Just Under the Clouds

by Melissa Sarno

  It doesn’t smell like Fred C.’s McDonald’s or like the new carpet of Willa’s. It smells like soup sitting on top of the stove and chicken frying and spices all mangled up. It smells like now, like tonight. Like tomorrow will be different, depending on dinner.

  Mom scans the hall, looking from one closed door to the next.

  The apartments are closer together than they are at Willa’s but not as close as at Ennis House.

  It’s the last apartment, in a corner, next to a window shielded by metal bars. The number of the apartment is faded and scratched, like it’s not a real address at all.

  Mom pulls a silver key from the breast pocket of her coat.

  “Can we have our own?” I whisper.

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Then she opens the door to our placement, which is as gray and sad as any other place we’ve been. There’s a stove, which is better than a hot plate, and a bathroom, but when I peek in, there’s no inner tube for our toothbrushes.

  I make my way to the window, looking for something, anything, that will make this place feel like ours. But there’s just the slim crevice between our building and the next slab of brick. A row of pigeons purr so loud, it’s like a chorus of sad sighs.

  I don’t look at Mom to see how she sees this place. I decide for myself. This is not where I want to be.

  I wake up beneath our quilt, on an air mattress Mom got discounted from the store. Someone returned it with a hole and she patched it with Band-Aids—the kiddie kind, with flowers and Snoopy and Mickey Mouse.

  Some morning light steals in from between the two sets of buildings. A line of yellow extends across the hardwood floor, splitting Adare’s soft, sleeping face in half.

  I won’t be able to grow anything with only one narrow slice of sun. Still, I sit up, quiet, and reach for my backpack. I smooth the pages of my Tree Book and draw the skinny line.

  It’s only then that I realize Mom’s awake, standing at the window with her steaming purple mug of tea. I remember it’s March twenty-first, the day after the first day of spring, which makes her sad because it’s the day Daddy left this world, as she says, and I know that on some days you can feel a person gone more than on others. Some days you can only feel someone in your heart, when all you want to do is hold that person’s hand.

  She makes her way over and I shut the book closed, crushing it to my chest, not wanting her to see any part of what’s mine.

  “I never asked what we had,” she says, nudging her finger to my palm.

  I open it in the dim light and hold it out to her. My number 7. It’s faded, so it looks like a smudge of disappearing ink. I don’t feel proud of it anymore. What does it matter if I found the answer to something I should have found months ago?

  She holds my hand in hers and her smile is sad. “You’ll see,” she whispers. “Tomorrow I’ll have this place done up right. I know it’s not like Willa’s. But it’s not like the shelters, either. It’s more like ours.”

  I wonder what will make this place feel like ours. Everything we’ve ever owned was someone else’s before.

  “I know it’s not perfect,” she says. “But I see what it can be. Can’t you?”

  I shake my head, letting my palm fall from hers. “No.”

  It’s a long walk to Adare’s school, twice as long as it was from Ennis House, and we have to cross a walking bridge over the highway. Again I let Mom and Adare go ahead of me. I follow behind, watching Adare’s red ponytail swing.

  We drop Adare off and she stands in a cluster of kids who wait with their special aides to take them to class.

  “How are things in your new math class?” Mom asks as we continue on. I still haven’t told her about Ms. Alice, her square glasses and her backward teaching.

  I keep it in me, closed up like Adare. I think about ripping my shoes off, but instead I say, “I can walk by myself, you know. I do it every day after school.”

  “I know, but I like our morning walks. Don’t you?”

  “You didn’t care when we took the subway. You didn’t always come with us then.”

  “It would have been another fare.”

  “So?”

  “You know we don’t have the money for that.”

  “Willa did.”

  She stops. “We are not Willa’s responsibility, Cora.”

  “We could have been.”

  “No, we couldn’t.” Then she says, “I think you’re right,” and for a minute I think she’s changing her mind about all of this, our placement, our way of living.

  Instead, she says, “You’re old enough to walk alone. I have to be better about trusting you.”

  She stops and there’s a moment when I do, too. There’s a moment when we stand beside each other and think about whether we’re really doing what we say.

  Then we are. She laughs, ruffles my hair, and says, “We’ll meet at the park. I get off early today. I’ll try to be there by four o’clock.”

  So our new placement isn’t somewhere we can go after school alone. It’s not the safe place she wants it to be. Maybe she sees that I know this because she follows up by saying, “The new place is not like the shelters, Cora. It’s more permanent. A big step for us. For all of us.”

  But I know this is not what home is like, somewhere you can’t go on your own.

  She kisses my forehead and I swipe it clean, then we walk opposite ways without saying goodbye.

  The brownstones are set far back in Carroll Gardens, so the front lawns roll out to the sidewalk. Some of them have religious statues, like women with stone cloaks and men with pointy crowns. The first green is already pushing through. It’s the crocuses with their purple smiles sticking up. Next will be the daffodils. Then the tulips in sweet rainbowed rows.

  It’s the kind of place where people plant things because they know they’ll be there to watch them grow.

  I stop and loop my arm out from my backpack to get my Tree Book, to write a note that the crocuses have started to come up. I probably should have written it sooner, but I’d been looking too high, waiting for tree buds.

  The broken zipper’s already undone. There’s a trail of my loose papers along the sidewalk. I crouch and grab at each one, darting toward them before the wind picks up. They’re worksheets, with my name across the top, and a spiral notebook, in purple, for English.

  I hopscotch my way backward, fisting the papers without crumpling them. They’re sopped in yesterday’s rain. I look over through the gates and stones, making sure nothing blew back. Then I brush the notebook off and stuff everything in, fishing around for my Tree Book.

  But it’s not there. The worn leather, with its little ribbon tail, is missing. I check the front pocket. I check the sleeve inside. I sit down on the wet ground and throw my backpack to it, opening it wide. I take all the withered papers out and stack them. I take each covered textbook and notebook out. Purple, red, green, blue. I check the front pocket—a jumble of pens and pencils and paper clips, an eraser that feels like it’s coated in sand and crumbs. I check the empty sleeve. I fan the colors, in a pinwheel, looking for the soft brown leather.

  It’s gone.

  My heart starts banging and I shove everything inside my backpack, fast. I try to zip it and send myself into a swirling circle, eyeing the sidewalk and the brown grass and the crocuses. I slip my backpack on, tight to my shoulders, and start running.

  I run back to where we came from, trying to catch my breath. But it’s like I’ve let all the air go in one giant exhale and I can’t get any of it back.

  I hear “Hey, Cora!” and look up to see Sabina running after me. “Wrong way!”

  I shake my head, words gone from me, caught up in all the lost things.

  “Fresh starts can be good,” Sabina says. “Maybe you can get a new book.”

  We sit against the
railing of the walking bridge, listening to the motoring expressway beneath us. It smells like car exhaust and sounds like ocean, with tremors and grumbling every time a tractor-trailer passes underneath.

  “It’s not just the book. It’s…everything.”

  How can I explain it? I want to tell Sabina the truth about things, but I don’t want her looking at me the way she did the day she found me in the stairwell.

  But then there was that day at lunch, the two of us staring up at the clouds. It might be easier if I didn’t have to see her looking at me.

  I lean back and look up. The sky’s a soft blue now, with the day drying out beneath me.

  I take a deep breath and start talking. “Everything’s a mess. We left my mom’s friend’s apartment. We have this placement in Red Hook. It’s cold and dark, and there’s no light, no nothing. There’s no place for me to even set up a greenhouse. There’s no way for anything to grow.”

  I stop and wait for her response. I don’t have to see her frowning or shaking her head at me. If I look up, I can only imagine the reaction I want her to have.

  And her answer is soft, like she’s thinking real hard. “Things can grow anywhere,” she tells me. “Look at the canal.”

  I need her to understand. It’s not only about growing things. “You don’t know what it’s like not to have a place to live. No place has ever been mine.”

  “I guess. But even if I’ve been to a million places, I’ve never really belonged anywhere,” she tells me.

  I imagine Sabina in her houseboat, how she’s never been to a real school until now and doesn’t know the real rules for jump the river, how she collects the notes and memories of others, but maybe she’s never actually made any lasting memories of her own.

  She twirls a braid around her finger. “Sometimes it feels like everyone’s got a secret I can’t know.”

  I roll the rubber heels of my sneakers back and forth, my legs sticking straight out. I wonder how she could say exactly what I’m feeling. Maybe it’s all the notes and letters and postcards she’s been collecting over the years. Or maybe we’re both feeling the exact same way.

  Then Sabina sighs and I know something’s coming. “So, Cora, I mean, I know I’m not exactly experienced with this whole friends thing, but why’ve you been avoiding me?”

  “Avoiding you?” I say. “You’re the one avoiding me.”

  “Me? Why would I do something like that?”

  “The other day in the stairwell when I cut class, you looked at me like…I don’t know. Like I was some delinquent.”

  “Delinquent?” She laughs. “Yeah, Cora, you’re such a delinquent. With your big old backpack and a notebook clutched at your chest every day.”

  “Well, why would I avoid you?”

  “Two words. Homeschooled. Freak.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Sabina, even when you’re standing on your head, I like you a gazillion times better than anybody right side up.”

  She smiles, but then her tone turns serious. “So what’s our problem?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like you said, about not leaving anything behind. Maybe it’s easier not to make memories or friends.” I swallow hard. “I mean, one of these days one of us is going to leave this place. Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” she tells me.

  “Me either.”

  I don’t look at her when I say what I’m about to say next. I look at the clouds, hoping for the best. “Maybe this is a crazy idea, but do you want to find out?”

  I don’t have to see it to hear it, the smile in Sabina’s voice. “Absolutely.”

  After Sabina skips off across Hicks Street, waving her hellos at the crossing guard, I keep straight. I walk away from the school, along the metal fence, beneath the subway tracks, past Miss Li, who I can see through the glass sitting at the deli counter with her chin in her hands.

  It’s March twenty-first and I’m going to the tree. I’m going to get in it and stay there until I know what I’m supposed to know.

  I cross the bridge over the canal, looking out over its green ooze, past the abandoned construction, and along the narrow dirt path. It’s easier without Adare, like a song on pause, stopping to look up and down or ripping her shoes off. I can walk free and fast.

  When I get to the fallen tree, I look for the charcoal cat, but he’s not there. I dip to the ground and lay myself along the still-wet dirt. Sabina’s notes are tucked on one side. On the other, the screech owl is back, sitting with bunched-up feathers. His eyes are two yellow round moons. He doesn’t look scared, even though I feel like he should. Because who am I to him? I’m an Old Lou, sitting and staring and taking up space where I shouldn’t be.

  I stand up and tiptoe away. The tree’s still there, of course. The tall, thin lines of bark stretch up and around, like the in-and-out folds of a skinny accordion.

  I walk to the foundry and see the door propped open. I take a deep breath, wondering how on earth I’ll convince Anju to let me use her ladder to get to the roof.

  But when I step inside, no one’s there. Only the giant heart stretching up into the empty dark.

  It might be my only chance.

  I rush to the ladder and wrap my fingers around one of the steps. Two feet, one hand. Each rung puts me closer to the latched door until I’m at the top rung. I flip the door open wide and yank myself up.

  The roof is black and the sun burns bright. I don’t look back. I steady myself and walk toward the nearest branch and I’m not even scared, just ready to be inside something, anything, for real.

  Gripping the rough bark, my hands feel strong. I sit and bounce up and down, testing my weight. The tree holds me, like I knew it would, because it has to, because there’s something about this tree that’s Daddy’s. I grip hard and swing my legs so I’m on all fours, crawling along the branch like an insect toward the tree’s sturdy center.

  It’s there, at the core, that the tree sprouts out into itself. The branches like petals. The trunk a massive, old, going-nowhere stalk.

  I look up. To the heaven Mom sends her love to when she motions the sign of the cross.

  I place my foot in an angled nook and wrap my hands around the branch above. Two feet. One hand. Two hands. One foot. I measure it, like this, like climbing the stairs of Ennis House, one flight at a time.

  The branches smell grassy and sweet. I don’t hear the subway or the cars rumbling on the bridge. It’s shaded and cool, and even when I look down at the fallen tree and the canal and the houseboats, I don’t feel scared. I feel like I’m somewhere I belong.

  I climb as high as I can. I follow the memory of the drawings in my lost book, but there comes a moment when I have to stop and let myself be.

  I catch my breath, slam my backpack against the bark, and let my legs dangle on either side of the wide branch.

  I look down at the roof and Brooklyn below, trying to see everything I’ve ever known, every street I’ve walked. Somewhere, down there, or out there, whether I can see it or not, is every place I’ve ever lived and every tree I’ve ever climbed. A real-life map, tucked in one fast, whole vision.

  I’m inside Daddy’s tree and it feels like now it’s not just his. It’s ours.

  I sit for hours in the memory of the pages of the Tree Book and all the places where I took over Daddy’s notes for him. I look at every curve of branch, every new stem, and see the smallest buds sprouting.

  I listen to my heart pound in my ears, so loud, so strong, it feels like the only place I can ever make my own.

  Then my breath catches, like a snag in a wool coat, and I know what’s mine and where I need to be.

  With Adare.

  Adare will be waiting.

  Adare might not care whether I’m there or not. She probably won’t even tell anyone I never came. She’ll sit on the school step
s. She’ll smile and look up at the sky. She’ll wait. That’s the kind of faith she has in me.

  I look at my watch. It’s 3:30—twenty minutes after I’m supposed to meet her. A half hour before we’re supposed to be with Mom.

  I’m caught in between.

  I lean forward, place both hands on the branch, and run the rough bark across my palms, scratching my flesh, knowing I can’t leave her even if I wanted to.

  It’s like she’s got me. Adare and her soft-song voice, the way she spins in the rain and follows cats through the dark.

  I hold on to the bark, take a deep breath, and climb down. It’s slower than going up and I have to be more careful. I secure my feet in every nook and grip one branch at a time until I reach the roof.

  But when I get to the hatch, it’s shut.

  There’s no handle and my heart starts ticking like a too-wound clock. I bang at it with a closed fist and call out, “Hey! Anybody in there?”

  I wait, with the subway coursing overhead and the bridge thundering every time a car crosses. The canal slinks along into the harbor, which looks so wide and going, going, gone from here. I bang again.

  Nothing.

  I walk to the edge of the roof and look down, feeling a tingle in my toes as I do. There’s no way I can jump. It’s too high.

  My heart speeds up, but I can’t hear it the way I could in the tree. It’s just fast and thumping against me like it wants out. Adare will be waiting. She’ll wonder where I am or she won’t wonder at all. But still, she’ll be there. And I won’t.

  I walk to the hatch. Slam my fists against it again. “Hey! I’m here!” I call. “I’m still here!” I walk back to the edge, look out over the canal, over at Sabina’s houseboat. Lifeless. Still.

  I’ll have to wait until morning, when Anju will come in her smacking boots and wild hair for her heart.