Behind You (5 page)

Ellie looked at me. “He doesn't play ball and he's not black—so no. And yes, I'm trying to see some Miah in you.” She threw her arms out. “I'm trying to see some Miah in every single person I see—not just you. So if that makes me some kind of stupid racist, then I guess I'll be that if I get to see him a little. . . .”

I didn't say anything, just started getting my stuff together. Ellie kept looking straight ahead. Just staring.

“Yo, El. I know he was your man, and I know you guys was mad tight and all. I know it must've hurt. . . .”

“It still does,” she said, real quiet.

I stood there with my backpack on my shoulder. Wasn't hardly anybody left on the stairs, and I wasn't looking to be late for math, but something kept me standing there.

“Look, El. I'm sorry I flashed on you. And I know I ain't never said this, but I'm sorry you lost your man. Miah was cool. The way I figure it, if it takes you a hundred years to get over it, then take the hundred years—it's just time, right? We all just doing our time on this planet anyways. Got a right to do it the way you need to.”

Ellie looked at me for a minute. Then she nodded.

“Thanks, Kennedy.”

I shrugged. “You don't have to be thanking me. I'm just telling you what's up.”

I turned and started heading up the stairs. I could feel Ellie's eyes on me. And another pair of eyes too—I knew who they belonged to and I knew he was nodding and saying,
Yo, Kennedy. Thanks, man
.

AT SCHOOL THERE WERE SIGNS EVERYWHERE—CHEERLEADING, debate team, track, soccer, chess club, reading group. I walked through the halls slowly, stopping to read each and every sign.
Come join us
, the signs seemed to beckon.
Why in God's name would anyone walk alone?

It was true—there were kids everywhere—talking, calling to each other, sharing notes and lunch and stories about their weekends. When the bell rang, the halls got loud and busy. The sounds swirled around me and over me as I walked, as though there were some kind of invisible
thing
covering me, keeping me just that far away from everyone. How could anyone ever get it?

In the classrooms, the teachers looked at me with soft, sad eyes. In the cafeteria, I turned to catch kids whispering as they looked in my direction.

I answered questions when called on. I waved to people who waved to me. I carried my books close to my chest and walked the halls alone. The noise that was Percy Academy became muted and distant and foreign. Who were these people?

Miah died in the winter. Spring came with lots of rain. Then crocuses in patches at playgrounds, narcissus in silver pots on windows, tulips at Easter time. Then it was summer. Then it was fall again.

I remember a day with lots of snow and me not getting out of bed. I remember the morning I slammed my fist into the mirror—the glass, the bleeding, the wanting to die. But the cuts were not deep and the mirror was replaced. I remember screaming. Lots and lots of screaming. And a rage so deep, some days I couldn't stop shaking from it.

Somewhere inside of all of this, there was a funeral. There were rallies and news programs and politicians promising to protect young black men. There was a trial and two cops went to jail. Percy put up a plaque and the basketball team wore black bands around their arms.

And then there was less rage and a new hollowness. A pit of warm, dry air inside of me.

Then, for a long time, nothing at all.

Through it all, the seasons continued to change. Day fell into night. My mother did chores. Dogs barked and car horns honked. Everywhere in the city, there were people who had no clue about the pain.

At school I took my tests. Did my homework. Each quarter, the A's on my report cards seemed to stumble over themselves. It was as if I was a grown-up coming back to school with all this new information. I had no friends. Everything and everyone seemed like it was part of a long-ago time—when I was young and free and living.

ALL DAY LONG, THE CICADAS BEAT THEIR WINGS. THE SUN moves out from behind clouds and shines on your skin. I sit, fanning myself, a tall glass of lemonade always at my side. You want summer—it's summer. You want to watch the leaves change color, you move to another spot and you got yourself some autumn. Or maybe you feel like lying on the ground and making yourself a snow angel—just take some steps and you got yourself your own private winter. My grandson won't go near the snow. He says it reminds him of the night he fell. He won't say
died.

I sit in my big chair and watch him watching the world some days. His body sags down and he lets himself get all wrapped up in a sadness just like his daddy used to do. I look at him and see Norman and Nelia and my own daddy—all coming through to him.

Jeremiah, you don't always got to be watching the world,
I say. I'm sitting in my spring with the cicadas singing. Jeremiah sitting in summer with the heat coming down and the sun so bright, the sky where he is is near white.

Jeremiah has a basketball. He can hold it in one hand. He can shoot it from way over there and it goes right into the basket. He can bounce it all kinds of ways that make you believe in magic. If he wants to play some basketball, all he's gotta do is get up and walk on over there and some boys who play really good will show up and they'll have themselves a good game. He gets the ball in the basket a whole lot of times. And he can do some fancy moves to take it away from one of the other boys.

That's when you see Jeremiah grinning.

But most days he just sits and watches the world. And that's when I try to talk to him.

You done left that world behind you,
I say.
Let it go.

But Jeremiah looks out on the world and shakes his head.

I look out at my flowers. The roses are red and pink and striped. Got roses with different-colored petals on the same flowers. Purple roses with color so deep, you choke up looking at them. Yellow-orange ones like little flames coming out of the green. Tulips too. And corn high as Jeremiah's head already and the spring still new. Got some rhubarb. Might bake a pie just to feel the crust forming against the palms of my hands. When my garden needs rain, it rains. Oh, if only living could've been like this.

If Jeremiah wanted, he could be in the front row of his favorite ball team's game. He could be swimming or eating ice cream. He could know what it feels like to fly. If he were a different kind of boy, he could stand in fire just because it was something he'd always wanted to do, or take steps down into the ocean and touch some shark's fin. Braid up the tentacles of a jellyfish.

But he's not that kind of boy. He's just a boy who can't let the world that he left behind get behind him.

I lean forward a little bit in my chair. I touch his head. Those twists he got is something I don't understand, but I still think his hair is beautiful. All of him is my beautiful Jeremiah. I let my hand run along his head and stare out to see what he's staring out at. There's his mama and daddy—Norman looking like he's putting on a little weight. I see Jeremiah's girl, Elisha, and her peoples. I see some animals, some little children, a ball game at Jeremiah's school. He's watching so many people and so many things.

One day,
I say,
each of them is gonna be on this side with you. Seems like it's gonna take forever—

Jeremiah is sitting cross-legged at my feet. He's got the ball in his lap. Now he lowers his head until his forehead is touching it.

Jeremiah lifts his head up and lets himself smile a little.
The water's still rippling, though.

I look out to where he's looking and I see he's telling the truth.

NELIA WAS SITTING ON THE STOOP WHEN I GOT THERE EARLY Saturday afternoon. She was wearing an orange T-shirt and a beautiful tie-dyed skirt that wrapped around her waist a couple of times and came all the way down to her ankles. I walked down the block slowly, watching her as she wrote in a black binder that covered a lot of her lap. The block was quiet. At the other end, a group of girls were playing hand games. I tried to listen to the song they were singing, but they were singing so fast, the words blurred together. Nelia'd gotten thin over the months. Her face looked smaller, the cheekbones jumping up from it in a way that was at once beautiful and alarming. I grabbed the strap of my shoulder bag, needing something—anything—to hold on to. She would always be Miah's mom to me.

“Hey, Nelia,” I said when I was still a few feet away from her.

Nelia looked up, surprised. Then, slowly, she smiled. Miah's smile. I stood there for a moment, not able to take another step.

Then Nelia said, “I was hoping you'd stop by.” And I felt myself melting, moving toward her like she was a life raft or something. We hugged and she held me tightly. I could feel her ribs beneath her shirt and skin, feel her still smiling.

“Sit down.” She motioned to the stoop and I sat down one stair below her. For some reason the idea of sitting on the same step seemed too much. I needed to be able to look up at her.

“What are you working on? I mean—is it okay to ask that?”

Nelia gave me a puzzled look, then nodded. “Of course.” She closed the binder. “I wish I could answer it, though—I don't really know. Just thoughts. Lots and lots of thoughts.”

“Oh.”

She touched my hair. Her hand felt so unfamiliar and so familiar at the same time.

“It's the way the books come to me. Thoughts are a good thing. A beginning.”

Before I knew Miah, before I knew Nelia, I'd had to read a novel of hers for English class. It was about a black woman who was a civil rights attorney. She went back south to visit family and ended up in slavery. The teacher kept calling it magical realism, but there was nothing magical about it to me—It was one of the scariest, most impactful books I'd ever read. It haunted me for ages afterward. When the class discussed it, I couldn't even say anything and I remember the teacher asking if I had read it. It's strange. I'd read it the year before I'd met Miah. Then there he was in my life. Then there was Nelia Roselind, author of
And Back Again.
Who would have known they were heading toward my life? Who could have told me? What would I have believed? If someone had said,
You're going to meet the son of this author—a black guy, Ellie—you're going to fall in love with him and then he's going to die,
I would have backed away from that person. I would have given them such a look and called them crazy.

I leaned back against the step and stared up at the sky. Nelia and I were quiet for a while. It was beautiful out—the leaves were just beginning to change and there was only the slightest bit of wind, a strange wind, like someone stroking my shoulders.

Nelia put the binder down on the step beside her. It had been a long time since she had written—I knew that. And I knew why too.

“It's been a long time,” Nelia said. She smiled at me and I knew it was because my face showed everything. Surprise. Embarrassment. “You were just thinking that, weren't you?”

I nodded.

“Since Norman and I—”

“Broke up.” I looked down at my fingers. “He left you—for Lois Ann King.” The words came quickly. It felt like I had said them a thousand times. But I hadn't. Only heard it—again and again from Miah.
It busted my mama's heart wide open,
Miah used to say.
Hasn't written anything since
.

Nelia frowned. “Your life gets away from you,” she said. “The older you get, the less of it you own.”

I didn't understand what she was talking about, but she kept talking and it seemed that it didn't matter, right then, whether or not I was there.

“Even you knowing the whole story—whether I wanted you to or not—”

“I'm sorry—”

“No. It's not a secret anymore. We would've gotten close and eventually you would've known. But the fact that you knew the whole story before you even knew me—that part. That's your life not being your own anymore. It's funny. It's like writing a book—once it's out there, people say and do whatever they want with it. You have no control.”

She looked at me, frowning still. “But who has control over
anything
, right?”

We were both quiet for a while. The sun went behind some clouds and everything got a bit darker for a moment. Then the sun came out again.

Nelia said, “It's hard to write when there's so much drama in your own life. Your own life gets in the way.” She let out a long breath and looked down the block. The girls were still doing their hand-clapping thing and she watched them for a minute. “That's an old one—
Down, down, baby, down by the roller coaster, sweet, sweet baby, I'll never letcha go. Jimmy Jimmy coco-pop. Jimmy Jimmy pop!
”

I laughed. “Is that what they're saying?”

Nelia rolled her eyes. “Over and over and over. Someone needs to teach them something new. If they keep it up, it's going to be the title of this book.
Down, Down, Baby, Down by the Roller Coaster, Sweet, Sweet Baby, I Will Never Let You Go
by Nelia Roselind.”

We laughed.