Authors: Renée Watson
This Side of Home
For Linda Christensen
my teacher, mentor, and friend
Summer
Chapter 1
June.
The season is changing.
Portland's rain is stubborn. It shares the sky with summer's sun, refusing to leave, refusing to let the flowers breathe. But summer is determined. Her sun pushes through the cracks of the clouds, making room for her light.
By July, the sun will win. And in August we will ask her to go easy on us. We will sweat and suck Popsicles, sleep under fans, and swear this is the hottest summer ever. Even though we said that last year.
But now we are going back and forth, umbrella up, umbrella down, jacket on, jacket off. Some days there is sunshine and rain at the same exact moment.
The season is changing.
And every time the season changes from spring to summer adults start saying, “Be careful out there,” because they know that summer can bring shootings and chaos with her. And when violence comes no one says, “This isn't supposed to happen here,” as if this is a place where we should be accustomed to tragedy.
Every summer the media come to my neighborhood, and every fall they come to my school. Never for good.
But there
is
something good to see here.
And not just all the new pretty houses and shops that line Jackson Avenue now. There is something good here. And not just because more white families have moved to this side of town.
There's always been something good here. People just have to open their minds to see it.
This is the way it is.
Nikki and I are identical twins, and our best friend is Essence. Mom says it's like she has triplets the way the three of us do everything together, the way we'd do anything for one another. And she's right. Essence is more like a sister than a friend, so when she stops at my locker after school and whispers to me, “We're moving,” I get a sick feeling in my stomach.
“The landlord is selling the house,” she says. Casual. Like what she's saying is no big deal. Like she hasn't lived directly across the street from me and Nikki our whole lives. Like we never sat on her porch swing on summer nights swinging away to imaginary places. Like she never tiptoes across the asphalt
in the middle of the night to come to my house so she can escape her drunk mother.
“He said he's tired of renting,” Essence says. This time not as casual as before, as if this is the first time she's realized that just because her posters have been hanging on her bedroom wall all these years doesn't mean those walls belong to her.
She owns nothing. Not even those hand-me-down blues records singing in her eyes.
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“Gresham probably, or maybe North Portland. We don't know yet.”
Both places are farâat least forty-five minutes away by bus. Too far for best friends who've had to take only ten steps to get to each other their entire lives.
“Don't look at me like that,” Essence says. This is her way of telling me she is about to cry, and Essence hates to cry.
I look away, pretend I'm okay.
Getting bad news is not the way I wanted to start off my summer vacation.
It's the last day of our junior year of high school. We are officially seniors. Next year, when I come back, I'll be student body president. The results were posted this morning. I have a lot of ideas about what I want to see change at Richmond, but for now, all I am thinking about is summer vacation and enjoying every minute of it with Essence. We wait at my locker for Nikki and the boys to show up.
Devin.
Ronnie.
Malachi.
Devin, Ronnie, and Malachi are in my dad's mentorship program. In the fifth grade when we became
friends, we had no idea the boys would end up the finest guys in our high school. Once they get to my locker, Essence is all smiles because now her arms are wrapped around Malachi. Essence and Malachi have been together since freshman year. They are the only couple at Richmond High who might actually know what love is. They love like spring.
Ronnie takes Nikki's hand. Their fingers intertwine like knitted yarn. Ronnie is the first boy Nikki kissed, the only boy she ever cried over after a breakup, ever got back together with and loved again.
I walk next to Devin. No hand-holding or long embrace. He kisses me on my cheek, delicately, as if my face is made of hibiscus petals. I am not used to the way his lips feel against my skin. We have always had love for each other. A brother-sister friendship. But now we have more.
The six of us leave Richmond High and head home. We walk the same way every day down Jackson Avenue, making stops at one another's blocks like a city bus. Jackson Avenue looks like most of the streets in Portland: wide sidewalks with trees that hover and shade the whole block. Branches reaching out to hug you; plump houses with welcoming porches.
Every time we walk down this street, Essence says, “This is
my
street.” Because Jackson is her last name. She looks at me. “You guys don't believe me,
but I'm telling you, this
whole
street was named after my great-grandfather.”
Essence has all kinds of stories about her family history. I know she makes them up, but it doesn't bother me. Sometimes you have to rewrite your own history.
Malachi comes to her defense. He says to me, “Look, you and Nikki aren't the only ones who have famous names.” He laughs.
The story goes like this: Mom and Dad, who are both community activists, wanted us to have names that represent creativity and strength. Mom always tells us how the agreement was that Dad could choose our names if we were girls and she would choose if we were boys. If we were boys, we would have been named Medgar and Martin. But once they found out we were girls Dad decided to give us the names of our mom's favorite poets, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni.
Nikki hits Malachi lightly on his shoulder. “Don't be jealous,” she says.
Devin jumps in. “Malachi has a biblical name. That fits as famous, right?”
Ronnie shakes his head. “Uh, no. I mean, who remembers what Malachi did in the Bible? No one ever mentions him.”
We all laugh.
As we walk down Jackson Avenue, I take in all the newness, all the change. I turn to Devin and say, “Remember that house?” I point to the pale-yellow bungalow that takes up the entire corner with its wraparound porch. It no longer has its wobbling steps, chipped paint. “I will never forget
that
day!”
“Don't remind me,” Devin says, even though the memory brings a smile to his face.
We retell the story as if we don't already know.
Devin says, “That dog came out of nowhere! Just came right up to the fence growling like crazy.”
I laugh. “Only I didn't know it stopped at the gate. I swear, I thought it jumped over and was chasing us.”
“You took off running, Maya! Ran so fast, I could barely catch you.”
And this is a big deal because Devin is an athlete and I have never been.
Then we remind each other how Ms. Thelma sat on her porch pretending to mind her business, when really she was eavesdropping and watching us to see what we were doing so she could tell our parents if we were misbehaving.
“It's so strange to see her house as a coffee shop,” he says. And there is no more laughter in his voice.
For the past four years, there has been constant construction on just about every block in my
neighborhood. They've painted and planted and made beauty out of decaying dreams. Block after block, strangers kept coming to Jackson Avenue, kept coming and changing and remaking and adding on to and taking away from.
About a year ago Ms. Thelma's old house became Daily Blend: Comfy. Cozy. Coffee. I wonder if those laptop-typing, freeâwi-fiâusing coffee drinkers know that Ms. Thelma's grandson died in that house. That a stray bullet found its home in his chest while he lay sleeping on the couch. He was only eight and only spending the night with his grandma while his parents were away to celebrate their anniversary. Wonder if they know that she had her husband's eightieth birthday celebration right there in the backyard; wonder if they know the soil used to grow Ms. Thelma's herbs and flowers and that her house always smelled good because her kitchen was full of basil, or mint, or something else fresh from her garden.
After Ms. Thelma's husband died, she moved to Seattle to live with her son, who never came to visit enough, she always said. Mom keeps in touch with her, mostly through holiday cards and phone calls on birthdays.
I wonder what Ms. Thelma would think of all these people being in her house. Wonder if she had any idea that in just four years our neighborhood would be a
whole new world. And I wonder what will be different in the next four years.
Mom keeps telling me that life is only about change. Just last night she looked at me and Nikki and said, “I can't believe my little girls are all grown up now.”
Nikki and I just sighed. We hate when she gets all sentimental.
“You've grown up, got your own identity and styles now,” Mom said.
And this is true.
When we were kids, we spent our childhood looking just like each other, ponytails all over our heads, matching outfits with our names written on the tags so we would know what was mine, what was hers.
We have seen our reflections in each other our entire lives.
But then, freshman year, no more matching outfits. Nikki's style is made up of mismatched findings at secondhand stores and garments from the too-small-to-wear-anymore section of Mom's closet.
Sophomore year she started experimenting with color on her eyelids, lips, fingernails.