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  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's

  Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Copyright © 2006 by Allison Wittenberg

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-49815-1

  June 2007

  v3.0_r1

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  Faye Marlene Whittenberg, my mother.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books By This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  I'm happy that this book fell into the nurturing hands of Stephanie Lane, a super editor who found the “story” within the story.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to my English and Latin teacher, Mrs. Jean Heslar, who turned me on to the power of words.

  Thank you, Auntie Harriet. You were everything an auntie could be: fun, kind, and more than a little eccentric.

  I can travel through time. Sometimes it's voluntary; sometimes it's not. Like one night, I saw a movie with these white people with dark hair—I think they were Italian. In this film, there was a funeral scene where the main character jumped the six feet into the ground after the coffin was lowered, and all of a sudden I was right back at that day. My version had black people all dressed in black and only a smattering of white people, from the nursing program she had been in. She left behind a son. She had named him Tracy John Upshaw.

  She was Karyn. I knew her as Auntie; she was Daddy's little sis.

  Everything annoyed me that day. I was watching Auntie Karyn in her coffin, and I knew that Auntie Karyn was watching me. At the grave site, the Reverend Whitaker led us away, saying, “There's nothing we can do now.”

  I didn't want to be ushered to the side, and I hated those words: There's nothing we can do now. Especially the word nothing. There had to be something—something that would bring her back.

  Reverend Whitaker used his arm to brace, then move me. My legs felt like they might fold under me. By the limo, my relatives were sobbing in one big huddled mass.

  My last look at Auntie made my chest hurt. I was only eleven, but I felt like I was having a heart attack. Auntie had always been fair, but her face was now whiter, glittering, almost like wax. All her hopes, every dream, every prayer were lost, gone. Her large penny-colored eyes were closed forever.

  What was I going to do? With the rest of my life, I mean. Without her, suddenly there was all this space. Space that would have been taken up by our adventures. Taking trips around the city or going to the movies or just hanging out. I know that sounds selfish, to think of things like that. But she was so much fun, so interesting, so up-to-the-minute with her clogs and scarves and bangles and jeans with the patches on them and Jeff caps over her natural hair. I wanted to be just like her, but my mom would never let me dress like that.

  Back at the house, my family gathered. Otis Redding played on the stereo, singing “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).” There was a lot of chicken. Fried, braised, broiled, roasted in a pan, stuck in a potpie. So much food. Nine trays of potato salad. Seven trays of bread pudding (Auntie Karyn's favorite dessert). Distant relatives ate heartily, even sloppily, macaroni salad sliding off their spoons onto their chins.

  Only three at the time, Tracy John was asleep during most of that day; He was passed from arm to arm. Everyone wanted to hold the precious one; he was like a hot potato in reverse. Family and friends didn't leave till it was dark. Then it really sank in: I'll never see her again.

  “I just want to know why,” I sobbed into my open hands.”

  Daddy offered no explanation. He just came over and held me while I pulled myself together. Though he didn't sob that day, either in public or alone with me, I could see that he wasn't whole. Like the rest of us who loved her, he had a hole in the heart that would never go away.

  With the sun down, my head felt lighter. My heart was heavier.

  Around midnight, Uncle O called to tell us that his car had broken down by the airport. He said the engine had died. Daddy took jumper cables and my older brother, Horace, to Island Avenue to rescue him.

  That night my eyes felt propped open by some unknown force. I wished Daddy had taken me with him instead of Horace. Maybe working a jack or holding a flashlight could have gotten my mind off the pain in my heart.

  Nobody knew who would take Tracy John for good. Gammy had him for the rest of the week, and I thought she was going to keep him. The following week, he was with us; midweek, Gammy took him back. Then, that Friday, I was over Uncle O's apartment, and Tracy John was there.

  By the end of the month, he was back at our house, and I guessed that Tracy John was going to stay with us forever. Back then, I didn't think that would be a problem. He was small and playful, and he fit right in with Daddy; Ma; my two brothers, Horace and Leo; and me.

  But within a week of Tracy John's moving into our home for good, I lost my room.

  When Ma told me, I was shocked. “What!”

  Daddy backed her up, repeating what she had just said.

  “No, no,” I pleaded. “Let him move in with Leo.”

  “Leo is moving in with you, Charmaine,” Ma said.

  “But he's a boy. I can't live with a boy.”

  “Boy, girl, don't make no matter.” Daddy waved me away. “We're all family.”

  I turned to Ma. “I don't have any friends who share a room with their brothers.”

  “Then you don't have any friends who share a room with their brothers,” Daddy said. “That don't mean nothing. You and your brother will live together. That's how they d
o it in the country.”

  “What country?” I asked.

  Daddy shot me a look that told me it was in my best interest to be quiet. I didn't argue with Daddy. Even at the age of eleven, I was pro-life—my own.

  Inside, though, I was mad. How could they do a thing like that to me? How did Tracy John get his own room? Tracy John could stay with Leo, or Horace for that matter. Tracy John wouldn't even know the difference.

  As worried as I had been three years before, now things had reached crisis proportions. Each day I was reminded that it was all about His Highness: the precious one, Tracy John Upshaw.

  Like one day, Tracy John almost cost Daddy sixty dollars for a pair of glasses he didn't need. Ma took him to get his eyes examined for the start of the school year. Tracy John had been reading ever since he was three and a half, so he knew his letters very well. The doctor thought Tracy John should wear a strong prescription because he'd read all but the top two lines wrong. Ma took him to the eyeglass shop. Over the next two hours, Tracy John tried on children's frames. He didn't like a single pair.

  When they came home, Tracy John pointed at me and said, “I want glasses like her.”

  Her? Her! I only lived in the same house as he did. He'd known me his whole life. I wasn't a “her” to be pointed at like some stranger on the street. I was his blood relative: Charmaine. He could have called me that, or Maine, like everyone else did.

  “You tried on glasses like that, honey,” Ma said to him, all patience and understanding.

  “I want her glasses,” Tracy John repeated fiercely, as if he was going to grab them right from my face.

  The next day, Ma, pixie-faced Tracy John, and I went all the way to downtown Philly to another eyeglass store. This time Tracy John spent two hours trying on forty-seven pairs of frames. I was about to blow my stack. Ma alternated between “Do you like this one, sugar?” and “How about this, pumpkin?” Even the salesclerk was in on the act, calling him peanut. They patted him on the head after lovingly fitting each frame around his ears. It was outrageous.

  The other patrons smiled and cooed at him, and over time they formed a small circle around him. In the end, Tracy John settled on a pair of glasses that looked nothing like my octagonal frames. He chose small black wire glasses that looked a little Ben Franklinish.

  The shop promised to put in a rush job on account of the doctor's saying Tracy John was half blind. Ma paid a ten-dollar deposit, leaving a balance of more than fifty dollars. We got on the number 13 trolley back to our home in Dardon. No sooner were we on the streetcar than Tracy John had a change of heart. He suddenly tugged at Ma's arm and said, “I don't want glasses. I see twenty.”

  Ma gave him a quizzical look.

  He was insistent. “I see twenty.”

  We got off at the next stop and caught the other trolley going back to Center City. At the eye doctor, it was concluded. In fact, Tracy John did see twenty. Twenty-twenty.

  So what had Tracy John done the previous day? Just made up letters like some fool. When Ma told Daddy, he just chuckled at it like it was funny.

  Later that evening, Daddy was in the living room, Tracy John cuddled in his lap sneaking sips of his beer. That kid was too much. A few times a night, Daddy encouraged him. Habitually, Daddy would tell him to run into the kitchen and say a bad word to Ma. Tracy John would run into the kitchen and say, “Une told me to say ‘bullshit.’ “ And Daddy would laugh at Ma's fit. This left me to wonder: would Tracy John have gotten away with all this mayhem if he hadn't been walking around with Auntie Karyn's face?

  As I watched The Godfather and struggled to come back from Auntie's ‘funeral, the phone rang. Ma answered it and told me it was for me.

  I walked to the phone, wishing I had my own phone m my own room. I wanted a king-sized bed with a heavy velvet canopy where I could talk the day away. Instead I had to stretch the phone into the bathroom, close the door; and sit on the toilet lid.

  I was on the phone only ten minutes. I was talking to my best friend, Millicent, about the gorgeous new boy at school, Demetrius McGee.

  “Did you see him in that blue sweater, Millicent? He has to be the best-looking guy ever. He looks like a Greek god. An African Greek god,” I said.

  “Oh, Demetrius!” Leo and Tracy John mocked in unison behind the door.

  I was endlessly heckled. They just didn't understand when! was talking about something important.

  “Excuse me, Millicent,” I said into the phone, and then put it to the side. I opened the bathroom door.

  “Will you two get out of here!”

  They laughed all bvet themselves, especially Tracy John, with his sickeningly sweet, squinched-up face.

  “Shoo, y'all,” I said, chasing them back into the living room.

  As soon as I was back to the phone, my mother told me to get off.

  “Millicent, I gotta go.” I hung up.

  I had to have my own room! I could play my own eight-tracks—my Roberta Flacks and Al Greens. I craved privacy. Our house was worse than Watergate: filled with bugs, and not the kind that you could spray with Raid. Half the time, I couldn't even get the bathroom to myself when I was talking on the phone. There was no place to get away from everyone. I'd go in one room, and Leo and Tracy John would be in there. In another, Horace would have a girl or his recruiter over. He was about to go to basic training. I'd go downstairs, and Daddy and his pinochle friends would be there. Ma would be in the kitchen, running the faucet, clattering the pots and pans or silverware, and I would try to slip away before she had a chance to see me and ask me to help her stir butter into the beans or mix the gravy or mashed potatoes.

  Dejected, I went to my half of “my” room. This had to be worse than a jail cell. At least Leo kept his side of the room neat. He always picked up after himself and had the footlocker organized well.

  I thought of The Godfather and turned the lights off, then drew the curtains, shutting out the streetlight. I was cold. It was going to be a hard winter. Soon I'd have to sleep with my socks on.

  I couldn't sleep, so I thought about her.

  Usually, it worked the other way: I'd wake in the night thinking of hen I'd lift my head from the pillow so that I could hear. I'd wait, in the nothingness of three in the morning-—or maybe four. Remembering the quick shuffle. The hiss of the waterpot. She'd be downstairs with her nurse books.

  Auntie Karyn. She'd had so many interests; I was surprised she had settled on being a nurse. She used to talk about the environment, stray animals, civil rights, and the women's movement. She used to go to all these meetings and bring back buttons for me. One really funny one was A Woman Without a Manls Like a Fish Without a Bicycle. I still didn't know what that meant.

  It was an odd thing; just when I thought it was under control, it would hit me. Maybe it wasn't about the movie. Maybe it was that Horace was due to ship out in about a week. Horace had signed up for the service after graduating from Dardon Senior High in June and a long summer of Daddy's badgering him: “No son of mine is living in this house and not working.” At least the Vietnam War was over, but our family would stilWbe broken up.

  Time.

  Occasional letters still came, and occasional phone calls, from people who I supposed had been on Mars and had had no idea she'd been killed. They'd want to know details—as if to recall the details wasn't painful for us. Daddy would handle it by providing curt commentary:

  “She died.”

  “She was twenty-four.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then he shot himself.”

  “Yeah, he should've done that first.”

  “Yeah, it's that kind of world.”

  People always said the same thing when they learned of her passing. They said she was so nice/she was so pretty/it was such a shame.

  Three years after her death, I was still trying to make sense of it. And, to be honest, I don't think I ever will.

  What is black? Is it all about lotion or hair-care products? Without those two topics, the
girls at my school would have had nothing to talk about. Millicent, Cissy, and I were the only exceptions.

  My own nap curls didn't take well to being tampered with. Each Sunday morning, Ma stunned them into semistraightness with a hot comb. That was all they'd put up with.

  Millicent was tall and thin like me and never straightened her shoulder-length hair. She had to do her hair her self, and she didn't do much. She just wore it in a fuzzy french braid.

  Cissy was short and overweight, and her hair was overpermed and broken off.

  We were the only girls left in the ninth grade whose hair was not straightened within a centimeter of its life. And we didn't care if there was a little ash on our legs or elbows.

  Though Dardon Junior High was overwhelmingly black, there was still segregation. There were the longhaired girls' table, the jock table, the nerd table.… The noise in the lunchroom pounded against my eardrums. I let out a labored sigh as I stared at the queen of the longhaired girls' table, Dinah Coverdale. Dinah's hair hung loose and shiny in deep silkened waves of amber. Her gray eyes looked almost spooky. She had already developed a womanly figure, filling out her sweater and slacks, and she walked around like she owned the world. The sad part about it was she did.

  My intense dislike for her went back to the fourth grade, when it had come down to the two of us in a class spelling bee. The final word was solidarity, and she mixed the d with the t. It flipped to me, and effortlessly, I spelled it right. Later on in the schoolyard, she called me Buckwheat.

  I didn't have a comeback. I just absorbed it.

  I thought divine justice would step in and make all her silken locks fall out while my hair turned free flowing.

  Ha.

  I mused, over my half peanut-butteKand-jelly sandwich, upon how Dinah still had hair like a model from a perm box, beautiful and bouncy. Her breasts too were beautiful and bouncy. I wondered whether I would grow breasts like that if I ate more.

  “Are there more light-skinned blacks or dark-skinned blacks?” I asked.

  “Dark. Look at Africa,” Cissy said, munching on the second of her sandwiches. Her problem was the opposite of mine. Cissy's breasts, beneath her blouse, were spilling beyond the borders of her bra.