew. She needs to understand. Her mother and me, we wanted to be together again. Had to be after Charles. No one else could of understood. That hole inside. Nella and me, we made a promise. We were gonna make a family … safe. Now that promise’s broke. When Nella left with the kids in May … three months they’d been gone. Now they’re gone forever. Tell Rachel—,” he
paused. “Tell Rachel now I’m sure she’ll be safe.”
Rachel
Grandma wants me in the church choir so I won’t be runnin the streets. Someone shot through the glass at the Wonder Bread factory store two weeks ago. It happened on a Friday night. On the news they said gang members did it. Not gangs on TV but real gangs from California. Hearing that must have scared Grandma because that’s when she said I couldn’t be out alone after dark — not even for school activities. At first when she said that, I thought she had learned about the secret Anthony Miller and kissing in the vestibule. But it’s been almost a year since the last time. Now Anthony Miller’s going with another girl. But if he said he wanted to meet me there again, I would.
I don’t fuss with Grandma about going to church. I say I’ll put on the yellow dress. “And the SHOES to MATCH,” Grandma says, making her capitals. She found the dress at the Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store with a fifty-cent price tag and a new price tag too. It doesn’t fit so well around my old beige bra, but with a sweater over the top I think Grandma will like it fine. That’s her best way of liking things.
If you ask me I would say that mostly I don’t look like myself when I wear church finery. Or feel like a self that makes any sense. And today my scalp itches because Grandma made me go to the hairdresser to get me looking more respectable. “None of those people want to see a pickaninny in they church,” Grandma said. She is glad that my hair has grown out again. I can’t say that I don’t like the way my hair looks. It’s straight now — straight like Mor’s hair for the first time ever. And it’s long enough for me to move it off my shoulder with a swish. But the hairdresser let the relaxer set too long and burned a few spots on my scalp and burned my left ear with the blow-dryer’s hot metal tip. And I am still tender-headed.
Two weeks ago Monday was my first day as a straight-haired girl.
Wearing my hair down and straight is one reason that the girls who hang out in the bathroom want to beat me up. They say: You better watch out or I’ll snatch you bald-headed.
Is that a weave?
You think you so cute tossin that hair around.
The truth is I never toss it. I do like to pull it back like the Bionic Woman did on TV. Two fingers pulling straight back at the top of my head to show off my ears. And I am glad that there are no tangles, no naps, and no kitchen at the back of my head anymore.
But people look at me differently. I don’t look just different or scary or undefinable: I look pretty. That pretty is what was Mor’s: my eyes, now my straight hair. People act different around me too. Mr. Barucci, my science teacher, said something real nice. He said I looked very beautiful, a pure masterpiece. I smiled a no-teeth smile and he said, “Makes those eyes more startling to look at.” And he put his fingers to his lips and made a kiss he threw in the air. “Bella!”
AUNT LORETTA AND DREW have stopped by to say hi before they go to play tennis. Aunt Loretta moved into Drew’s apartment a few months ago. I wish she had taken me too. Aunt Loretta comes to visit at least twice a week, but every time she comes Grandma asks when the wedding is.
“I’m working on that lizard now,” she says to Grandma in a fake whisper, leaning over to kiss her good-bye on the cheek, and points at Drew.
“He a rooster,” Grandma says.
“A rooster?” Aunt Loretta laughs.
“That’s the kind of lizard that take care of you,” Grandma says and makes her teeth click.
Aunt Loretta’s hand is on the door, and I can see all the good that will be her day. I can’t wait to go where I want to go without people (Grandma) studying me. I want to walk out on a Sunday morning with my boyfriend next to me, with everybody seeing I have things to do. I start high school this year, and I’m going to get all As and think about the long run. And when I’m seventeen I’m going to go to college and then see the world. I guess I’ll be someone like Aunt Loretta. Aunt Loretta is a black woman — the kind of woman I will be.
Aunt Loretta walks out the front door slowly, and I see her red red nails and her sparkly engagement ring. Grandma wasn’t right. There is paint beneath Aunt Loretta’s fingernails, and it doesn’t matter.
Aunt Loretta is backing out the door with her tennis bag over her arm and Drew is right behind her and that light is still in her, turned on. Grandma tut-tuts because the lizard hasn’t opened the door for her daughter. Aunt Loretta pauses at the threshold — she’s about to go on stage. “I’m sorry you can’t go with me today, sweet,” Aunt Loretta says like I am a candy. It is gentle the way she says it. I mean, the way she says it sounds like a warm lake breeze. And behind the words I hear: I’ll be by again real soon.
DEACON JAMES ALWAYS makes it a point to talk to Grandma at services. Deacon James is a man about Grandma’s age, with no hair. He is the only deacon in the AME Zion Church with no wife even though there are a lot of women without husbands. That makes him a popular man.
Sometimes he sits next to us during the service. Today Deacon James holds Grandma’s hand high in the air and makes her twirl around when he sees her.
“Miss Doris,” he says, which makes Grandma bat her eyes, “you sure are lookin fine for our services today.” Grandma crosses her left foot in front of her and puts her hand on her hat, posing, so Deacon James can have a picture of her in his mind. “Deacon James,” she says, “I’m feeling good.”
“And how’s this precious young thing?”
Today I am precious and young, and last week I was sweet and shy. Deacon James cannot remember my name. Heather, Wendy, Holly he’s called me over the last few months since I started going to the AME Zion Church to make Grandma happy. Deacon James, like most of the folks Grandma’s age, comes from the South — North Carolina to be exact, just across the bridge from Wilsonville — and he has no history of Rachels. I am okay with precious and sweet.
Deacon James sits next to us during the service, and I know I must pay attention. It is like sitting next to the principal during a school assembly.
We stand. We sit. We sing. We sing and I only pretend sing. I can’t make those big sounds that Grandma can make, or the smooth high sounds the girl who looks like Tamika can make when she does her solos. We stand and sit. And all the time, if I keep my mouth going, no one notices that no sound is coming through my lips.
I think I see Deacon James touch Grandma’s knee during “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” During the next hymn he touches a little bit up her thigh. Grandma doesn’t seem to notice, or she doesn’t seem to mind, or she doesn’t want to be impolite.
The Gospel is usually loud and has a lot of soul to it. It makes you sway, clap, almost dance. I love these big sounds in the small church. Why didn’t I know about the Gospel before?
Mor used to be in a choir. It was a Danish choir and she never learned how to do the Gospel like we do here at the AME Zion Church. The Gospel has style.
I AM AT Church listening to the Gospel when never careful Aunt Loretta trips on her shoelace in a broken patch of Irving Park’s public court and lands on a piece of glass no one has seen, making it love-thirty. And she’s the one who’s down. She cuts her face. “Oh good Lord,” Grandma says, “she cut her face.”
“At least she didn’t poke out an eye,” I say, trying to calm Grandma. But the only picture in my mind is of Aunt Loretta, her beautiful smile with a jagged slice in it and two long sewing stitches holding the sides together. And her hands covering up her smile, so she won’t make Grandma mad looking at the now ugly ex–Rose Festival princess.
GRANDMA WON’T LET me go to the hospital. She says it is “too much.” A young girl doesn’t need to see such things. “And Loretta don’t need to be exercised so.” Oh, she has so many reasons. That evening I sit and pray. Not knowing how. I will lift her up.
I SNEAK UP to the hospital with Drew’s help. I haven’t seen Aunt Loretta in two months. Her face has a ragged scar, but that’s not what’s wrong, Grandma explains. They gave her medicine, and the medicine done made her sick. It’s burned the outside o
f her and the inside and made her bleed. Her skin has come off in giant patches and sheets. I think Grandma has misunderstood. She doesn’t understand the sophisticated things too well. But I hear her talking to the nurses on the phone and every day to Drew in the kitchen, and he says, “Don’t be mad Mrs. Morse. They couldn’t know any better. Sometimes it just happens — an antibiotic can go wrong in somebody. They were trying to help.” I think of the crooked seam in Aunt Loretta’s face. I think: Will Drew still love Aunt Loretta?
Drew drives me to the hospital and tells me Aunt Loretta’s room number. “You know I can be late for work if you want me to go with you,” he says as I get out of the car. “I can do it by myself. I’m used to hospitals,” I say and wave good-bye.
Aunt Loretta is in the same hospital I went to when I first came. The nurse tells me to put on gloves, a gown, and a mask. But first wash my hands. There is a small mirror above the sink. I want to look pleasing and I practice my smile. And the way I will say “I love you” without staring at the way her face is stitched together with thread. I wash my hands and put on the gloves and gown.
“And the mask, honey. Don’t forget,” the nurse says.
The hospital smells stop at the door. Then it is all pink and soap and toothpaste. I can smell through the mask: It’s Aunt Loretta.
But maybe I am just making this up. This room has a bare tile floor and machines on rolling poles. There are tubes that run from the machines to under Aunt Loretta’s bed sheet. And there is a tube in her mouth that keeps away her smile.
I am happy that Aunt Loretta is asleep so she does not see me cry. I am happy that I am wearing this mask because my well-rehearsed smile is gone. And I can’t make up the pink and the smell of soap and toothpaste anymore. The thread holding her face together has sticky brown blood on it. Her face is swollen and so are her tiny arms. The room is filled with beeps and the machine’s sound for breathing.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Page 7