Skye Falling

by Mia Mckenzie

  Faye takes a long, deep breath, like she’s trying really hard not to lose her shit. Then she says, in an impressively measured tone, “Vicky. Please lower your voice. And watch your language.”

  Vicky glares at her, but doesn’t say anything.

  “I understand you’re upset,” Faye continues. “But can you please try to understand where I’m coming from?”

  The kid folds her arms tight across her chest, which I take as a no.

  “I know you’re not a little kid. I know you want to help the reverend. But I promised your mother I would keep you safe and that’s all I’m trying to do,” Faye says, and here her voice trembles the littlest bit. “Can you understand that?”

  I watch her reach out and touch one of Vicky’s braids. She rubs it between her thumb and fingers. I feel things threatening to break open inside me, things I’m not sure I can precisely name, my own volcanic earthquakes beneath the surface. Vicky’s sitting there shooting eye daggers at Faye and part of me wants to scream at her: Don’t you know how lucky you are, you ungrateful little shit, to be seen and loved and protected like this?

  The dryer buzzes loudly from a nearby room. “Whatever,” Vicky says, yanking her braid out of Faye’s fingers. She gets up and disappears down a stairwell to the basement.

  Faye sighs.

  I take another sip of bubbly water. Clear my throat. “She’s still having a hard time about her mom, huh?”

  “She’s been suspended from school three times in the last three months,” Faye says.

  “Shit.”

  “Some of that is the school and their horrible track record with Black students and suspension,” she says. “That’s a battle we’re constantly fighting. And then some of it is Vicky acting out. Last time she got suspended because she was upset with one of her teachers and wrote ‘white devil’ on the blackboard.”

  “Ha!”

  Faye frowns at me.

  “Oh, am I not supposed to laugh at that?”

  “It won’t be funny when she can’t get into a good high school because of her disciplinary record.”

  “Right,” I say, nodding thoughtfully. It’s still funny, though.

  There’s a loud bang from the basement. Faye rubs her temples.

  “It must be challenging for you,” I say. “Dealing with…all of that.”

  She sighs. “I pray to my ancestors every day to make me worthy of the job of parenting such a terrific kid. And to please, please keep me from throttling her.”

  I laugh and she does, too.

  “It’s gotten better,” she says, “since she came to live with me. But in the last few months, since she found out about the eggs, and that I knew and didn’t tell her…” She shakes her head.

  “You knew before she did?”

  She hesitates, like she’s not sure she wants to be talking to me about it. Then, she says, “I found the papers in Cynthia’s things, after she died. I locked them in a safe place, or what I thought was a safe place, until I could figure out how to handle it. I didn’t really know what else to do.”

  There’s another bang from the basement.

  “Excuse me,” Faye says, and goes downstairs.

  A couple of minutes later, they come up from the basement together. Vicky’s wearing purple jeans that, I gotta say, were worth the wait.

  “I’m ready.” She heads for the door.

  “Thanks for the water.”

  Faye smiles a tired smile. “Have fun, you two.”

  13

  Clark Park is like a mile away, so obviously I start ordering a Lyft.

  “We can walk,” Vicky says. “It’s just right down Cedar.”

  “Ugh. Fine.”

  It’s a little bit cloudy today but still pretty okay weather. There are a lot of people out on the kid’s block, sitting on their porches or front steps. Vicky says hi to almost all of them as we pass. She stops in front of a tiny yard filled with tiny, newly planted yellow and pink flowers and waves to the Mary J. Blige–wigged woman drinking coffee out of an enormous mug.

  “Hi, Miss Vena.”

  “That you, Vicky?” the woman asks, squinting over the porch railing through dark glasses.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How’d Faye like those zinnias I sent over for your yard?”

  “She likes them. We’re planting them tomorrow.”

  Miss Vena smiles at me. “How you doing, baby?”

  “Fine. And yourself?”

  “Well, my gout is acting up,” she says, rubbing her left knee. “And I’m more blind every day. But otherwise, I’m feeling happy, thank the good Lord.”

  “The Lord?” asks the old man who has just come out of the house onto the porch. “You should be thanking the Jim Beam you got in that cup.”

  Miss Vena looks scandalized. “This is coffee I’m drinking!”

  “Two splashes of Folgers in a double shot of whiskey.”

  “Oh, shut up, Mitch,” she says, waving a dismissive hand at him.

  “Hey, lil’ Vicky,” says Mr. Mitch. “Who this chocolate drop you got with you?”

  “This is Skye.”

  “The sky, the sun, and the stars, too!” he says, grinning at me. “You got a man, pretty lady?”

  I nod. “His name’s Nino.” I always call my fake boyfriend Nino. He sounds like a dude you don’t want to upset by trying to pick up his girlfriend, because he’s definitely been to jail.

  We keep moving and, at the corner, we turn onto Cedar Ave and head east toward the park.

  Philadelphia is a city of murals, and nowhere more so than West Philly. There are murals on almost every other corner here, painted on the sides of buildings, depicting famous Black Philadelphians, or iconic civil rights leaders, or just regular Black people hugging their kids or planting flowers. To me, the murals are West Philly. They capture the mood of the neighborhood and its people—colorful, loud, Black. They’re one of the things I miss most when I’m not here.

  “So, what happened?” the kid asks me as we pass a huge mural of girls jumping rope. “What made your day s-h-i-t?”

  I don’t know if it’s appropriate to share my adult dramas with a twelve-year-old. But the weight of what went down with Tasha feels so heavy on my mind that I relish the thought of laying it down for a moment, even at the feet of a seventh-grader. Plus, I figure the drama started when I was eighteen, just a handful of years older than Vicky is now, so it’s probably fine. Or at least defensible.

  “I saw someone I used to be friends with a long time ago. Best friends, actually. We don’t get along now.”

  “How come you stopped being friends?” she asks.

  “She went to a different college. And didn’t keep in touch.”

  “Even though you were besties?”

  “Yep.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s messed up.”

  “Yeah. She seems to remember it differently, though. She said I was pissed at her, so I was testing her to see if she really cared about me.”

  “I don’t get it. Like testing her how?”

  I shrug. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Were you?”

  “Testing her?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, I was pissed. I felt abandoned. I probably did wonder if she gave a shit about me.” I sigh. “It was more than twenty years ago. Who the hell knows?”

  “I used to be friends with this boy, Marco,” Vicky says, “but not anymore. I still have to see him at school, like, every day. It sucks.”

  “Why aren’t you friends anymore?”

  “He had a crush on me. But I didn’t like him like that. I still wanted to be friends, though. But he didn’t.”

  “Ugh,” I say. “Boys.”

  “Yeah. Then last year at sleepover camp, he held me dow
n and tried to kiss me.” She delivers it so matter-of-factly that it takes me a second to realize the full fucked-up-ness of what she’s said.

  “He…held you down?”

  “Uh-huh. I had to knee him really hard in the balls to get him off,” she says, demonstrating kneeing someone in the balls.

  “Jesus,” is all I can think of to say, even though I know more is probably required. “What happened? Did he get in trouble?”

  “No,” she says. “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I felt, like, weird about it.”

  “Did you tell your aunt?”

  “No,” she says. “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  I’m not sure what I should say here. I’m not even sure it’s my responsibility to say anything. But it feels wrong to just let that go, right? I ask myself: What would Oprah say? But all I can think of is, You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Which really isn’t helpful.

  “Are you okay?” Vicky asks me.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You just have a weird look on your face.”

  I sigh. “Sometimes being here feels like a lot.”

  “I thought you come back to Philly all the time,” she says.

  “I do. But I mostly just sleep for two weeks and then head out again.”

  We’re at Fifty-second Street now. Fifty-second is the main commercial strip in this part of West Philly, starting way up at Market Street, where the el runs. The first two or three blocks from the el, there are some big brand stores, like McDonald’s and Foot Locker, interspersed with small bookshops and clothing boutiques, street vendors, and the West Philadelphia branch of the public library. Farther down, where we are now, out of easy reach of the foot traffic off the el, it’s mostly hair and nail salons, tiny laundromats, take-out spots, and bars.

  “Where would you be if you weren’t here?” the kid asks me.

  “Right now? Rio.”

  “De Janeiro? That’s in Brazil, right?” She smiles. “I got an A in geography.”

  I smile, too. “Geography was my favorite subject when I was your age.” I was obsessed with other places. I daydreamed about a life as a painter or a poet, living in France like James Baldwin and Eartha Kitt—whose lives abroad I read about in an Ebony magazine article about Black Americans in Paris—traipsing the continent and beyond.

  “English is my favorite subject,” she says. “Then science. Then geography, third. I like reading about Australia. Do you know the Great Barrier Reef is there?”

  “What’s left of it, anyway.”

  “Have you been to it?” she asks.

  “I’ve snorkeled there twice. Scuba dived once, a long time ago.”

  “That’s so decent,” she says, looking impressed, which makes me feel good about myself. “I think I might live there one day.”

  “In the reef? You want to be a shark when you grow up?”

  She giggles. “On land in Australia. But not until I’m thirty-five. I want to live in Philly for a long time first.”

  “Why?”

  She makes a face like that’s a silly question. “Because all my friends and family are here. Duh.”

  I wonder what it must be like to be happy where you are.

  The light turns green and we continue east down Cedar Avenue, past Fifty-first and Fiftieth and Forty-ninth. We talk about geography for a while, then Vicky tells me about the butterfly and moth science project she’s working on at school. I listen with interest, as the houses around us get wider, the streets become tree-lined, and, eventually, the people get whiter. This is the part of West Philly you find in Zagat’s, with its cafés, breweries, and overpriced, gluten-free donut shops.

  The festival at Clark Park seems less a festival and more a gathering of randomness. There are people selling everything from used clothing to used books to used bikes. There’s a DJ spinning old-school hip-hop, a stage set up with amps and microphones, and a sign announcing a Neighborhood Dog Show at three. There’s a Southern BBQ food cart, a vegan Middle Eastern food cart, and an Asian fusion food cart. There’s a face-painting booth and two professional clowns. Despite the haphazardness of it all, there are tons of mofos in attendance. And not just any mofos. Hipster mofos. We’ve only been here fifteen minutes and I’ve already spotted three handlebar mustaches and seven pairs of ironic socks. It’s awful.

  “Your face looks weird again,” Vicky says, standing among crates and crates and crates of used records, peering at me over a Sign o’ the Times.

  “Sorry.” I point to the Prince record. “You buying that?”

  “Yeah,” she says, handing a few bucks to the bearded man selling it.

  She wants to buy purple things to wear, so we move on to the used clothing section. I watch while she finds and rejects a purple T-shirt with a kitten on it, a long purple skirt, and a purple knit sweater. “I give up,” she says. “Let’s go look at books.”

  The used books area of the “festival” is at the other end of the park. On our way there, we get water ices from a guy selling them out of a little pushcart.

  “Do you have interns at your job?” Vicky asks me through a mouthful of blue raspberry slush.

  I tell her yes, I do, usually two for every trip.

  “Can I be one?”

  “Sure, when you’re a little older.”

  “How much older?”

  “College?”

  She groans. “You sound like my aunt. She treats me like a little kid.”

  “You are a kid.”

  “Yeah, but not a little kid. I’ll be a teenager in a year. I can do things. I can help with stuff. I’m not a baby.”

  “Is this about the cop thing?” I ask her. “Because I think Faye’s just trying to protect you. The police are dangerous.”

  “She overprotects me,” Vicky says. “All the time. I think she’s worried I’ll be like she was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She used to get in a lot of trouble. She was really wild.”

  “Wild how?”

  “She did lots of drugs and stuff. When she was a teenager.”

  “What, like weed?” I ask.

  Vicky shakes her head, no. “Like blow.”

  I stare at her. “You’re using the word ‘blow’ post 1984?”

  She shrugs. “I heard it on TV.”

  “Blow is cocaine,” I tell her, because she’s obviously confused.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

  I shake my head. “No way Faye did coke.”

  “Yes way. She had this boyfriend down south who sold drugs to college kids. He gave it to her. And he got her pregnant. She was, like, sixteen. She had an abortion. Then she got pregnant by some other guy when she was seventeen. And she had another abortion.”

  Shit. “How do you even know all that?”

  “I heard my dad talking to Charlotte about it,” she says. “I think I heard my mom and dad arguing about it one time, too. When my mom was sick. My dad was mad that she wanted me to live with Aunt Faye.”

  “I thought they didn’t get along. Faye and your mom.”

  “They didn’t ‘not get along,’ ” she says, doing air quotes. “They didn’t fight or anything. They just weren’t, like, besties.”

  This doesn’t exactly mesh with what Faye said about her relationship with Cynthia. But maybe they didn’t want the kid to see their mutual dislike. I think about the photo on the refrigerator: of Faye and Cynthia holding tight to each other. I think about Slade: how close we were as little kids; how as teenagers we moved in and out of closeness in waves; how as adults we hardly speak. Thinking about my brother makes me uneasy, though, so I stop.

  “Who’s that woman your aunt’s holding hands with on the fridge?” I ask Vicky, mostly to get off t
he subject of siblings, but also because I’m dying to know. “I thought she was engaged to some man.”

  “She is. But she used to be with this woman, Sydette.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Nice,” Vicky says. “Butchy. People called her ‘sir’ sometimes.”

  “So, your aunt is super into masculinity or whatever, huh?” I ask, trying not to sound disappointed.

  The kid shrugs. “I don’t think so. Why do you care, anyway?”

  “I don’t. I’m just making conversation.”

  So as not to arouse further suspicion, I drop it.

  When we finally get to the books, we split up. Vicky goes looking for YA while I search for literary fiction, for The Color Purple, specifically. Talking to Faye reminded me how much I like having the books I love around me, even when I’m constantly moving from place to place. I rummage through two dozen boxes before I finally find a copy in good shape.

  “You gonna buy that?” Vicky asks, reappearing quite suddenly beside me.

  I nod. “I think so.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s kind of expensive.”

  I point to the price that’s scrawled inside the cover. “It’s two-fifty.”

  She frowns.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

  “Tell me what, Vicky? Jesus.”

  “Aunt Faye wants me to get that book for you.”

  I look at the book, then back at Vicky. “Faye wants to buy me a present?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s, like, a peace offering or something.”

  “That’s sort of nice of her.”

  “So, you can’t buy it,” she says. “Because I’m supposed to buy it.”

  “Okay,” I say, handing her the book.

  “Just act s-u-r-p-r-i-s-e-d when she gives it to you.”

  “Got it.”

  When we’re done buying books, we grab seats in front of the stage, where a bluegrass band is playing. We let some of the afternoon slip away on the twangy wings of the five-string banjo. Then, when the light begins to take on the ochre tinge of late day, we start making our way back to Vicky’s house.