“You didn’t know the good parts of my mother,” I say, and I hope that I won’t cry.
“A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing,” Grandma says. “You never know when she’ll throw away a piece you may need. Your mama was a crazy lady.”
And then I yell at Grandma, like I’ve never yelled at her, or at anyone before. I say, “You’re a damn lie — that newspaper story proves it. My mom didn’t do a damn thing!”
MOR WALKED US up three flights of stairs to the roof. She carried Ariel in her arms. Robbie and I, we followed two steps behind. Mor had taken us up to the roof three times that week — each time closer to the edge.
On the evenings on the rooftop, Mor wrapped her arms, like wings, around our shoulders and breathed onto our necks to keep us warm. Robbie and I fought about who got to crawl on her lap.
Mor hadn’t seemed right that last week since the fight with Doug. Robbie had gone without his pills for two days; Ariel’s diaper was often wet. Mor’s blue eyes had faded into a fuzzy stare. Her long blond hair fell in limp strands. And when she spoke, I could see the space for the tooth she lost in the fight with her boyfriend. I didn’t want to be like her anymore; I didn’t want her smooth white skin.
“YOU WEREN’T THERE. You don’t know what happened,” I say. “Up on the roof, there was a man.”
Laronne
From the rooftop Laronne could see the puddle where the shrine had been. The swing set — repaired to draw attention from what should be a grave — shone too new. Tattered yellow police tape clung stubbornly to a bench leg.
To come up here, to the rooftop, Nella must have imagined she was going to a place like any other place on a map, Laronne thought.
To climb the flight of stairs with a baby in her arms and her two children in tow. One flight, then two. Nella must have thought she was going somewhere.
Laronne had spent many nights reading through Nella’s diaries. She could almost hear Nella’s soft voice in her ear as she read.
In the last two journals — the ones she had written since she came to the U.S. — Nella’s voice sounded more like a plea. One entry that was undated, Laronne knew, must have been from two weeks ago: “Never have I been thinking of my children as black. How to learn all these things that might hurt them? I want to pull out my tongue if I made them sad … It makes me so sad I said those things to them. I want them to know how much I love them. I love them and will keep them safe.” The words haunted Laronne.
Two weeks before the accident, Laronne had complimented Nella on her new scarf.
“Why thank you,” Nella responded with a fake British accent copying Laronne’s own silly talk: “I’m going to have tea with the queen,” Laronne would say like a true Brit when complimented.
“Now did your special fellow give that to you?” That day Laronne’s voice was high like she was talking to her two cats. It was a note away from a tickle.
“Nope.” Nella had laughed as if she had been tickled. “It’s from my little jigaboos.” She said it with all love.
“Your?” Laronne paused.
“My little jigaboos. That’s what Doug calls them. It’s so cute.”
“Nella. Don’t say that again. It’s not cute.”
The first time Laronne heard the word — the first time it was directed at her — she wasn’t even ten years old. Nigger, jigaboo — they were the same. The words came so fast she barely understood that it was language. She was waiting for the bus after the city spelling bee finals. Out in the second round because she spelled fugitive with an a, it was time to go home. Still she felt good and full of herself. She was wearing her older cousin’s hand-me-down pants (a little on the short side)—but they were store-bought not handmade, a fuzzy sweater she thought she would keep forever, and a warm blue winter coat — double-breasted. Next time, she thought, I’ll study more words.
Who knows why children decide to bully another. It started with kicking up dirt on Laronne. The white boys not much bigger — not much older — waited at the same bus stop with her in the good part of town. Kicking up dirt, you know the way they do. Like it was just an accident. “Oops sorry.” And then they would laugh.
Laronne had been taught to ignore bullies. But as the boys got louder, they kicked the dirt and laughed and laughed harder, and they said, “Oops, sorry, highwater girl.” “Oops, sorry, ugly face.” “Sorry, straw head.” “Sorry, jigaboo.” “Sorry, nigger.” And then it was nigger, nigger, nigger sung and shouted like a Top 40 pop song. Nigger, nigger, nigger, jigaboo.
Laronne’s mother had her own story of “The First Time I Was Called a Nigger.” Her father did too. These stories were passed down to Laronne when it happened to her that day. They did not help her stop crying. They did not soothe.
“Nigger. Nella, it means nigger.”
“Oh goodness. Oh my goodness,” Nella had said. “Oh goodness, no — I didn’t know. Oh, I knew about the other word …”
“Nigger?” Laronne said it again as if she were preempting Nella from saying it.
“Oh, that’s a terrible word. I …”
“It’s the same thing.” Laronne’s voice had more anger in it than she meant.
“I didn’t know,” Nella had said again, in almost a whisper. “Do you think, Laronne — Laronne do you think the kids know? Is it something you would just know … the word?”
Laronne didn’t know how to answer. “Nella, they know you love them.”
“But I don’t ever want them to think — to think I’d let anything hurt them.”
“They know.”
“I want them to really know.”
And like a flash, a second thought, Nella had said: “I don’t think Doug meant — means that.” But the way Nella had said it, Laronne thought she didn’t seem so sure. Whatever authority that was in Nella’s voice came from a desire to believe — not belief — that the man she left her marriage for wasn’t the worst thing she could have wished on her kids.
THESE WHITE GIRLS think all they need is love.
What might Nella have seen that day? Not tall buildings, or city streets, not the treeless courtyard below. Try hard as she might, Laronne couldn’t sweep away the view. But Nella must have.
What must Nella have seen? Not the ground, but an expanse. It was this step and then another, then another. This was what Nella saw. This was what Nella did. She was journeying to where her love was enough, and it could fill the sky.
Nella
Day 759. I wanted a drink today. But I didn’t. What did I do? Laronne told me today about the word Doug says — I do not want to write it down. I did not know. I don’t think they know what it means. Never have I been thinking of my children as black. How to learn all these things that might hurt them? I want to pull out my tongue if I made them sad. I don’t think Doug understands the meaning. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t know how to ask him. He is coming home soon. He says he is not drinking. I am not sure. When I come home from work, he sleeps on the couch. Then he goes hanging out with his friends. It makes me so sad I said those things to them. I want them to know how much I love them. I love them and will keep them safe. My children are one half of black. They are also one half of me. I want them to be anything. They are not just a color that people see.
Rachel
“If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”
That’s Grandma’s way of cursing when she sees the porch window’s broken.
“Lord have mercy if our people ain’t just gonna do ourselves in.”
We don’t know for sure, but it’s Drew’s best guess that one of the kids who hangs out on the corner threw a rock to scare us. They’re tired of Grandma’s loud talk from the porch. It makes Grandma mad, but also sad that the neighborhood has changed so much.
“Them closing the drive-through dairy was one thing,” Grandma says. “But not feeling safe in your own home … It was the best of the best black folk living around here when I first come. And the rest of them hard workers, mostly from the shipyards �
� not like them kids ruinin things just to get some new sneakers. Look at us now.”
Even I can see it. Things just aren’t the same. Across the street Mrs. Lewis put bars on her windows, and the neighbor next door got a big dog. There have been three break-ins on this street in the last month. On the block where there was a real grocery store, now there’s just a convenience store, a liquor store, a church, and a place that you can buy hair. The closest grocery store is a twenty-minute bus ride away. And someone spray-painted graffiti on the Alberta Street community center mural of the Reverend Martin Luther King. My ex-friend Tracy used to say I lived in the ghetto, which made me think of the TV show Good Times. A ghetto has tall buildings and empty lots, trash all over the street and city noise. Here the houses are two stories; the houses have trees in front and everyone has a yard. I always told Tracy she was wrong, but now I think Tracy was right. The ghetto looks different in different places, but if you live there, it makes you feel the same.
“Miss Doris, don’t you worry,” Drew says. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Now how am I gonna leave this child alone knowing those hooligans tryin to get me?”
Grandma’s bags have been packed for two days. She’s going on the train to Seattle for the church convention.
“How about if I stay on, Miss Doris?” Drew says. He offers to sleep on the couch and see to it that I’m fed and safe at night while she’s gone. At first Grandma says she can’t let Drew do that.
“Go on. Things’ll be fine. Now let me call somebody see if I can get this here patched up.”
Grandma looks at me real stern and says, “Now don’t be giving Drew no trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
IT’S STRANGE TO have Drew stay over. I’m in bed with the door a little bit open. I can hear the television show he’s watching. If I scoot to the top of the bed, I can see the top of his head through the open sliver of the door.
It makes me think: No man has slept in this house since the day Pop left to go to the air force. And that’s been a long time now.
I settle down into the blankets and close my eyes. I’ll be safe tonight. I won’t be alone.
I think I would like it if Drew lived here full-time because he makes French toast for breakfast. I have two slices and he has four. He doesn’t ask me why I hold the fork and knife in opposite hands while I eat. (It’s the Danish way.) And when I say, “Tak for mad” — which is what you say after a meal — he says, “Well, alright,” and smiles. When he’s done eating, he makes a fake burp and pats his pushed-out stomach, making it round. He’s not all about formality like Grandma.
Drew reads not just one, but three newspapers during breakfast: the Oregonian and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He starts with the front page, then reads almost every page to the end like he’s reading a book. He doesn’t read the comics like Grandma does. Drew isn’t interested in the funnies. He wants to know about what’s happening in the world. He has all kinds of things to say about our times, like how racial injustice is worse than when he was growing up, how apartheid has to end real soon and Nelson Mandela must be free, how the government doesn’t care about these new drugs like crack taking over our neighborhoods; how ketchup can’t be a vegetable to anybody; and how he never thought he’d live to see the day that the young brothers would be killing each other over tennis shoes.
He goes on and on. “And what does it matter?” he says today. He’s reading a story about a protest that happened downtown yesterday. About a month ago, an Ethiopian man was killed over in Southeast by a bunch of skinheads, wearing swastikas. They chased the man down and beat him to death with a bat.
“Even if the Ethiopian kid threw the first punch, it’s no reason to beat the boy to death with a bat,” Drew says as if he’s talking to me, but really he’s talking to himself out loud. “Mark my words: Lines are being drawn.”
I nod my head. He talks about the news this way, like he’s in a conversation with the world, but it’s really just himself. I pay attention. I know he wants me to listen in.
FOR THE MOST part, the weekend goes on like it normally does. I go to the library. I watch some TV. It’s normal but also special that Drew’s here.
Tonight Drew’s going out and I have to “hold down the fort” by myself for a couple of hours. He’s running the shower so long it would make Grandma tap her remote control on her bedroom wall. You can tell how steamy Drew’s shower water is by the drips of dew that are collecting on the bottom of the doorframe. Not that I’m looking or anything, but also there’s a powerful soap scent coming from the room. It smells like the woods only clean. Drew smells as good as a homemade loaf of bread.
He gets dressed in all black for a concert by a singer I’ve never heard of. “Etta James? You’ve never heard of Etta James?”
“No, sir.”
“You ever heard the blues?”
“Kind of.” And I think if he means like some old black guys on a porch with guitars then I have seen that on TV.
“Kind of?” he asks, and he gets into the low part of his voice like Deacon James. “The blues ain’t something you could kind of know.”
“Well, is it like jazz? My mom used to listen to jazz.”
“Young lady, we’ve got to get you schooled. You’re going with me tonight.”
“Sir, I can’t go. It’s a bar.”
“It’s a restaurant too. And I’m not doing any drinking,” Drew says. “It’ll be fine. We just won’t mention it to Miss Doris. Come on. Go get dressed.”
A special date with Drew calls for a special outfit — not church clothes but as close to grown-up woman clothes as I can get. So I wear a black sweater that used to be Aunt Loretta’s, a black skirt, high heels, and a purple brooch that Grandma found beneath her seat on the bus one day.
THE RESTAURANT IS smoky and dark. Everyone seems to know Drew’s name. We sit close to the stage.
“This okay?” Drew asks.
Of course, everything’s okay. I smile.
We sit for a few moments listening to the band warm up. “Rachel, you’re sure these are good seats? I can’t hear myself think.”
“Maybe because I can only hear half of everything,” I shout back at him, pointing to my deaf left ear.
Drew squints his eyes and cocks his head to the side. He’s a big question mark. And I wonder what he really knows. I know when people ask how it was I came to live with her, Grandma says, “Her mama couldn’t do right by her.” And no one ever asks where Pop has gone.
I’m not going to explain to Drew what I mean because I like thinking of myself this way: like nothing is wrong with me at all. I wave my hands to say “never mind” and turn to look at the stage again.
That’s when the waitress with red-orange lipstick and braids piled on top of her head comes over. She leans over Drew a little too close, I think, and kisses him closer to his mouth than his cheek.
“Who you got with you?”
“This is Lo’s niece.”
“Well, bless your heart.”
“I’m looking out for Rachel for the weekend while her grandmother is gone.”
“Lord have mercy and takin her to a place like this is what you call lookin out?” I look around when she says this. This is a restaurant, just like Drew says, but more of a bar or a lounge. There is no one here even near my age.
“She’ll be fine. She’s incorruptible. She’s got a good head on her shoulders too.”
“So what can I get you, sweetie?” the waitress asks.
ETTA JAMES IS stuffed together like Grandma — a big, squishy capsule — and she’s light-skinned like me. She’s got the gravel to her voice when she sings the loud parts (and the parts that are kind of nasty too). She also has that soft spot in her voice when she sings songs that are about being lonely and sad.
The last song, which is an encore, is a long, slow song. I clap and clap. And stand and clap. I want to say this the way Grandma would if she agreed: I like me some Etta James! It feels lik
e it’s the only way to say it to make the meaning good.
Drew laughs.
“I wish Lakeisha could appreciate the things you do. I know it’s been hard on her, me not being around. But that girl’s got no interest in nothing but trouble. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. It’s all I can do. I try to be there for her: phone calls, letters. Those are just words. And she’s so grown. Just not grown up. Lord, help her.”
It’s like I’m not there as Drew says this, because I can tell that he’s sad and I don’t know what to say to make him feel better. Me, personally, I think Lakeisha’s not too smart. Because if I had a dad like Drew I’d make sure he was proud of me. I’d make sure he knew that I liked having him around.
When we get home to Grandma’s house, everything I notice is what is different about Drew being here. His blanket’s bunched up on the couch, and his bag is halfway hidden beneath the coffee table. And the other thing I notice is not something you can see, but a feeling. It’s that feeling Mor called hyggeligt. It means something like comfort and home and love all rolled into one. That feeling went away when Aunt Loretta died, but somehow, it’s here tonight.
AFTER I BRUSH my teeth, I go to the living room to say thank you and good night.
“You’re welcome,” Drew says. “Sleep tight.”
“So, I guess I know what the blues is now,” I say smiling.
“Oh, yeah?” There’s a smirk on Drew’s face, not like he wants to laugh at what I’m going to say, but he’s going to pay attention real close. “What do you know?”
“Well, I would explain the blues this way: Like for me, I imagine inside of a person there’s a blue bottle, you know?”
I feel shaky when I say this but also good. I’ve never told anyone about the blue bottle before.
“Yeah?”
“The bottle is where everything sad or mean or confusing can go. And the blues — it’s like that bottle. But in the bottle there’s a seed that you let grow. Even in the bottle it can grow big and green. It’s full of all those feelings that are in there, but beautiful and growing too.”
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Page 11