I would never spit on the reverend father, of course. Michael, he calls himself. I am happy enough to sit here under the highway crossing and listen while he tells stories from his book, the Bible. The book is small, and brown, and he can read from it for a long time one day, and then more the next. He reads and reads, while the people sit stacked on the cement slope, their heads nodding forward, their clothing and blankets whispering in the breeze as they pass the time. They gaze out into the dusty lot, where the Glory Wagon is preparing something that smells good. The scent paints the back of my throat with water, and I look at the Glory Wagon, too. The Glory Wagon comes with Michael, and after you have listened to him tell what Father God wants to say, then the people in the Glory Wagon will give you something good in a paper bowl. It is only on certain days. Sometimes I pass by the bridge and see no Michael, and no Glory Wagon, and no paper bowls. I am learning the way of it, as you must when you come to a new place. The street people will help you, if you know how to ask.
Today, the men under the bridge are restless. They want to move on to the meal. I like the stories, though. I put them in my mind, but some of them are difficult to remember. I do not believe Michael keeps them all in his little brown book. There is not enough room in there for the pictures to tell so many stories. I think Michael must have many brown books with many different Father God stories, but all the books look the same. I think it is a trick he plays.
When he finishes, Michael prays over all of us. I watch him stand in the light filtering through the concrete piers, and hold his hands toward the sky, and call down a blessing. For a moment, everything is far away. I remember a building with no walls. I am a little girl on a blanket, and the sun is pushing through the roof in tiny pinpoints of heat, sending down shafts of light that dance in the dust from the floor. I have caught a piece of light in my hand, and I want to show it to someone. Another child. A younger one. There are brothers and sisters and cousins all around me. They have their eyes closed, as Father speaks a prayer over us, but I am looking at the sunbeams. For a moment now, my mind can see my brothers and sisters and cousins, their feet bare and brown in the dust, the tiny straws of sunlight falling over the braids in their hair. But then they fade, as they always do. I do not know what became of them when the soldiers broke down the gates of my father’s house. When my mother found me hiding beneath Father’s desk, no one was with her. She held my hand, and we ran through the house alone, into the darkness. . . .
There is movement all around me, and I am under the bridge again. Michael has finished his prayer, and everyone is walking toward the Glory Wagon—men and women, and a family with children alongside. Some of the men limp, some weave and stagger, and some just walk, as do I. Michael smiles at me as I come close. “Hello, Sesay,” he says, and points to the pocket on the front of my pack. It is clear, and you can see through it to know what is inside. “I see you’ve got another book.”
“I see you have one, as well,” I tell him, and he laughs.
“It’s the same book,” he answers. “Same old Bible.”
I blow a sound through my teeth, so he knows I am not such a fool as some of these people. “I like the story in this one.”
“I figured you would.” He looks down at the book, lifts it, and shows it the way a mother would display a favorite child.
“I have heard that story before—about the giant,” I tell him, and for a moment, I see a man’s hand, whirling as if he’s holding a bit of leather, a slingshot that will throw the rock to kill a giant. It is a white man’s hand, so I know it is not my grandfather’s. “Somewhere . . . my ears caught that story. . . .” Like so many rememberings, this one is a tiny scrap, like a bit of paper with the hand drawn on it. Nothing else is attached. There is only the hand floating in my mind. I watch it for a moment. “Is there a picture of the giant? In your book?” Perhaps if I see the picture, the memory will come back with it.
“No pictures in this book,” he says. “Just the words.”
“Father God could send pictures,” I point out, and look at the book again. “And then you would not need so many words.”
Michael laughs. “I never thought of it that way.” Lowering the book to his side, he turns toward the Glory Wagon, and we begin to walk. “I’ll look for a picture of Goliath and bring it to you, if I can. You going to be at the Broadberry Mission tonight?” In the evenings, Michael speaks at the mission, eight streets west, where the roads tangle together like snakes in a dance.
“Perhaps,” I tell him. “I saw a new family on Red Bird, beside the park. The house once was pink, but now it is yellow.” I want to watch the family more, to listen for their story, but I also know that when new people unpack, they put out boxes, and often the boxes have things in them that I can use—a bit of string, a can of paint, a china plate that has broken in the move.
Michael curls his lip like a growling dog when I mention the yellow houses. His hand goes tense on the Bible, and tight muscles shoot up his arms like cords of rope twisting. I am reminded that he is a young man. He has the anger of the young, but he fights against it. Sighing, he looks down at the sidewalk and shakes his head. He weighs the Bible in his hand. “Householders,” he murmurs, but does not say anything more.
“The family may be putting out boxes by now,” I tell him. “Boxes with things left in them.”
Michael narrows an eye and it twinkles at me. “Sounds like you’ve got important business. Guess I should stop holding you up then, shouldn’t I?” We reach the end of the line at the Glory Wagon, and he moves to take a place behind the table. Most days, he gives the spoons and greets everyone as they pass. He knows the names of so many people, even the newer ones like me. Some answer to the names and some do not. Today, a young girl with red hair gives out the spoons and bowls. She smiles, but she is not certain she should look anyone in the eye. She sets the bowls and spoons on the table, so no one will touch her.
Michael takes my spoon from her and keeps it just out of my reach. “You have anything for me?” he asks.
I have been waiting for the question. “Of course.” I pretend to search the pockets of my pack, but that is only for show. I am wearing my green pants with the pockets, like the ones the army men have. The thing Michael is waiting for is there, and I know it. When I finally take it out, he gasps with anticipation.
“It’s wonderful,” he says, watching as the little red fish dangles from a loop of orange thread. The thread was tangled in the fence near the school, and the fish I carved from a bit of pecan wood that was floating in a puddle in the ditch where the children play beside the white apartments. I know how to find the story in a bit of wood. My grandfather taught me.
“It’s just a little thing,” I tell him, but the fish is good. I rubbed it against the paint on the curb to give it the red color. I saw fish like it in the ocean, after my grandfather put me on the boat. Auntie showed the fish to me, and she told me to watch them. When I looked up again, the shore was far away, and my grandfather was as tiny as the little wooden fish, now dangling from the orange string.
“It’s very nice,” Michael decides, and I am pleased.
“I can carve a good fish.” For just a moment, I feel taller, and then I realize that I am smiling, and my teeth are not pretty. “It is equal to a bowl and a spoon.”
Michael nods. “It certainly is.” He pockets the fish and hands a bowl and spoon to me. The red-haired girl chews her lip, and I can see what she is thinking. The bowls and spoons don’t cost. But she does not know me. She does not know that I pay my own way. When you pay your own way, no one can own you.
I feel inside my pocket again. There’s still a turtle and a bird in there. I will have need of both yet today.
I go through the line and have my bowl filled, and then I’m off. I can walk and eat at the same time. If I arrive at the Summer Kitchen to help clean the dishes, the woman there will pack a sandwich and chips for me to have for supper, and I’ll have no need of going to the mission tonight.
My bowl is soon empty, so I slip it into a trash bin and wipe my face and walk down the block toward the white church, where the Summer Kitchen is in the squatty building beside the chapel. The line stretches out the door, so I know I have arrived too early to wash dishes. At the Book Basket, the sign is turned to the side that means the door will be locked, so I move to the tree and stand there to watch the Indian chief, instead. The big doors on his part of the building are open, and I can hear music. The soft, clear tune of a flute draws me closer as if I am a snake, charmed from a basket. I walk to the corner and look in, then come nearer. I do not see the Indian chief, but it would be no matter if I did. I am invisible to him.
The big room where he works is empty. He has been painting on the large canvas again—broad, angry strokes that make a picture of a warrior on horseback, galloping. The white spaces yesterday have become mountains today.
There are splatters of paint by the door. Blue and green, still glistening wet. I look around for the chief again, and then I slip inside just far enough. I reach into my pocket, take out the turtle and the bird, push my finger into the paint, and color the turtle green and the bird blue. These are the right colors for them, and now both are finished. This is good, because I will need one for my sandwich from the Summer Kitchen.
The other is for the family in the new yellow house.
Chapter 6
Shasta Reid-Williams
Something weird happens when you’re from a big family, and all your life, y’all have been bouncing off one another like mixed nuts in a can. Even when you finally break out, you can still hear all the relatives talking in your head. I never really counted on that when Cody and I moved to Dallas. I had it pictured that once we were in the city, and Cody was finally on with the police department, we’d get all settled in, and I’d finally feel like a grown-up adult, like I really was almost twenty-four years old. After being married five years and having two (and a quarter) kids, it seemed like it oughta be time.
But all I could hear the first day I was alone in our little yellow house was my mother whispering in my ear. I lay down on the mattress in the boys’ room just long enough to get them to take a nap, and Mama pointed out right away that the ceiling had a big spot in the middle where the plaster dipped like a bubble about to burst. Someone’d painted over it, but it was there. Big cracks fanned out from it like spider legs, and ran down the walls. Lying on a mattress on the floor, I couldn’t miss it.
How could you even walk into the room and not see it?
the invisible Mama in my head wanted to know. Nana Jo Reid was right beside her, making a
tsk-tsk
through her teeth, and saying,
That’ll cost a bundle to fix. You’ll have to chip the plaster off way down to the edge, Shasta Marie. There’ll be plaster everyplace.
Cody’s mom was one step behind the other two with her nose in the air, saying,
It smells like mold in here. Black mold, most likely. It’ll ruin the boys’ lungs. For heaven’s sake, Shasta, you can’t raise the boys in a house full of mold. What were you thinking?
My heart started racing, and I clamped my hands over my ears to shut them up. It didn’t work. I should’ve known it wouldn’t. Cody’s mom just kept on comparing our house to the one Cody’s sister, Randi, just built on ten acres off the back side of the folks’ place. Randi’s house had a porch all the way across the front and around one side, a bay window in the kitchen, a whirlpool master bath, and ceramic tile all through. I could of described every square inch of it by heart, I’d heard about it so many times. Randi did things just right—college degree up at East Central in Ardmore, big wedding with a huge white tent and the whole deal, good job doing accounting at the headquarters of the Tribe. If you’re from southeastern Oklahoma and you’re Choctaw, that’s what you do: get whatever education you’re gonna get, then take a good job with the Choctaw Nation, the school district, or the highway department, build a nice house, live the good life. Cody’s sister did it. My brother did it. My cousins did it. Everybody with half a brain did it.
If you haven’t got half a brain, you fall for somebody in high school, get pregnant and married, get pregnant again and buy a dumb, overpriced trailer house you’ll be paying on for the next twenty years; then you run up some credit card bills to put new furniture in it. Finally at some point you realize that really was stupid, and you’ve got to do something drastic if you’re ever gonna dig your way out.
“This is
our
house,” I whispered, staring out the window into the backyard, where roses and crape myrtles grew around the edges, and a gorgeous stand of hollyhocks made a big square in the middle, and pecan trees were so huge you couldn’t reach both arms all the way around them. Randi’s new place didn’t have anything as incredible as those trees. “This is
our
place.
Ours
.” My voice echoed off the walls, and Benjamin twitched on the mattress; then Tyler rolled over and pushed his fist up into his mouth. I sat looking at them for a minute, watching Tyler smack his lips in his sleep, and the tips of Benji’s black, burr-cut hair touching the sunlight on the pillow, and I thought,
Randi doesn’t have anything like them. She doesn’t have anything as great as my boys.
I got up and left the room, because there was stuff I needed to do while the kids were down for their nap—wash out the kitchen cabinets and unpack all the dishes, for one thing. After the big celebration at Chuck E. Cheese’s yesterday, we needed to start cooking at home. Our first supper in our new place. I’d have to think of something special. Something that wouldn’t cost much. Between buying the new truck, and moving into the house, and paying to get the electricity, the cable, and the water turned on, the checkbook was thin as a banker’s smile. There wasn’t money left for anything else. Luckily, someone nearby had Wi-Fi, and it wasn’t password protected, so we could connect up with Cody’s old laptop and use the Internet for free. Altogether, we had two hundred and forty-eight dollars left to make it for the month, which would be tight, but we could do it. Back home, we’d come through the month with less money than that lots of times.