“I guess so.” My hair reaches past my shoulders now.
“If I had me some hair like this I’d be workin it.” She pretends to swish her hair off her shoulders, then she punches me on the arm.
“You like to dance?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know how to do the Pac-Man? It’s all tired, but it’s easy. I could show you.”
Lakeisha stands in front of the bed and does the Pac-Man.
She pulls me off the bed. “See, like this,” she says, and she does it real slow. “In-out. In-out.”
Her feet look like windshield wipers when she does it slow. But then she speeds it up and it looks like dancing.
“You got a radio?”
“Over there.”
She walks around to the other side of the bed and turns on the radio. When she turns it on, we both jump because the music plays so loud. Lakeisha turns down the volume quickly and we both laugh.
“You listen to white music.”
“That’s jazz.”
“You ain’t got no tapes or nothing?”
I shrug.
She dials through the radio stations. She pauses when one comes in clear.
“Y’all got some sorry radio stations,” she says.
She stops turning the dial when she hears “her song.” She sings to the chorus. She stands in the mirror and pulls the braids off her face. She makes my brush a microphone. “I’m saving all my love … Yes, I’m saving all my love …”
When the song is over, she bows and I clap. I wonder how come she seems so brave. There is no part of her she hides. Lakeisha sits with me now on the bed and says, “Wanna hear a story?” I don’t have to say yes before she tells me.
Lakeisha tells a story about how this one girl at her school thought she was looking all fly in some white jeans and then she turned around and “you could see she got her menstruations and she didn’t know it. We was laughin!”
I hold my book again as a shield wishing I could laugh. Lakeisha might change her mind about me too.
“My dad, he gave me twenty dollars to go to the movies. I’ma buy me some candy and popcorn. You wanna go? You have to have your own money.”
“No, thank you,” I say.
“No thank you,” she says repeating me in a high voice. “Why you talk all proper?”
I shrug.
“My dad said you were really smart. I think you retarded.” She pauses. “Not! I’m just playin. Why you so serious?”
I AM HAPPY that Grandma calls us back to the table. We will eat cobbler and then say our good nights, and I will be able to look through each page of this book and find the note Pop must have left for me.
Drew has two helpings of cobbler with ice cream. Grandma has a sweet tooth. She eats two helpings too. She doesn’t want a lizard or a rooster anymore. “They gonna have to love all-a this if they want love from me.”
I think of how Grandma makes fun of love. And maybe that’s the key.
“Miss Doris, you bad. You bad. Careful how those contributions catch up to you,” Drew says, pointing to Grandma’s “secret” bottle of sherry.
Grandma likes being bad around Drew. She smooths down the front of her dress, the part that stretches across her chest, and she makes a low lizard-eating giggle. Grandma says she feels like a woman when she’s being bad. And Lakeisha says, “I’m scared of you, Miss Doris.” They all laugh.
Grandma puts the cobbler back in the oven to heat up another helping for Drew. He likes it when the ice cream melts all in it. He talks for a long time about his job at the Salvation Army Harbor Lights Center, the way he wants to landscape his yard with rose bushes and grow a garden with tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce, and how much he’s been missing his sweet Lo. We all hush when he says her name.
Grandma says something first. “It’s been too much. Oh, Loretta. I’m missing my baby girl, and Charles …”
“You mean Robbie, Grandma.”
“I mean Charles and Robbie and that baby too,” she says. “I say what I mean.”
It’s hard to know what Grandma means when she’s had the contributions.
And then Drew says thank you and promises to come again soon.
“Rachel, maybe you want to come with us to the parade this weekend? Good spot for watching is up at my job at the Salvation Army on Burnside — not fancy, but you’ll be up close.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ma be there,” Lakeisha says.
“Happy to have met you,” Grandma says to Lakeisha as they walk to the door. She’s made Texas very strong. She turns to Drew. “If you still got her next Sunday, come on to church with us.”
“That’s a nice invitation. Maybe we will,” Drew says. “Lakeisha’s a real good singer.”
“I heard you all with the radio up,” Grandma says, touching Lakeisha’s braids. I know she disapproves of braids, but for Lakeisha, today, she makes it okay.
“Lakeisha has a solo in the choir,” Drew says.
“You wanna hear it?” Lakeisha asks. She takes the gum out of her mouth, and this time every one sees. Then she takes off her glasses. She is in the middle of the second line of “Amazing Grace” and Grandma joins in.
I hear a voice I have not heard. The choir sang this at Aunt Loretta’s funeral. Grandma sings now but she didn’t that day. I hear a voice I have not heard. It has the hurt in it.
They finish the song with pitch-perfect harmony. They are holding hands and I want to say that Drew is crying, but I’m not sure. I’m afraid to look. I want to be Lakeisha. She’s hugging Grandma, getting the sad stuck feeling out of her with a song. I am fourteen and know that I am black, but I can’t make the Gospel sound right from my mouth. I can’t help make Grandma’s feelings show. They hold hands and Grandma hugs Lakeisha again. I can see what Grandma sees in Lakeisha. It is a reflection.
I smell something burning. “Good Lord, that last bit of cobbler’s burnin,” Grandma says and rushes to turn the oven off.
IT’S LATE. DREW and Lakeisha have gone home. Beneath my covers I turn on a flashlight and look through the book. There is no note from Pop, but one from Mor on the title page. It says: “Kære Roger, Together, all the stories will have wishes that come true. Jeg elsker dig. Nella.” And then there’s a date from the year I was born. I trace the words with my fingertips. Then I turn to the story I know best: the story of the bird who didn’t know he was a swan. Only it reads so different than I remember it. There is an Egyptian, a hunter, and a large comfortable nest the duckling must leave. He didn’t decide to go on his own. I wonder: What would Pop remember about this story? What was the wish that came true?
It’s late. I close the book. I turn off the flashlight. And every burning thing is off.
Nella
Day 747. Today the woman at the kiosk was staring at us, and she said if the children father was black? Roger never was black. He was charming and fun and handsome. And he loved to have fun. I really felt for him the very first time we met at the base club. We would be at the base club, the airmen club and hang out with friends have a few drinks and dance the night away. He was taken me on picnics around base by Loetzbeuren, the snacks he brought the Saltine crackers, martinis in the thermos and also a blanket so we could smooch. I wasn’t ever thinking he was a black. When he said but you cannot be pregnant, we cannot get married, and when I said why not he said cause you are white and I am not. I did not know that was a problem. So many white women were dating NCOs with brown skin, and it was normal to me. I do not think of this thing. I did not say anything to the woman today. She is rude and I did not need give her a answer. Roger said I could not understand because Europa is not the same. He never wanted to come back to America. Is this part of why? The woman was thinking I adopted my children? What does the woman not see? Robbie, the little brown kys. He looks like Roger — around the eyes, his nose. His mouth looks like me. Rachel has the same color eyes. They are more pretty for her. Ariel looks just like them when they were babys. More h
air. They are my natural children. And look like it.
Rachel
Lakeisha waves to the people below who’ve come to see the Starlight Holiday Parade. We are on the third floor at the Salvation Army Harbor Lights Center where Drew works. If you sit on the fire escape, like Lakeisha does, it’s probably one of the best spots to see the parade. I lean just a little bit out the window instead. Still, I can see the city sign over the Burnside Bridge, which is lit up in daytime during the holidays with the reindeer’s nose glowing bright red. The sun’s shining after the early morning rain and you can see the snow-covered mountain in the distance to the east. Below, people dressed in their heavy winter coats are seated on lawn chairs that line the street. The marching bands, the cheerleading squads, the floats, and the fancy decorated cars go by.
There isn’t a queen for this parade, but that’s what Lakeisha looks like she’s practicing to be, waving to the crowd below. Lakeisha could never be queen. Her glasses fog up. And she flicks her wrist too fast for the wave. She waves anyway.
“My brother’s friend. He’s as tall as that guy. That one playing the trumpet,” Lakeisha says pointing to the band crossing down Burnside.
“Where?”
“Right there,” she says and points. “If you weren’t so scary you could see him good from out here.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You ain’t coming out here.”
“So. It’s cold. I’m cold.”
Lakeisha has fog in her glasses and her breath comes out in a cloud. “Okay, scaredy cat, come on let’s get something to eat. This is tired anyway. Watching a parade from a bum house ain’t no fun.”
Lakeisha crawls back through the window from the fire escape. She uses my shoulder for balance and jumps to the floor almost knocking me down. “Come on, dang.”
“SO YOU’RE HUNGRY,” Drew says. “Well, you’re just in time for lunch.”
“I don’t want to eat with no bums,” Lakeisha says.
“Lakeisha, you show some respect. These are men. They’re trying to make a change.”
“I think it smells good,” I say.
“It should. We’ve got a special holiday meal.”
“How come I can’t have McDonald’s?” Lakeisha asks. Drew gives her a harsh look and says, “Why don’t you follow Rachel’s lead? Show some manners.”
Lakeisha and I get in line along with the others. Not all of the men live at the center. Some still live on the street and they smell like it. Lakeisha holds her nose when she grabs a tray.
We sit down as close to the door as possible at a table where there are only two men on the far end. Lakeisha has put only peas and potatoes on her plate. “That food looks like dookie,” she says. “I’m not eating bum food.”
“Whatever,” I say, eating the turkey I’ve topped with lots of gravy. It doesn’t taste so bad to me.
As the cafeteria fills up, so does our table, and someone sits down next to me.
“Good afternoon,” the man says.
We both look up and nod then look away. The man looks like an old cowboy on TV. His skin’s real wrinkled, real tan. He’s got sideburns and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Even though he’s missing three front teeth, his smile looks like it’s ready to bite.
“Lookie there, at those eyes,” the man says and pats my shoulder. “You’re gonna be a real heartbreaker.”
Lakeisha looks up from her plate. She laughs.
“Excuse me,” I say and get up and carry away my tray.
Lakeisha’s right behind me. “Who don’t have manners now? Why you got be so conceited? You don’t want a boyfriend who’s a bum?”
“LAKEISHA’S COMING OVER,” Grandma says the next day. “Y’all is gonna watch each other. And none of that trouble.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna go with Drew.”
It’s Aunt Loretta’s birthday. They’re going to the cemetery.
“Can I go?”
“No. Now hush up.”
“I just said I want to go.”
“Hush. No need to be thinking things. Go in and straighten up your room. You’re gonna have company.”
Lakeisha and I eat Grandma’s homemade cookies and the Dorito chips Lakeisha brought. We eat it watching three episodes of The Brady Bunch in a row.
“Y’all ain’t got cable?”
“Nope.”
“That’s how come you can’t dance. I be watching MTV. Me and my friend know most of the ‘Thriller’ dance just from watching. You wanna learn it?”
“No.”
“How come you so boring?”
“I’m not.”
“You know what? One time I found my mama’s birth control. And a fake penis. Bet you got something like that somewhere here. I’ll show you.”
Lakeisha goes into the bathroom first, and then into Grandma’s room where I am not allowed to go. We look through the drawers and hall closets and then go down to the basement.
“What’s this?”
Downstairs are boxes and boxes of Goodwill finds, of old clothes, of Aunt Loretta’s things, and then I see a box that I don’t recognize with my name on it. It’s not Grandma’s handwriting or Aunt Loretta’s either.
When I open the box I see it’s all wrong. This isn’t me — not from a me I can recognize. Then I realize these are things from that day — a few books, my only pair of dress shoes, sweaters, two pairs of pants, three stuffed animals, and the sheets that were on my bed. And the pajamas that I had folded and tucked under my pillow.
And there’s a newspaper page folded in half, page B3: “Police say they are continuing their investigation to rule out foul play. Witnesses indicate possible suspects … ‘The only person who may really know,’ said Capt. Ronald Veliveau of the Chicago police, ‘is that brave kid who’s fighting to survive now. She might not remember. She might not want to.’”
“What you reading?”
I hold the newspaper trying to make my hands still. They won’t stop shaking.
“Come on,” I say, putting the paper in my pocket, “let’s go watch TV.”
When Grandma gets home she is “all through” early. It’s not even eight o’clock when she goes to bed. A full bottle of contribution is empty again.
I want to ask her what she knows about that day, but she’s deep into sleeping — so much that she’s started to snore.
UP ON THE ROOF Mor told us things she remembered about her childhood self: how she saved the wishbone in her jewelry box until she really needed a wish to come true; how she always ate her dinner one food at a time. She told us about all the things that mattered to her, about everything that counted and how it all added up to a childhood she had never remembered being so good before.
“Math was my favorite subject in school,” she said in Danish. She said she could find herself better in numbers. She liked the way there was always only a single answer.
On that last day Mor took us up to the roof, she had calculated the difference between what we couldn’t have and her ability to watch us want. The difference between her pain and ours, she decided, measured nine stories high.
I HAVE NEVER told anyone and maybe I should have. That day there was a man. And if only I had told, then Mor wouldn’t be all to blame.
Nella
Day 751. I am stupid. He was drinking with his friend when he knows alcohol is not allowed in the house. Like Roger he wants to be fun. Having fun all the time. He says this isn’t fun. It is not fun. Waking up in the middle of the night to the baby. Three hours sleeping. Going to work. Seeing Rachel and Robbie sad. Children should play outside in the summer but here is not safe. They do not know the place. They say they are bored. I take them to the park Saturday and Sunday. I have taken home from the library books for the kids to read. Doug says he will not be in the house drinking again. He says he will stop. Was it a mistake coming here? There was no where else to go. I couldn’t go home. Doug said he would help. Now he goes out all night sometimes. Not coming home. Oh, no, the
babys crying.
Brick
Brick was transfixed by the scar above Laronne’s son’s left eye. Maybe he was cut by pirates, but then he was saved. Maybe he fought some scary monster who scraped him with a giant claw. He knew the scar was the result of neither of these things or anything like it — but to have a scar so big and survive seemed incredible to Brick. Laronne’s son, Greg, must have done something heroic, he thought. Even if it was just not being too scared.
Brick was no hero. He was too scared to go back to the hospital; too scared to play outside if the pigeon man found him; too scared even to go back home since the night the policemen came by.
He hid beneath his bed when he realized they had come for him and not for one of his mother’s new friends. What did he know about the accident, they asked. His mother was in a deep haze when she opened the door. When she said her boy wasn’t home — even though it was dark and after nine p.m. — she really thought he wasn’t.
Brick had spent every night since then at Laronne’s. His mom didn’t seem to mind. Laronne sent him to school with a lunch packed the same as her boy’s. And they walked to the city bus together every day.
Greg was good at playing big brother. He was, one, bigger than Brick. Two, he had lots of jokes, knock-knocks and booger jokes that he liked to share with Brick. Three, he was quick with his hands, so quick with the tap-on-the-shoulder trick he’d get Brick every time. And four, he knew dozens of ghost stories and monster stories that he told Brick each night in a whisper in the dark of the room that they shared.
Brick took Greg’s ribbing in stride. In fact, he liked it. Not the monster stories so much, but he had scarier things in his dreams already.
“That guy in Atlanta snatched up another kid yesterday,” Greg said.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Page 9