The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (13 page)

“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m nineteen. My name’s Lisa.”

“He doesn’t need to know names. He needs to keep his monkey ass in check.”

“Come here, monkey,” the woman named Lisa said.

Brick took steps so small toward her the distance was like a tightrope walk.

“You like to cuddle don’t you, monkey? Come on here by me.”

Her arm was around him and she nestled his face onto her chest, pressing him against her partially bare breast.

“That’s my tittie, monkey. Don’t get ideas,” the man said.

“He’s scared,” Lisa said. “He won’t be able to play if he’s scared.”

“Give him this.” The young man handed Lisa a small white pill. “That’ll keep him rested.”

Brick took the pill from Lisa. Swallowed. After a few minutes he got a soft melting feeling, then a melted feeling.

“You look like you could use some love,” Lisa said. She pet his head and caressed his shoulder. “You go to sleep little monkey. We got a big day ahead.”

Rachel

Grandma’s garden’s dying and the mad look on her face stays there all the time.

At night Grandma sits in her rocking chair on the porch where she can see the men who lean into passing cars. Everyone knows they’re selling drugs, but the police don’t stop them. I tell Grandma it’s dangerous to be out there at night, but she won’t listen.

When Grandma sits out there, she talks at the top of her voice to nobody in particular about pride. About the way black folks used to care about more than loud thumping music and gold chains. She’s only so bold when she’s drinking the sherry Miss Verle brings.

I
N HIGH SCHOOL
I still don’t have a best friend, even though I know how to answer the questions differently now.

I’m black. I’m from northeast Portland. My grandfather’s eyes are this color. I’ve lived here mostly my whole life. I’m black. I’m black, I know.

I spend a lot of time reading at the library that’s next to the high school. There’s a new black literature section. It’s four whole shelves. I found one book of poetry about a girl who has a white father and a black mother. I have never read anything like that before. And I’m reading the book that Drew gave me,
Black Skin, White Masks
. But I’m not so sure I agree with what it says. There is a chapter called “The Man of Color and the White Woman.” Just that title makes me mad. I can’t explain why. The book uses the word
Negro
like they did in the old days. Jesse Jackson wants us to be African-American now. I don’t know if this is a good idea. I don’t know any black people who have even been to Africa. It’s like calling me Danish-American even though I’ve never been to Denmark. But at least I speak Danish. I don’t know a single black person who speaks Swahili or any of those other African things they speak. Then there’s page 173: “Wherever he goes, the Negro remains a Negro.” That makes me think of how the other black girls in school think I want to be white. They call me an Oreo. I don’t want to be white. Sometimes I want to go back to being what I was. I want to be nothing.

Grandma keeps saying what I need to study is typing. That way I can work in a nice office one day. “A pretty girl’s gonna go somewhere. Now that’s a fact. Long as she keeps that pretty to herself and then her husband.” Miss Verle agrees with Grandma. She says a pretty girl can take aim at whatever she wants and have it—even something like a good office
job. Grandma and Miss Verle think secretary when they say this; they think of it as something good. Grandma thinks she’s dreaming big when she says I can have a three-bedroom house on Albina or Killingsworth or maybe near Irving Park (she calls it Irvington), and a husband, and a Toyota that has the new-car smell. She wants me to be able to buy whatever I want at the Fred Meyer without paying attention to what vegetable is on sale and without worrying about bringing double coupons. She thinks a shopping spree at Meier & Frank for a Sunday hat and a new church dress every few months is living in style.

Grandma sees these things when she talks about them and gestures with her hands like she’s painting brush strokes in the air. The way Grandma paints her dream for me, there’s a low sky.

Grandma’s dreams come from hearing about Up North when she was growing up in Texas on a farm, on a road that had no name. Grandma’s dream is bigger than her life. I guess at Mor’s dreams: having a husband, a family, love. That’s the way I would list them. But then I think about it again—her dream maybe was feeling the way she felt with Doug, the way she would smile easy, she would laugh easy, she would play. At least at first. Then the sky in her dream got low too.

Sometimes I think Grandma and Mor are two sides of the same coin. They are two sides of a coin that I can hold in my hand at the same time.

I
KNOW
I am not interesting to Grandma anymore—what with my new ways. My new ways are back talk. I call it
explaining. My new ways are wearing my shirts too tight. I call it fashion. My new ways are paying too much attention to boys. I call it being lonely.

There’s a new boy at our high school named John Bailey. He’s a basketball player. He’s very tall and very handsome and the same color brown as Pop. John Bailey knows that I am black. The first thing John Bailey said to me was “You must be the prettiest girl in the Jack & Jill here.”

I guess you could say he’s my boyfriend now. He likes the shirts I wear.

The first time I kissed John Bailey it was in the back hallway by the gym. The second time I kissed John Bailey it was in his basement room laying down.

Kissing John Bailey felt real good. It was like everything that’s the outside me—the me that people see—made all of what is really me feel really good. When John Bailey touches me, I know this is the skin I want to be in. Sometimes, when his mom works nights and he doesn’t have basketball practice, I go to his house after school.

When I come home late, I tell Grandma I was at the library.

“Fast girls go to the library too,” she says, and it is like she is looking right into the center of me.

“Okay, Grandma.” I’m caught. How does she know?

“Don’t do what your mama did. Some people ain’t figured to take care of babies. Specially some people, like your mama—hoing herself to that no-count man.”

Grandma never mentions my mother.

“It ain’t respectable. Don’t be like your mama—sniffin around life like the only nose you’ve got is the one between your legs.”

So this is the part of me that is Mor? It is the part of me that wants to be touched. It is the part that makes me want someone to touch me.

“You didn’t know the good parts of my mother,” I say, and I hope that I won’t cry.

“A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing,” Grandma says. “You never know when she’ll throw away a piece you may need. Your mama was a crazy lady.”

And then I yell at Grandma, like I’ve never yelled at her, or at anyone before. I say, “You’re a damn lie—that newspaper story proves it. My mom didn’t do a damn thing!”

M
OR WALKED US
up three flights of stairs to the roof. She carried Ariel in her arms. Robbie and I, we followed two steps behind. Mor had taken us up to the roof three times that week—each time closer to the edge.

On the evenings on the rooftop, Mor wrapped her arms, like wings, around our shoulders and breathed onto our necks to keep us warm. Robbie and I fought about who got to crawl on her lap.

Mor hadn’t seemed right that last week since the fight with Doug. Robbie had gone without his pills for two days; Ariel’s diaper was often wet. Mor’s blue eyes had faded into a fuzzy stare. Her long blond hair fell in limp strands. And when she spoke, I could see the space for the tooth she lost in the fight with her boyfriend. I didn’t want to be like her anymore; I didn’t want her smooth white skin.

“Y
OU WEREN
’
T THERE
. You don’t know what happened,” I say. “Up on the roof, there was a man.”

Laronne

From the rooftop Laronne could see the puddle where the shrine had been. The swing set—repaired to draw attention from what should be a grave—shone too new. Tattered yellow police tape clung stubbornly to a bench leg.

To come up here, to the rooftop, Nella must have imagined she was going to a place like any other place on a map, Laronne thought.

To climb the flight of stairs with a baby in her arms and her two children in tow. One flight, then two. Nella must have thought she was going somewhere.

Laronne had spent many nights reading through Nella’s diaries. She could almost hear Nella’s soft voice in her ear as she read.

In the last two journals—the ones she had written since she
came to the U.S.—Nella’s voice sounded more like a plea. One entry that was undated, Laronne knew, must have been from two weeks ago: “Never have I been thinking of my children as black. How to learn all these things that might hurt them? I want to pull out my tongue if I made them sad . . . It makes me so sad I said those things to them. I want them to know how much I love them. I love them and will keep them safe.” The words haunted Laronne.

Two weeks before the accident, Laronne had complimented Nella on her new scarf.

“Why thank you,” Nella responded with a fake British accent copying Laronne’s own silly talk: “I’m going to have tea with the queen,” Laronne would say like a true Brit when complimented.

“Now did your special fellow give that to you?” That day Laronne’s voice was high like she was talking to her two cats. It was a note away from a tickle.

“Nope.” Nella had laughed as if she had been tickled. “It’s from my little jigaboos.” She said it with all love.

“Your?” Laronne paused.

“My little jigaboos. That’s what Doug calls them. It’s so cute.”

“Nella. Don’t say that again. It’s not cute.”

The first time Laronne heard the word—the first time it was directed at her—she wasn’t even ten years old.
Nigger, jigaboo
—they were the same. The words came so fast she barely understood that it was language. She was waiting for the bus after the city spelling bee finals. Out in the second round because she spelled
fugitive
with an
a,
it was time to go
home. Still she felt good and full of herself. She was wearing her older cousin’s hand-me-down pants (a little on the short side)—but they were store-bought not handmade, a fuzzy sweater she thought she would keep forever, and a warm blue winter coat—double-breasted. Next time, she thought, I’ll study more words.

Who knows why children decide to bully another. It started with kicking up dirt on Laronne. The white boys not much bigger—not much older—waited at the same bus stop with her in the good part of town. Kicking up dirt, you know the way they do. Like it was just an accident. “Oops sorry.” And then they would laugh.

Laronne had been taught to ignore bullies. But as the boys got louder, they kicked the dirt and laughed and laughed harder, and they said, “Oops, sorry, highwater girl.” “Oops, sorry, ugly face.” “Sorry, straw head.” “Sorry, jigaboo.” “Sorry, nigger.” And then it was
nigger, nigger, nigger
sung and shouted like a Top 40 pop song.
Nigger, nigger, nigger, jigaboo.

Laronne’s mother had her own story of “The First Time I Was Called a Nigger.” Her father did too. These stories were passed down to Laronne when it happened to her that day. They did not help her stop crying. They did not soothe.

“Nigger. Nella, it means nigger.”

“Oh goodness. Oh my goodness,” Nella had said. “Oh goodness, no—I didn’t know. Oh, I knew about the other word . . .”

“Nigger?” Laronne said it again as if she were preempting Nella from saying it.

“Oh, that’s a terrible word. I . . .”

“It’s the same thing.” Laronne’s voice had more anger in it than she meant.

“I didn’t know,” Nella had said again, in almost a whisper. “Do you think, Laronne—Laronne do you think the kids know? Is it something you would just know . . . the word?”

Laronne didn’t know how to answer. “Nella, they know you love them.”

“But I don’t ever want them to think—to think I’d let anything hurt them.”

“They know.”

“I want them to really know.”

And like a flash, a second thought, Nella had said: “I don’t think Doug meant—means that.” But the way Nella had said it, Laronne thought she didn’t seem so sure. Whatever authority that was in Nella’s voice came from a desire to believe—not belief—that the man she left her marriage for wasn’t the worst thing she could have wished on her kids.

T
HESE WHITE GIRLS
think all they need is love
.

What might Nella have seen that day? Not tall buildings, or city streets, not the treeless courtyard below. Try hard as she might, Laronne couldn’t sweep away the view. But Nella must have.

What must Nella have seen? Not the ground, but an expanse. It was this step and then another, then another. This was what Nella saw. This was what Nella did. She was journeying to where her love was enough, and it could fill the sky.

Nella

Day 759. I wanted a drink today. But I didn’t. What did I do? Laronne told me today about the word Doug says—I do not want to write it down. I did not know. I don’t think they know what it means. Never have I been thinking of my children as black. How to learn all these things that might hurt them? I want to pull out my tongue if I made them sad. I don’t think Doug understands the meaning. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t know how to ask him. He is coming home soon. He says he is not drinking. I am not sure. When I come home from work, he sleeps on the couch. Then he goes hanging out with his friends. It makes me so sad I said those things to them. I want them to know how much I love them. I love them and will keep them safe. My children are one half of black. They are also one half of me. I want them to be anything. They are not just a color that people see.

Rachel