If You Come Softly (6 page)

“I’m out of here,” I said, waving.

My father glanced up from the
Times.
“No kisses?”

“No, not this morning,” I said, slamming the door behind me.

 

 

At Seventy-Second Street, I cut through the park and bumped smack into a black guy. My stomach fluttered. He had locks and dark shades and reminded me of Jeremiah.

“Excuse me.”

He nodded and kept going, a portfolio case bumping against his leg as he walked.

I turned and watched him, fingering the tiny Star of David hanging from a gold chain around my neck. Why did I always bump into black guys? Was it something in the stars? I shook my head and smiled.

Once Anne and I were walking through Central Park when this black guy started running toward us. I frowned, remembering how Anne had screamed, and grabbed me. When the guy got up close, we realized he was a jogger, not a mugger or anything, and Anne had turned red with embarrassment.

I started walking again. Would Anne have reacted that way if the guy had been white? I put the Star of David in my mouth and sucked on it. It calmed me somehow, feeling it there.

I used to think it didn’t matter-that everyone in this world had the same chance, the same fight. Imagine two babies born-one white, one black. Maybe their mothers shared the same hospital room and talked low-when all the excited visitors were gone and the hospital was heavy with sleep-about their futures. Talked about their dreams for the babies, long after the two A.M. feeding was over. I used to think that all those babies needed was some kind of chance-and a mother’s dream for them. I was so ... so silly back then. Naive. I
believed
stuff like that. Just because no one in this family had ever said a hateful thing about black people.

“All people,” Marion was often saying. “All people have suffered. So why should any of us feel like we’re better or less than another?”

But where were they then-these black people who were just like us—who were equal to us? Why weren’t they coming over for dinner? Why weren’t they playing golf with Daddy on Saturdays or quilting with Marion on Thursday nights? Why weren’t they in our world, around us, a part of us?

IT RAINED AGAIN ON FRIDAY, A WARM, STEADY RAIN that turned the whole city gray. I sat in Mr. Hazelton’s history class watching it. There was something sad about the rain. Marion had left on a rainy day. And Anne. The day she moved out it rained and rained. I turned back to my textbook. Jeremiah must have left Percy. It was already October and still I had only seen him once since that first day. That’s what the rain made me feel now as it slammed against the windowpane—that I should stop hoping. People would always be leaving.

“I’d like all twenty-seven amendments memorized by—” Mr. Hazelton was saying.

“Excuse me.”

I felt the room change. Felt the air around me grow warm suddenly-and still.

“I’ve been transferred over from Ms. Trousseau’s class. My name is Jeremiah.”

I lifted my head slowly, afraid I had heard wrong. He was standing there-in the front of the room—beautiful—the way I had remembered him.

Mr. Hazelton frowned as he studied Jeremiah’s program card. “This late into the semester, Mr. Roselind?”

“Yes, sir.” Jeremiah took a quick look around the room. His eyes flicked past me then back again. He smiled.

“Well, take a seat then,” Mr. Hazelton said. “Look on with someone. You can pick up a textbook down in my office at the end of the day. You will memorize all twenty-seven amendments by Monday. Are you at all familiar with the amendments?”

“Yes, sir.” Jeremiah looked annoyed.

“Good then. Take a seat.”

He looked around the room again and nodded hello to a couple of people before walking slowly up the aisle toward me.

“Can I sit next to you?”

I nodded. He was taller than I had remembered and had pulled his hair back into a ponytail. When he sat down and smiled again, I smiled back. The smile felt shaky. Maybe my lips were trembling.

“Can I look on with you too?”

I nodded again, pressing my nails into my palms. My skin felt as though it would lift off.

“Can I have your book for keeps?”

I stared at him without saying anything, not sure what he was talking about. He grinned.

“I’m kidding.”

“Oh.”

“The right to privacy ...” Mr. Hazelton was saying.

Jeremiah leaned over to look on with me. He smelled of musk and autumn-like he had just come in from outside. I stared down at the page and inhaled.

“Why’d you get transferred out of that other class?” I whispered.

“I knew it already. Remedial history. School made a
mistake.”
He rolled his eyes.

“They do stuff like that all the time, I bet.”

“Yeah—it just seems like more than a coincidence when it happens to me. Like what made them think I needed remedial anything. Nobody tested me. Nobody
asked
me. They just threw me in it then looked surprised when I knew it all. I mean, it makes you wonder—is it my
hair?”
He smiled.

I kind of half smiled, not sure what he was getting at.

“Or the melanin thing?”

The melanin thing.
I played with the sentence a moment in my head and frowned. The world was like that a long time ago. But it wasn’t like that anymore, was it? No. My stupid sister might be like that. And maybe my family sometimes. But not the rest of the world. Please not the rest of the world.

“Anyway,” Jeremiah whispered, “I never got your name.”

I swallowed. Mr. Hazelton was eyeing us. I turned to a clean page in my notebook and wrote “Ellie” across the top of it.

“Are you familiar with the fifth amendment, Mr. Roselind?”

“Yes, sir. The right to silence.”

“Good. Maybe you and Elisha can take the fifth right now.”

The class laughed and Jeremiah smiled. He had a beautiful smile.

“Yes, sir.”

I stared at his hand resting on the textbook. His fingers were long and brown. Slowly, his hand moved across the textbook page and underneath my name. He ran his finger across it, then tapped it lightly and winked at me.

SOME MORNINGS, IT SEEMED THE BELL WOULD NEVER ring, that he would never again walk to Mr. Hazelton’s class and sit beside her. When it did ring, finally, he held tight to the straps of his knapsack as he walked, trying to keep from running there, running to the place where he could sit beside her. Ellie.

He found himself watching her when she wasn’t looking. Watching the way she used her hand to move her hair out of her face, slowly, wrapping her fingers around it and pulling it back behind her ear. The way she leaned over her notebook to write, a tiny frown between her eyebrows. And her smile—she had a sweet smile. Sweet and sad and something else too. He couldn’t explain it. If anyone asked, he wouldn’t be able to put words to how he felt when Ellie looked at him and smiled. He felt something stop and start inside of him.

This afternoon, he had leaned across the desk and their shoulders touched. And Miah could feel the heat coming through her jacket. She had looked at him then and smiled. And they had stayed that way, with their shoulders touching, until the bell rang.

Jeremiah walked slowly now, his thumbs tucked into the straps of his knapsack. No one else at school had a leather one and now he understood why-one strap had already broken and he had had to stop at the shoe repair to get it sewn back on. And the books! He’d left two in his locker and stuffed the others into his bag as best as he could. Now the zipper was on its way to breaking. It was dumb—this leather knapsack was. First thing Saturday, he was going to go into the city, get a nylon one. Hers-Ellie’s —was blue. He had seen her leaving school, had seen the way she clutched it to her chest as she walked-as though she was trying to hide something—

“Miah! Yo, Miah! Wait up!”

Jeremiah turned. Carlton was running toward him, dribbling a basketball, his curly brown hair blowing wild. Jeremiah lifted his backpack higher on his shoulder and stood there, watching Carlton head toward him. He had never really thought about it before—Carlton’s white mama and black daddy. Had never even asked him what it was like. Ellie. Where did she live? Who were her parents?

“What’s up?” Carlton grinned and chucked him the ball, then bent with his hands on his knees and took a few deep breaths. “I been calling your deaf behind for about three blocks now. That school got you thinking deep or something?”

“You just out of shape, man. Look at you, breathing all hard.”

Carlton stood up and snatched the ball from him. “I ran from Atlantic and Fifth Avenue all the way over here to this piece of ground on South Portland in about seven minutes, so who’s out of shape?”

“All I know is I’m not the one breathing like I just did some marathon.”

He started walking again and Carlton fell in step beside him.

“Look at you all Percy’d out.” Carlton grinned, eyeing Jeremiah’s uniform.

Jeremiah looked down at himself. The burgundy jacket was made out of some kind of wool that itched around his neck and wrists. And the gray pants were cut strange. He had gotten them a size too big but that didn’t make much difference. They still just sort of hung on him. When he had tried the uniform on at the end of the summer, his father had said he looked smart in it. But smart and good were two real different things and Jeremiah knew he didn’t look his best on school days.

“I know. Ain’t this some junk? I keep thinking I’m just going to walk in there and say the heck with it-kick it in some of my own clothes.”

Carlton laughed.

“You walk up to that school dressed like Brooklyn, they’ll send you packing. They’ll be like, ‘Oh no, we let a live one in here.’ ”

“You know it,” Jeremiah said. “Least they let me pick my own shoes.” He bent over and brushed an invisible speck of dust off of his hiking boots. They were black and lug soled.

“Those are some sweet boots,” Carlton said. “But give me my own clothes any day.”

Jeremiah nodded. Carlton was wearing a pair of jeans and a green sweatshirt with
Wisdom
stitched across the front. He dribbled the ball easily back and forth through his legs as they walked.

“Tech miss me?”

“Nah—not really. They probably won’t even notice you’re gone until the season starts.” Carlton laughed. “Anything happening over at Percy?”

“Nah,” Jeremiah said, shaking his head. “They’re some kind of raggedy. Took third last year. I’m scared to see who we’re up against. Must be a couple of nursing homes thrown in there.”

Carlton smiled. “They must think they got a piece of heaven with you.” He raised the ball above Jeremiah’s head. “Mr. Twenty-two points a game.”

“And that was on a bad day,” Jeremiah added.

“Let’s not get crazy, Miah. I remember a couple of no-pointer games—donut, zero, circles, hula hoop—score nothing—games.” He laughed. His eyes lit up when he laughed in a way that made his whole face seem brighter.

Jeremiah smiled.

“I must have been injured.”

“Your game was injured but
you
were fine.”

They walked along without saying anything for a while. Jeremiah watched Carlton take the ball up on his finger and spin it. He was a year older than Jeremiah and a starting forward at Tech. Their coach had said Carlton was one of the best players Tech had ever seen.

“You want to get out of that buffalo soldier’s uniform and shoot some?” Carlton tossed the ball against a building, jumped high, and caught it. He started singing the Bob Marley song about the guy being stolen from Africa to fight against Africa in America.

“Oh, is that what it is?” Jeremiah laughed. “So I’m gonna be shipped back to my own homeland to fight, huh?”

Carlton threw him the ball. “Yep.”

They were at his mother’s stoop. Jeremiah looked over at his father’s window knowing he’d have to sleep there tonight. It’d been a week since he’d stayed with him. He sighed and sat on the bottom stair. “Well, which is the enemy’s homeland and which one is my own?”

Carlton stopped dribbling and ran his fingers through his hair. “Your daddy still shacking up with Lois Ann?”

Jeremiah nodded.

“Yeah. And Mama’s still mad as all get out about it all.” He pulled his knapsack off his shoulders and stared up at the sky. It was beautiful today, all warm and gold. The leaves had begun to change, and the trees up and down the block cast pretty shadows over everything. He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it-the ending and beginning of things.

“That’s rough, Miah.”

Carlton sat down beside him.

“I mean, they didn’t really get along all that well-like in front of the cameras they did, but not in private. Not even in front of me. They’d go days without speaking and everything would feel all tight and hot ...” He frowned and stared at his hands. “I wouldn’t even want to come home some days.... But it was still something—they still had something. It was raggedy but it was something.”

“Yeah, I feel you,” Carlton said. “But when my parents start arguing I’m like, ‘Just break up already and give us all a break.’ ”

“How come they don’t?”

Carlton shrugged. “I think they know there’s nobody else in the whole world who would live with either of them. Even my sister—she graduated high school and jetted all the way to England to go to college. I feel like telling them, ‘Listen, you know something’s up if your only daughter went all the way to England to get away from you.’ ”

They laughed. Across the street two little girls sat on a stoop playing jacks. Further down the block somebody was playing a Stevie Wonder tune on the piano. The music drifted slowly past them.

“I figure I might go to Zimbabwe or somewhere. Two years I’ll be eighteen and done with school and on my way.”