And now I’m feeling even more stupid because I can’t even sit on the front stoop and read and I don’t have any place to go.
It isn’t until I round the corner onto Broadway that I realize I’m still carrying the tamales. I never looked up how to eat them, and they’re probably cold anyway, so I toss the bag in a trash can on the corner.
Broadway is crowded with people and sounds. A group of boys is playing three on three on the sidewalk outside a barbershop, faking left and right, weaving between people passing by, jumping over the heads of their opponents, and letting the basketball roll off their fingers through the bottom rung of a fire escape ladder. Friends cheer and chant for each basket from the hoods of parked cars and seats made of coolers and big, black speakers that vibrate with the same Spanish music that bounces around the alley and in through our apartment windows.
A delivery truck double-parks, and three men jump out and slide crates of food down a metal ramp to the street, load the boxes high onto handcarts, and wheel them to the grocery store. Cabs and buses honk, and drivers gesture out their windows and swerve into the next lane.
A woman on the corner sings a church song from deep in her chest and hands out pamphlets as people walk past.
I try to count all the people on the street, but they’re moving too fast from block to block, and I have to start over three times before I give up.
I pass one of the stores with clothes hanging in the window. There are two racks outside the door on the sidewalk jammed with pants and shirts in no order with a sign that says descuento, and a cardboard box of white socks that come in packages of eight. Inside looks small and dark, and I wonder if it even has dressing rooms. I hear two men in the store speaking in Spanish that’s too fast to catch and I try to remember the lesson from our textbook about buying items. ¿Cuánto cuesta esta camiseta? But everything sounds wrong in my head, and they’d probably respond too quickly for me to understand the answer anyway.
I pretend to look through the clothing on the racks for thirty seconds, then I keep walking before anyone can come out and ask me if I need any help. I can’t go home yet, and walk past hot-and-cold Frankie sulking on the stoop, and back up to apartment thirty-one, where there are too many closed doors, so I just keep going along Broadway.
I pass by the bar where people sit outside on long picnic tables, clinking glasses of beer, and next door there’s a sandwich board sign open on the sidewalk that says Hamilton Heights Café with an arrow pointing down five stairs into a basement. I peek into the café and see people sitting around small tables with steaming mugs. Some stare at laptops, some read and write notes in the margins of their books, some are sitting back with their legs crossed and chatting.
This is the kind of place where I could read Ivan, so I hurry down the stairs and order a big hot chocolate with extra whipped cream from a barista with long hair and a backward baseball hat who says, “Enjoy!” I take out my book and read at a little square table for the whole forty-eight minutes that I have left to be away from the apartment before I’m late.
In my book, the main character, a silverback gorilla named Ivan, is describing his domain in the zoo-themed mall, and I think I know how he feels. He’s the only one of his kind there, and he’s lonely, and has that same missing that rises up.
It isn’t until I look up from page seventy-nine that I realize that this café is different from my building, and different from my school, and different from the street. I hear mostly English, and my skin matches lots of other skin here. And why is a big who-knows because I don’t match fourteen out of fifteen of the people who walk by outside. And I don’t match any of the thirty-three kids in my class.
Frankie is gone from the stoop when I get there. Our cable is hooked up and working, and mounted on the wall outside the kitchen is a landline telephone. And it’s not even cordless. Ten boxes are empty, broken down, and leaning by the door, which means there’s one more, besides my two, that is packed up and tucked away somewhere, and I’m 98 percent certain it’s the Garden box.
And the bedroom door is still closed.
“Rain!” Mom says the second she hears me click open our dead bolt. She stands up from the wires she’s trying to reroute around the bookshelf. “I’m so sorry. We ended up with a different cable package, and I had to—”
“It’s OK.”
“Did you find anything?” Mom asks.
“Just hot chocolate.”
She gives me a big hug. “Oh, my little Raindrop. I love you so,” she says and kind of rocks me back and forth once. Then she holds me out at arm’s length and starts listing all the best shopping spots in the city, and which subways go there, and how she’s already called and knows where every pair of navy blue pants from here to Fifty-Ninth Street is.
Tears sting behind my eyes because I wish she would rock me back and forth one or two more times and repeat, Oh, my little Raindrop, over and over again. I wish she’d just cry so that I could cry too and it wouldn’t feel like we’re a retaining wall holding back soil that just wants to crumble out and is so tired of being packed in tight.
But I know she can’t. She has to hold me out by the shoulders and she has to keep everything packed inside like she has since that night.
“I need ten hours of community service by June eighteenth,” I tell her because it’s the only thing I can think to say.
She points at me and smiles. “I’m on it,” she says.
Chapter 12
That Night
I made my footsteps as quiet as possible, staying up on the balls of my feet as I passed their bedroom. From the bathroom I could see right down the stairs to the front door, where Guthrie had his hand on the knob.
Then we locked eyes, held up our hands, and counted out together silently on our fingers.
One, two, three.
Chapter 13
A Man Named Nestor
“Wakey, wakey!” Mom’s pulling on my toes. “We’re going to church!” And never in my eleven years, four months, and one day have I ever heard my mom say that. And that’s a fact.
In Vermont, what Sundays were for depended on the season. In the winter, Sundays were for skiing. “Closer to God up here anyway,” Dad would say as we’d ride the quad chairlift, side by side by side by side, high up into the mountain. In the spring, Sundays were for tilling, and weeding, and planting. Summer was for barbecues and swimming, and eating vegetables right off the branch. Fall was for harvesting, and canning, and prepping the garden for a long winter. But never once was a Sunday for church.
It’s our first Sunday in New York City and all of a sudden I’m getting up, putting on a new pair of navy blue pants, and buttoning up one of my new white shirts that Mom and I bought yesterday in a neighborhood five subway stops away, but felt like a whole different city. They’re the nicest clothes I have now, and Mom says I can’t wear jeans and a T-shirt to church. This feels way different, way worse, than dirt under my fingernails, and it’s June, so Sundays should be for dirt.
“We’re not going for the service,” Mom says. “We’re going to help cook a meal for the homeless. Community service, remember?” Then she’s hustling off to the kitchen to silence a whistling kettle and I’m thinking about the cracked, bare foot I saw sticking out from the green sleeping bag on Broadway and wondering if that person is still there.
My parents’ bedroom door is closed when I slide into my shoes and I try a secret little message to my dad again. I try telling him that I don’t really want to go to a church either, but I wish he’d come with us anyway.
“Let’s go,” Mom says, and we open the door and click the dead bolt locked.
It’s only three blocks from our apartment, but the whole walk I’m tugging at my shirt and wishing I were wearing overalls and working compost into the soil.
The church has a bell tower that stretches up taller than all the buildings around it. It has high arched windows, and heavy front doors, and old gray stones that look like they belong in a history book.
The music inside soars. It breaks through the heavy doors, pushes against the thick stone walls, and tumbles down the wide front stairs. The sound of hundreds of voices breaking apart and coming together makes my heart beat fast. And I’m thinking that Guthrie would love this.
A few people walking by stop on the street and listen too. Some make imaginary crosses by tapping their forehead, then each shoulder, mumbling a quiet prayer, and closing their eyes.
“Beautiful,” Mom whispers. And we just stand and stare toward the doors, as if we can see the music in the air. And I can tell the voices sing right to my mom’s heart too, because she breathes in so deep I can hear it, and she closes her eyes. But before she really lets the voices sink in too deep, she pulls on my hand. “We’re supposed to meet in the kitchen in the basement.” Then we hustle off around the side of the church, down a set of stairs, and knock on a little red door.
A small woman with gray-streaked hair pulled back in a short braid opens the door, and my mom starts in about how she had called to volunteer.
“Bienvenido, bienvenido. Gracias,” the woman says and waves us in.
She doesn’t speak much English, but we find out her name is Claudia and she pronounces it like the clouds in the sky and I think it’s just as beautiful as the singing that’s tumbling down the front steps of the church.
Claudia speaks in short English sentences, and my mom responds with a couple of words in Spanish.
“Sandwich. Bread.” Claudia points toward a counter and opens a drawer with knives. Then she points to the refrigerator and takes out sandwich meat and cheese.
“Está bien,” Mom replies. “¿Aquí?”
“Yes, yes, sí.”
Before too long we’re making turkey and cheese sandwiches and chopping cucumbers for a salad. Another woman shows up at the little door and hugs Claudia and speaks one-hundred-miles-per-hour Spanish that I can’t catch a word of. Then another arrives with a tray of food that she slides into the oven. There are six of us by the end, and Claudia introduces us to them all. They come here every Sunday. I can tell because of how fast they talk and tight they hug. Today is just our first time, but everyone is as warm as this kitchen, with bread baking and rice simmering and a basket of cookies covered with a red-checked cloth keeping the chocolate chips melty.
Then Claudia asks me to come here and shows me how to stir the soup in a big pot on the stove. I move the wooden spoon in big, slow, clockwise circles and watch the chicken and vegetables follow around and around. Then I switch to counterclockwise and the chicken and vegetables scatter and resist and sink and bob, and it takes a few circles for them to follow their new direction.
It makes me think of Dad, and I wonder if he’s just sinking and scattering and soon he’ll catch on and come out and change his shirt and kiss my forehead like he used to, even if I’m too old for that now.
It’s hard when someone switches your direction on you fast. And that’s a fact.
Before the remembering can rise up too fast, there’s a quiet knock on the door and it creaks open, and this time it’s not someone here to help. It’s someone who needs help.
He’s tall and his shoulders are wide. His face is a map of old lines that’s been folded over and over along the same creases and his hair is tight and gray and curls all over his head, thinning at the top. His clothes are dirty and loose, and he walks favoring his left foot.
He smiles at Claudia and she takes his arm. “¿Como está, Nestor?”
“Can’t complain,” he says, and his voice is as deep and rumbling as the subway trains that pass under our feet on Broadway. I don’t know if Claudia understands his English, but she smiles and nods and pats his arm, leads him to a table and pours him a cup of water.
For one minute I think this might be the person I saw on the street, and I’m relieved that he was just sleeping. But when he sits down I notice his shoes, worn and ripped, plastic bags shoved into holes and taped over, socks loose and brown and sinking below his ankles. The person beneath the green sleeping bag didn’t have shoes.
Now more people are coming through the church basement door. Another older man walks in with a black hat and three layers of T-shirts poking out from the neck of his baggy sweater, then a woman younger than my mom who’s holding the hand of a little girl who’s holding the hand of a teddy bear. The little girl is wearing pajamas with feet and a too-big black jacket.
“Hola, Natasha,” Claudia says, bending down and tucking the girl’s hair behind her ears. The girl smiles and wags her bear, and Claudia gestures toward the tables.
I’m stirring the soup and pouring two ladles full in each bowl like Claudia showed me and I’m feeling uncomfortable in my new white shirt. Mom is spreading mayonnaise on sandwich bread. She gives me a half smile across the kitchen, and I know what it means. This is hard. It’s hard to see people who need. But it’s good we’re helping, and not just to get hours for some piece of paper so I can go on to seventh grade.
Claudia grabs two bowls of soup and gestures for me to do the same, and I follow her out to the tables, where there are now eighteen people waiting for water and sandwiches and soup. They chat with each other or stare off somewhere else; some fold their arms on the table and bury their faces in their sleeves.
I place a bowl in front of Nestor. He looks up. “You’re new.”
I nod.
“I’m old,” he says, and smiles. And it makes me laugh a little, but I stop fast because I don’t want to be laughing at him.
“No, no, laugh out loud, new kid,” he says, and he lets out a big, rumbling laugh, so I laugh again with him and he gets going pretty good but manages to chuckle out, “Old as dirt, I am.”
He puts out his hand. “Nestor.”
I shake it because it’s polite, but his nails are dirty and it’s not because he’s been digging potatoes. “Rain,” I say.
I return to the kitchen and when Nestor’s not looking I wash my hands with lots of soap and it makes me feel terrible. Then I serve the rest of the soup bowls and fill water cups and I watch Nestor as he slurps his soup and takes small bites of his sandwich until it’s all gone.
When everyone leaves, Claudia puts a brown bag of leftovers in each hand. They say thank you and adiós and gracias and see you next week. Mom and I stay to scrub the pots and take out the garbage, and it feels wrong to pull out my community service log and have Claudia sign it, but I have to pass to the seventh grade, so I do.
“Muchas gracias,” she says and when she smiles she has three little wrinkles that reach out from her eyes, lines that my mom calls crow’s-feet. They’re the mark of a kind life, she tells me on the way home. And I hope that I get crow’s-feet when I get old, old like Claudia. Old like Nestor.
Chapter 14
A Deal with Frankie
I get to Mrs. Baldwin’s English class before everyone else and enter on my own because Amelia gets pulled for speech therapy at lunch on Mondays, so we can’t walk in together.
I take out my folder. It feels better to have two hours of community service signed on my log, clothes that match everyone else’s, and new notebooks that aren’t filled with all my classwork from my old school, but I still feel like the only silverback gorilla in a domain that doesn’t quite fit right.
Kids arrive two by two or in groups of three, jumping up to slam the top of the door frame like basketball stars, and laughing about something that I missed. Finally Amelia comes in, and it already makes me feel a little better.
She smiles big and waves when she sees me and sits down at her desk on my right.
Frankie comes in next and slumps into her desk on my left and she’s still not looking in my direction. Amelia raises her eyebrows like What’s wrong with her? and I shrug.
Mrs. Baldwin is calling for attention. Kids are still talking, most in Spanish, and even though I’m really trying, they’re talking too fast for me to pick out all the words I recognize and then make those into a sentence that makes sense, like the word jumble
puzzles Dad used to pull out of the newspaper and help me unscramble until the letters turned into meaning.
I stick my hands in my desk even though I know I haven’t put anything in there, and I feel a piece of paper. It’s crinkled in a ball, so I open it up and flatten it out against my desk. Little jotted notes in two different handwritings fill the page, two different-colored pens, back and forth. I can’t really follow the conversation, even though it’s mostly in English, because it twists down the margin and crams into the corners and has arrows pointing to the back.
Before I can figure out where the notes start, Frankie grabs it out of my hand and crumples it back up into a ball.
“None of your business,” she says, and before I can say sorry, there’s a knock on the classroom door. It’s a tall, dark-skinned man, my dad’s age, with a thick accent that doesn’t sound like our super’s or any of the people’s at the church kitchen. He’s wearing a navy zip-up track jacket and mesh running cap, the kind you can dunk in the stream and put back on your head and your whole body cools down and feels like it can go one more mile. And I’m wondering where runners dunk their caps here in New York City.
“A minute with these three, please,” he says to Mrs. Baldwin. And he’s pointing his long finger at Frankie, then at Amelia. Then at me.
I look behind me and jab my thumb to my chest. “Me?”
“You.”
Frankie grumbles. “Coach . . .”
But he gives her a look that makes her stop. She sighs and takes her time walking to the door. Amelia and I follow.
“I’m Coach Okeke,” he says. “And I hear you can run.”
I nod my head yes, because that’s a fact.
“Frankie’s already on my team, and even though she’s only in the sixth grade, she has a definite shot at winning the 100m at the middle school city championships in a couple of weeks.”
Frankie smiles and puts her hands on her hips.
“And she did have a real shot at winning the 4x100m relay,” he adds.
Right as Rain Page 6