Behind You (7 page)

“Yeah, I hear you. I get it.”

“You know . . . ,” Ellie said softly, “I feel like the world stopped. And I got off . . . and then it started spinning again, but too fast for me to hop back on. I feel like I'm still trying to get a . . . to get some kind of foothold on living.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That's deep.”

“You don't feel that way? I mean—you guys were best friends.”

“Yeah. But for me, it's like there's this place where there's just . . . nothing. Like this hole or something. I throw some TV or a movie or a book in it every now and then. I throw a lot of ball in there, and music—you know, I take steps. Press on.”

Ellie stared out the window, then sighed and leaned back into the couch. “I guess that's what we're doing, huh? Guess we're pressing on.”

“Yep.”

“No girlfriend, huh?”

“Nope.”

She looked at me. Then without blinking she said, “Boyfriend?”

“Nah. Just me. Just me trying to figure it all out.” It felt like something heavy lifted up off of me. I took a breath and the breath came easily. Ellie hadn't even
blinked.

“I think the figuring out takes forever,” she said. “It seems like everybody's trying to figure something out.”

“How about you—what's your thing? The thing you're trying to figure out? I mean, besides how to hop back onto the world.”

Ellie shrugged. “I don't know, really—I mean, I guess that's the thing. How do we go on? How do we get back on the world and move along?”

“Well . . .” I sat down on the couch beside her. “I guess this is a step, huh? You ringing my bell.”

Ellie smiled again. “I guess.”

“It's a big day for me,” I said.

“ 'Cause I rang your bell?”

I took another sip of water. She hadn't even
blinked
when she asked about a boyfriend. And here I was thinking there'd be the world exploding out from under me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Glad you crossed that street and rang my bell.”

“Well, then I guess I'll have to do it again sometime.”

“You better.”

“And maybe one day you can cross that bridge to Manhattan.”

“Maybe—it's a long bridge.”

Ellie nudged me with her shoulder and smiled. I nudged her back.

“Nah, really, though,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don't thank me. Nelia's the one who pointed your house out and suggested I come say hi. I just followed the music.”

I started singing the song again. Ellie listened and after a moment she joined in—her voice high and soft in a way that blended nicely. I was surprised she knew the words, but didn't stop to ask her about it.

When the song ended, we sat there drinking our water and staring outside. It grew dark, but I didn't turn on any lights. Somewhere someone was playing a Stevie Wonder tune. Somewhere else, a little kid was singing her ABC's. Then the block got quiet. And another day was almost over.

SUNDAY, MY MOMS WAKES ME UP EARLY AND I TAKE A SHOWER, grease my braids a little and put on some decent clothes. She's already dressed, wearing dark blue, her black coat and pocketbook on the couch next to her Bible.

“Made you some bacon and eggs,” she says when I come out of the bathroom. She sets the plate down on the kitchen table and smiles at me. “Don't you look nice.”

I smile back, sit down and say, “So do you.”

Sunday mornings, I miss my dad the most. His chair across from mine is empty. In our building some of the kids got dads and some don't. Some of them never met their dads and some see them on weekends.

Sunday mornings, we go to church and then go see my dad.

The whole time the preacher's preaching, I'm thinking about my dad. If anybody asked, I'd say he was good—like in his heart, he was good. You'd see him coming down the street and he was always carrying some lady's bag or helping somebody with one of their kids or giving some poor chump some spare change. That's the kind of guy I remember him being—somebody who was always thinking about other people. I guess somebody like that should have gone out real tragic—like, shot or something—like Miah. But he didn't. He went out early because he had a whacked heart. Something from when he was young that just stayed on and caught him when he was thirty-seven. Makes you always think about how you're living.

 

Even though it's freezing, the cemetery is hopping. Sunday seems to be Visit the Dead Day—people walking slowly up and down the rows and rows of dead people or crouching all close around some tiny grave. Makes a body wonder if the dead know what Sunday is and get all ready.

My daddy's grave is in a lot about a quarter mile in then another twenty feet to the left. KENNEDY MAYARD SR. it says. Something about the way his name looks there makes me wish gravestones wasn't stone—it seems real permanent that way. Like it's saying,
You better believe he's dead!

I make a fist and pound it against my heart a couple of times, then throw the peace sign at him. My moms fixes the plastic flowers around the gravestone. We stand there a little while without saying anything. Then I'm feeling my dad right there with us—his arm around my mom's shoulder, his big hand rubbing my head.

My moms pulls her coat tighter and says, “Sure is windy today, isn't it?”

I look out over the cemetery. Even though it's only the third day of November, I see the first few flakes of snow.

Me and my moms stand there watching it come down—all soft and slow and cold.

It's strange the way death connects people. I wasn't real tight with Miah when he was living, but now here I was, standing in a brick-cold cemetery, feeling my dad everywhere and knowing that me and Ellie and Miah's moms and pops and everybody who'd ever lost somebody they'd been tight with—we all . . . it was like, I don't know—like a continuum—and we're all a part of the same something. We ate our breakfast and did our work and had conversations that were stupid and conversations that weren't so stupid. At night we closed our eyes and hoped sleep came quickfast. And with all of our living going on, our dead peeps were there—everywhere. Watching over us, holding us up, giving us some kinda reasons for going to church and school and the basketball courts. Always right there, making sure we kept on keeping on. I guess if anybody asked, I'd tell them we were all doing what the living do.

I take my mom's hand, pull her a little bit closer to me. She smells like cold weather and perfume.

“Your daddy always liked himself some snow,” my moms says.

And we stand there, freezing our behinds off and watching it fall.

WHEN I FIRST MOVED TO FORT GREENE, WHAT I LOVED MOST were the trees. The city had planted saplings back in the sixties and now the trees stand like soldiers up and down the block. As though they're guarding the residents of Fort Greene from harm. I wish I could say they do. It amazes me that they're still standing—that anyone or anything is still standing. The trees change—leaves bud, grow green and wide, wither, turn red and brown, then fall. Again and again. Year after year. When Miah was a little boy, he'd climb up and swing on the lowest branches and invariably, some adult would lean out of a window and say, “Miah, get down off of that tree and let it grow like you grow.” For some reason, that always made Miah laugh—the idea of a tree having the same upward journey as himself.

Some mornings, I sit on my stoop and look at the
Times,
see the way the world is stopping and the way it just keeps moving on. Amazing how it keeps moving on. Amazing how people can melt themselves into each new day.

This morning, Nelia was sitting across the street on her stoop. Used to be our stoop.

The wind was blowing hard. It'd been cold last night and the day felt like it was trying to warm up but not doing a good job at it. Nelia was leaning over her writing. Her hair was getting longer and it sort of fell down a bit over her face in a way I'd never seen it do. Miah's death had added some years to her and thinned her up. At some angles she looked like the Vassar girl I'd fallen in love with years and years ago. Then she looked like an older, more beautiful version of the woman I'd walked away from. I closed my eyes. Miah'd never understood how two people could stop loving each other and I'd never known how to explain.

After a while of watching Nelia, I took a deep breath, folded the paper under my arm, got up from my stoop and crossed the street.

How many years had it been since I'd crossed that street—three, four, nine? Even after Miah died, I still didn't go back into that house. I'd offered to help clean out his room, but Nelia had said no, said she'd take care of it. Now here were my feet, one stepping in front of the other, and me moving closer and closer to Nelia's stoop.

The block is silent as a stone. It feels like somebody far away is watching. And waiting to see what happens.

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, MARION SHAKES ME AWAKE. MY throat hurts and I'm not sure where I am.

“You were screaming,” she says.

I blink, look around my room.

“Someone shot Miah,” I whisper, pressing my hand to my throat. “I dreamed someone shot Miah.”

Marion stares at me and shakes her head. She leaves and a few minutes later, she's back, pressing a warm cloth to my forehead.

“I dreamed . . .”

“Shhhh, Elisha,” she whispers. “Miah's gone, honey.”

I lay back on the bed and close my eyes. “Miah's gone,” I whisper, sinking back into sleep.

 

When I came downstairs later, I was surprised to find my father sitting at the kitchen table. The apartment smelled like cinnamon, apples and coffee. Marion gave me a long look, then put a glass of juice on the table in front of me.

“What are you doing home?” I asked my father. He was usually at the hospital on Saturdays. Sundays were our day together.

“Your mother tells me you had another bad dream,” my father said. He looked tired, his blue eyes were rimmed and puffy. My sisters and brother call me “the accident” because I was born ten years after the last one. My parents aren't young. Last year, we celebrated my mother's fifty-seventh birthday.

I looked at Marion. “And?”

“And we're worried,” she said. “It's been almost a year now, Elisha.”

“It's been eleven months,
Marion.
”

“Don't call your mother ‘Marion,' El.”

I pushed the juice away from me. “When she starts calling me ‘Ellie,' I'll start calling her ‘Mom'—”

“Your name is Elisha.” Marion turned back to the stove and stirred something. After a moment, she set a bowl of apple compote on the table, then took a stack of pancakes from the oven.

I got up and poured myself some coffee.

“We're just concerned,” my father said. “You don't participate in school—”

“I get straight A's.” I tried to keep my voice even.

“You don't do any activities, just study, study, study,” Marion said. She sat across from me and put two pancakes on a plate. “Here.”

“Not hungry.”

My father looked at me and I rolled my eyes and took the plate from Marion.

“No sports, no clubs, no friends . . . ,” Marion said, counting off on her fingers. “Just bad dreams and sadness. Just you in your room, doing I don't know what. . . .”

“
Studying
. I'm
studying
in my room. And I do other stuff besides hang out upstairs.”

“Like what?” Marion and my father looked at me. “Where are your friends? Girls your age are supposed to have lots of girlfriends hanging around and calling. Nobody ever calls here for you. When the other kids were home, the phone was constantly—”

“Well, I'm not
the other kids
. You should have stopped when you were ahead if you wanted
the other kids
.”

“We were thinking,” my father said, “that maybe you want to talk to somebody—”

I started to say something, but he put his hand up.

“I know we've talked about it before, but now all this time has passed and you're the same.”

I'm not the same,
I wanted to scream.
I'm different. My boyfriend was killed. That does something to a person.

“Sometimes I go to Brooklyn and visit Miah's mother and Carlton,” I said. I knew I couldn't make them understand, and I knew some psychiatrist friend of my father's wouldn't understand either.

“When are you taking all these trips to Brooklyn?” Marion asked.

“Just sometimes.” I took a bite of pancake and chewed slowly.

Both of them waited.

“Who's Carlton?” Marion wanted to know.

I looked up at the clock over the kitchen sink. It was almost nine thirty. Carlton and I had said we'd meet downtown at eleven for brunch.

“He was Miah's best friend.”

My mother put her fork down on the table. “And now you're dating
him
?”

“God—can't you guys leave me alone? I'm not
dating
him.”

“What's going on, Ellie?” my father said. “What's this about? There're plenty of boys living right around you. Nice boys.”

“You mean
white
boys, Dad.”

“I mean more appropriate boys.” My father looked at me and I looked back at him without saying anything. I'd always loved him more than my mother and maybe that's why it hurt to hear him talk like that.