The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (18 page)

“You understand this?” she says addressing Jesse and pointing to the screen. Not hello. Or tell me your name. Or anything polite and regular. “All them folks have mamas. How come they get raised up like that?” A full bottle of contribution stands empty beside her. It’s the second in two days.

“Ma’am?” Jesse says. But he can’t help but laugh.

“I’m serious, now. Don’t it matter what your mama do?”

The tape keeps playing and Grandma turns up the volume. “Ain’t this something though,” she says. “Glad to know what the fuss is all about.”

“Where’d you get that tape, Mrs. Morse?” He’s still laughing.

“Miss Verle gave it to me with Mr. Donahue on it. Now all of a sudden this come up.”

“Miss Verle is a nasty lady,” Jesse says.

Grandma looks at him close for a moment. And then starts to laugh. “She sho is. She is.” They laugh together.

It’s late and finally I say good-bye to Jesse. He tells Grandma
how his mother has invited me over again—Grandma’s welcome to come next time too.

“Well, that’d be nice. Haven’t had a white woman cook for me in years.” And they both start to laugh again.

“It would be a pleasure to have you come next time, ma’am.” “Now, that’s a young man with manners,” Grandma says as she closes the door behind him.

W
E’RE HAVING A
welcome back dinner for Lakeisha. Grandma’s not feeling well. She had promised to make dinner, but when I got home she was a full bottle of contributions into the day. I told Drew she had a cold, so instead he’s taken us to his favorite restaurant downtown.

Lakeisha wears contacts now. She’s grown a little bit taller and a little bit fatter. But she’s not fat. Lakeisha is not much of a talker unless you’re talking about hair and makeup (she’s going to cosmetology school) or boys. So Lakeisha doesn’t say much as we eat, because Drew wants to talk about the day’s news (an antiapartheid demonstration the other day), the book about affirmative action he just read, and tennis. I have been reading the newspaper, the
New York Times,
since Jesse started bringing it to me from home. I know about everything that Drew is talking about. It’s on my mind too.

“You’re so quiet tonight, Lakeisha,” Drew says as we eat the restaurant’s special pie, not cobbler but a good pecan kind.

“Why you have to talk about things that are so boring?” Lakeisha says.

“What’s not boring?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“I’ll tell you what’s not boring. Seeing somebody get on the right track. There’s a new kid at the center,” Drew says. “A good kid. It’s been exciting to see him turn it all around.” Drew calls everyone a kid. Even someone like me.

Lakeisha is not interested in what Drew does. She yawns when he talks about how important it is to give back. When she met us at the center, she said to me, “You like working with a bunch of bums too?” She tells people her dad works at a hospital. She says it’s nasty thinking about her dad being around bums all the time.

“You mean Brick,” I say.

“We hired him on. He’s a hard worker. I’d love to see him do something more. Stay clean. He’s talented. A musician too. A nice young man.”

“Ooo, he that tall one. He fine,” Lakeisha says. Now she’s interested. We’re talking about boys. “I saw him when I was coming in.”

“He’s too old for you. Plus, he’s one of those bums,” I say teasing her. I don’t mean that. Brick is a nice guy. And he is very nice-looking, but I don’t think of him that way. I don’t know why.

“They’re not bums. They’re recovering alcoholics and addicts,” Drew says.

“It’s all creepy up in there. I don’t like it. It smells.”

“Then it’s good you don’t work there,” I say.

“Then it’s good you don’t work there,” Lakeisha says with a high voice and her best white people accent.

L
AKEISHA AND
I wait for Drew in the car while he goes back to get the jacket he left in the restaurant booth.
Lakeisha turns around to say, “You like the white boy, huh? The one sit by you?”

I don’t say anything.

“I saw you all up close and talking when I walked in. You can have him. I don’t know nothing about no white boys. But I don’t know why you’d want that when that fine tall boy’s there.”

“Jesse’s just a friend. And we work together.”

I haven’t really thought about Jesse this way. It’s like I’ve been feeling that the part of me that is a girl is invisible to him. White guys don’t notice black girls, and black girls don’t look at white guys that way. But when I think about it again, maybe Jesse does like me. Maybe I like him.

“Girl, he ain’t thinkin friend when he looks at them titties. Me, I want that fine tall one,” Lakeisha says, ignoring me. “I don’t usually like them light-skinned-ed but he look good.”

“He’s twenty-five. He’s too old for you,” I say again.

“No he not. I need a real man.”

“I thought you wanted a man with a job?”

“He got a job. But he gonna have to get one better to take care of the things I like. You say something to him okay? And I promise not to say anything to the white boy.”

“Why should I care if you say anything to Jesse? It isn’t true.”

“You like a white boy. You like a white boy,” she says in singsong until Drew opens the car door.

Brick

For weeks Brick wondered how to approach Rachel—how to tell the story he’d promised to tell. He often joined her for lunch with Jesse. They would each get a slice of pizza or a sandwich at the deli and then eat in Pioneer Courthouse Square watching people go by.

Rachel never talked about herself. When Brick asked her where she lived in Chicago, she said she couldn’t remember. The way she shut off—her eyes went blank; her voice went low—he knew Chicago wasn’t a memory she visited often. He would have to find the right moment to tell her the story he’d promised Roger he’d share.

Today he had promised Drew to deliver a box to Rachel’s grandmother. He hoped Rachel would be home.

Brick took a shower that was extra long this morning. He didn’t mind when the water started to run cold—he was still shaping his thoughts.

My name’s Brick. But it used to be something else. I used to live downstairs from you. In Chicago. I met your dad and he said tell you this.

Brick felt lucky. He was going to tell her a story. It was a story that would help her make sense of things that maybe didn’t make sense, of those Chicago memories.

The water was running very cold. He was still smiling. He was a shiny coin in fountain water. He was going to make wishes come true.

R
ACHEL LOOKED SLIGHTLY
scared when she opened the door, he thought, or maybe it was just a look of surprise. Her bright blue eyes seemed a little wet. She hid her body behind the front door.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Drew asked me to drop this off for your grandmother.” He made the box, which was filled with papers and letters, look heavier than it was. “Where can I put it?”

She ushered him in. “Over there,” she said, pointing to the table.

“You scared me. I didn’t really expect a person—,” she said. “I was feeding the birds earlier, and they sometimes come looking for more.”

“And they knock on the door?”

“No they ring the bell. Duh!” she said, but she was smiling
and Brick didn’t feel so stupid for his question. He was just so nervous. He didn’t really know what to say.

“They peck at the window. It can sound like a knock,” she said.

“Oh,” he said and tried to laugh along with her.

Rachel looked beautiful. She was wearing a pale blue summer dress he’d seen her wear at the center before. Her eyes in the summer light were bright as headlights.

Brick set the box down on the table and then suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands. He was too tall, too clumsy, too awkward, too tongue-tied to manage words. He’d never been alone with her before.

His eyes fixed on the photos on the mantel. “Is this your father? I can see the resemblance.”

“Really?”

“Through the nose, mouth.” And, he thought, the way that I am touched by you.

“I don’t remember him much,” she said. “I mean I miss him. But he kind of left us,” she continued. “I mean me. So then Grandma got me. I came to live with her.”

He didn’t have to ask about her mother. “I’m sorry,” he said instead of
Let me explain. Your father said you would be safer here. And this is why.

“Who’s this?” he asked, holding a photograph of a young woman.

“My Aunt Loretta.”

This time it wasn’t fear, but sadness, that registered in Rachel’s face. Brick studied the picture. The woman had a pageboy hairdo and pearl earrings and a necklace to match,
and the same soft jawline and high cheekbones as her niece. They did not have the same color eyes.

“You must have your mom’s eyes,” he said.

Rachel took the photograph from him when he looked up at her again as if comparing. She wiped dust from the frame.

He realized he was going too fast. You couldn’t fill a room with ghosts when you didn’t know what power they might have.

“Is your grandmother home?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’s asleep. Otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to let you in. Do you want to wait for her?”

“Umm . . .”

“Oh. It’d be okay. The rule is no boys allowed in the house. But maybe you don’t count as a boy since—well, you’re older.”

“Oh.”

Brick sat. His legs were impossibly long. Impossible because he could not figure how to cross them or lean them to the side without looking effeminate. He was a pretty man so he lowered his voice when he talked; he made sure to stand straight. He put his hands in his pockets. In those ways, he thought, he made himself look more manly. “You’re so pretty,” the women would say. “How do I know you’re not gay?” That’s what the women would tease him with. His beauty. He had learned that the women who said this wanted him to be rough with them—take them in his arms hard. He’d done it a couple of times—both drunk and high—but not without the uneasy feeling that claimed his throat and his gut later. He’d hold the women the way the bruising hands of the pigeon man had held him. It was not the touch he wanted or wanted to give.

“So do you like the job at the center?” He folded his hands in his lap. Slow, slowly.

“Yeah, I like it,” she said, fanning the pages of a thick book. “Otherwise I’d be here reading the whole summer. I think I could read the whole library through.”

Without Jesse between them, Brick felt uncomfortable in her presence. Boyish. Usually their conversations were so easy. He was all nerves now and filled the silence with questions.

You like reading?

What’s your favorite book?

And how come?

What’s the biggest book you ever read?

He asked her what was her favorite food, color, day of the week, holiday?

She answered his questions then said, “That’s not a way to know people.”

There was a long silence. Then Brick heard a toilet flush at the back of the house.

“I think she’s up.” Rachel looked toward a closed door. Silence. The remote control clicked. The television turned on. “I think she’s gonna watch her story. Yeah, you better not disturb her now.”

Again, they were quiet.

If he wasn’t going to tell her Roger’s story, then he should leave.

I’m Jamie. I used to live downstairs.
He couldn’t form the words. Today maybe wasn’t the day. He felt rubbed down—dull.

He was about to stand to go when she said, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“So, can I ask you a question?” she asked. “You had so many for me.”

“Yeah, sure . . .” Did she know the reason he’d come? Did she recognize who he was?

“What are you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re from Chicago. But what are you? Like black, or—like me?”

“Oh, I’m black. Regular.” He said “regular” like he was describing coffee without milk. “Normal,” he said amending his answer. “Just black.”

“I didn’t mean . . .” she said.

“That’s okay,” he said, trying to take out whatever edge he had in his words. “I don’t mind. Really.” And then, “Do you think people would ask you that if you didn’t have your mother’s eyes?”

“I don’t know,” she said and her voice changed. When he looked at her, he saw a building, her brother, a fall. There was actual sky in her eyes. He wanted to take it back—put the question back inside.

“Hey, can we go outside?” he said. “I want to see that bird feeder.”

“Really?” she asked.

“I used to know something about birds,” he said. “A long time ago.”

I
N THE BACKYARD
Rachel propped herself on the gate. Brick took a seat on a stump.

“Did you meet Drew’s daughter, Lakeisha?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah.”

“She likes you.”

“Oh?”

“She’s eighteen.”

“Oh.”

“I told her that if you and me and Jesse go somewhere. She could come.”

“Sure.”

A bird flew down from the neighbor’s walnut tree. It pecked at the bird feeder, then flew off. “It got so close,” Rachel said. “How come?”

“I guess we didn’t scare it.”

“I know that. I meant you said you knew a lot about birds. Was this something that kind of bird normally does?”

“I don’t know. I knew what they looked like, and I remembered their songs. Not so much what they did and stuff.”

“Is that what you wanted to do? Before . . .”

Before he became a bum, Brick knew she was thinking. Before he was an addict, an alcoholic, someone who had lived on the street.

“An ornithologist,” she said.

“Big word.”

“I like big words,” she said.

“I never thought of liking words,” he said.

“What do you like? Best? I bet I could guess,” she said. “Music.”

“You’re right,” he said, and he took out his harmonica, the silver harmonica that was Roger’s gift.

“You play that? Too?” she asked. “That’s weird. That you would play that.”

“Weird? It’s a way to make music out of a whistle,” Brick said. “Like a bird does. Let me show you.” With his cupped hands around the instrument, with his eyes closed, he played Roger’s song.