This Side of Home (2 page)

I stayed plain faced. Modest in everything except attitude, Nikki says.

Junior year, Nikki's hair had a personality all its own. Pressed straight most days, but sometimes she
let it be. Natural waves swimming all over her head. My long, black strands twist like licorice and hang down my back, always braided.

All these adjustments to our outsides.

Reversible if we want to go back, be the same again. It's the changes on the inside that I'm worried about. I keep telling Mom that it feels like Nikki and I are growing apart.

She says, “There are going to be a lot of things that start changing now that you're older. You're growing up, that's all.”

Maybe she is right.

Part of me is excited, but it makes me nervous, too. There are some things I like just the way they are.

Essence's mom is a cracked vase. A woman who used to hold beauty.

I've seen pictures of Ms. Jackson and Mom when they were in high school. Mom has told me the story of how they met, of how they'd stay after school to watch the football team practice. Ms. Jackson was watching a guy named Reggie. Mom had her eyes on Dad. Mom never tells the part about how Reggie left Ms. Jackson, how when he came to the hospital two days after Essence was born he told Ms. Jackson, “This baby don't look like me,” and walked out.

But Ms. Jackson tells the story all the time. Especially when she's drunk. Tonight she is pacing their living room with an empty bottle in her hand that
she tries to drink from. “Got to move out of my house 'cause your trifling, no-good daddy ain't paid no child support.” She stumbles over half-packed boxes, almost trips, and then yells at Essence. “Didn't I tell you to get this living room packed up? You think this stuff is going to pack itself?”

Essence finishes wrapping the plates and glasses in bubble wrap. She places them in a box, then walks over to a closet in the hallway and pulls out a dusty box that's falling apart and bursting at the seams. It has a missing flap, so it can't close properly. Essence reaches in and pulls out a stack of magazines. They are small, almost the size of thin books. “What do you want me to do with your
Jet
magazines?”

“If I got to tell you what to do, why you helping?” Ms. Jackson says. She snatches the magazines from Essence. They slip out of her hands and scatter on the floor.

I bend down and start picking them up.

“I ain't asked you to do nothing!” Ms. Jackson kneels down and picks up the magazines, cradling them in her arms in a way a mother holds her child, in a way I don't think she ever held Essence.

“Ms. Jackson, I was—I was just trying to help,” I say. “Sorry.”

“I don't want your sorry. And what I tell you about
calling me Ms. Jackson?” she says. “I done told you my name is Darlene.”

Mom says calling adults by their first name is disrespectful. “Sorry, Ms. Darlene,” I say.

She stands up, barely able to walk straight. She continues her rant, talking to me even though she isn't looking at me. She paces the living room, still nurturing her magazines. There are so many they barely fit in her arms. “Coming over here acting all siddity. You can leave and go tell your momma everything you seen here. I know that's what you gonna do. Comin' over here like a spy or somethin'—”

“Mom!” Essence says.

“You shut up and help me pack. Didn't I ask you to help me?”

Essence can't or won't look at me. I'm not sure which. She always gets this look when Ms. Jackson relapses. As if it's her fault, like she should be able to keep her mother sober. “I can't wait till I graduate so I can get away from you,” Essence says.

I think Ms. Jackson might throw the magazines down and slap Essence, but instead she just yells back. “And where you think you gonna go? You hang with Maya and Nikki, but you ain't smart like them—and you don't have Mr. I-Have-a-Dream Thomas Younger as a father to pay for college.”

When Ms. Jackson is drunk she calls Dad all kinds
of names. Sometimes, Mr. Thomas-Younger-Our-Next-President, or Mr. Make-the-World-a-Better-Place. I don't want to say what she calls Mom.

“I'm getting away from you,” Essence says. “And I'll work my way through college if I have to. I can do hair.” She holds a handful of her own braids in her hands as proof.

Ms. Jackson rolls her eyes. “You ain't gettin' into college. Not with that Richmond High education. That school ain't nothing. Not like it was when I went there. Back then we had good teachers—”

“Well, you can't tell that by looking at you!”

I wish Essence hadn't said that.

“What did you say?” Ms. Jackson asks.

I look at Essence. Hard. I shake my head.

When Essence opens her mouth, I am afraid of what might come out. She sighs and says, “Nothing, Mom. Nothing.” Essence walks over to her mother. “I'm done arguing with you. Just give me the magazines so I can repack them,” she says.

“I'll take care of these. You pack up that stuff.” Ms. Jackson points to a bookcase that holds family pictures and a framed handprint that Essence gave her for a Mother's Day gift. We were in the third grade, and our teacher had each of us dip our hands in our favorite color of paint and make prints.

Essence walks over to the bookcase with an
empty box in hand. She dumps the picture frames in the box.

Ms. Jackson neatly packs her magazines. One by one she puts them on top of each other. “These are classics. Might be worth something one day,” she says. Her voice is calm now, and I don't think she's talking to us. Or maybe she is but it doesn't matter to her if we are listening. “Do they even make
Jet
magazine anymore?” she asks. “This one here has Michael Jackson on the cover. This was back in his normal days. Back when everything was—” Ms. Jackson is still for a moment, just looking at a young Michael Jackson. She touches his face before she puts it in the box, then takes another one. “And this one—Luther. I can't throw out Luther Vandross.”

Ms. Jackson talks about each magazine as she puts them in their new home. She has her own personal black history time capsule. She walks over to the sofa, dragging the box with her, and sits next to me. For each magazine, she has a story.

Essence lets out a loud sigh of boredom, of frustration. She goes upstairs. I think maybe I should go with her, but I feel like Ms. Jackson needs me to stay. She needs someone to listen to her yesterdays. She packs the last magazine, one that has the Olympic track star Flo Jo on it. “Help me tape this, please,” she says.

I take the tape from the coffee table. She grabs the
scissors. Together, we close the box, store her memories once again. Before I let go of the box, Ms. Jackson grabs my hand, squeezes it tight. “Don't tell your mom, okay? Don't tell her you seen me like this,” she says. “And your dad. Don't tell your dad. Promise me, okay?”

I don't answer.

“Promise me.”

“Promise me you'll stop drinking,” I say.

“I promise. I promise I'm gonna get myself together,” Ms. Jackson says.

“I won't tell them,” I say.

Ms. Jackson lets go of my hand.

We both know neither of us will keep our word.

Essence will not tell us how she feels about moving. Instead, she curses the landlord. Rants to me and Nikki about all the things he ever did wrong.

“He never fixed the light in the bathroom; we have to hit it in order for it to come on,” she says. “And the dishwasher. That thing has never worked. Not once, not ever, in seventeen years. We use it to store pots and pans.” Essence takes everything out of her top dresser drawer and stuffs it into a suitcase. “He raised the rent even though he took two weeks to schedule the exterminator to come.” Essence is yelling now. She slams the drawer and opens another one. “Mickey and Minnie should've been paying rent,” Essence says. “Since they left Disneyland and moved in here.”

Nikki can't hold back her smile. It spreads across her face and she gives in to a laugh. Essence gives in, too. Her head falls back and she laughs up to heaven, showing God her smile before the rest of us see it.

We chase the sadness and anger with our laughter. Essence sits on her bed and says, “Do you guys remember that night we all stood in the middle of my bed, hollering for hours?”

I feel jittery just thinking about it. “That mouse was strolling all over your room. Just roaming around like he lived here,” I say.

“He did live here!” Nikki says.

And we laugh harder.

I finish the story, “And Dad teased us. Said we were scaredy-cats.”

Nikki remembers, “Yeah, he was like, ‘You three tall girls are scared of a tiny mouse?'”

“If it wasn't for your dad,” Essence says, “I don't know what we would've done.”

She is talking about how Dad came and put out mousetraps, how he always comes and helps—fixing things around her house like he's the handyman. She is talking about how Dad came the night Ms. Jackson had a breakdown and locked herself in the bathroom, how he called Mom and how they took Ms. Jackson to the hospital and let Essence stay with us until her mom was better.

Just as quick as the laughter came, it leaves. Essence stands up and paces the room with her arms folded. “I can't believe I have to move. I hate our landlord,” she says. “I really hate him. He kept telling us he was going to redo the basement. Every year he had some plan, telling us he could make it a rec room, a study, an exercise space, but it's still just a creepy dungeon,” Essence says. “And then he has the nerve to start fixing things—right in our faces—a new bathroom with a jetted tub and marbled shower.” Essence fills a suitcase with the clothes that are hanging in her closet. “And he goes and tells us it ain't for us. Like we ain't good enough to live in a place like this. Can you believe that? He's going to fix it all up, and we can't stay.” She inhales a gulp of air. “He knew he was going to sell the house. He knew it. And he knew we wouldn't be able to afford it!”

Essence looks out of the window. “Just when things are starting to get nice around here, too. Finally got a neighborhood I don't have to be afraid to walk through at night, and I got to leave.”

Essence sits back on her bed. I don't know what to say, what to do. I am just as mad as she is, but it won't do any good to join her in complaining. Nikki and I start taking her posters off the wall. Most of them are pages Essence tore out of hair magazines, except for the one big poster of her favorite basketball player.

The last things left to pack are the picture frames on her dresser. Every photo has a friend in it. There's one of her and Malachi, and another of her, Nikki, and me when we were in the eighth grade. We are standing outside the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry at a field trip. The three of us just happy to be together.

The next frame Essence picks up holds a picture of us at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Ms. Jackson is standing on the end, holding her waffle cone. The rest of us had all gobbled ours right before my mom took out her camera. Mom and Ms. Jackson used to take us to the coast every summer, and we couldn't go without stopping at the cheese factory. Each year, we took the tour to see the huge machines and learn how cheese is packaged, how ice cream is made. At the end of the tour, we'd stop by the gift shop. Mom always bought smoked cheddar; Ms. Jackson, the squeaky cheese curds that make noise as you chew. And at the very end, we all got ice cream cones—the best part of the day.

Essence gently puts the photo in the box. There is no bubble wrap to put the frames in, so she takes a black marker, writes FRAGILE on the box. I think maybe that note is not only about what's in the box, but the girl packing it.

The three of us sit, looking at the lonely room. I
think of all the things we did here. How when we were in elementary school we were small enough to fit under her bed and we would pretend to be on a camping trip. In middle school we whispered and giggled the night away talking about our secret crushes. We carved ESSENCE + MAYA + NIKKI = FRIENDS 4 EVER in her closet.

“I'm going to miss you,” I say.

Nikki looks at me like I have just said the craziest thing. “You're acting like she's leaving the country.”

“Well, the bus ride
is
forty-five minutes,” Essence tells us. “You two better come see me.”

I don't know why I start talking in a motherly tone, but I can't help it. I say, “You better keep your attendance up.”

“She'll be fine,” Nikki says. Like she's forgotten that Essence hits the snooze button for an hour before she crawls out of bed. We both know how long she takes to do her hair, her makeup, and to nurse her hungover mother before she leaves for school.

“Maya, don't worry about me. I've got to stay on top of things so I can get me some scholarships. Perfect attendance. Honor roll. That's my goal.” Essence stands up, and we follow her downstairs. The stairs moan like an old woman with bad knees. Essence says, “I wonder when the landlord's going to fix the rest of
the house. You two have to get in good with whoever moves in here so you can tell me how he changes the upstairs.”

“Okay,” Nikki says.

I don't say anything.

We go into the kitchen, and Essence opens the refrigerator. It is in its usual state. Half-empty. She takes out three cans of soda, and we go outside and sit on the porch swing. Essence and Nikki start talking about prom. They're already making plans even though prom is at least ten months away.

We've had our senior year planned out since we were in middle school.

Prom: Me and Devin, Nikki and Ronnie, Essence and Malachi.

College: the boys at Morehouse, us girls at Spelman.

That's the plan.

Essence and Nikki talk about going to the beach the weekend of prom, which I know Mom and Dad are not going to allow. I let them have their fantasy and start watching Essence's neighbor, Carla, who is moving another roommate into her house. Carla moved in two years ago. She's thirtysomething, at least I think she is. She rents rooms to college students, which means there are always people in and out. Carla is in
a band and sometimes has rehearsals in the garage, and that always gets Ms. Jackson complaining. She thinks the music is too loud. “And it don't even sound good,” Ms. Jackson always says. And then she goes on and on about it. “White people moving here thinking it's okay to play music all loud and let their dogs go to the bathroom all on the sidewalk. Let one of us blast our music and I bet they call the police for noise violation.”