The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Read online

  “Laronne,” Nella had said, “I thought it was right. I do not know what to think. Feel.” Laronne had never been one to counsel or advise, but she saw that Nella needed some words, any words: “Just pay attention to what happens in here,” she had said, making a circle in the center of her chest with her hand. You can’t tell a grown woman what to do no way, she thought. “And take care of yourself and those kids,” she said. “That’s all you got to do.”

  IT WAS SLIGHTLY before noon when the white man, with his bright orange hair slicked back, came into the library with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, asking for Nella. This was the man Nella had left her marriage for?

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Laronne had said.

  “Ma’am,” he said in a lowered tone. “I need to see her. To give her these.”

  Laronne wasn’t one to be bullied.

  “Sir,” she said with equal force. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. But maybe security can.” He stood there glowering at her for a moment before he stormed away.

  Laronne could feel her heart quicken but more from anger than from fear. Nella’s got to handle her business, Laronne thought. But not here, and not on my time.

  WHEN LARONNE LEFT a second message for Nella that afternoon, she hesitated for a moment, and then, instead of saying “How are you?” or “Can I help?” she said, “Don’t bother coming in tomorrow. We won’t be needing your services here anymore.”

  What more did Laronne owe her? What more did she have to do?

  IT WAS A gray August evening. It had been a wet August day. As Laronne stepped into the apartment’s light, shadows of the couch rose up on the walls. The large green couch, a bassinet, and a television were the only pieces of furniture in the room. There were no bookshelves or tables or decorations — just opened suitcases along the wall serving as makeshift dresser drawers and dozens of moving boxes, some unsealed, most of them full.

  In the bedroom Laronne could see which child had slept on which side. The girl had made a nightstand out of an empty box. Her pajamas were folded and tucked beneath her pillow. Her bed was made. Library books were stacked neatly by the mattress on the floor.

  Laronne turned over the box that served as a nightstand and put the girl’s belongings inside. Three stuffed animals, a few sweaters, two pairs of pants, and a pair of dress shoes.

  Everything would have to be packed away.

  FROM THE KITCHEN window Laronne saw the crowd that had gathered before the courtyard cordoned off by the yellow police tape. The crowd stared up in the air as if looking for signs. They drew lines in the air — flight patterns of a family that fell from the sky.

  It was the Tuesday after Nella’s first payday and the cabinets were nearly bare. Laronne trashed a can of coffee, two white boxes of macaroni and cheese, a sweet cereal, and a dented tuna can. In the refrigerator was half a pitcher of orange juice, a baby bottle, applesauce, ketchup, and a box of the orange government cheese. Laronne threw it all away.

  It was in the drawer by the stove she found a pad of paper, pens, uncut sheets of wallet-sized school photos of the boy and girl, scissors, and five ten-dollar bills paper-clipped together along with a note.

  Dear Mrs. Warner,

  Thank you for giving us the money to go to the amusement park. We are going next week. I can’t wait.

  Love,

  Rachel

  Nella had paid her back.

  Laronne retrieved the coffee can from the trash. She emptied out the grounds. With the scissors she cut a hole in the coffee can lid. Then she marked the can with tape COLLECTIONS and stuck the ten-dollar bills inside. This would be for the lone survivor, the girl.

  Rachel

  Aunt Loretta plays tennis on Sunday mornings with a possible lizard named Drew. “At least he ain’t funny, like that Nathan turned out,” Grandma says. “But he still keepin you away from the Word.” That’s Grandma’s way of yelling. She doesn’t make her voice go loud or hard, just makes the sounds go capital. “BUT, he STILL keepin YOU AWAY from the WORD.” Aunt Loretta never goes to church. Not since Uncle Nathan went away.

  Grandma goes to the AME church every Sunday morning and sometimes Wednesday nights too to “lift up” one of the church ladies if someone’s sick. Today she’s giving Aunt Loretta the devil because she’s not going with us to raise up the Lord’s name.

  “You’re the one that wants me married, Mama. You’re the one that made me play.” Aunt Loretta isn’t defensive when she says this. She talks with facts. She has a high school tennis trophy on her dresser from 1967 and a date with Drew to play.

  Playing tennis is one of the things that goes in the white category, along with classical music and golf. Tamika said that in PE when Mrs. Karr was teaching us how to understand the score.

  Tamika is no authority, but I noticed the other black girls agree. The only black people I’ve seen play tennis are Aunt Loretta and Pop. And they’re related to white people, to me. I don’t ever mention that I’m related to white people. And most of the time I try not to let the black girls like Tamika see me talk to Tracy, because Tracy is a white girl. And the way they say that — white girl — it feels like a dangerous thing to be.

  But Grandma always wanted Pop and Aunt Loretta to know white things. Like when Pop wanted to be a musician. Grandma made him play the piano, when what he wanted to play was the banjo or harmonica. A piano is more white than a harmonica. I don’t know if it was a secret from Grandma, but sometimes Pop still played the harmonica too.

  Grandma can’t argue with Aunt Loretta. She does want Aunt Loretta married. She does want her to have something more. But sometimes it seems that Aunt Loretta has a different more in mind than Grandma. Grandma’s more for Aunt Loretta is a good secretarial job, a husband, two children and a house nearby.

  That kind of more doesn’t seem enough for Aunt Loretta and probably not for me.

  Aunt Loretta’s boyfriend, Drew, is her new tennis partner. Drew is handsome and not a boyfriend that gives anyone looks. Drew likes Aunt Loretta because she’s 1) pretty of course, 2) a good tennis player, and 3) smart. I’ve never heard boys say this was a good thing before.

  I like Drew because he is smart and he has a big, deep voice. He talks about “giving back to the community,” “uplifting the people.” He says the things he says over and over. He is very passionate the way he talks — more even than a preacher or a person running for president. Drew works downtown at the Salvation Army Harbor Lights Center. He is a drug and alcohol counselor. He says the same things Mor said. “Easy does it.” “One day at a time.” That kind of thing. It’s a code language. And I know what it means.

  I also like Drew because he makes the happy in Aunt Loretta more visible. The bus driver, the mailman, even the grocery store cashier at Fred Meyer can see it. It’s not different for Aunt Loretta to smile — she does that all the time. It’s easy to smile just to make other people feel better. But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see edges and lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me) or the anger (Grandma), begins. The lines and edges are gone from Aunt Loretta when Drew is around. And the picture of Uncle Nathan on the mantel is gone too — the one where he’s leaning into Aunt Loretta and it looks as if he can’t get the question off his face. That’s a good thing, I think. You shouldn’t hold onto things that give you edges. Now there’s more light inside Aunt Loretta, inside light that other people can see too.

  AT SCHOOL I HAVE the best cursive handwriting, and I am learning more big words like discombobulated because Mrs. Anderson always says that.

  “You’ve got me all discombobulated,” she says when she smacks the yardstick on Anthony Miller’s desk and breaks it in half. That makes Anthony Miller laugh even harder.

  Today when Anthony Miller does the bump bump bump against my chair, I turn around and make my face very still. “I’m not going to tell on you,” I say to Anthony Miller, which makes him smile with dimple
s so deep they can hold new nickels.

  “Sorry,” he says “for bumping your chair.” The space between his eyes seems smaller than before. His forehead squishes together. “Does it hurt?” he asks and his smile changes. I could look at the poster above his head on the back wall or at the blue-ink squiggles he’s made on his paper instead of the answers to the vocabulary test on the board, but I look him in the eye even though the blue bottle is open and the heat fills my face. “Not,” and my tongue is Robbie’s, “r-r-really.” I can’t stop the cry that wants to come. I haven’t. Anthony Miller’s eyes open wide like I’ve given him a special Christmas present.

  I don’t like it when I surprise myself by crying. The only time I do it really is when I wake up from a nightmare like last night when Robbie was with me in my dream. He was Robbie but he wasn’t Robbie. He had black hair like matted yarn and big brown eyes (not green) that looked like buttons stitched on wrong. He smiled at me a little crooked, and I tugged at the edge of his mouth to get him to laugh. But his smile turned into a thread in my hand. I picked at every loose thread, and then his face was empty. Only needle holes were where his eyes, his nose, his smile had been. There was no way he could cry or even scream. So I did. Robbie!

  Aunt Loretta always comes to check on me if she hears me scream in the middle of the night. “Poor thing,” she says. “It’s alright. Go ahead. Let it out.”

  Sometimes Aunt Loretta seems more scared of my nightmares than me. Aunt Loretta says, “What happened to you, it was scary. It was a scary thing that …” She doesn’t know what to say.

  “It’s hard to make sense of,” she says. “But you’re safe here.”

  “Okay,” I say without disagreeing. I am what she calls “safe,” and to me I am what I call “waiting.” In my diary I keep counting the days. I am waiting for Pop to come back — for Pop to come get me and take me home. Not to Germany. Not to where we spent that summer in Chicago. Not Denmark where Mor said she’d never go again. Home — wherever Pop is — even if it’s just me and him.

  The words on the board look fuzzy right now. If I concentrate I can copy down number 2 invade and then number 3 invalid. I am at inundate and Anthony Miller says, “Here,” and bumps my right arm making my u go jagged. He gives me a cafeteria napkin, crumpled from his pocket. It’s in my hand already when Mrs. Anderson comes toward Anthony Miller.

  Crack. Mrs. Anderson’s yardstick smacks down on his desk and breaks in half. The crack is in my bad ear. I can feel it pulse red because there is nowhere for the sound to go.

  “Hush. It’s time to be quiet.” Everyone is laughing and not at all quiet. This is the third yardstick Mrs. Anderson has broken this week, two of them on Anthony Miller’s desk.

  “It was me again Mrs. A. Sorry,” Anthony Miller says. “Sorry” sounds different now, or I make it sound different. I hold onto Anthony Miller’s first “sorry,” the one meant for me. Does it hurt? No one asked that before.

  I am still counting days.

  WHEN GRANDMA IS gardening is the only time she doesn’t seem just a little bit mad. Even when she wakes up in the morning, there’s a frown on her face. Grandma wakes up at 5:15 a.m. She takes the number 7 bus downtown and transfers to the 34. That takes almost two hours. She works for a white lady in the southwest part of town. That’s where the white people live. None of them have time to take care of their grandmothers, and that’s what Grandma does. Grandma is a grandma who helps grandmas. That seems important. When Grandma needs help, I don’t want another grandma to take care of her. I’ll do it myself. I think that’s only fair.

  When Grandma is gardening, I sit on the porch in her rocking chair and read. Right now I am reading Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. One girl in class said it was the first big book she has ever read. I’ve been reading big books since fourth grade. I have some favorites. I think this book will become one of them.

  “You think I don’t like books,” Grandma says. I never said that. But I do wonder sometimes when she asks me to read her the listings in the TV Guide: Maybe Grandma can’t read.

  “Grandma, you just know things.” I say this like I am giving her the pat on the head that she wants. Grandma does just know things — like she knows the names of the flowers and plants. She can see only the leaf and tell you what it’s from and what it can do.

  Aunt Loretta is different than Grandma. She’s interested in things, new things — not just gardening, good deals, looking respectable, and being clean in pressed clothes. Aunt Loretta doesn’t talk the way Grandma does either. She makes her t and ing sounds sharp. There is no Texas in the way Aunt Loretta talks.

  Aunt Loretta has something that maybe you could call class. It’s not the made-up kind like Grandma has, fake pearls and Sunday hats, but something that comes to you as if you were born to the king and queen. Aunt Loretta understands better than Grandma that reading a big book is more classy than wearing fake pearls watching TV. I wish I knew a better word for what I mean. On the days she’s feeling fussy, Grandma calls it “High Falutin” and then she calls it “white” — like the kids at school.

  When Grandma fusses at me, it means she wants me to like her. I will like her enough. Sometimes I can even say, “I love you, Grandma,” and that means something to her. I do love her because I have to. She’s my grandmother.

  I have a trick figured out though, so I don’t make mean thoughts about her when she starts to fuss. Thoughts like she’s not so smart, like she’s not as good a mother as Mor. I picture Grandma my age and someone loving her. I picture someone loving her but not someone like me who can curl into her lap while we’re watching TV, and I’m loving her soft squishiness, and her lavender, and the little bit of sweat I can smell if she’s still wearing her blue dress uniform. I picture someone loving Grandma small. Grandma curled up. Grandma closing her eyes when a warm hand runs through the front of her hair. Grandma’s hands are the ones that are quiet, and the loving one’s touching her.

  “It’s true. I don’t know any of them books you be readin,” Grandma says. “But I would of if they let me go to school. To that private school.”

  There is a story there that Grandma doesn’t tell. It’s a story that makes her sigh and tut-tut. When she digs again, she is in that story, not looking at the ground, but pictures of Texas in her mind. Or maybe they are pictures of herself young, more like Aunt Loretta — more like a girl who was going somewhere. That’s when she stops looking so mad.

  “Grandma, I think if I read you the stories, you could have the same books in you too.”

  “You think too much,” she says.

  “Don’t listen to that. You keep on making your mind good. That’s important,” Aunt Loretta says.

  She’s come home from work, an office job where she types and gets coffee or lunch for the boss. She’s still in office clothes: a skirt, high heels, a silk blouse, and a sweater. Seeing her standing on the porch right then, it’s hard to imagine that Aunt Loretta even belongs here.

  You can see how she looked exactly right driving down the street in Los Angeles in a fancy car or riding in a cab in New York City, when she was married to Uncle Nathan.

  “My mother means well, Rachel, but you just keep doing what you’re doing with your studies,” Aunt Loretta says. “It’s important.”

  “Ain’t nobody said it wasn’t. But she need to put some common sense up against that book sense.”

  “Mama, leave her alone. She’s a good girl.”

  “I’m right if I say they used to say that about you too,” Grandma says. “Still you run off just seventeen with that boy Nathan. You slept in the bed you made.”

  Grandma and really no one talks about where Uncle Nathan went. Uncle Nathan played football and basketball and baseball. “Real good,” as Grandma says, meaning very well. Uncle Nathan doesn’t play anything now. His “playin around days” are done. I don’t think he died because then Grandma would never say his name. “Bad luck conjurin up spirits and all.” Grandma never says “Ariel.” Grandma never says
“Robbie.” Grandma never says my mother’s name.

  I have never seen Aunt Loretta look anything like mad. Sad is what she does normally, but right now in her eyes it’s as if all she is is a flame. But she doesn’t say anything. And then it’s like someone’s thrown water on her. “You know what, Mama,” she says, “you’re right. You go on and be right.”

  Jamie

  Jamie visited the courtyard shrine every day until it rained.

  The shrine was made of an old board elevated by two cement blocks a foot off the ground. On the board, covered by a brightly colored cloth, there were candles, flowers, a teddy bear, and balloons — two already popped — attached with barely sticky tape. And there was a coffee can with a hole poked through the plastic lid, like the one passed around at church, that said COLLECTIONS.

  On that first day, Jamie put a quarter in the coffee can. He wanted to put in more.

  A school portrait of the bird-boy was taped to the collection can. In the photo he was six maybe seven, Jamie thought, because he was missing the same two teeth Jamie was missing at that age. And next to that was a photo of the girl with the fuzzy hair and the blue blue eyes.

  There was also a framed family photograph. The mother was seated in a wicker chair and standing on each side were the boy and the girl. It was the family from the sixth floor. Jamie had seen them when they moved in a few weeks ago and in the stairwell a few times too. It was summer, but he never saw them play outside.

  What is its shape? What shape are its wings?

  THE TELEVISION CAMERAS came on the first day. Channel 2, 5, and 7 interviewed neighbors Jamie had never seen. The neighbors said many things:

  She seemed regular.

  Kept to herself.

  Always made sure those kids were clean.

  Cute kids, damn shame.

  Polite, quiet.

  Didn’t know much about her.

  She had a man around here for a while. A white man. Kinda scraggily lookin.