The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (14 page)

“If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”

That’s Grandma’s way of cursing when she sees the porch window’s broken.

“Lord have mercy if our people ain’t just gonna do ourselves in.”

We don’t know for sure, but it’s Drew’s best guess that one of the kids who hangs out on the corner threw a rock to scare us. They’re tired of Grandma’s loud talk from the porch. It makes Grandma mad, but also sad that the neighborhood has changed so much.

“Them closing the drive-through dairy was one thing,” Grandma says. “But not feeling safe in your own home . . . It was the best of the best black folk living around here when I first come. And the rest of them hard workers, mostly from the
shipyards—not like them kids ruinin things just to get some new sneakers. Look at us now.”

Even I can see it. Things just aren’t the same. Across the street Mrs. Lewis put bars on her windows, and the neighbor next door got a big dog. There have been three break-ins on this street in the last month. On the block where there was a real grocery store, now there’s just a convenience store, a liquor store, a church, and a place that you can buy hair. The closest grocery store is a twenty-minute bus ride away. And someone spray-painted graffiti on the Alberta Street community center mural of the Reverend Martin Luther King. My ex-friend Tracy used to say I lived in the ghetto, which made me think of the TV show
Good Times.
A ghetto has tall buildings and empty lots, trash all over the street and city noise. Here the houses are two stories; the houses have trees in front and everyone has a yard. I always told Tracy she was wrong, but now I think Tracy was right. The ghetto looks different in different places, but if you live there, it makes you feel the same.

“Miss Doris, don’t you worry,” Drew says. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Now how am I gonna leave this child alone knowing those hooligans tryin to get me?”

Grandma’s bags have been packed for two days. She’s going on the train to Seattle for the church convention.

“How about if I stay on, Miss Doris?” Drew says. He offers to sleep on the couch and see to it that I’m fed and safe at night while she’s gone. At first Grandma says she can’t let Drew do that.

“Go on. Things’ll be fine. Now let me call somebody see if I can get this here patched up.”

Grandma looks at me real stern and says, “Now don’t be giving Drew no trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I
T’S STRANGE TO
have Drew stay over. I’m in bed with the door a little bit open. I can hear the television show he’s watching. If I scoot to the top of the bed, I can see the top of his head through the open sliver of the door.

It makes me think: No man has slept in this house since the day Pop left to go to the air force. And that’s been a long time now.

I settle down into the blankets and close my eyes. I’ll be safe tonight. I won’t be alone.

I think I would like it if Drew lived here full-time because he makes French toast for breakfast. I have two slices and he has four. He doesn’t ask me why I hold the fork and knife in opposite hands while I eat. (It’s the Danish way.) And when I say, “
Tak for mad
”—which is what you say after a meal—he says, “Well, alright,” and smiles. When he’s done eating, he makes a fake burp and pats his pushed-out stomach, making it round. He’s not all about formality like Grandma.

Drew reads not just one, but three newspapers during breakfast: the
Oregonian
and the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
. He starts with the front page, then reads almost every page to the end like he’s reading a book. He doesn’t read the comics like Grandma does. Drew isn’t interested in
the funnies. He wants to know about what’s happening in the world. He has all kinds of things to say about our times, like how racial injustice is worse than when he was growing up, how apartheid has to end real soon and Nelson Mandela must be free, how the government doesn’t care about these new drugs like crack taking over our neighborhoods; how ketchup can’t be a vegetable to anybody; and how he never thought he’d live to see the day that the young brothers would be killing each other over tennis shoes.

He goes on and on. “And what does it matter?” he says today. He’s reading a story about a protest that happened downtown yesterday. About a month ago, an Ethiopian man was killed over in Southeast by a bunch of skinheads, wearing swastikas. They chased the man down and beat him to death with a bat.

“Even if the Ethiopian kid threw the first punch, it’s no reason to beat the boy to death with a bat,” Drew says as if he’s talking to me, but really he’s talking to himself out loud. “Mark my words: Lines are being drawn.”

I nod my head. He talks about the news this way, like he’s in a conversation with the world, but it’s really just himself. I pay attention. I know he wants me to listen in.

F
OR THE MOST
part, the weekend goes on like it normally does. I go to the library. I watch some TV. It’s normal but also special that Drew’s here.

Tonight Drew’s going out and I have to “hold down the fort” by myself for a couple of hours. He’s running the shower
so long it would make Grandma tap her remote control on her bedroom wall. You can tell how steamy Drew’s shower water is by the drips of dew that are collecting on the bottom of the doorframe. Not that I’m looking or anything, but also there’s a powerful soap scent coming from the room. It smells like the woods only clean. Drew smells as good as a homemade loaf of bread.

He gets dressed in all black for a concert by a singer I’ve never heard of. “Etta James? You’ve never heard of Etta James?”

“No, sir.”

“You ever heard the blues?”

“Kind of.” And I think if he means like some old black guys on a porch with guitars then I have seen that on TV.

“Kind of?” he asks, and he gets into the low part of his voice like Deacon James. “The blues ain’t something you could kind of know.”

“Well, is it like jazz? My mom used to listen to jazz.”

“Young lady, we’ve got to get you schooled. You’re going with me tonight.”

“Sir, I can’t go. It’s a bar.”

“It’s a restaurant too. And I’m not doing any drinking,” Drew says. “It’ll be fine. We just won’t mention it to Miss Doris. Come on. Go get dressed.”

A special date with Drew calls for a special outfit—not church clothes but as close to grown-up woman clothes as I can get. So I wear a black sweater that used to be Aunt Loretta’s, a black skirt, high heels, and a purple brooch that Grandma found beneath her seat on the bus one day.

T
HE RESTAURANT IS
smoky and dark. Everyone seems to know Drew’s name. We sit close to the stage.

“This okay?” Drew asks.

Of course, everything’s okay. I smile.

We sit for a few moments listening to the band warm up. “Rachel, you’re sure these are good seats? I can’t hear myself think.”

“Maybe because I can only hear half of everything,” I shout back at him, pointing to my deaf left ear.

Drew squints his eyes and cocks his head to the side. He’s a big question mark. And I wonder what he really knows. I know when people ask how it was I came to live with her, Grandma says, “Her mama couldn’t do right by her.” And no one ever asks where Pop has gone.

I’m not going to explain to Drew what I mean because I like thinking of myself this way: like nothing is wrong with me at all. I wave my hands to say “never mind” and turn to look at the stage again.

That’s when the waitress with red-orange lipstick and braids piled on top of her head comes over. She leans over Drew a little too close, I think, and kisses him closer to his mouth than his cheek.

“Who you got with you?”

“This is Lo’s niece.”

“Well, bless your heart.”

“I’m looking out for Rachel for the weekend while her grandmother is gone.”

“Lord have mercy and takin her to a place like this is what you call lookin out?” I look around when she says this. This
is a restaurant, just like Drew says, but more of a bar or a lounge. There is no one here even near my age.

“She’ll be fine. She’s incorruptible. She’s got a good head on her shoulders too.”

“So what can I get you, sweetie?” the waitress asks.

E
TTA
J
AMES IS
stuffed together like Grandma—a big, squishy capsule—and she’s light-skinned like me. She’s got the gravel to her voice when she sings the loud parts (and the parts that are kind of nasty too). She also has that soft spot in her voice when she sings songs that are about being lonely and sad.

The last song, which is an encore, is a long, slow song. I clap and clap. And stand and clap. I want to say this the way Grandma would if she agreed: I like me some Etta James! It feels like it’s the only way to say it to make the meaning good.

Drew laughs.

“I wish Lakeisha could appreciate the things you do. I know it’s been hard on her, me not being around. But that girl’s got no interest in nothing but trouble. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. It’s all I can do. I try to be there for her: phone calls, letters. Those are just words. And she’s so grown. Just not grown up. Lord, help her.”

It’s like I’m not there as Drew says this, because I can tell that he’s sad and I don’t know what to say to make him feel better. Me, personally, I think Lakeisha’s not too smart. Because if I had a dad like Drew I’d make sure he was proud of me. I’d make sure he knew that I liked having him around.

When we get home to Grandma’s house, everything I notice is what is different about Drew being here. His blanket’s
bunched up on the couch, and his bag is halfway hidden beneath the coffee table. And the other thing I notice is not something you can see, but a feeling. It’s that feeling Mor called
hyggeligt
. It means something like comfort and home and love all rolled into one. That feeling went away when Aunt Loretta died, but somehow, it’s here tonight.

A
FTER
I
BRUSH
my teeth, I go to the living room to say thank you and good night.

“You’re welcome,” Drew says. “Sleep tight.”

“So, I guess I know what the blues is now,” I say smiling.

“Oh, yeah?” There’s a smirk on Drew’s face, not like he wants to laugh at what I’m going to say, but he’s going to pay attention real close. “What do you know?”

“Well, I would explain the blues this way: Like for me, I imagine inside of a person there’s a blue bottle, you know?”

I feel shaky when I say this but also good. I’ve never told anyone about the blue bottle before.

“Yeah?”

“The bottle is where everything sad or mean or confusing can go. And the blues—it’s like that bottle. But in the bottle there’s a seed that you let grow. Even in the bottle it can grow big and green. It’s full of all those feelings that are in there, but beautiful and growing too.”

“Yes, Rachel,” Drew says, “that makes a lot of sense to me.”

In bed later, I stare at the ceiling for a long time. I am thinking: What if Mor knew about the blues? What if she had thought that sometimes there’s a way to take the sadness and turn it into a beautiful song?

G
RANDMA TAKES AN
extra day away because the trains aren’t running on time.

That’s okay by me. It gives me an extra day to plan a welcome-home dinner and a celebration of three straight-A report cards in a row. Drew doesn’t mind staying the extra night watching me either. This way the window will be fixed by the time Grandma gets back, and she won’t have to worry about a thing.

“Welcome home, Grandma.” I yell when she opens the door and steps inside with Miss Verle right behind her. The table is set with the good plates and two candles burning. Drew stands next to me with his arm on me like he’s showing off a prize. “See, she’s all in one piece. You didn’t have to worry about a thing.”

“And Grandma, look. I got straight-As again. See.” I hand her my report card, but she doesn’t take it.

“Well, you’re not gonna get a A for that,” Grandma says, pointing to the casserole I’ve made for dinner. It’s more than a little brown on top. It’s actually black in some spots, and it’s runny—kind of like there’s a puddle of water on top of the cheese crust. I think I put in too much milk.

Grandma laughs. “Oh Lordy be.” She laughs some more. “Looks like I haven’t taught you a thing.”

“But y’all do look all cozy up in here playing house,” Miss Verle says and laughs.

I never pay attention to Miss Verle, and Drew definitely doesn’t. There’s no use in talking to a drunk who’s been drinking, which he figures she usually has because she smells like the contributions whether she comes in the morning or around suppertime. She smells like the contributions now.

“Come on. Grandma will show you how you treat a man. Not like that.” Without ever looking at my report card, Grandma takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen.

Miss Verle follows two steps behind. “Drew,” Grandma says real loud, “Miss Doris is fixin to put some hurtin to some chicken. I hope you’ll stay.”

“Miss Doris, you know I will.”

J
OHN
B
AILEY ASKED
me why I lied to him about being in Jack & Jill. He said no one at Jack & Jill knew who I was. I never said I was in Jack & Jill; I just let him think I was. He says I probably lied about other things too. Like there’s probably no reason for me to be saying no all the time when we’re kissing. He says because my underwear is small and my shirts are so tight, I must have said yes before. He says he doesn’t want to go with me anymore. Not unless he hears me say yes.

Drew’s not used to me crying. No one is used to me crying. So when I show up at his job doing just that, he hugs me real tight and closes his office door.

“You want to talk about it?”

“John Bailey is stupid.”

“I’m sure he is if he’s responsible for making you feel this way.”

“He’s a fucker.”

“No need to use that language.” I love to be held so close.

“I’m not a kid. I’m sixteen. He’s a stupid fucker.” I talk directly into Drew’s chest, and can feel my voice reverberate right back into me.