If You Come Softly (10 page)

She shivered and Miah pulled her closer to him. “Let’s say it’s rain-the people who got problems with us being together—let’s call them and their problems rain.”

Ellie nodded. “Okay, they’re rain.” She smiled. “So now what?”

“So it’s not always raining, is it? But when it’s not raining, we know the rain isn’t gone forever.”

Ellie sighed. “Well a drought would be a beautiful thing.”

He wiped the snow melting across her forehead. “Let’s go inside.”

Ellie lifted her knapsack higher onto her shoulder and followed him.

 

 

“You can’t own it,” Jeremiah whispered, leading her to a nearly empty table. He shook out of his coat and draped it over the seat next to him. “If you just carry that stuff around with you all the time, it eats you up.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow at him as she took off her hat and smoothed her hair back.

“It eats me up even if I don’t own it,” she whispered, placing her own coat on the chair beside Miah’s and sitting down. “I just wish that part of it—would go away.”

“It only goes away if we go away, Ellie. From each other.”

She looked down at her hands. “You know something? That first time when we were sitting in Central Park talking-and then you cut that Snickers bar right in half and handed me that piece—I was thinking this is what I’ve waited forever for—you know-somebody I could talk to, somebody who got it the way you get me. And there you were, not even a foot away from me, listening and sharing your candy.” She was thoughtful for a moment. “When I used to dream about that somebody, they never had a face. It was more like a feeling. I didn’t know it would be like this-this good and this hard.”

“What if you had known?”

Ellie looked away from him. “I would have still come—still tried to find you that day in the hallway. Isn’t that crazy? Because that stuff, that junk-the looks and words—I would ... if someone told me that’s what I had to go through ...” She smiled and put the end of her braid into her mouth. “To get to you. I would’ve still kept on coming.”

“Me too,” Miah whispered. “No question.”

“THING ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE,” HIS FATHER WAS SAYING. They were driving along the Long Island Ex pressway, heading out to East Hampton. There was a house there his father wanted to look at for his next film. “They don’t know they’re white. They know what everybody else is, but they don’t know
they’re
white.” He shook his head and checked his rearview mirror. “It’s strange.”

Jeremiah stared out the window. How had they gotten on the subject? He didn’t want it to be like this when he told his father. He didn’t know what he wanted. Maybe he wanted his dad to hug him and say, “I’m proud of you son, for doing what’s in your heart.” But he hadn’t even gotten to the Ellie part. “Maybe some of them know it.”

His father eyed him and smiled. “When they walk into a party and everyone’s black, they know it. Or when they get caught in Harlem after night-fall, they know it. But otherwise ... Okay, take this black church thing ...”

Jeremiah nodded. He knew all about the recent bombings of black churches. A new church was bombed almost once a week now. Everybody in Fort Greene was talking about it.

“A white person reads the paper and says, ‘That’s too bad for those churches. It’s a shame. I hope they catch that person soon.’ ”

Miah shrugged. “What else can a person say. That’s what
I
say.”

“That’s true. But you also have to take it a step deeper ‘cause you’re black. They’re not ’those churches,‘ they’re
black churches
and because they’re black churches, they affect you.” He took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed to his heart. “In here. Deep.”

Miah turned back to the window. Last Saturday, after they left the library, he and Ellie had been walking along Fifth Avenue holding hands when these white boys started acting stupid-saying stuff like “jungle fever” and “who turned out the lights?” Miah had clenched his jaw and held tighter to Ellie’s hand.
Walk through the rain,
Ellie had said.

“You don’t think there’s one white person in this world, Daddy,” Miah said now, “somewhere—who’s different? Who gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, ‘I’m white so what am I gonna do with this-how am I going to use it to change the world?’ ”

His father frowned and thought for a moment. Then his face softened. He reached over and took Miah’s hand.

“You know what Miah-man,” he said. “I truly, truly hope so.”

“CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS TO ME, MISS ELISHA?”

I looked up from my science book. Marion was standing in the doorway holding a small white card.

“Explain what?” It was Saturday morning. Later, I would meet Miah downtown and we’d see a movie. But right now Marion was standing in the doorway, dangling a white card between her thumb and forefinger as though it were something dirty, something that shouldn’t be touched.

“This
absence.”
She held the card up and read:

“Dear Parent. Please be informed that your child was absent from her Trigonometry II class on Thursday, October 22.”

I shrugged. October 22. The first time we kissed. Had it really been that long ago. That beautiful day in Central Park. How did time move so quickly without moving at all? “I didn’t go. What’s there to explain?”

“But you were at school that day.”

“Yes.” I laid my book on my lap and looked out the window beside my bed. I didn’t want this—to have to explain. Not to Marion. Not to anybody. Who would understand? He was Miah. Jeremiah Roselind. And when we walked out of Central Park that afternoon, he had taken my hand in his and held it. Who would understand that in this stupid family—the way our hands looked together—dark and light all at once. The way his hair felt so different from my own. Who in this family of people who married people who looked just like them would ever
get it?

“Elisha,” Marion said. “I’m talking to you!”

“Of course I went to school that day. I just didn’t go to trig.”

“Elisha,” Marion said, so softly it surprised me. “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. Don’t do it to me, don’t do it to your father. We don’t deserve it.”

“What do you deserve, Marion? You went away—just left—boom—out of here. Twice. I think I can miss a forty-five-minute class and not have to explain it.”

“Are you always going to hold it against me?”

I glared at her.

“We always wondered when you’d get angry about it,” she said. “Everyone else got angry, but you never did.” She held up the card. “So I guess this is anger then.”

“You don’t know anything, Marion. My not going to trigonometry has nothing to do with you. Believe it or not, everything isn’t about you.”

She turned to leave, then stopped.

“I think I know a lot of things, Elisha. I know everything isn’t about me. Maybe you think you have all the answers right now because of that boy, but you don’t. You’ll see how your life turns around on you and sets you down in some strange other place.”

“I have to study. And there isn’t any boy.”

“The one that calls.”

“That’s just a friend from school.”

“You’ll see, Elisha—how life plays tricks on you,” she said again.

I stared out the window for a long time after she left. All the leaves had fallen off the trees in Central Park and the sky was overcast and gray. I could see people walking hunched over, bending against the cold. I shivered. Marion was wrong. No, maybe she wasn’t wrong, but she was slow. My life had already turned around and set me down in a strange other place. I ran my hand across the navy blue comforter that covered my bed. A beautiful, wonderful, perfect, perfect place.

“YOU KNOW I’M LEAVING FOR L.A. FIRST THING tomorrow.”

Jeremiah nodded and poured some cereal into a bowl. “You told me last week. We got any orange juice?”

“Should be.” His father was sitting at the table, the
New York Times
Metro section opened in front of his cup of coffee. He gave Miah a puzzled look. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“You were out pretty late last night. What time you get home?”

“Around ten.” Miah poured some orange juice over his cereal then brought the bowl to the table. He sat down across from his father.

“Speak to me Miah-man. What’s happening in your life? Feel like I never get to see you. This the first time all week you stayed here and I thought this was
my
week.”

“I had a lot of studying to do-and I knew you were having people over for dinner a couple of times. It’s quieter across the street.”

His father frowned. “Well, it’d be nice if you came in and met the people
then
went to Nelia’s.”

“I met those people last time. That big lady that kept flirting with me?”

“Who? Kate Mitchell?”

“I think that was her.”

“Kate was in my last movie.” He grinned. “She played the schoolteacher. She’s just messing with you.”

“I know.” He looked around Lois Ann’s kitchen. It was painted a pale green, with plants and pictures everywhere. He liked his mother’s kitchen better—with its big windows and soft white walls.

“And where you going on weekends these days anyway?”

Jeremiah took another bite of cereal and chewed it slowly before answering. “Mostly go up to Central Park—hang out with some people from Percy.” He hated lying to his father. Yes, he did go to Central Park, but it was to hang out with Elite—to sit and talk with her for hours and hours.

“You be careful over there. No running.”

Every since he was a little boy, his father had always warned him about running in white neighborhoods. Once, when he was about ten, he had torn away from his father and taken off down Madison Avenue. When his father caught up to him, he grabbed Miah’s shoulder.
Don’t you ever run in a white neighborhood,
he’d whispered fiercely, tears in his eyes. Then he had pulled Miah toward him and held him.
Ever.

“Times are different, Daddy,” Miah said now.

“Not that different.”

He knew his father was right. Knew by the way people eyed him and Ellie when they walked holding hands. It scared him sometimes. Those white boys making fun of them had scared him. He wasn’t a fighter, had never learned how really. He didn’t want to fight.

“I’m not running anywhere, just hanging out. When you coming back?” He asked, wanting to change the subject.

His father frowned again. “You know how those people are. They run you ragged. I’m trying to get over to TriStar or someplace where I can make some real movies instead of these fool pictures they’ve got me making now about fake blacks. Couple other studios say they want to do the same thing but talk is talk. Figure I’ll get out there and see what people have to say about this new script—it’s about a family and all the stuff they have to go through. No shootings or drugs, just everyday family stuff. Probably won’t get too far.”

Jeremiah ate slowly. He didn’t feel like listening to Hollywood talk this morning. When his father got nominated for an Oscar last time, he got a studio deal-one of the big Hollywood studios said they’d give him the money to do whatever he wanted. But it turned out that wasn’t the case after all. Now he was forever visiting other studios, trying to get away from the one he was with. Sometimes Jeremiah wondered why his father got married and had him. Yeah, he knew he loved him. But he loved making movies more.

“We saw a good movie last night. It was about bugs.”

“Bugs?”

Jeremiah nodded and smiled. “A whole silent movie about insects. It was cool.”

“What was the social message?”

“I guess that you shouldn’t take bugs for granted.”

His father rolled his eyes.

“Well, you shouldn’t. You look up one day and there won’t be a single bug.”

“Good,” his father said. “No roaches.”

“No roaches. No aphids. No ladybugs. No honey-making bees...”

“No sweater-eating moths.”

“No butterflies, no dragonflies, no fireflies lighting up the night.”

His father laughed. “That’s where you’d be a sad one. Remember how you used to catch all those jars of them down south? Mama’d make you take them right back outside and set them all free.”

Jeremiah smiled, remembering those hot summer evenings down south—so many fireflies flicking off and on-their tiny specks of green light floating past him. All he had to do was reach out his hand and he’d catch one. Once, he and his cousin Frank had killed a bunch and smeared the green all over their hands and faces until they glowed. Then they had laughed as they ran along the road, scaring little children. His cousin Frank was three years older than Miah but that summer, it had been hard to separate them. Now Frank was at Moorehouse, playing football and majoring in sociology. The last time he had seen him was at their grandmother’s funeral. Sometimes he got a feeling deep, like there were certain people he’d never see again. He felt that way about Frank. He should call him, just to say hey.

“Sometimes I get to missing people,” Miah said softly. “I miss Grandma all the time—even though she passed four years ago.”

His father sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I miss her too. My mama was something else.”

“I start wondering what she’d say about all this—about us living the way we do.”

“She’d understand. Me and Nelia were outgrowing each other. That happens sometimes. And while we were in the middle of outgrowing each other, I fell for Lois Ann. It’s not right, but it’s what happened.” His father was quiet for a moment. “I never made a plan to hurt Nelia the way I did. It just happened,” he said.

Jeremiah shook his head and stared down at his empty cereal bowl. He would never outgrow Ellie. She was inside him, all around him. Just closing his eyes, he could feel her hair against his face. He couldn’t imagine never kissing her again. He couldn’t imagine never wanting to. Or making her cry. That would tear him up inside, to see Ellie crying and know it was because of him.