If You Come Softly (11 page)

“Daddy?”

“Hmm... ?”

“What do you think happens to people when they die? You think they just go back to the dust or you think it’s something bigger?”

“I don’t know...” He frowned, thoughtful. “I like to think it’s something bigger, better maybe. But sometimes I think people just need to believe that to feel good.”

“Some days I feel Grandma though. It’s like she’s right here.” He touched his shoulder. “And she’s whispering to me, telling me that it’s all right where she is now. It’s good. That she’s happy.” He grinned and looked at his father. “You think that’s crazy?”

His father shook his head and smiled. “Nah, Miah-man,” he said softly. “I don’t think that’s crazy. I don’t think that’s crazy at all.”

I HAD BEEN TO BROOKLYN ONCE. WHEN I WAS SEVEN, Marion took us to visit her great-aunt. The twins were still living at home then. All morning they had argued with my parents. Neither of them wanted to go. I sat at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of Chee rios, dressed and ready. They had been to Brooklyn before, had visited the aunt a couple of times before I was born.

“We’ve done that already,” Anne had said. “I have no interest in spending a Saturday afternoon sitting around that cramped Flatbush apartment.”

“Me neither,” Ruben had said from behind the pages of his history textbook. “And I have a ton of homework anyway.”

“You’re going,” Marion said. “Everybody who lives in this house is going.”

 

 

“You really want to see where I live?” Jeremiah asked nervously. We were sitting in the bleachers waiting for basketball practice to begin. Other players drifted in noisily. There were a couple of other girls scattered around the gym. We all knew that the minute the coach walked in, we’d all be kicked out. I crossed one ankle over the other and stared down at my loafers.

“Of course I want to see it, silly. You make Fort Greene sound like the only place in the world.”

Jeremiah grinned. “It is the only place in the world. The only place I’d live.” He grabbed my ankle and held on to it. “It’d be cool if you came to Brooklyn.”

“Then it’s a plan. When do you want me to come?”

“Come now.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Somebody has practice, Miah. And it’s not me.”

“After practice. I’m done at four-thirty. We can - take the train there.” He winked at me. “I’ll have you at my house by dinnertime.”

I could feel myself blushing. “You’re such a gentleman.”

“Anyone not on the team—out!”

I looked up to see Coach standing in the center of the gym. Slowly, people started filing out.

“I’ll meet you out front,” I said, kissing my finger and touching it to his face.

He grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Four-thirty—Ellie Eisen heads to Brooklyn.”

 

 

That time I had gone to Brooklyn with my family, I hadn’t thought much of it. My great-aunt’s apartment was cramped and dark and smelled of unbaked bread and morning breath. I had sat between Ruben and Anne while my parents talked to my great-aunt in low whispers-about the weather, their various aches and pains, and long-dead family members. My great-aunt served us weak tea and graham crackers. Then Marion evil-eyed us until we each had a cracker and had mumbled thank-you’s. Then she eyed us a minute longer until we each took a bite of cracker and a sip of tea. Content, she went back to discussing the state of age-old affairs with my great-aunt. That was a long time ago.

As Jeremiah and I walked through the gate, I felt my stomach dip at the idea of returning to Brooklyn again—a different Brooklyn. Jeremiah’s Brooklyn.

“Is it near Flatbush?”

Miah shook his head and smiled. “That’s like asking is the Upper West Side near Soho. Yeah they’re in the same borough, but there’s a little bit of space between them.” He was still sweating from working out. His eyes were bright the way they always were after practice.

“You call your moms?”

I nodded. I had lied-well, half lied-and told Marion I was staying late to work on something with another student.

“You call yours?”

Miah nodded. “Right after I stepped off the court. She said she’d make us a burger—You eat meat?”

I nodded.

“Well, that’s too bad because my moms is like me. It’ll be one of those soy burgers. They’re good though.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, making a face.

Miah laughed. “Well, you’re still gonna have to eat every bite so you don’t hurt Nelia’s feelings.” He leaned over the edge of the platform. “Train’s a-coming. That’s what my dad always says. You nervous?”

I nodded. The train was loud and crowded. Miah had to lean into me to speak. He smiled and touched my cheek. People stared, but we made believe we didn’t notice. People always stared.
I feel like I’ve grown an extra leg since we started going out,
Miah said once.

“Don’t be nervous. Nelia’s cool.”

“What about your dad’s house. Are we going there?”

“He’s away on business again.” He got quiet.

“How come you don’t talk about him so much, Miah? And how come he’s always gone?”

He shrugged. “I’ll tell you when we get off.”

 

 

It was cold when we came up out of the subway. I shivered and Miah put his arm around me for a second then let it drop back at his side.

The streets were quiet and still as we walked. “So many trees,” I said. I hadn’t remembered Brooklyn having so many trees. “It’s pretty here.”

“Yeah.” He looked distant and worried. “Ellie,” he said softly. “You ever saw that film
Somewhere on This Journey
?
”

I nodded. I had gone to see it with Anne and Marion last year after it had won something big at some film festival. Marion had cried clear through it. “That was a really great film.”

Miah looked at me and took a deep breath. “My father made it,” he said slowly.

I stopped walking and grabbed his hand. “Your
dad
is Norman Roselind?”

Miah nodded, looking away from me.

I let go of his hand and starting walking again. I felt strange suddenly, hot and cramped. For some reason I didn’t want Miah to be Norman Roselind’s son. I wanted him to just be Miah—a boy from Brooklyn. But he
was
Miah. But he wasn’t.

“Ellie,” he said, catching up to me and touching my shoulder. “There’s more.” He kind of laughed, but it was a nervous laugh-sort of tearful and scared at the same time.

“Remember when you were talking about that book Ms. Lanford is assigning in English Comp. The one about the girl growing up in Chicago?”

I nodded.

“My mom wrote it. She’s written a couple of books.”

We stopped walking again. I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth and chewed on it a moment. “Jeez, Miah. I thought you were—I thought you were just Miah.”

“I
am
Miah. That’s why I don’t talk about them so much. When my mother and father split up, it was all over. Everybody knew. I hated opening up some stupid magazine and seeing myself in it—the poor only child of Norman and Nelia Roselind. I’m not some poor only child, I’m
Miah.”
He swallowed. For a minute I thought he’d start crying. I didn’t want him to start crying. If he’d started crying—I’ d start crying. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d just get on the train and go home-home to Marion and my father and my quiet bedroom looking out over Central Park. Home to our apartment where no one was famous or brilliant.

“I don’t want you to go home, Ellie,” Miah said.

“Who said anything about going home? I didn’t say anything about anything.”

“I can see it on your face... that... that you want to go home.”

I lifted my knapsack higher on my shoulder.

“You could have told me sooner, you know. I feel like you’ve been lying—”

“But I
haven’t
been, Ellie. I just didn’t want to talk about them.”

“Lies by omission.” I turned away from him then. People going into the train station eyed us, but I didn’t care. I hated being lied to. Hated it.

Jeremiah sat down on the curb.

“What if I had told you the truth from the beginning?” he said. “You would have thought I was something—somebody, I wasn’t. That day, in the hallway, I wanted you to see... to see
me,
Ellie. Miah.” He sighed and started picking at the tar. I watched him a moment.

“You could have taken a chance, Miah,” I said. “Given me the benefit of the doubt.”

“But that’s what I’m doing now.”

I sat down beside him and sighed. “I know. I mean, I know but I don’t know. I would have worn something different if I had—”

“But I don’t want you different, Ellie. I want you as you. The Ellie from the hallway with her hair and books falling everywhere. The Ellie who smiled at me—a real smile not something painted on your face.”

I looked at him, feeling myself start to smile a bit, and shook my head. “Is there anything else? Is your uncle like president or something?”

Miah smiled. “Nah—not yet anyway.”

I stood up. “Then let’s go get those soy burgers. I’m starting to freeze out here.”

“YO, MIAH! WAIT UP!”

Miah turned and shook his head. “Figures.”

Carlton ran up to them, his knapsack bouncing over his shoulder. “Tech beat Stuyvesant, man—one-ten to ninety-two. We squished them!” He held up his palm and Miah slapped it then watched Carlton’s eyes slide over to Ellie.

“How do you do? I’m Carlton,” he said, bowing.

Ellie smiled. “Ellie.”

“The pleasure is mine, Ellie.”

“Okay, Carlton. It was nice seeing you, hint, hint.” Miah took Ellie’s hand and started walking.

“This is the nice young lady from that first day, isn’t it?” Carlton grinned. “The one whose books you knocked out of her arms. Did he apologize, Ellie?”

Ellie laughed and Miah knew she liked Carlton. It made him feel good to see her laughing like that, to know his homeboy made her laugh.

“He apologized a couple of times actually,” Ellie said.

Carlton climbed the stairs of his brownstone slowly. “Good, that means I taught him right.”

He gave Jeremiah a power sign and made his way into his building.

“Well, that was Carlton,” Miah said. “And here’s one of my houses. Daddy lives right there.” He pointed across the street.

Ellie turned and shook her head. “That’s so wild.”

“I think he’ll move to L.A. though eventually. Probably not until I’m in college or something. But I think he’d rather be there.”

They climbed the stairs slowly, Jeremiah walking a bit ahead of Ellie. The house was quiet and smelled of garlic and bread. “Think my moms bagged the soy burgers.”

Ellie smiled. “This place is beautiful,” she whispered.

“It’s not a museum,” Miah whispered back. “We don’t have to whisper. Ma!”

His mother was sitting in the living room, a stack of paper and a pen on her lap. Miah bent to kiss her then introduced them.

“Nice to meet you, Ellie,” his mother said, rising. He had not told his mother Ellie was white, and now his mother raised an eyebrow as she held out her hand.

“Nice to meet you too,” Ellie whispered.

“She got bit by the shy bug on the way in, Ma.” Miah grinned, kissing his mother on the cheek. “I told her I’d give her a tour to relax her a bit.”

Nelia took Ellie’s hand and placed her other one over it. She held it a moment. Jeremiah smiled. He loved his mama-so, so much.

“It’s good to have you here,” she said.

“You working on something?” Miah pointed to the stack of paper beside her chair.

“I hope so. This book has been knocking on my head for a couple of weeks. I’ve been resisting, but now I’m seeing what it’s got to say to me.” She turned back to Ellie. “That’s writer talk for‘Yes, I’m working on another book.’ ”

Ellie smiled again and stared down at her loafers.

“You didn’t tell me your mother was beautiful,” she whispered as they made their way upstairs.

At the top of the staircase, Miah kissed her on the lips and smiled. “Nobody says that about their mother. Not to other people.”

“She likes me. It wasn’t weird. I was afraid it was going to be wei—This place is amazing!”

From the top of the stairs, they could look down into the living room and on past it into the family area. His mother had a fire going in the fireplace, and from the top of the stairs, the smell of wood burning mixed with the other smells in the house. They went from room to room, slowly, Miah opening doors that hadn’t been opened in months.

“I’m gonna kiss you in each room,” he said. “Then it’s dinnertime.”

“How many rooms to this place?” Ellie asked, her eyes wide.

Miah shrugged. “I’m not counting.”

By DECEMBER, IT WAS TOO COLD TO HANG IN CENTRAL Park. Miah and I spent Saturday afternoons at Nelia‘s, sitting in front of the fireplace with our school books spread out around us. Miah was smarter than me and this made me work harder than ever. By the end of the first trimester, neither of us had received a grade lower than 97.

“Am I ever gonna meet your family?” Miah asked one Saturday afternoon. Outside it had started to snow. There were windows on either side of the fireplace and often I found myself staring out of them, wondering what it had been like to grow up in such a place. The winding stairs at the other end of the living room were marble and wood. Some afternoons I ran up and down them in my bare feet, loving the way the cool marble felt, feeling like a ten-year-old, while Miah watched me from his place on the floor.

Now, staring out the window, I thought about my own apartment, how small and cramped it felt compared to this place. Yes, it was big—more space than the three of us needed, but it wasn’t this. It was pretty, not beautiful. And my parents in it were aging and set in their ways, not elegant and creative like Miah’s. Doctor’s daughter. All my life I had heard how lucky I was to be so. I had never imagined anything different, until now, until I met Miah.