Behind You

by Jacqueline Woodson

  Some mornings, I sit on my stoop and look at the Times, see the way the world is stopping and the way it just keeps moving on. Amazing how it keeps moving on. Amazing how people can melt themselves into each new day.

  This morning, Nelia was sitting across the street on her stoop. Used to be our stoop.

  The wind was blowing hard. It’d been cold last night and the day felt like it was trying to warm up but not doing a good job at it. Nelia was leaning over her writing. Her hair was getting longer and it sort of fell down a bit over her face in a way I’d never seen it do. Miah’s death had added some years to her and thinned her up. At some angles she looked like the Vassar girl I’d fallen in love with years and years ago. Then she looked like an older, more beautiful version of the woman I’d walked away from. I closed my eyes. Miah’d never understood how two people could stop loving each other and I’d never known how to explain.

  After a while of watching Nelia, I took a deep breath, folded the paper under my arm, got up from my stoop and crossed the street.

  How many years had it been since I’d crossed that street—three, four, nine? Even after Miah died, I still didn’t go back into that house. I’d offered to help clean out his room, but Nelia had said no, said she’d take care of it. Now here were my feet, one stepping in front of the other, and me moving closer and closer to Nelia’s stoop.

  The block is silent as a stone. It feels like somebody far away is watching. And waiting to see what happens.

  Ellie

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, MARION SHAKES ME AWAKE. MY throat hurts and I’m not sure where I am.

  “You were screaming,” she says.

  I blink, look around my room.

  “Someone shot Miah,” I whisper, pressing my hand to my throat. “I dreamed someone shot Miah.”

  Marion stares at me and shakes her head. She leaves and a few minutes later, she’s back, pressing a warm cloth to my forehead.

  “I dreamed . . .”

  “Shhhh, Elisha,” she whispers. “Miah’s gone, honey.”

  I lay back on the bed and close my eyes. “Miah’s gone,” I whisper, sinking back into sleep.

  When I came downstairs later, I was surprised to find my father sitting at the kitchen table. The apartment smelled like cinnamon, apples and coffee. Marion gave me a long look, then put a glass of juice on the table in front of me.

  “What are you doing home?” I asked my father. He was usually at the hospital on Saturdays. Sundays were our day together.

  “Your mother tells me you had another bad dream,” my father said. He looked tired, his blue eyes were rimmed and puffy. My sisters and brother call me “the accident” because I was born ten years after the last one. My parents aren’t young. Last year, we celebrated my mother’s fifty-seventh birthday.

  I looked at Marion. “And?”

  “And we’re worried,” she said. “It’s been almost a year now, Elisha.”

  “It’s been eleven months, Marion.”

  “Don’t call your mother ‘Marion,’ El.”

  I pushed the juice away from me. “When she starts calling me ‘Ellie,’ I’ll start calling her ‘Mom’—”

  “Your name is Elisha.” Marion turned back to the stove and stirred something. After a moment, she set a bowl of apple compote on the table, then took a stack of pancakes from the oven.

  I got up and poured myself some coffee.

  “We’re just concerned,” my father said. “You don’t participate in school—”

  “I get straight A’s.” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “You don’t do any activities, just study, study, study,” Marion said. She sat across from me and put two pancakes on a plate. “Here.”

  “Not hungry.”

  My father looked at me and I rolled my eyes and took the plate from Marion.

  “No sports, no clubs, no friends . . . ,” Marion said, counting off on her fingers. “Just bad dreams and sadness. Just you in your room, doing I don’t know what. . . .”

  “Studying. I’m studying in my room. And I do other stuff besides hang out upstairs.”

  “Like what?” Marion and my father looked at me. “Where are your friends? Girls your age are supposed to have lots of girlfriends hanging around and calling. Nobody ever calls here for you. When the other kids were home, the phone was constantly—”

  “Well, I’m not the other kids. You should have stopped when you were ahead if you wanted the other kids.”

  “We were thinking,” my father said, “that maybe you want to talk to somebody—”

  I started to say something, but he put his hand up.

  “I know we’ve talked about it before, but now all this time has passed and you’re the same.”

  I’m not the same, I wanted to scream. I’m different. My boyfriend was killed. That does something to a person.

  “Sometimes I go to Brooklyn and visit Miah’s mother and Carlton,” I said. I knew I couldn’t make them understand, and I knew some psychiatrist friend of my father’s wouldn’t understand either.

  “When are you taking all these trips to Brooklyn?” Marion asked.

  “Just sometimes.” I took a bite of pancake and chewed slowly.

  Both of them waited.

  “Who’s Carlton?” Marion wanted to know.

  I looked up at the clock over the kitchen sink. It was almost nine thirty. Carlton and I had said we’d meet downtown at eleven for brunch.

  “He was Miah’s best friend.”

  My mother put her fork down on the table. “And now you’re dating him?”

  “God—can’t you guys leave me alone? I’m not dating him.”

  “What’s going on, Ellie?” my father said. “What’s this about? There’re plenty of boys living right around you. Nice boys.”

  “You mean white boys, Dad.”

  “I mean more appropriate boys.” My father looked at me and I looked back at him without saying anything. I’d always loved him more than my mother and maybe that’s why it hurt to hear him talk like that.

  “Give me a break, Dad. Cut the liberal crap. You mean white boys, but you would never say that, because it would be politically incorrect, wouldn’t it?”

  My father shook his head and stared at me like he was trying to figure out who I was.

  Marion got up and went over to the sink. She stood there with her back to us as though she’d forgotten what she’d gone there for.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing, honey. Maybe it means less sadness in the house.”

  “I don’t understand you,” my father said. “I thought I did, but I don’t.”

  “I understand you even less,” I said. “And I’m not dating him. He’s . . . he’s a friend.”

  “Well,” Marion said. “It’s good to hear you’re making some friends. I don’t want you going all the way to Brooklyn, though.”

  “I’m meeting him downtown today.” I took another bite of pancake. “Don’t worry—I won’t be crossing that dangerous bridge into an outer borough.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” my father said. “I still think we need to talk about you seeing someone.”

  I stood up. “How about family therapy? I’m game for that. How about I get a chance to talk about why I was too scared to bring my black boyfriend home to parents who swear they’re not racist. How about we talk about him dying without you ever meeting him because somewhere along the way, I got the message that it wasn’t okay—”

  “Bring this new friend home,” Marion said. “No one’s stopping you.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off my father. “That’s not the point, is it?”

  “It’s all something we need to talk about,” he said.

  I shook my head. “We never will,” I said.

  My parents were silent. They knew it was true.

  Carlton

  “IT’S FUNNY. THERE’S THIS PART OF ME THAT ALWAYS KINDA felt alone, you know?”

  We’re in a coffee shop on the corner of Waverly and Sixth Avenue. There a
re people all around us—men and men together, women and men, parents and kids, women and women.

  “I used to come here with Miah,” Ellie said, leading me to a table in the back. We sat down and a waiter put two menus in front of us. The place was quieter than it seemed it ought to be. I looked up and saw that the ceilings were covered with a purple foamy material that must have absorbed a lot of the sound.

  “How’d you guys find it—I mean, I come to the Village a lot and I never even noticed this place.”

  Ellie looked at me. “We were walking once. God, it all feels like such a long time ago. And we passed this couple—interracial—older, like in their thirties or something. And the guy says to Miah, ‘Yo, take your honey . . .’ and he told us about this place. We just smiled. It was like this bonding moment or something. And then we came here. All kinds of people mixed up all kinds of ways. Black, white, gay, straight. It doesn’t make any kind of difference here.”

  I looked around, nodding. It was easy to imagine Miah here with Ellie, the two of them at a quiet table, drinking cappuccinos and talking about their lives. Nobody looking at them, judging them, hating them just because . . .

  I stared down at the menu, my eyes starting to burn. Maybe it was the big memory of Miah. Maybe it was thinking about how good that must have felt, to be out and open and not caring about the rest of the world. When the waiter returned, we both ordered and I started messing with a napkin, tearing it into tiny pieces. I couldn’t look at Ellie for some reason. The word gay seemed so loud, so everywhere at once.

  “Something about coming here,” Ellie said. “It made me so sure of Miah. So sure that I loved him. That everything would be okay.” Her voice cracked a bit and she got quiet again.

  Outside, snow was blowing—not a whole lot, and it probably wouldn’t stick, but enough to let us know that winter was definitely here.

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “I mean, to have had a chance to feel so sure about something. There’s not one single part of me I’ve ever been a hundred percent sure about.”

  “Hmmm.” Ellie looked at me. “Nothing?”

  “Ball, I guess. I wasn’t always sure of my game, but I always loved playing ball.” I opened my palm and stared at it. “The way the ball feels in my hand. The way a shot slides into a basket. Running full court and getting underneath the backboard in time—all of that’s always felt . . . felt real. Solid. But show me a ballplayer that’s out there going pro saying, ‘My boyfriend Bob and me . . .’ ”

  Ellie smiled. Our food came.

  “Don’t exist,” I said after the waiter left. “I don’t exist.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have a boyfriend?” Ellie looked at me, frowning.

  “I don’t. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t exist—gay ballplayers don’t exist.”

  “That’s crazy, Carlton. You’re going to stop being who you are because—”

  “Yep.”

  “But that’s not . . . that’s not living.”

  “I know.”

  “And just because people aren’t out, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  I didn’t say anything. If someone had said to me, Carlton, are you straight or gay? Tell me now because you might be dead tomorrow, I would say, I’m gay—even though I’ve never kissed another guy or been in love with anybody.

  “I am gay,” I said, not looking at Ellie. I watched the syrup sink into my pancakes, watched the way the orange slices beside the pancakes lay still as glass.

  “I know,” Ellie said.

  When I looked up, she was smiling again.

  We stared at each other for a long time. I felt myself choking up. Felt like Ellie had just saved my life somehow. I wanted to holler, to reach across the table and lift her up. But my breath was coming too fast and my body felt heavy and light all at once, so I just sat there, staring at her.

  “We’d make a nice couple—aesthetically, don’t you think?” Ellie said.

  I laughed and the air felt the tiniest bit lighter.

  “Seriously, Carlton. You’re beautiful—you could have guys dropping for you all over the place.”

  I took a bite of my pancakes, shook my head.

  “I think I’m some kind of romantic. I would love to fall in love and feel like that’s it—that’s the be-all, end-all, forever amen.”

  Ellie’s fork froze. When she looked at me, I don’t know if I was surprised to see her eyes were watery. She blinked but didn’t say anything.

  “I know that’s what you guys had,” I said quickly.

  “I just wonder . . . you know—if you can have it more than once. I mean, I’m not looking and I don’t know if I’ll ever be looking. I wasn’t even looking when I found Miah.” She laughed. “But . . . who knows. Who knows anything.”

  “I can’t even imagine your world.”

  Ellie smiled.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I like—you don’t even try to.”

  “Miah loved you like crazy—you know that, right?”

  Ellie stared down at her plate and nodded. “Most days,” she said.

  “All days.”

  “Most days I know it was all days. But some days . . .” She looked up at me and laughed a little bit. “Some days, I think—”

  “Well, those days you’re wrong.”

  “I know. I mean, most of me knows.”

  “Your food’s getting cold.”

  She started eating. I watched her for a while.

  “It never even crossed my mind to go uptown and see you,” I said. “But I’m sure as hell glad you crossed that street.”

  “Like I said before, don’t thank me—thank Nelia.”

  I started eating again. “You. Nelia. Whoever. I’m glad it happened.”

  “Yeah.” Ellie looked over at me and smiled. Miah was right—it was one of the prettiest smiles I’d ever seen—real, deep, sincere, like her face and heart were wide-open.

  “You want to catch a movie later?”

  Ellie nodded. “Definitely.”

  “We’ll get the paper and see what’s playing, cool?”

  “Way cool with me.”

  It was Saturday morning still. The rest of the day was ours. The rest of our life was ours. Winter was coming and it was cold outside. But we were sitting inside a restaurant that was quiet and warm. The food was good. The company was good. Maybe one day I’d have myself someone to be in love with. But even if I didn’t right now, the world was ours. And here me and Ellie were, sitting across from each other. Smiling.

  Kennedy

  IN THE SECOND QUARTER, TRINITY SNATCHES THE BALL FROM our weak point guard—who should be sitting on the bench, but isn’t because his daddy gives big money to Percy—and scores. I curse and the ref calls a foul on me because you ain’t supposed to be cursing on the court. Our team’s down by ten points and looking to lose yet another game. It’s my third foul, so the coach pulls me off the floor. I curse again, but not so anybody can hear it, take the bench, feeling the sweat rolling off me, and put the towel over my head so I can’t see how bad we’re doing.

  “Gotta learn to watch that mouth, Kennedy,” the coach says to me.

  “Yeah, whatever,” I say from under the towel.

  “And that attitude.”

  I don’t say whatever again, but I’m thinking it hard enough for the whole gym to feel it. It’s full tonight because this game is only the fourth one in the season and even though we already lost the first two out of three, people still feeling hopeful about Percy. I hear the crowd cheering and look out from underneath my towel to see Percy score from midcourt. Even more surprised to see that it’s our weak point guard actually doing something for the team.

  The game goes back and forth for a while and I don’t look at the coach because I don’t want him to see how much I’m hurting to get back in the game.

  “Keep yourself warm,” Coach says, throwing me my sweats. “No use cramping up.”

  I pull the sweats on. Percy scores two more basket
s and then gets fouled. After a while the score’s tied.

  “Go on out,” Coach says to me. He pulls the point guard out and we slap hands on the way on and off the court. His hand is sweaty and he’s got this big grin on his face like he’s done a whole lot.

  The crowd starts cheering when they see I’m back. Since Miah’s been gone, I’m the big scorer on the team. He’d get out here and pull down twenty, thirty, sometimes even forty points a game. Most games, I go home with about twenty. Coach says if my attitude was a little better, I’d probably pull down a whole lot more.

  It’s Percy’s ball and the forward shoots it my way. I take it up court and slip a layout in easily. The crowd starts going crazy, cheering and stomping and whistling. Even though I’m still bent about that foul, I feel myself starting to grin. I flip the crowd a peace sign and they go even crazier.

  We score a few more baskets and then even I’m feeling the love in the room. I look over at Coach and he’s got this big smile on his face. Like he’s thinking what I’m thinking—Hey, y’all—we’re the Percy Panthers. And we’re BACK!

  Outside, there’s like a trillion stars in the sky and the night’s colder than anything. I pull my hood over my head and lift my knapsack higher on my shoulder, ready to make a quick trek to the subway, when I hear somebody calling my name. I turn and see Ellie coming up to me—Ellie and Carlton.

  I give Carlton a look as I slap his hand. We hug real quick. I’m feeling good, so I even give Ellie a quick hug.

  “You went off,” Carlton says to me.

  “Forty-two points, yo!” We slap hands again, both of us grinning. “Most I ever scored in one game.”

  “You keep going like that—”

  “Yeah,” I say before he can even finish. “Put Percy on the map finally. How’s Tech doing?”

  “We doing okay,” Carlton says.

  “They’re doing more than okay,” Ellie says. “Won their last four games.”

  I look from one to the other, then back again, and raise my eyebrows.

  Carlton smiles. “Nah, man,” he says. “It’s not like that. We’re friends.”