“Enough of that talk at the dinner table,” Laronne’s husband, David, said.
Brick made a note to himself: Be careful of the pigeon man and of the child snatcher.
Laronne’s son snatched at Brick with a monster sound. “Arrghhhh.”
Brick jumped and coughed as milk caught in his throat.
“I said that’s enough,” David yelled. “You’re not gonna stop until your roughhousing chokes the boy to death. And no more talk of that evilness. He’s not just a child snatcher. He’s a child killer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dinner continued in silence until there was a knock at the door.
Laronne went to answer it. When Brick heard Laronne call the visitor “sir” and then “officer,” he fled the table.
“My stomach hurts,” he said and ran to the bathroom. He could hear the police officer introduce himself. “We understood you might be able to help with the investigation of Nella Fløe and her children. I want to go over some information with you.”
“Have you found the boyfriend yet? He’s been missing since it happened.”
“We’re checking into it. We haven’t found him.”
“You know,” Laronne said. “Brick is the one you should be talking to. He lives a couple of floors below Nella and the kids. He said he saw a man up there that day. Brick?” Laronne shouted. “Brick?” she called again. “He’s here — he’s visiting.”
“That the boy said something in the newspaper?”
“That’s him,” she said. “Sweet boy.”
“Can’t imagine what it’s doing to him to have seen that,” the officer said. “It took a bit to find him cause of the different name. We went to talk to him a few days ago. His mama said he wasn’t home, but sure didn’t seem like she could figure out what was up or down the way she looked.”
Laronne knocked on the bathroom door. “Brick, you okay?”
Brick opened the door slowly. “Yes?”
“Baby can you come tell the police officer what you saw?”
Laronne had not asked him about the accident since the day in the stairwell. He considered it their secret, a special bond — what he knew, what he didn’t tell.
“You can tell him,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid of that man.” Brick was thinking of the pigeon man and how easy it would be for the pigeon man to find him. He was thinking of what the pigeon man told him to say. He was thinking of Roger’s confession: But he couldn’t imagine Roger’s hands like that — pushing a boy, a woman, or a girl — just to see how they’d fly. But he had said: “Maybe I did it.” Thinking of all these things, he wasn’t sure who to blame.
“You saw a man on the roof? How tall was he, son? Was he black? White? What?” the policeman asked.
Brick shrugged.
“Well, how is he going to know that — when the man wasn’t but a speck standing so high up?” David said watching Brick.
“Sir, these are standard questions. We’re trying to get an idea of who we’re looking for. Son, do you know?”
“Yes,” Brick said and then tried to describe a man he’d never seen. “About six feet tall … orange hair.” He stopped. But that was someone he did see, he thought. That was the man at the bottom of the stairs the day after the accident. It was funny how imagination worked. He could make up the description of a man only by thinking of men he’d seen. “I mean maybe it was an orange hat. A ski cap. And a blue shirt. He looked like maybe he was mean,” Brick said. The officer wrote down every word he said. It was easy this imagining thing.
“What else can you remember? Any other details?”
Brick thought of what else he could say. “Big ring on his finger. Tall. White?”
“Sounds like a punk we talked to last week,” the officer said.
“The pigeon man?” Brick asked.
“He the guy you saw?”
“Doug,” Laronne interrupted. “He must mean the boyfriend. He had red hair,” Laronne says.
“Anything else son?”
“No sir.”
“Is that all? Can you tell us what happens next?” Laronne asked as the officer put his notebook away.
“Look, ma’am,” he said, “We don’t have much to go on here. And nobody wants to be right about this any way you cut it.”
“But we have to still try to find out,” Laronne said. “Don’t we have to find out why?”
THE NEXT MORNING when Brick saw the school bus coming, he said to Laronne’s boy, “I forgot my homework. I gotta go back.”
As the bus sped away, Brick ran. He ran the ten blocks to his building’s courtyard and looked up toward the window that was his own.
He was certain he saw his mother’s hand drag the curtain closed. He kept looking up at that closed window until he heard the voices of boys behind him, running to catch the bus like he should have been. He had been looking up all this time. Nothing fell from this sky.
Laronne
When Laronne went to the hospital again, she saw a heavy-set black woman rocking in the chair next to the girl’s bed.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Laronne said touching the woman’s shoulder.
The woman looked up at her blankly.
“I packed up the apartment,” Laronne said. “I’d be happy to send the boxes to you if you want.”
The woman stared at her.
“Those boxes have Rachel’s things,” Laronne said, pointing at the two boxes she had brought a few days earlier. “I thought she might … well.” Laronne paused. “The rest of the things — they’re boxed up and ready to go. I hope that’s okay. I wanted to help. I was her mother’s boss.”
“Her mother … That don’t describe what that woman was. Nothing describes her. I don’t want nothing of that woman’s. You keep it. You can throw it out.”
The woman went back to rocking and stroked the girl’s hair. “You gonna be alright. Doris is gonna make it all right now.”
Brick
At the bus station two nights later, with the money he found and the money he stole from his mother’s coat, purse, and coin jar, Brick had enough to buy his ticket out of town.
“Kansas City, huh?” said the bus driver as he took his ticket.
“Yes, sir.” It was as far as his money could get him.
He had looked at the map in the school library like Roger would, seeing targets and enemy territory. At first he’d picked the largest dot on the map that he could find farthest away from Chicago — Los Angeles.
But then Laronne told him that the fuzzy-haired girl with the blue blue eyes was going to a hospital in Portland, Oregon, soon. Did he know where that was?
Brick sat in a seat close to the front. He had packed a toothbrush, a T-shirt, and Roger’s harmonica. He’d saved the cookies and apples from his free lunch the last couple of days and bought the biggest bag of sunflower seeds in the corner grocery store.
Sitting there on the bus, Brick felt heroic. Wouldn’t the girl with the fuzzy hair and the blue blue eyes be surprised when she saw him? It would go like this: Hi, my name’s Brick. I used to live downstairs. I met your dad, and he said tell you this. And Brick would launch into the story that Roger told him and then play her the song. Hum. Mmmm. Hum.
TO-KANSAS-CITY WAS A long bus ride, and Brick was happy to get off. For the next week he hunted for lost coins and empty soda bottles to find a way to buy the ticket the rest of the way. He hid the first couple of nights behind the stairs at the Y and then in an old boxing gym near the bus station. He had learned the art of invisibility. Stay quiet. Nod yes. Speak only when spoken to.
He wasn’t used to this city’s sounds. The drunks — who in the day were students or bankers or clerks in the stores — came home when the streets were empty and slammed the bike storage door loud enough to wake him most nights. Sometimes he’d wake to the sounds of the small scenes that spilled out onto the street in front of the massage parlor when one of the regular old men didn’t get his regular girl, or the sounds of barking dogs when the yo
ung men finally exited the bar down the street.
The sounds from the street alarmed him less than those of his dreams. He was happy when he could wake up before screaming. This night he didn’t. His scream attracted the attention of a young woman and man — who had taken refuge in the gym too.
“Damn kid, you nearly made me pee myself,” the man said.
“You thought it was a monster! Ha ha,” the young woman laughed mocking him. “He’s a kid. He’s just a kid.”
“What you doing here, kid? Go away.”
Brick was paralyzed.
“If you got something to pay us with, you can stay.”
“What?” Brick asked.
“Rent. This is our spot. You can stay if you got some rent money.”
Brick figured he was only a day or so away from having enough coins to buy another bus ticket. He’d exchanged the money he’d collected for bills and stuffed it into his sock — a trick he once saw one of his mother’s friends do with a knife. Please, please, he thought. He couldn’t spend any more time looking for a place to sleep. And he didn’t have money to spare.
“Leave him alone,” the woman said. Brick could see she came from money. She had straight teeth, and around her neck she wore a gold chain with a pearl. But she was dressed the same as other runaways he’d seen hanging out by the bus station and downtown. Her youth looked rubbed down — smudged like her black eyeliner. He knew they were junkies and meant no harm. Like his mother, they just needed their fix to go on.
“I don’t have any money,” Brick said.
When the young man started toward him, Brick cowered instead of running. He made himself a heavy weight, but not heavy enough for the young man not to lift him upside down and shake him the way the older neighborhood kids did for sport and for change. Everything in Brick’s pockets — a marble, the newspaper story, and his harmonica — fell to the ground. The stash in his sock didn’t shake free. The man set him down.
Brick hiked his jeans up. He straightened his sweat jacket on his small shoulders. “That’s all you got?” the man said examining the marble, the newspaper clipping, and the harmonica.
Brick nodded.
Turning to the girl, holding the harmonica high, the man said, “What you think we could get for this?”
“You can’t get shit for that. But if we had a monkey could play it, we’d be rich and high and happy.” She laughed at her own joke.
“Hey, monkey.” Brick knew the young man meant him. “You play.”
Was it a question or an order?
The young man hit Brick on the head hard enough for Brick to stumble.
“Play.” It was no question. The young man handed Brick the harmonica.
Brick played the tune that Roger taught him, slowly. He played the soul of who he was. It was as if the harmonica could sound without his breath. It breathed without lungs.
“Nice job, monkey. I’m gonna let you stay here tonight, and tomorrow you go with us up to by the highway. Bet you’ll score us something good.”
“He’s so cute.” The young woman chuckled each time she spoke.
“You see it?” the young man said turning to her. “It puts on a sad monkey face and plays that thing. Girl, we’re gonna be set. People gotta help us if we have a kid.” They kissed then, a long nasty kiss that made the young woman press herself against the young man.
Brick wasn’t a monkey or an it, but he felt like one until the woman looked directly at him that moment and said, “It looks scared. Are you scared?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m nineteen. My name’s Lisa.”
“He doesn’t need to know names. He needs to keep his monkey ass in check.”
“Come here, monkey,” the woman named Lisa said.
Brick took steps so small toward her the distance was like a tightrope walk.
“You like to cuddle don’t you, monkey? Come on here by me.”
Her arm was around him and she nestled his face onto her chest, pressing him against her partially bare breast.
“That’s my tittie, monkey. Don’t get ideas,” the man said.
“He’s scared,” Lisa said. “He won’t be able to play if he’s scared.”
“Give him this.” The young man handed Lisa a small white pill. “That’ll keep him rested.”
Brick took the pill from Lisa. Swallowed. After a few minutes he got a soft melting feeling, then a melted feeling.
“You look like you could use some love,” Lisa said. She pet his head and caressed his shoulder. “You go to sleep little monkey. We got a big day ahead.”
Rachel
Grandma’s garden’s dying and the mad look on her face stays there all the time.
At night Grandma sits in her rocking chair on the porch where she can see the men who lean into passing cars. Everyone knows they’re selling drugs, but the police don’t stop them. I tell Grandma it’s dangerous to be out there at night, but she won’t listen.
When Grandma sits out there, she talks at the top of her voice to nobody in particular about pride. About the way black folks used to care about more than loud thumping music and gold chains. She’s only so bold when she’s drinking the sherry Miss Verle brings.
IN HIGH SCHOOL I still don’t have a best friend, even though I know how to answer the questions differently now.
I’m black. I’m from northeast Portland. My grandfather’s eyes are this color. I’ve lived here mostly my whole life. I’m black. I’m black, I know.
I spend a lot of time reading at the library that’s next to the high school. There’s a new black literature section. It’s four whole shelves. I found one book of poetry about a girl who has a white father and a black mother. I have never read anything like that before. And I’m reading the book that Drew gave me, Black Skin, White Masks. But I’m not so sure I agree with what it says. There is a chapter called “The Man of Color and the White Woman.” Just that title makes me mad. I can’t explain why. The book uses the word Negro like they did in the old days. Jesse Jackson wants us to be African-American now. I don’t know if this is a good idea. I don’t know any black people who have even been to Africa. It’s like calling me Danish-American even though I’ve never been to Denmark. But at least I speak Danish. I don’t know a single black person who speaks Swahili or any of those other African things they speak. Then there’s page 173: “Wherever he goes, the Negro remains a Negro.” That makes me think of how the other black girls in school think I want to be white. They call me an Oreo. I don’t want to be white. Sometimes I want to go back to being what I was. I want to be nothing.
Grandma keeps saying what I need to study is typing. That way I can work in a nice office one day. “A pretty girl’s gonna go somewhere. Now that’s a fact. Long as she keeps that pretty to herself and then her husband.” Miss Verle agrees with Grandma. She says a pretty girl can take aim at whatever she wants and have it — even something like a good office job. Grandma and Miss Verle think secretary when they say this; they think of it as something good. Grandma thinks she’s dreaming big when she says I can have a three-bedroom house on Albina or Killingsworth or maybe near Irving Park (she calls it Irvington), and a husband, and a Toyota that has the new-car smell. She wants me to be able to buy whatever I want at the Fred Meyer without paying attention to what vegetable is on sale and without worrying about bringing double coupons. She thinks a shopping spree at Meier & Frank for a Sunday hat and a new church dress every few months is living in style.
Grandma sees these things when she talks about them and gestures with her hands like she’s painting brush strokes in the air. The way Grandma paints her dream for me, there’s a low sky.
Grandma’s dreams come from hearing about Up North when she was growing up in Texas on a farm, on a road that had no name. Grandma’s dream is bigger than her life. I guess at Mor’s dreams: having a husband, a family, love. That’s the way I would list them. But then I think about it again — her dream maybe was feeling the wa
y she felt with Doug, the way she would smile easy, she would laugh easy, she would play. At least at first. Then the sky in her dream got low too.
Sometimes I think Grandma and Mor are two sides of the same coin. They are two sides of a coin that I can hold in my hand at the same time.
I KNOW I am not interesting to Grandma anymore — what with my new ways. My new ways are back talk. I call it explaining. My new ways are wearing my shirts too tight. I call it fashion. My new ways are paying too much attention to boys. I call it being lonely.
There’s a new boy at our high school named John Bailey. He’s a basketball player. He’s very tall and very handsome and the same color brown as Pop. John Bailey knows that I am black. The first thing John Bailey said to me was “You must be the prettiest girl in the Jack & Jill here.”
I guess you could say he’s my boyfriend now. He likes the shirts I wear.
The first time I kissed John Bailey it was in the back hallway by the gym. The second time I kissed John Bailey it was in his basement room laying down.
Kissing John Bailey felt real good. It was like everything that’s the outside me — the me that people see — made all of what is really me feel really good. When John Bailey touches me, I know this is the skin I want to be in. Sometimes, when his mom works nights and he doesn’t have basketball practice, I go to his house after school.
When I come home late, I tell Grandma I was at the library.
“Fast girls go to the library too,” she says, and it is like she is looking right into the center of me.
“Okay, Grandma.” I’m caught. How does she know?
“Don’t do what your mama did. Some people ain’t figured to take care of babies. Specially some people, like your mama — hoing herself to that no-count man.”
Grandma never mentions my mother.
“It ain’t respectable. Don’t be like your mama — sniffin around life like the only nose you’ve got is the one between your legs.”
So this is the part of me that is Mor? It is the part of me that wants to be touched. It is the part that makes me want someone to touch me.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Page 10