From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

by Jacqueline Woodson

  Kristin moved around the kitchen helping Mama as though our house was her second home. I didn’t have a clue why she seemed so comfortable here, or how she knew where everything was. And I wondered if Mama had really done that much talking about this place. I mean, it’s a nice apartment and all, but did she go and describe every nook and cranny of it to this woman?

  There was something about the two of them together that made my stomach hollow out, but again, I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  I stood at the edge of the kitchen watching them silently. Every time Kristin said something even the tini est bit funny (and she wasn’t that funny), Mama threw her head back and laughed. I wanted to tell Mama to stop Uncle Tomming the woman ’cause she really wasn’t that funny. I wanted to make Mama laugh like that.

  “Put this on the table, Mel,” Mama said, handing me the lace tablecloth we used at holidays. I looked at her and she raised an eyebrow at me. “Then set it.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  When we finally sat down, I was half starved to death and tore into my corn bread without waiting for either of them. We were having fried chicken, corn bread, potato salad, and collards for dinner. Mama had rushed home from work and cooked up a storm. Soul food. It figured.

  “. . . and then I get off the train and am standing there and this guy comes up to me to ask directions, only he’s looking straight down my shirt as he’s talking to me,” Kristin was saying. She had launched into a long monologue about her train ride over here. I half listened. When she mentioned the part about the man looking down her shirt, my eyes went straight for her chest. She didn’t seem to have much worth searching for. When she finished telling the story, she turned to me, and without even taking a breather asked, “So what kind of music are you into?”

  I didn’t even look at her, just said, “Old school stuff.”

  “Do you like Arrested Development?”

  She had caught me off guard. What did she know about Arrested Development, anyway? Of course I liked them. Who didn’t? This guy named Speech wrote all of these great lyrics. “I like Digable Planets better,” I said, looking down at my plate.

  “I don’t believe you,” Kristin said.

  “You don’t have to,” I said, shoving a piece of chicken wing into my mouth.

  “You’re really beautiful,” Kristin said. “I can’t believe how much you two look alike.”

  Mama coughed and I looked up quickly. Nobody had ever said I was beautiful—well, maybe Mama, but mothers don’t really count.

  I looked at Mama as if to say Who is this woman? But Kristin was there, staring me dead in the eye, so I couldn’t quite get the expression I wanted going.

  Kristin and Mama tried to keep a conversation going with me, but it fell over itself again and again because I wasn’t that interested in talking. I just wanted to be able to talk to Mama, only Mama. I needed to ask her about Angie. To ask Mama what I should say when I called. I needed Mama alone.

  “What kind of lawyer are you?” I asked Kristin when one of the gaps of silence became unbearable. Mama looked at me and smiled.

  “The bad kind,” Kristin said. “I defend landlords.”

  “Mama’s gonna be the good kind,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Mama said. “Watch us get to court and be opposing each other.”

  Kristin smiled. “It won’t be the first time.”

  When Mama looked at Kristin, her eyes held something unfamiliar. I didn’t like whatever it was. If she was worrying about court, I wanted to say everything would be all right. But she also seemed happier than she had been in a long time. I sat up straighter in my chair.

  Kristin had brought her briefcase over to the table with her, and now she took some papers out from it. “Speaking of bad lawyers . . .” she began.

  Kristin looked at me for a long time without saying anything. After a moment, I got so uncomfortable the bottom of my feet started itching. When Mama got up to get some more greens, Kristin said, “You and me are probably a lot more alike than just the fact that we put on the same outfit.” She was smiling when she said this but I shook my head. I wanted to say I really don’t think so but she was Mama’s friend and she was just visiting. Soon, she’d be gone, so I decided to get both me and Mama through this moment with very little embarrassment.

  When Mama came back to the table, I glanced at Kristin’s plate. She didn’t like collard greens. They sat in a small green pile in one corner. Her potato salad had remained untouched, also, but now she put a forkful in her mouth. She didn’t eat like us, taking a bite of this and a bite of that until everything was gone. Kristin ate things separately. First the chicken, then the corn bread, now the potato salad. Maybe she would get to the collards after all. I wondered if this was a white thing.

  Kristin handed Mama the papers she had taken from her briefcase, and they drifted into law talk. I only half listened, glancing at the clock behind Mama’s head from time to time. Maybe that was why Kristin was here. Since she was already a lawyer, maybe she had some friends that would help Mama get a job. Soon this evening would be over, and I’d have Mama to myself again. When I realized this, I could have slapped myself for being so stupid. Of course that was it. What else could it be?

  Tick, tick, tick. Soon. Soon. Soon.

  ANGIE

  Angie. Angie. Angie. Think her name all through dinner when your mama’s guest is acting like she’s never gonna leave. Let the name take you up and away from the table until you’re nowhere . . . and everywhere at once. Say her name slow, it’s like angels crossing in front of you. Sleep, sleep, sleep and dream of kissing her, of calling her, of showing her your stamps and hearing her say, “This is the one missing from my collection.” And for the quickest moment—there’s a connection. This is what love is. Easy words coming soft and slow and finding out you’re the same person all the way deep inside of yourselves where it matters the most. Angie. Angie. Angie. Say her name soft and her millions of braids are trailing behind her as she walks slow towards you saying, “Mel. You been on my mind.” Make it sugary and sweet. Make it low as a moan, deep as a holler. Angie. Angie. Angie.

  Chapter Four

  A week went by with no mention of Mama’s friend Kristin. Maybe Mama had realized she’d done all she could to land a good job and now it was out of her hands. She seemed to be home a bit more, which gave us more time to talk about stuff. But there was something strange about us together these days. Something missing. . . . I had a million questions I needed to ask her about Angie. But every time I looked at Mama, it felt like I was looking at her through layers and layers of something. It seemed more and more we were talking around stuff rather than getting to the heart of things.

  Something needed to happen, though. Here I was, going on fourteen, never had a girlfriend. But I had a cute girl’s number in the pocket of my jeans and I was afraid to call her. Every time I changed pants, I transferred the number, and because I was always touching it, the numbers had begun to fade a bit and the paper was starting to fray around the edges.

  This morning, Ralph had suggested I call her up and ask her if she wanted to come over and check out my endangered species stamp collection. He had said that that was subtle enough and she was probably into stamps and stuff. I was thinking this would be a good idea, but when I turned around Sean was rolled up in a ball on my bed trying hard as he could not to laugh out loud.

  “Well,” Ralph said. “I thought it was a cool idea.”

  And for a moment, I tried to make believe it didn’t matter what anyone thought. But it did. No matter how stupid people acted sometimes, it mattered. A lot. Stupid, stupid Sean. Stupid, stupid world.

  Chapter Five

  Mama came into my room early one Saturday morning wearing this perfume oil called “Rain.” The scent of it wafted into my dream. I could feel her gently shaking me. Halfway between sleep and wake, I climbed up a tree to save the last Malayan flying frog. Far off, I could hear Sean laughing and yelling at me to bring my crazy behind d
own.

  “Wake up,” Mama whispered. I opened my eyes slowly, feeling the frog taking a final leap out from beneath my fingertips. Almost awake, I felt my hand close over air.

  Outside my window, the sky was dawn-lavender, shot through with the dark shadows of other buildings. When I sat up, I could see the black pools of single-story roofs below me.

  “Beach day,” Mama reminded me. “Supposed to get up to 85, which probably means 90.”

  “Mama?” She was standing in the doorway now, dressed in a pair of shorts, a polo shirt, and brown leather sandals. Her hair was messy and wet. “The way the sky looks, Ma? You see it?”

  Mama smiled and came back over to my bed. She stared out at the dawn for a long time before she nodded. “I want to keep the day just like this,” I said. “I want to hold on to it.”

  “Can’t keep a day, Mel,” Mama said, her voice hopeful and full of some sort of longing. “A day turns into night just as quickly as it dawns.”

  “I want this day to be different from other days. Just full up with those colors. I wish . . .” My voice cracked and I caught Mama trying to hide a smile. It was changing. Slowly, it was going from being little-boy high to something between a boy’s and a man’s. Now it couldn’t make up its mind.

  Mama put her arm around my shoulder. For a moment we stared out the window together this way, just watching the dawn move up over the buildings.

  “I wish some things could just go on like this,” I said.

  “Oh, Mel,” Mama said. She rubbed my cheek before moving back over to the door.

  “Mama . . . ?”

  I didn’t know what I was going to say next but I didn’t want her to leave. She turned. Rays of light filtering through the blinds cast hazy bluish blades across her shoulders and chest.

  “Huh?”

  Ralphael’s mother doesn’t allow anyone to use “huh” in her house. Every time someone calls out to us, we have to say “Yes?” even if we don’t know why they’re calling us. Even if it’s something we want to say “no” to. Sometimes I make fun of Mama, saying, “The way you say ‘huh’ sounds like someone who’s never seen the inside of a schoolhouse, let alone a college.” But Mama went to college. Four years while I was growing up. Even now, she has her law school books spread out over the coffee table most of the time, working during the day, taking classes at night. She says she’s going to be a lawyer but I see her teaching law somewhere, standing in front of a classroom of college kids all waiting impatiently for her to speak—like parents leaning over their firstborn’s crib hoping the baby will goo or gaa or just smile up at them.

  “There’s this girl . . . Angie.” I looked up quickly to see if Mama was smirking. She wasn’t. Her arms were folded across her chest and she was all ears. “She gave me her number . . .”

  “Call her,” Mama said before I could even finish.

  “I don’t know what to say. I never called a girl before . . . just because I liked her.” I looked down at my hands, feeling my face get hot.

  “Say, ‘Hi, Angie. What are you up to?’ ”

  Mama was making it sound so simple, I felt stupid even asking her about this.

  “That’s corny.”

  “You haven’t even tried it. You want me to listen on the other end?”

  I looked up quickly. She couldn’t be serious. But of course, standing there, looking concerned, she was.

  “Of course not, Ma. That would be so lame. How about, ‘Yo, Angie. It’s Mel. What’s up?’ ”

  Mama thought for a moment. “What if she says, ‘Nothing. What’s up with you?’ ”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I was going blank. What would I say? Frogs. Salamanders. Star tortoises. Ugh.

  Mama smiled. “Be yourself, Mel.”

  “You sound like someone’s mother,” I said.

  She blew me a kiss, told me to hurry up and dress, then turned to leave.

  “Mama . . .” I said again.

  When she turned, I shrugged. “I was just calling to hear myself call you.” I couldn’t help thinking about that part in Winnie-the-Pooh when Piglet calls Pooh, and when Pooh answers, Piglet says, “Nothing. I just wanted to be sure of you.” Sean would call these “faggot” thoughts. He thinks I could use a little toughening up around the edges. The hell with toughening up.

  “Hurry up,” Mama said. “I want to get there before it gets too hot.”

  Last year Mama bought a used Chevy off of a coworker and even though it ran well, something was always breaking in it. The air-conditioning had broken the month before, so we drove with the windows down, the warm air rushing against my hand when I stuck it out of the car. Other cars blasted past us, their windows closed tight to keep the cool air inside. We drove past a huge digital clock and thermometer on the side of a building. Eight-thirty. Eighty-eight degrees. Already, there were tons of people in the streets, trying to figure out how to stay cool. Old men sold shaved ice with flavored syrup and plastic bags of wilted cotton candy. At a red light, a man ran up to our car, offering us a set of kitchen knives, cheap. Brooklyn was steamy, gray-green, and loud. I lay back and dozed. When I woke up, a long time must have passed because the gray-green had turned to mostly green and all the people selling stuff had disappeared. Already, I could smell the ocean.

  By the time we got to Jones Beach, it was ten-thirty and the beach was crowded. Mama took off her sandals the minute our feet touched the sand and carried them as we walked past the crowds, searching for a place to put our blanket.

  “How ’bout here?” I asked.

  Mama was looking out over the water absently. She was in one of her distant moods again.

  “Here, Mama?” I asked again, a little louder.

  She looked around slowly, then nodded. “Yeah, this is fine.”

  We spread the blanket out and Mama lay back on it, pulling her earphones from her bag.

  “I think I’m gonna walk some,” I said, picking up my notebook. This one had a loop on the side for a pen. I took the cap off the pen and drew a tiny line on my hand. It skipped a little but seemed okay.

  “Be careful.”

  “What could happen to me on a beach?” I asked, moving backwards away from her.

  Mama winked at me. “Anything,” she said, smiling, then lay back on the blanket, her head moving slightly to the music.

  I turned away from her and continued down the beach, walking along the edge of the water so that it lapped up against my ankles. A group of small kids were building a sopping sandcastle. A tiny blond girl held a cup into the ocean, then ran back over to the group with it.

  Taking a look around, I realized again what I always realized when I came to the beach—that no one was as dark as me. Once, walking along here, I passed a bunch of white boys heading in the opposite direction. When I was only a few feet past them, one boy said, “Hey, it’s getting mighty dark around here.” And the other guys laughed so hard, you’d have thought that was the fun niest joke they’d ever heard. White boys sure are stupid. At first, I didn’t know what they were talking about, but as I walked, it became more clear. They had been talking about me. I felt stupid then, dark and ugly. Alone. It made me hate white people in a way I hadn’t thought about hating them before. It was before my notebooks, before I had a place to write stuff down—get it out of me.

  “I would’ve messed those white boys up,” Ralphael had said when I told him and Sean what had happened.

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” Sean said quietly. “You would have kept on walking just like Mel did.”

  We got all quiet then because we knew it was true. If it happened all over again—five or six white boys on a mostly white beach and one sorry black kid—we wouldn’t have said anything. Simple. We would have been outnumbered. Outnumbered and mute as glass.

  But the amount of hate seemed to have more power to it than anything else. And that’s what we held on to when people got ugly with us. The hate—it’s like it kept us whole. But it’s not the kind of hate you wear on the outside. Tha
t would just make us go crazy. It’s the inside kind, that sinks so deep you can forget about it until something comes along.

  Walking along the beach now, I checked out the scene. It seemed too quiet, as though something was waiting around the edge of the day to happen. Kristin popped into my head. When she was leaving that night, she had said, “I like who you are, Mel. I really like you.” I didn’t say anything. You have no idea who I am, I should have said.

  A kid was crying somewhere. And further off, I could hear seagulls calling out over the ocean. A spray of salty air washed across my face. A man was fishing off a pile of graffitied boulders. I climbed up a few feet away from him, sat down, and started to write.

  BEACHES

  Mama’s lying on a blue-gray blanket, tuned out to everything but the sun. I can’t see her. She’s too far away. The distance between us is a strange feeling. New. Like maybe me and Mama are drifting. . . . It’s hard to talk about it. Hard even to write about.

  This is Jones Beach. I’ve never been to a beach with no litter. We step over it here and keep walking. A girl in a red bathing suit is plunging into the water and her scream lifts up. I wish I had the words for things. I wish I could knock people’s socks off by saying clever stuff. But all I can do is talk to Mama. And write stuff down. And it seems more and more, I’m only writing stuff down.

  A man with a fishing pole is casting off now. I’ve never been fishing. Mama doesn’t fish. We buy porgies three pounds for five dollars and fry them up. I wonder if you could catch porgies here. Probably couldn’t catch anything that wasn’t filled with red tide, or some other toxic strain of pollution. I wouldn’t eat anything out of this water.