Behind You (2 page)

THE SNOW STARTED MELTING IN JANUARY. AFTER THAT CAME the rain. Jeremiah'd been dead about a month and a half by then. Each day, I looked out the window expecting to see some sun, but it didn't come for a long time. Shoot. It was like Miah died and the sun just changed its mind about shining. City so gray, it could've been Seattle. Pain in me so deep, some days I just stood wherever I was, my mouth hanging open, my eyes burning up. My heart always just banging and banging. All these years I hadn't thought about it, and then my son died and my heart started pounding, always, like it wanted to break right through my chest. Even as I'm telling this, it's banging. Doctors say nothing they can do about this feeling. And I know they're looking at me, wanting to say
—We can't bring him back, Mr. Roselind.

So the world just stayed gray, my eyes burn, and then some days the tears come and don't stop, and then some days it's just my heart, banging and banging like that.

But I'm talking about that winter, right after everything. I was trying to do the things a person does to keep moving—dry cleaners, auto repair, post office . . . I'd taken a roll of film to get developed and when I got it back, there were some pictures in there from that day me and Miah had gone for a drive out to East Hampton because I was looking at this location to shoot my next movie. I don't want anybody to ever have to imagine what it's like to walk out of a drugstore with an envelope full of pictures under their arm—then, when they open that envelope, all they see is picture after picture of their dead son. I wouldn't wish that on anybody—no matter how deep my dislike of that person went. But that was me, walking up Fulton Street, my throat closing up so tight, I had to stop walking, remember how to breathe again. I remember a little girl and her mother crossed the street when they saw me standing there like that. Another woman asked if I was all right. I said,
My son . . . my son was killed. Jeremiah. My son was Jeremiah. He was only fifteen. Only fifteen
. I kept saying that.
Only fifteen.
And the tears came and wouldn't stop. The woman wanted to know what my address was and somehow I was able to tell her. She put her hand under my elbow and slowly led me home. Lois Ann was there. She thanked the woman. Took me upstairs and got me into bed. That was a long time ago. Some days it feels like it just happened.

In one of the pictures, Miah's got this big grin on his face. When I started going through those pictures, it took me right back to that day. Made me remember that we'd been having this whole talk about white people and I'd said something about white people not knowing they were white. Like if they go to a party, they don't know they're white if it's all white people in the room, but if they go to a party of black folks—
then
they know. I remember Miah getting quiet and staring out the window. He was wearing a green jacket and his black jeans. I remember looking over at him and thinking,
How did me and Nelia make such a beautiful child?
But he wasn't a child anymore. There was just the thinnest road of hair going across his top lip and his face had changed—he had my jawline—sharp. And he had the same habit I have of clenching his teeth when he was thinking real hard on something. We drove for a bit, him staring and clenching, me wondering what was on his mind.

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

Now I know why he was asking. Know why we were having that talk that day. But what good is it that I know now?

THE SOUL LOOKS BACK AND WONDERS. MINE DID. ONLY I didn't know it was my soul—I thought it was me looking back at me. But I kept hearing my grandmother's voice. The way she'd say that—
The soul looks back and wonders
—every time something made no sense to her. Or every time I did something that seemed completely outrageous. Like the time I put a plastic snake on top of her laundry pile. She got so scared, she couldn't even catch her breath. And her sitting there with her hand on her chest breathing hard in and out made me realize—even at seven years old—that I'd done something there wasn't any turning back from. That the way she was gonna beat my butt once she finally
did
catch her breath was gonna be like no butt whipping I'd ever felt before. Or would ever feel again, thank goodness. And later on, as she took the strap to my bare legs and sore behind, she kept saying, “The soul”—
slap—
“looks”—
slap—
“back”—
slap
—“and”—
slap
—“wonders”—
slap
.

My grandmother could beat a behind, yo. That's no joke. She'd get this look on her face when you got fresh, or got caught playing with matches, or put a snake on her laundry. And the look was like “Where in God's name did you ever get an idea that that was the right thing to . . . ” And then you knew. You knew it was all over for your behind. My mom and pops never laid a hand on me, but my grandma made up for their non-whipping parenting by letting me know every now and then that

“In order to be raised right, Jeremiah—you can
not
spare the rod.”

I was her only grandchild and she loved me with this love so fierce, my pops used to say you could feel it coming on for miles. Soon as we got a call saying she was on her way up to New York, my pops would say,

“Stand still, Miah. You feel the love coming?”

FOR EIGHT YEARS I WAS MIAH'S GRAM. BEFORE THAT TOO, I reckon. Feels like I've known him since before he got to the world—longer than he knew himself, truthfully. Seems like we'd been friends really—not gram and first-born grandson—somewhere before life on earth . . .

Life. On. Earth.

Think on that. Earth looks small from far'ways. I remember when I was a child and my daddy showed me a blue marble, those kind that don't just have blue in them but lots of other colors besides. He says to me,
Girl, look hard at this here marble, 'cause what you looking at is the whole wide world.

And I looked hard at the marble and then I looked real hard at my pa and I reckon I must have been thinking that here's a man I always loved who's lost his mind.

We lived in Aiken then. A little brick house. You went up three stone stairs and then you were on our porch. And there was a swing on the porch—old iron swing that squealed to high heaven every time you sat down on it and commenced to swinging. Well, you went up those three stone stairs and passed that porch swing and then you were at our front screen door. Then you were in our front room—hardwood floors, a big potbellied stove—stove warmed the house like you wouldn't believe. One year, my baby sister set fire to her own dress sleeve standing too close to the open stove door. The skin on her arm was never the same after that, and she carried that arm sort of different from the other. When she got to be a young woman, she never wore short sleeves—not even in the hottest months—because she was ashamed. Don't know if the shame come from the scars or from her childhood foolishness of sticking her arm in the fire. Reckon it had to be some of both. Guess that's my first recollection of how people hide their scars.

Girl,
my daddy said,
I know you think I lost my mind, but this marble is how the world looks to everybody but us humans.

I looked at the marble. I looked at my daddy. I looked around at our little brick house. Back and forth and back and forth like that till I must have looked some kind of foolish myself.

Sir,
I said,
I reckon I don't know what you mean when you say everybody but us humans. Ain't nobody else but God to see.

Uh-uh, Sweet Pea,
my daddy said. He'd been squatting down, sitting back on his haunches like a lot of people used to do. He'd sit that way, squatted down, 'cause he was tall—over six feet—and me and my sisters and brothers had gotten our mama's gift for not growing tall. I was the smallest in the family—tiny hands, tiny feet and body.

Well, my daddy stood up and looked down on me and let himself smile. He had a nice, big, white-toothed smile, my daddy did.

Close your eyes
, my daddy said.

I did.

I did.

I did.

I looked around, and I liked the way it felt to have everything back in its place, the way the room came back in view and the floor felt hard again. And my daddy standing there grinning like he would be that way . . . always. . . .

And now, here I am—way on the other side of that story and that beautiful day. I grew up and I grew old and then I got sickly and I died. But before all that happened, I had me a son, and that son had himself a son. And he named that boy-child Jeremiah.

And some mornings, Jeremiah comes to where I'm sitting, rocking in this big maple chair, the cushion softer than any cushion should ever be, the wood smelling like it was cut only an hour ago, the air cool and gentle as a child's hand. And Miah sits down beside me and we look out before us where the rest of the world is hustling past—people doing what they need to be doing to get through their days.

And Jeremiah says,
Tell me that story again, Grandma, the one about the marble
.

And the love in my heart for that boy-child just fills up inside me and spills all over.

THE FIRST TIME I TRIED TO WALK TO THE PLACE WHERE THE cops shot Miah, it was dark. Central Park is not a safe place at night. People have been mugged. Raped. One man was attacked by a group of kids who just wanted to see if they could get away with it—rich kids from the Upper East Side. Some of them got away, but three were caught.
We were just playing
, they said.
We didn't think it would end that way.
Well, that man didn't make it. I don't know what happened to the kids—kids my age—fifteen, sixteen. The news was all over the story for a while and then it wasn't anymore. Something else must've happened and the media's absolute glee followed that new thing. The park at night is dark and quiet, though. If it wasn't for the danger, it would be a beautiful place. I wanted to see where Miah fell. I wanted to listen—hear him crying out. Two months had passed since his dying. It was late February and so cold, my hands hurt. I knew the place—the papers had reported the story for almost a month. There had been demonstrations—yet another black guy shot in a case of mistaken identity. But this had been different. According to the papers, Miah was not just some black guy. He was a rich kid. He was the kid of famous parents. He was loved and attended one of the most prestigious schools in New York City. I read every word, even when Marion tried to take the papers from me.

“You don't need to do this to yourself, Elisha,” she said.

“Yes, I do,” I said back. Yes, she is my mother. But she doesn't understand. How could she ever understand any of it? How could anyone know what it was like? It was all so damned useless. And the stupid papers—how dare they? How dare they measure one life against another.

The first time I tried to walk to the place where the cops shot Miah, a dog ran out from nowhere, then darted back into the darkness. I stopped, a long way away from that place—in the dark and in the cold. I stopped, hugged myself hard in the darkness.

And screamed and screamed and screamed.

THAT SATURDAY AFTERNOON—I'LL ALWAYS CALL IT THAT. That Saturday. Not “The Day Miah Died.” Not “The Day a Whole Lot of Us Changed Forever.” Not “Saturday, December Eighth.” That Saturday, the snow started coming down hard. I had been sitting on the stoop just thinking on things. That fall, I'd begun to realize this thing about me, this stupid secret thing that I knew I'd never live out or talk about. And then the fall was over and it was starting to snow. A new season. Different weather and the secret getting older and deeper. When the snow started falling, it was wetter and colder than I'd ever remembered it being. I had on a sweater and some jeans and my hiking boots. Maybe I had on a T-shirt underneath, but it wasn't enough. Even my fingernails were cold. I looked over at Jeremiah's building—every window except Nelia's study was dark. I knew Miah wasn't home, so I couldn't go over there. But I didn't want to go inside my own house. My mother was inside and she was probably reading on the couch. A romance novel. She was probably reading about a woman who fell in love with a man and lived happily ever after. The books with the shiny gold letters on them. Always white women. My mother's white and I wonder if she sees some part of herself in those books—wonder if she makes wishes. Or just lets herself get caught up in them before coming back to planet Earth to make dinner for me and my dad and start ironing her clothes for the next week of working. She teaches. My father plays music. They've been together forever. My sister's in England. Oxford. She wanted to get out of New York. Wanted to get away from our tiny family, I guess. Maybe I was thinking about all of this as I sat there shivering and singing real low. Maybe it's because my dad's a musician that I like to sing. There's always been music in my house. That day, I was singing “Landslide”—not the remake, but the old Fleetwood Mac version where Stevie Nicks really rocks it. Jeremiah always thought it was strange that I was such a Stevie Nicks fan, but her voice—her
voice
—it did something to you. And no one can do “Landslide” the way she does. My father had turned me on to that song. He plays piano and guitar and a couple of other instruments. He'd sit down with his guitar and just start strumming and singing that song.
Can I sail through the changing ocean tide? Can I handle the seasons of my life?
And there was always such a sadness in his voice, but nothing compared to Stevie's. When she starts going on about the landslide bringing her down, it snaps the heart. So I sat there, singing, trying to do what she did with that song.