Skye Falling

by Mia Mckenzie

Wow, he’s really Questions B. McCurious today, isn’t he?

  I think about recording the cops outside the reverend’s house that day. How she thanked me, hugged me. How it doesn’t seem to have amounted to anything. I’m not sure showing up now amounts to anything, either. She probably won’t ever know I was here. But Vicky was right. The reverend is my friend.

  “I just wanted to see her, I guess.” Which is true. But the strange thing is? I also came because every time I’ve talked to the reverend she’s made me feel a little less broken; a little less like a failure at life, and I could use some of that right now. But that’s ridiculous, because she’s obviously in no condition to help me. So, all I can do is stand here, peering through the curtains at her and her loved ones.

  Letdown is inevitable, Sister Skye, she told me. But if you close that distance, so is connection. So is joy.

  The times I’ve felt happiest and most connected in the last couple of months have been when I closed the distance between myself and another human. Vicky. Faye. Viva. The reverend. Even Tasha, that time on the bus, even with that whole jacket-in-the-door situation. But you know what else? I closed some distance with my mother and that was a pretty big mistake.

  So, what should I do? is what I want to ask Reverend Seymour, but can’t.

  It occurs to me, though, that there might be someone else I can ask.

  33

  My brother is sitting on the stoop, smoking a blunt and reading a book about Paul Robeson, like a proper West Philadelphian, when I walk up. When he sees me, he looks surprised as shit.

  “I was sure you were going to leave town after…” His voice trails off.

  I sit on the steps beside him. He takes a drag off his blunt and offers it to me. I haven’t smoked weed in years. I had two consecutive marijuana-related panic attacks back in 2005, and the stuff just makes me feel anxious now. Anxious is not the feel I need at this particular moment in time. “You have bourbon?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. I have some scotch, though. It’s not too peaty.”

  I agree to scotch. He goes inside and brings it out in a coffee mug. I take a drink. It’s peaty as hell. Like licking the mossy side of a tree. Like what you’d expect a hobbit’s butthole to taste like, if you happened to be part of the ass-eating community of the Shire. But I have a rule that I never complain about free liquor. So, I drink it while my brother smokes his blunt, and wonders why I came, probably.

  “Why’d you stalk me and blow up my phone for weeks trying to get me to see our mother?” I ask him. “You never really seemed to care before.”

  He thinks about it. “A lot of reasons, I guess. Mostly, I was hoping if you visited more, you might want to help out more. It seemed to work, too, until Dad showed up.”

  I frown at the mention of Fred, and take several large sips of scotch. “How do you stay here,” I ask Slade, “and not just be enraged all the time? Is it the weed?”

  He laughs.

  “It’s the weed, right?”

  “It wasn’t all bad,” he says. “There was a lot of good stuff, too, especially after he was gone. When I feel resentful, I try to remember that stuff.”

  You only remember what you want to remember. What fits your agenda.

  “Do you know I went back to church a few years ago?” he asks.

  “You go to church?”

  “Nah. But I did for a little while. Most of it was whack. Sexist. Homophobic. But one idea I took from it really helped me.”

  “Vengeance?” I ask. Christian God is so dick-hard for vengeance.

  “Mercy.”

  I squint at him. “What do you mean?”

  “It means forgiving—”

  I put a hand up. “You don’t need to mansplain mercy to me, Slade. I know what it means. I’m asking what you mean. How it helped you.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “Okay, so, I basically had it out with Mom a few months ago. After I lost my job at the tax place. I felt like it was her fault—their fault—that I couldn’t get my life together. I asked her why she didn’t protect us from our father, why she kept him around so long. You know what she said?”

  I shrug.

  “She couldn’t remember.”

  “Remember what?” I ask him. “Why she kept him around?”

  “Any of it. She said she thought she divorced him when I was five. I told her I was fifteen. She just sat there looking confused.”

  “You really believe she doesn’t remember what actually happened?”

  “Yes,” he says, sounding very sure. “Skye, she can’t remember half her life some days. She thinks people are alive who died in 1980. Sometimes she doesn’t remember what her parents’ names were. I wanted her to see how she jacked up my life and own up to it. I wanted some kind of…closure, I guess you’d call it? But closure is a joke even when people do remember. With Mom?” He shakes his head. “If that’s what you’re waiting on, you can forget it. It doesn’t exist.”

  “So…what, then?” I ask. “You forgave them?”

  “Not them. I’ll never forgive that nigga as long as I live.”

  “But you forgave Mom?”

  “I had mercy on her,” he says. “Because she needs mercy. And because I needed to get on with my damn life.”

  “So, you think I should have mercy on our mother?” I ask.

  “I think you should do whatever you need to do to be able to have the life you want.”

  “Do you?” I ask. “Have the life you want?”

  “I’m working on it,” he says. “I have a job I like. I have a girl I want to spend more time with, maybe even in a permanent way. It may not look like much progress to you, from the outside. But, yeah. I’m getting there.”

  I sip my scotch and we don’t say anything for a while. It’s the easy kind of silence. I forgot how easy Slade is to be silent with.

  After a couple of minutes, he says, “Can I ask you something?”

  “I guess.”

  “Why do you hate me?”

  “I don’t hate you. Jesus. Don’t be so dramatic.”

  He frowns. “You literally told me you hate me. I hate you so much. That’s what you said.”

  That does sound like me.

  “Seriously, Skye,” he says. “What did I do?” He looks young in this moment. Like a rejected kid. Like someone who loves you and can’t figure out why you don’t love them back. It low-key makes me feel like shit.

  “I think I resented you for not leaving,” I tell him. “It always felt like you were excusing it all by staying with Mom. I guess I decided you were disloyal.”

  He laughs. “Disloyal? Shit. You really are a lot sometimes, you know that?” He shakes his head. “I wasn’t excusing anything. I ain’t have nowhere else to go. I flunked out of college. I was nineteen and broke.”

  “That was twenty years ago.”

  “Okay,” he says. “But I’m not like you, Skye.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning…special. Not everybody can just go and do whatever they want with their life. I’m not young, gifted, and Black, on some Nina Simone shit. I’m a regular nigga.”

  It’s my turn to laugh. Slade laughs, too. It feels familiar, in a good way.

  He takes a long drag off his blunt.

  I take another sip of scotch.

  “Your kid’s cute, by the way,” he says. “She looks like us.”

  I start to say she’s not my kid, but decide to skip it.

  “I hope I get to meet her properly soon,” he says.

  “You heard about the elderly lady who got knocked down by the cops?” I ask. “The reverend?”

  “Yeah, I was just watching that on the news. These violent-ass cops never stop with this shit. You know that lady?”

  “Yes. There’s a vigil for her tonight at dusk. You should come if yo
u want. Vicky and I will be there.”

  “Okay,” he says, smiling. “I will.”

  “Skye, is that you?” our mother calls from inside the house.

  I get up off the step.

  “You going in?” Slade asks.

  I hand him the empty coffee mug. “Not today.”

  “Maybe next time?”

  “Maybe next time,” I say, going down the steps. “Or maybe never. We’ll see.”

  34

  The vigil for Reverend Seymour is packed. From Vicky’s porch, she and I watch hundreds of people gathering. There are two news vans at the corner. And there are cops. A dozen of them, at least, standing on the sidewalks and leaning against squad cars, looking menacing.

  “Of course you pigs show up at a peaceful vigil!” Mr. Mitch yells at them from his porch. “Y’all ain’t done enough already?”

  Slade arrives, wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt and holding hands with a woman. “This is my girl, Elle,” he says. Then, to her, “This is my little sister, Skye.”

  Elle hugs me. She’s tall and curly-haired and looks a little bit like Viva.

  Vicky walks up to Slade. “Vicky Valentine,” she says, offering him her hand, all serious.

  Slade shakes it. “Slade Ellison. Nice to meet you.”

  “I like your name. It sounds like a prehistoric vampire.”

  “Yeah,” Slade replies. “It kind of does.”

  “Do you want some Oreos?”

  “I’d love some,” he says, sounding genuinely excited, almost as if she’d offered him Pop-Tarts.

  I spot Viva and Jason in the crowd halfway down the block and wave. I warned her that Slade would be here, so I don’t expect her to join us on the porch, but I’m glad she came. I see Nick in the crowd, too, in a shirt and tie, looking like a lawyer, which, considering there are cops at this peaceful vigil, I’m guessing is intentional. For a second, I think I spot Tasha down the block, but when I look again she’s not there.

  Faye comes out of the house with candles. She’s still being cold and polite with me. I haven’t apologized for leaving or tried to smooth things over at all because there hasn’t really been space for it. But honestly? Three months ago I didn’t even have Vicky. And now I do. Why get greedy? The kid is enough. She’s plenty! The rest of it—my mother; this neighborhood where every corner is a potential traumatic setback; the idea of trying to reconnect with Tasha; and, maybe especially, a relationship with Faye—still all feels too risky. The safer thing is to go back to my old life with regular Vicky time when I’m back between trips, just like I planned when I canceled my flight to São Paulo.

  Mr. Mitch is still yelling at the cops. Brother Nguyen walks by with Keisha. He has a splint on his nose and a black eye, but he waves at us.

  Kenny, Charlotte, and Sabrina arrive. Sabrina’s carrying a Black Lives Matter sign. Kenny looks somber. He’s not even on his phone. “Hey, baby girl,” he says to Vicky. She doesn’t look annoyed when he hugs her.

  At dusk, we come down off the porch and stand with the rest of the crowd and light our candles. One of Reverend Seymour’s daughters leads a prayer for her recovery. I don’t believe in prayer, but I bow my head and pray along anyway.

  I feel someone brush past me. I look up and see a cop moving to my right, toward Slade. I feel a rush of panic. I didn’t see my brother do anything. But I figure he probably has weed on him, which is decriminalized in Philly, but you can still get a citation and a fine, and are much more likely to if you’re Black. But the cop moves past Slade.

  “Sir? Are you intoxicated?”

  Mr. Mitch, who has his head down and his eyes closed, PRAYING, looks up, startled. When he sees the cop, anger spreads across his face. “I don’t drink. I leave that to my wife,” he says. “Leave me the hell alone.”

  Some people have stopped praying and turned to see what’s going on. “Leave him alone!” somebody says.

  Then, at the top of her lungs, Vicky yells, “Leave us alone, pig!”

  The cop looks over at her, takes three swift steps toward her, and grabs her arm. Which: OH, HELL NO.

  I step between them, grabbing his arm in turn and wrenching it off of her. Looking surprised, and pissed, he takes a step back and reaches for his gun.

  Shit slows down. Just like in the movies. There’s a rush of sound, and I think people are screaming? But it’s muffled, so I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that I can see his pale fingers touching his gun.

  And then I can’t. Because someone is standing between me and the cop. It’s Faye.

  The next fraction of a moment, Mr. Mitch, Miss Vena, Sabrina, and Slade are all there, standing in front of Faye, and other people, including Nick, Kenny, and Jason, are pushing in toward the cop, forcing him back. Other cops rush in, and one of them starts yelling at the first cop not to touch his weapon again. “You’re going to start a riot! There’s not enough of us!”

  People are losing their shit now, screaming, “Leave us alone, pigs!” over and over until it becomes a rage-filled chant.

  The cops yell back, telling people to dissipate. No one does. More and more people push in, forcing the cops back away from us. I look around for Vicky, but I don’t see her. Suddenly, there’s a soft bang and then a cloud of smoke. Faye grabs my hand.

  “Where’s Vicky?” I ask her, panicked.

  “Viva got her away,” she says, pulling me toward the sidewalk. And then we’re running.

  Y’ALL ALREADY KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT RUNNING.

  It’s all I can do to keep up with Faye. I’ve never heard her mention sports, but surely she’s a professional athlete or something? I’m dragging along behind her, panting, wondering if I will have survived a dangerous encounter with the police only to perish by running-related lung failure, when Faye starts to slow down and I realize we’re blocks away from where we started, halfway to the bed-and-breakfast.

  I double over, holding my chest.

  “We have to keep moving,” Faye says. Despite the fact that she just put herself between me and a cop with a loaded firearm, she’s resumed the coldly polite tone from earlier. “We have to get inside.”

  I shake my head. “Can’t run no more.”

  “We can walk now,” she says. “But we can’t stop.”

  So, we walk.

  While I catch my breath, I try to decide what to say to her, how to tell her that I’m sorry for leaving and that I love her so much. I know! It shouldn’t have taken her jumping in front of a gun for me to believe that I can count on her, since she’s already shown up for me in so many other ways, like

  helping me when I had an actual factual meltdown over a grimy pool hall;

  pretending it wasn’t super gross when I got snot on her shoulder while crying about my childhood trauma; and

  deciding to still love me even though I waited way too long to tell her about Nick.

  My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Viva: V is safe. I show it to Faye. She looks relieved.

  She takes out her own phone and makes a call. I can hear Kenny yelling on the other end. “Where are you? Where’s Vicky?”

  “She’s at Viva’s. Meet us there.”

  He says okay and they hang up.

  “Faye, listen,” I say, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “We have to keep moving, Skye.”

  “I know. But just listen for a minute.”

  She stops. She doesn’t look happy about it.

  “I decided to stay in Philly and get to know Vicky,” I tell her, “so maybe there’d be someone in the world who’d give a shit if I dropped dead. I realize now that was stupid. Because does it even matter how I die if I don’t have a life I want in the first place?”

  She peers at me, blinks. “Are you asking me?”

  “No. I don’t know why I put that in the f
orm of a question. Sorry.”

  A siren wails.

  “Talk faster,” Faye says.

  “I’m sorry. For leaving. I did it because I didn’t think it was safe to count on you. On anybody, I guess.”

  “I know why you left,” she says. “It was obvious with the state you were in when you came back from your mother’s. What I don’t know is why you didn’t tell me that. Why you just left without a word.”

  “I…didn’t mean to.” Which is sort of true. But is also stupid.

  Faye starts walking again. I walk beside her, but I don’t say anything else because what else can I say? I think about our trip to Wildwood, which was supposed to be today. Jesus, I really fucked this whole thing up. But then a question occurs to me.

  “If you hate me, why did you jump in front of that cop?”

  She stops, looks at me. “To protect Vicky.”

  Ohhhhhhhhh. Right. Yeah, that seems really obvious now, actually.

  “And I never said I hate you. We’re not in eighth grade, Skye. I can’t fall out of love with you overnight.”

  “So, you love me?”

  “Of course I do,” she says, walking faster. “But that doesn’t mean I can be with you.”

  We’re almost at the bed-and-breakfast, turning onto Viva’s street.

  “So, when you jumped in front of that cop to protect Vicky, you weren’t thinking about me at all?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer, just keeps walking.

  “Not even a teensy bit? As a side note, maybe?”

  We’re in front of the B and B now and she stops and turns to look at me. She looks like MC Faye Malice in this moment—tough; unfuckwithable—and I think she’s not going to forgive me, she’s not going to let me back in. But then she says, “Maybe as a side note.”

  I move closer to her. She lets me.

  “I can’t handle disappearances,” she says.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I won’t disappear again. I promise.”

  The toughness slips away. Her shoulders relax, her eyes soften. She looks at my lips, in that way she has. So, I kiss her.