He comes over to me. Cups my chin and gently turns my head up toward him. His eyes are gray-blue like my father’s.
How long has your dad been home?
Two months.
How many conversations have you had with him?
I shrug. We talk at dinner.
My uncle shakes his head. You talk to me at dinner.
You’re like a dad to me, though.
But I’m not him, Haley. I’m not my brother.
I move my head away from his hand, play with the edge of my comforter.
All the questions I could never answer, Haley. That’s your guy—right downstairs. He’s as afraid of you as you are of him.
I don’t say anything.
Cousins.
What? I look up at him.
Don’t you want some cousins to boss around? Some bigheaded boy cousins or some cutie-cute baby girl cousins.
What are you talking about?
The sooner I get out of here, the sooner the ladies will come running. The sooner I’ll find someone and get busy making you some cousins.
Ugh. That’s gross, I say. But I’m laughing. You’re so gross and that’s so TMI.
He holds up the shirt again, looks at it a second, then tosses it on my head. Keep it, he says. I bet it’ll look good on you.
By the time I get it off my head, he’s gone back upstairs.
I close my door, then turn the recorder back on, fast-forwarding. Past Holly and Tiago and more Amari. And then it is me, telling my story for the first time. While my uncle packs. While my dad plays piano. My own voice in the ARTT room then, but in my room now . . . The thing I’ve never told you guys is that my dad’s in prison.
24
My uncle and I had been in the car for more than an hour and were finally out of the city. The tall buildings had shrunk down into trees and long ribbons of wild, dying grass. The sun wasn’t up yet and everything looked like it had been painted in black and dark blue.
Years had passed since that afternoon on the slide. A tiny scar shaped like a Z ran from my hairline down behind my right ear. I reached up and ran my finger along it. My uncle used to say being a parent meant long nights and short years. He said before anyone blinked, kids were grown up, packing their bags and moving on. But some things stayed. The scar. The memory of that day on the slide. My mother’s nails. My voice on the recorder. Esteban’s hug.
I must have slept because when I looked out the window again, we were passing the New Paltz exit and the sun was beginning to rise over the mountains. The sky was burgundy and blue. I’ve only seen the sky this way driving to Malone. It seemed strange that there could be so much color and beauty, and then when you got to Malone everything was tan and gray and black steel bars and wire.
You know they found Esteban’s dad in Florida, I said, staring out the window.
Who?
Esteban. The guy from my class! My friend. They took his dad. Esteban!
My uncle glanced at me and nodded. Oh right. I know who Esteban is, he said. But I didn’t know his dad was gone.
But I thought— And then I remembered. Of course I hadn’t told him. We didn’t talk to anyone outside the ARTT room about the things we talked about inside it. We talked and talked and talked but only to each other. The day before, Ms. Laverne had found the six of us sitting in the corner of the lunchroom, laughing at a character Tiago was mimicking. Even Esteban had thrown his head back and cracked up. We were all huddled into one another, shoulders pressing against shoulders, Holly’s legs thrown over mine.
Immigration took his dad, I told my uncle slowly.
Oh jeez, Haley. I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe this crap is happening right in Brooklyn.
I looked at him and said, Brooklyn’s part of America. I felt tired. Was Esteban awake? Had he gotten another poem? Did they know anything else about what was happening? On Friday he’d looked like he hadn’t slept. He’d kept his head down in class most of the day. I didn’t know how to tell my uncle all of this without getting so sad and feeling like a dumb kid who couldn’t even help her friend.
Hales, I’m so sorry, he said again. What next for them? What’s the plan? Should I reach out to his mother?
His mom is hoping some lawyers can do something. But he said she’s packing. Packing and waiting.
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It suddenly felt like I was betraying Esteban, betraying the ARTT room. My uncle was a grown-up. What did he understand about six kids talking? What did anybody besides me, Tiago, Holly, Amari, Esteban and Ashton understand? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Jeez, my uncle said again.
Yeah, I said. Jeez.
Outside, the farther we got into the mountains, the faster the wind rushed past the car. I leaned against the window. My uncle drove in silence. The mountains went from burgundy to pink to green and brown. The sun, as always, rose.
25
This time, when we got to Malone, my dad came down immediately and hugged me so hard, I thought my shoulder bones would crack. He and my uncle looked so much alike, no one could ever say they weren’t brothers, but now my dad looked so much older. He had dark circles under his eyes and was wearing the glasses with thick black frames that he usually only put on to read.
I just couldn’t get myself down here last time, my dad said. I’m so sorry. I was having one of those days and it turned into the longest month of my life.
I stood there listening to him. I wanted to tell him that when someone drives almost to Canada to see you, you ignore those days. You push past them. I wanted to ask him how come I knew this as a kid and he didn’t know it as a grown-up?
But I didn’t say any of this. I just nodded, said, It’s okay. At least we’re all together now, right? Because that part was true. I thought about Esteban’s father being so far away from him and him not even able to visit.
I looked over at my uncle. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, his feet a little bit apart. He and my father both looked so worried and sad.
I nodded and said, I get it, Dad, because what if next time he didn’t come down again? Or what if the car accident had taken both of my parents from me and he wasn’t even here for me to be mad at? What if my uncle had been in the back seat?
My dad hugged me again. His prison uniform felt the same—stiff against my cheek, familiar as daylight. I had never seen him in anything but those tan khaki pants and a tan shirt with a number on the pocket. After all those years, I should’ve known that number by heart. There was so much I wanted to remember, so many stories. But his number wasn’t one of them. The story of his number was one I’d lock away in a room and write on the door of that memory The End.
26
As we drove home that afternoon, I pulled my braids down over my eyes and thought about Kira’s hands in my hair, the way they felt strong and warm and sure—the tiny point of her comb making straight parts between the braids, the smell of the lavender oil she rubbed into my scalp. I had sat there the way I did every time she did my hair—with my eyes closed and my head tilted down—secretly imagining Kira was my mother. I know that’s stupid. Holly was sitting across from us, talking away and eating pretzels with peanut butter. I imagined my mom had put the bowl where it was between us. I imagined she’d said, You’ve always loved pretzels and peanut butter, Haley. I remember when you were a baby, you grabbed a spoon full of peanut butter out of my hand and shoved it into your mouth. I was so scared. All those stories I’d heard about peanut butter allergies and how babies shouldn’t have it until they were older. I tried to pry your mouth open with my fingers and scoop it out . . .
But it was Kira talking, Kira who had pried Holly’s mouth open. Kira’s fear.
I let out a deep breath and felt my uncle glance over at me.
Tell me about her again, I said. The little bit you know.
About your m
om, right? my uncle said. I figured that’s where you had gone.
I nodded.
I only knew her a short time, he said. By the time Berry and your dad got really serious, I was already away at college. I hardly ever came home. You know our dad didn’t approve, right?
Yeah, I said. But he died before I was born, and you and Dad used some of the money he left you to buy our house. Too bad so sad for him, I guess.
Are you mocking me?
I shook my head. Nope, just saying what you always say. Your dad wasn’t a nice guy. But at least you got to know your mom, even though you were young when she died. I wish I had known mine.
You would have loved her like crazy, Hales, my uncle said. And she would have been over the moon about you. She was over the moon about you.
How many times had he started the story this same way? I knew exactly what he’d say next, and in my head, I said it with him. Your parents loved each other like that romantic movie kind of love. Except it was real. They truly, truly loved each other.
My mother and father had met when they were both at Brooklyn College. My mother was studying to be a nurse and my father wanted to be a teacher. They had some kind of advanced science class together. My uncle was still in high school then. He said my dad told him he’d never even imagined the two of them falling in love. It didn’t even feel like a possibility.
But then it happened, my uncle said. And your dad, when he told me about her, he just said, ‘She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met. You’re gonna love her.’ He didn’t say ‘She’s the most amazing black person I’ve ever met.’ So I was surprised when I first met her.
That’s racist, I said.
Nah, it’s just truth. I was a young knucklehead with a skinny brain. And then I wasn’t anymore.
She changed you, I said. She woke you up.
Both of you woke me up. And keep on waking me up. He tapped my head.
The sun was starting to set and the sky was a bright orange now. Upstate was so different from Brooklyn. There weren’t buildings blocking the sky, and the mountains felt like they were just there to let color slip through them and around them. Just there to help us see it all.
Your mother would always try to pinch my cheek when I first met her, my uncle was saying. ‘You’re such a cutie,’ she’d say every time she saw me! Man, I’d get so mad about it. I mean, it wasn’t like I was some little kid like you—
Hey!
You know what I mean. I was fifteen! Fifteen is almost a man.
Almost, Uncle. Just almost. But not.
She was only five years older than me. I always loved to see her smiling. And it was so easy to make her laugh. He glanced at me.
When you smile, it reminds me of her.
I smiled into the window, trying to imagine my twenty-year-old not-yet-mother pinching my uncle’s cheek. I could see her hands, dark with the bright red polish. But her face and hair were blurred.
She was tall, I said.
Taller than your dad.
And someone in her family had red hair too, I said. But not her.
Red hair on both sides, my uncle said. You were doomed.
I was doomed.
My uncle laughed. Behind his glasses, I could see the lines at the edges of his eyes. Crow’s-feet. That’s what he said people called them. Tiny maps of my life, he’d say.
They were beautiful.
We drove for a while without talking. We were listening to Joni Mitchell—a singer from way back before my uncle was a kid. She was singing about the color green. She had another song about the color blue, but the green song was one of my favorites. Her voice was sweet and high but she could make it do crazy things and hold notes for so long, like, it made your eyes water. My uncle sang along with her. There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes and sometimes there’ll be sorrow.
The story is not complicated. Since that time in the hospital, I’d asked my uncle about it again and again. I was born when my parents were both twenty-six. Then when I was three, they got into a car accident coming back from a party. My dad was driving, and when they got a block away from home, my dad accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake and mowed into a lamppost before swerving the car and hitting the outside wall of a donut shop. It was nearly morning and the streets were empty, so nobody came when he screamed for help. So he stumbled home to get my uncle to help him get my mom out of the car. She won’t move, he kept saying. She won’t wake up! My uncle’s voice gets quiet when he tells that part of the story. My dad’s nose was broken and he had cuts on his hands and arms. My uncle was babysitting me. Before the three of us could get back to the car, the cops pulled up beside us and arrested my dad for leaving the scene of a crime. And for drunk driving.
He kept saying to me, my uncle told me, ‘Go get her. Please go make her wake up.’
My mother was six days away from her thirtieth birthday. But by the time the cops booked my father, my mother had been dead for hours. She will always be twenty-nine.
Sometimes I say the words slowly to myself. Vehicular homicide. It sounds like a hiccup. Or like the first words of a song. It sounds like the promise of something. And then it doesn’t.
Tell me again about the day after the accident, I said.
I told you your mom and dad both had to go away, my uncle said. I told you I’d keep you safe, though. That you didn’t have to worry. And that you’d see your daddy again soon. I told you I loved you and that I’d always take care of you.
And I asked you who would take care of me all day, and you said, ‘We’re good, Red. I can do it.’
That I did.
That’s what you used to call me. Before I made you stop.
Yup.
And I said, ‘Does that mean I’m white now?’
My uncle smiled. You sure did. And I said nope.
You said I’d always be half white and half black.
And that until it turned gray, you’d always have red hair.
Tell me again how I made you stop calling me Red.
You said, ‘My name is Haley, not Red!’ And not quietly either. My uncle laughed. I’d never heard you have so much conviction before that day.
I thought about Amari calling me Red and how I didn’t mind it so much when he said it.
And what did you think about how I said it?
I thought, I’m raising a strong brave girl. I’m doing something right.
I leaned across the car and rested my head against his arm. Sometimes I don’t feel so brave. Sometimes I just feel scared.
I know, he said. That makes two of us.
27
You think he’s coming back? Ashton asked. I don’t know his phone number or anything.
It was Thursday and Esteban had been absent the whole week. The five of us sat in the corner of the cafeteria, not touching our food, while rain slammed against the windows.
Ms. Laverne said she’s trying to find out what’s happening, Holly said. But the number the school has for him is disconnected.
Yeah, Amari said. Esteban doesn’t have his own phone. Remember I used to let him play games on mine? Amari stopped talking and shook his head. I mean, not I used to. He always plays games on mine. That’s what I meant to say. And when he gets back to school, I’m gonna keep letting him do it.
But—, I started to say.
No buts, Red. You have to think positive.
I don’t think he would move away without saying goodbye to us, Ashton said. We’re his friends.
But they take people, Tiago said. In the night. In the morning. They just take them. Like they took his dad. So what if they came in the night and took E and his family.
But they can’t, Ashton said. Esteban and his sister, both of them were born here.
I know . . . right? Amari said. He looked around the cafeteria. It was loud with th
e sound of trays banging and kids yelling. Someone blew a whistle and for a moment everything went silent. But then a boy at the far end of the cafeteria held up the whistle he had blown and it was like someone turned on the sound again. I watched a teacher go over to him and take the whistle away.
His dad wrote good poetry, Holly said.
Writes, I said. He writes good poetry. They’re not dead, guys.
It just sucks, Amari said. Here we are, trying to have the ARTT room, and boom, it gets messed up like this. I mean, Esteban, he’s cool. He’s nice. He makes us . . . the six of us. It’s not fair.
Nah, it’s not, Holly said. This is supposed to be America. The land of the free and the home of the brave.
Amari was drinking milk and he laughed so hard, it came spraying out of his mouth and nose all over the table and Holly.
So gross! Holly said. Oh my God! You are so, so gross! She wiped her shirt and hands with a tissue. Milk sprinkled her sandwich, so she pushed her whole tray away.
My bad, Amari said, but he was still laughing.
Then he stopped and looked at us all. I got one word for you, Amari said. Lenape.
What about them?
You think they were somewhere saying, ‘Well, this is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave’? Nah, man. They were here in Lenapehoking, aka New York City, getting robbed. They were getting gangstered by the so-called settlers. You miss that whole history lesson?
Holly glared at him. No, I didn’t miss that whole history lesson, she said, mocking him.
Then how you going to be trying to erase them? You’re doing the same thing the people who took E’s dad are doing. Up here trying to erase people.
No I’m not! Holly yelled. We got quiet. Amari looked around the cafeteria. People were staring at us. One of the eighth-graders who had necked Ashton gave us the finger, and Tiago, Amari and Ashton jumped out of their seats and lurched toward him. But the boy put up his hands in an all’s-cool way and they sat back down. Ashton’s neck was back to its pale skinny self. There was something both heartbreaking and awesome about that big boy being scared of some fifth/sixth grade special kids.
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