by Randi Pink
“I don’t know,” he said to Miss Ferris.
“My dear boy,” she replied, her chin quivering. “You’re a poet, and you’re in love. These two things together create the truest of art. A love like that could shift the atmosphere.”
A soft knock made Miss Ferris and Isaiah both jump. Angel Hill stood in the doorway, peeking over her large glasses.
“Am I interrupting?”
Isaiah heard her words sung as a melody, the syllables coming through her like ripples in the ocean, replacing the stale air with the breathable kind. Miss Ferris looked from Isaiah to Angel and finally to his open journal. Then she knowingly closed it and handed it back to him.
“Not at all, Angel,” Miss Ferris said. “I wanted to meet with both of you.”
ANGEL
Any small benefit of the doubt that Isaiah Wilson possessed even an inkling of goodness escaped Angel as soon as she saw Miss Ferris crying. How could he be so cruel to everyone? She was Angel’s favorite teacher—both brilliant and patient—she deserved awards, not tears inflicted by spiteful, vindictive, heartless boys like him.
Muggy was a bully, plain and simple. Angel understood bullies. At least Muggy held a discernible title, but Isaiah was a disciple to the bully, and that she could not abide. Now, it seemed, Isaiah was the one doing the bullying, and to sweet Miss Ferris no less.
As he sat there with Miss Ferris, watching her with his large, unassuming eyes, she knew what was behind them—a hanger-on with no mind of his own taking advantage of the weak.
“Are you all right?” Angel asked her teacher while eyeing Isaiah, daring him to say a hateful word.
Angel detested confrontation, but she was put on this earth to help people and poor Miss Ferris, in that moment, needed her to be strong, to take a stand. Isaiah looked away, breaking her gaze. Coward, she thought. So big and bad when it’s just Miss Ferris, but can’t take on two at a time, can you?
“I’m fine,” Miss Ferris replied, still wiping jumbo tears from her shiny, rose-colored cheeks. “Better than fine.”
Denial, Angel thought, that’s the first sign.
“Uh,” Isaiah uttered, seemingly unable to spit out his harsh words under the weight of her gaze. “I mean, uhh.”
Miss Ferris laughed, an unexpected type of snort that made her nose run. “I brought you two here to ask if you’re interested in a summer job?”
“Together?” Isaiah shook his head to gather himself. “Both of us, together? Uh.”
“What kind of job?” asked Angel.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s what I was trying to—Never mind.”
“I’m building a mobile library of sorts,” their teacher said, smiling, but still teary. “Well, really, it’s a three-wheeled bike pulling a wooden cart behind it. I’ll need someone to pedal and a rider to hand out the books. There are a few challenging blocks within Greenwood. Those without formal education. I believe we can reach them through the written word, and you two love words more than any students I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching. I can pay five dollars a week to each of you, equal pay of course. It is, after all, the twenties.” She winked.
Five dollars a week was a generous amount. Very generous. Angel looked over at Isaiah and could tell by his wide eyes that he was thinking the same. But working together? That was a blaring problem. Angel had no desire to be in such close quarters with him, alone in thick, uncomfortable silence, without joy and goodness. Then, she remembered, Miss Ferris had mentioned that Isaiah loved words. Strange, Angel had no knowledge of this.
“I’d love to!” Isaiah said with more excitement than Angel expected. He was practically bouncing as he looked at her. “If you do, of course.”
Angel wanted to tell them no. Isaiah would make fun of her once they started their shifts. It was no wonder he was so excited. He wanted a punching bag, a dumb Dora, a pushover to make him feel bigger than he actually was. Someone to direct his pent-up meanness to throughout the heat of summer. Just that day, Deacon Yancey told her to keep her distance, and he wouldn’t have said it without good reason. And Isaiah and Muggy proved the deacon’s point by pointing and laughing at her while she sat on his porch. What, did Isaiah think she hadn’t seen them?
But then, five whole dollars a week. She could save every bit of that for her family. And, she’d be handing out books. Helping people fall in love with them in the same way she had so many years ago. That sounded like pure joy. She felt a tug happening on the inside, but neither side was winning.
“I’d like to think about it,” Angel said. “Thank you, Miss Ferris, for the opportunity. Can I let you know tomorrow?”
* * *
Angel decided it would be a good idea to take the long way home. She needed time to think about what she was going to do. The seesaw of emotion at the thought of dealing with Isaiah confused her. She thought she had everyone in Greenwood pretty well figured out. She had observed and categorized those she should and should not share her audience with. Isaiah was undoubtedly trouble.
Then again, was that the right thing to do? Funnel folks into columns marked good and bad without taking nuance into consideration? Did everyone do that, or was it just her? This was one of the moments she longed for a friend or a sister—someone to run her thoughts by. But there was only her—independent to her own detriment. And she couldn’t bother her father with every confusing philosophical thought as she had in the past. He was barely hanging on as it was. So she did the one thing within her power; she prayed for answers. She didn’t ask for anything too profound or specific, just signs and answers.
As she turned the corner leading to her house, she heard baby Michael yelling and quickened her step to get to him.
“Amen,” she said to herself, and then called out, “Mrs. Nichelle?”
Angel pushed in the screen to find her neighbor on the couch holding Michael with one exhausted arm. “Go to bed,” Angel told her. “I’ve got the baby until you wake up.”
Mrs. Nichelle looked too tired to smile. She lifted her tiny body like it was weighted down by a thousand pounds and went into her bedroom.
“I’ll take him next door.”
Angel went into her own home through the back as not to disturb her father, who was typically dozing on the couch by that time of day. Her mother greeted her with a kiss on the cheek as soon as she entered.
“Sweet of you to keep him,” her mother said. “Little demon child won’t stop his screaming.”
Angel quickly covered the baby’s ears. “Mama!”
“What?” she replied, grinning. “It’s the truth.”
Her mother cleared a place on the dining room table and lined up a variety of hair greases. “Better get him quiet quick,” she told Angel. “I’ve got to do three whole heads of braids by midnight, and I’ll need you to help.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Angel replied. “The Barney sisters?”
“That’s right,” said her mother with a strong sigh. “I hope you’re ready for a dramatic evening filled with unnecessary hooping and hollering.”
“But we just did their hair Saturday.”
“Their mama said they got to rolling in mud,” her mother said. “They need a wash and deep condition.”
“Angel!” her dad called out. “Get in here.”
Her mother paused to look at her daughter with pity. Angel could tell her mother didn’t want so much responsibility on her shoulders. Angel nodded as if encouraging her mother to carry on.
“How about a dollar fifteen this time?” her mother asked, and when Angel smiled, she went back to laying out long ribbons and wide-toothed combs. “Best go in there to see what he wants,” she said with a wink.
ISAIAH
Muggy demanded to walk Isaiah home that afternoon. He wanted to tell Isaiah about a girl he’d kissed after school behind the wooden bleachers, and how she’d wanted to do much more but Muggy was playing with her. This was a broken record that Isaiah listened to on frequent repeat. There was always a new girl to kiss, and
a new game to win, and a new story to tell, and a new heart to shatter. Isaiah stopped listening altogether as they walked past Angel’s house. He slyly tried to catch a glimpse of her through one of the windows without Muggy noticing. He certainly couldn’t know that Isaiah hadn’t stopped thinking of her and the way she danced. He would laugh, or worse, tell her, or worse, tell all of Greenwood.
Isaiah had seen the way Angel looked at him when Miss Ferris proposed they work together after school. Utter disgust. But he expected no less after all the hell Muggy made him put her through since childhood. Muggy was the root of the problem, absolutely. He glared at him as Muggy walked ahead—one hand emoting his words and the other holding on tight to his unlit cigar. Isaiah was sick and tired of Muggy Little Jr., but Muggy was Greenwood royalty. Without him, what would Isaiah be? Nothing. Nobody. All alone and outcast in their town.
“What kind of square rides around on a bike handing out books?” Muggy asked, breaking the silence. “It’s stupid if you ask me.”
Isaiah stayed quiet, because it wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t stupid at all. Actually, it was brilliant. Square or not square, books changed lives. Books had absolutely changed his. He hid his reading in the same way he hid his poetry, and now, his angel. Hiding his passions from Muggy was becoming a hallmark of their so-called friendship.
“You said no to Miss Ferris, right?” Muggy continued. “It’s stupid,” he repeated. “And why on earth wouldn’t she ask me to join in? I’m as smart as you are.”
Isaiah shrugged without confirming or denying. But of course he’d said yes. What was he supposed to do? Walk around Greenwood with Muggy every day for the rest of his life, chasing girls with nothing valuable to talk about? Muggy was the stupid one, skipping high school, while Isaiah, again secretly, was ranked in the top-tenth percentile overall. The only thing keeping Muggy from being kicked out of Booker T. Washington was his wealthy father, a butcher whose shop customers, both Black and white, traveled far and wide for the very best cuts of meat.
Thankfully, they approached Isaiah’s house before Muggy had a chance to ask again. Isaiah quickly walked to his porch and waved. “See you tomorrow morning.”
He closed the door behind him and let out an exasperated huff.
“I don’t know why you associate with him,” Isaiah’s mother said as soon as the door shut. “You’re better than that.”
Isaiah didn’t know, either.
“Hungry?”
He dropped his satchel in the foyer and followed his mother into their spotless kitchen. The warm smell of caramelized onions filled his nose and made his eyes itch; it was his father’s favorite, beef and onions.
Isaiah wanted to talk to his dad about Angel. His father used to be the town’s authority on such things, listening to everyone’s problems and solving them as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Isaiah loved him. His mother loved him. But everyone who met him, too, even in passing, fell for his quick wit and wisdom. The day he boarded the train for the big war, it seemed as if the entire district waved him on his way. Isaiah could remember the whites of hands as far as he could see, fluttering in their direction. The whole of Greenwood respected his father, and the whole of Greenwood mourned when he didn’t come home.
But he’d been gone a while now. So long, in fact, that Isaiah was starting to kick himself for forgetting the little things about him—his voice, his eyes, his infectious laugh. Most of all, he was beginning to forget his father’s aphorisms. His father could pull the appropriate saying without skipping a single beat, showering wisdom onto anyone who sought him out for it. Some inexplicably branded themselves into Isaiah’s mind—when cobwebs are plenty kisses are scarce, gluttony kills more than the sword, and a friend to all is a friend to none. But Isaiah could think of none to help him with his Angel dilemma.
“Mom,” Isaiah said, watching her spoon generous helpings of beef and onions into two porcelain bowls. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, baby.” She sat across from him and clasped her waiting hands.
“What do you know about Angel Hill?”
He watched his mother’s hands come apart and shoot to the ceiling in celebration. “Angel Hill?” she nearly shouted. “Down the way? My God, he’s asking about Angel Hill.”
Isaiah lowered his head. “That’s why I didn’t want to talk to you about this. I knew you’d make a fuss.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but the energy in the kitchen had shifted. She was all bouncing knees and twitchy cheeks, wanting so badly to smile ear to ear. “Just … Angel Hill is…”
“An angel?”
“Well…,” she started. “Yes, as close to one as humanly possible, I’d say.”
She is, he thought, visualizing her spinning in white.
“I’ll never understand how she goes overlooked in this town,” his mother added, shaking her head.
Again, he thought the same. Yet he’d been so very cruel.
“Not just overlooked, Mama. We were awful to her,” Isaiah started before he’d realized. “I was awful to her.”
Isaiah looked up to see the question in his mother’s eyes—why? He decided to answer it before she had an opportunity to ask.
“Because…,” he said, head hung low. “She seemed an easy target, I suppose. No fight in her.”
His mother laughed but not in a humorous way. “Oh, dear boy. That’s where you’re more wrong than you know.”
His mother didn’t have to speak her disdain for him in that moment; a son can read that in shrug of shoulders and tone of voice. Isaiah hung his head so low now that his forehead nearly brushed his dinner.
“Sorry, Mama.”
“Ah,” she said, still angry but slightly softened. “No need to say sorry. You, dear boy, will live. And as you do, you will have to look back to see that the real fighters only open their mouths when it is absolutely necessary. The Muggy Little Juniors speak through their own insecurities and say the wrong damn thing in the process.”
It was the first time he’d ever heard his mother say a curse word of any kind. And it made Isaiah feel like the villain of his own story. He spooned his beef and onions without eating it, knowing full well it was moist and delicious, but he couldn’t take a bite. He disgusted himself.
“I’ve been,” he started. “I’ve been…”
Somewhere between his mind and the world, the words got stuck. He didn’t want to disappoint his kind, delicate mother. She, too, was too good for him. All sweet, no bitter. He’d been cruel to her. Not in the same way he’d been to Angel, but in other ways.
He’d left his mother to cry alone. He’d heard her—night after night—through their thin walls. Once, he’d quietly walked into the kitchen to find her sobbing over the sink. He easily could have placed his palm on her back. Even, dear Lord, cried right along with her. But, no. He’d walked by without a single word or touch, leaving her all alone.
Alone she was, clinging firmly to the thought that she’d see her beloved husband again one day on the other side of heaven. But lonely still. Figuring creative ways to feed, clothe, and house her ungrateful upchuck of a son.
“You’ve been what?”
He wanted to tell her how horrible he’d been over the years. To please Muggy, he justified. To fit in, he could argue. But not really. He had no one to blame but himself for being unworthy of Angel and his mother, too. He couldn’t find the way to say such things aloud, though.
“I’d like to come with you to Sunday school again this week if you don’t mind,” he said as he shoved a heaping spoonful into his mouth. Dinner was even better than he’d expected it to be.
His mother beamed in response.
* * *
After dinner, he lay across his bed with his journal in his hands, his mind blank of anything to write. He was frozen there with an empty brain. He felt under his pillow for The Souls of Black Folk and found it, well-read and worn.
Like a Bible, the book usually opened directly to where he needed it to go.
When the uniformed men had shown up on his doorstep to tell them of his father’s death, the book opened to the section entitled “Of the Passing of the First-Born.” He decided to reread that passage:
He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train. The day changed not; the same tall trees peeped in at the windows, the same green grass glinted in the setting sun. Only in the chamber of death writhed the world’s most piteous thing—a childless mother.
That passage spoke deeper to Isaiah’s heart than any well-wisher’s condolence. Such things could only be written by someone who knew the heavy weight of true loss. Like Du Bois articulated miraculously, the shocking death of a loved one isn’t a wailing thing. The real shudder comes from the world moving on as if nothing’s happened. Shops flip their Closed signs to Open, patrons gather at the theaters and soda shops, and people dare smile at things that make them happy, while those left in the ruins find joy in nothing.
A tiny rock hit the sill of his bedroom window. For a moment, he thought it might be Angel. Then he caught himself in the dream and realized it must instead be Dorothy Mae.
She’d been voted Most Beautiful last year, even though she wasn’t technically allowed to be named that her sophomore year. She was an unlikely pencil-in candidate who actually won. And it was much deserved, too; Dorothy Mae was shockingly beautiful. She and Isaiah had been necking for months. Mostly touching, rarely talking. Whenever they stopped kissing, she had nothing much to say, and Isaiah would rather kiss than gossip. Besides, he was under enough pressure from Muggy to speak ill of others, he certainly didn’t want to do it with her, too. So they kissed until their lips went purple and tingly. Still, he’d never written a single poem about Dorothy Mae.