Just Under the Clouds Read online

  A woman in plasticky pants swishes in front of us. An old man holds a bunch of paper bags as he swipes past. I study the ground, count sidewalks and streetlights and turns in my head. Left, left, right. The whoosh of the highway forces the wind across my cheeks.

  A shadow jumps and I jump with it. Adare’s hand fidgets out from mine. She takes off toward Miss Li’s.

  “Adare, you come back here!” I shout, but she’s off, hair bouncing, moving like some little forest creature. Her high-tops tap-dance over the crunching grass along the old lot.

  “Adare!”

  She sinks to the ground and I know what she’s doing before I can stop it. One after the other the laced high-tops come off. You can’t force a shoe on Adare. No way. Her bare feet have known every ground she’s ever walked on, and at the end of the day, the dirt of all her everywheres becomes mud in the shower drain.

  I run to the corner, thinking it’s lucky we live where no one wants to or everyone would be looking at us and tsking, wagging their heads because it isn’t normal, it isn’t right. A little kid taking her shoes off in the middle of Brooklyn.

  “Up!” I pull at her wrist, but she’s giggling, and there go the socks, too, and I try to collect them when the shadow jumps again. She whizzes around, scrambles up, running barefoot, laughing hysterically, following whatever it is she sees, and I think, Nuh-uh, no way am I chasing after this barefoot crazy kid. I’m done.

  It’s dark and my pants are cold on the concrete. Her pink high-tops sit in my lap, with the sweaty socks rolled up into a ball.

  I call out for her, but it’s no use, she’s running toward Miss Li’s. Light shines from the tall glass windows of the shop. Stacks of detergent and toothpaste and lotto tickets. And I see, in the way the store lights up the street, that the shadow she’s chasing is the smooth charcoal line of a cat.

  She follows the cat while my fingers are wrapped in her laces. I stand up and wish Adare had been born different, but I push the wishing aside, like I always do, because we’re here and it’s late and Mom’s missing—or we are—and I’m tired, so tired of trying to figure out where to be.

  I slink on over, slow, to Miss Li’s, and stand at the swinging door. Inside, Adare crouches at the beer refrigerators, where the cat is pawing at the silver and steel. It stretches its front legs out like it might leap away, but instead it starts licking its dark gray fur. Adare’s cheek falls to her shoulder. She’s mesmerized.

  “No animals allowed!” Miss Li shouts, pointing to her handwritten signs behind the register—something about IDs and cigarettes, and no animals, and a big red Mrs. Belz X slashing through American Express.

  “He’s not ours,” I say, but Miss Li’s arm swings back again and one skinny, wrinkled finger looks like it’ll poke the sign straight into my eye.

  “Out,” she says, and her lips sag to her chin, like always, except for the one time Adare reached over the counter and touched the gold bracelet on her bone-thin wrist. Real gentle, with just one soft finger. Of course, Adare’s smile, the way it has a habit of knowing people and calming them down, made Miss Li smile, too. A gift from my son, she said.

  I look at her gold bracelet now. It’s made to look like a ribbon, looped in a perfect bow. She wears it so tight, so close, her skin bunches up, tries to break free from behind it but never quite lets go.

  I march over to Adare, who rests her head on her knees. She marvels at the cat like she’s never seen one before, like we don’t have a Sookie taking up room in our bed every night.

  “Miss Li says no animals allowed.” I look back to Miss Li for approval. She swings her arm around again to the sign.

  “And we have to put your shoes on,” I continue, reaching for her hand, but she snatches it away. So I try to take her foot and she giggles at the same time she whines like a baby, shifts her feet so they’re tucked safe under her butt.

  “Adare, please,” I beg. “We gotta go.”

  She shakes her head, red hair sliding to her bare ankles, like she’ll slip to sleep right there, next to the stray cat, on the dirty floor of Miss Li’s.

  I pull at her wrist, but she screams out. I try to yank her up, but she laughs and wriggles her arm from my grasp. She slumps against the refrigerator and starts stroking the slippery gray fur. The cat’s not skittish at all because Adare’s got a way, like Mom says, with people and pets and all living things. But when I reach out, the cat jitters and tries to claw at me, teeth out, because whatever way Adare’s got, I don’t have.

  I grab her wrist tight and pull, thinking I’ll drag her straight across this store.

  The cat’s slithering along the bags of potato chips, then behind the register, where Miss Li reaches for a broom, hissing, “Scat!”

  I hear a rubber screech across the floor and look up to see Sabina Griffin, who looks down at me like I’m a wad of gum stuck to her squeaking boots.

  I’m confused at first, wondering what Sabina’s doing at Miss Li’s. I didn’t think she lived over here. Actually, I don’t know where she lives at all. Her hair’s in two messy braids, like always. A dark brown eye, like rock, pokes from behind the strands, staring at me and my scene. I let go of Adare, who scrambles on her knees, looking for the cat. I know what Sabina’s thinking, what everybody thinks about Adare: What’s wrong with her?

  And I turn my face off, the way you turn out the light. I take away every expression and make my face say, Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Sabina swivels on her squealing boot. She pushes with her elbow against the tinkling door, and leaves.

  The broom scratches the floor and Miss Li shrieks, “Out, out, out!”

  The cat looks scared, its petal-green eyes drooping low as it speeds toward the door, which looks like it’ll shut right on the hook of its tail. Adare follows and I chase after her, shouting, “I’m sorry!” to Miss Li, whose red leopard glasses are bunched on her face. She’s shaking her head, muttering in runaway words, “No animals allowed, says it right there, clear as day, I’m not running a zoo here, nuh-uh, look at the storefront, does it say Miss Li’s Menagerie? I don’t think so.”

  Then I’m out in the dark again. Sabina turns a corner. Gone in a flash.

  The cat slips through a fence into an empty lot and Adare kneels down. Her fingers curl around the metal like she’s caught behind bars.

  “Look. It ran away,” I scold. I know I should be soft, but everything in me has an edge. It’s late, Mom’s missing, and like it wasn’t bad enough Sabina knowing I don’t know where to find a, she had to see us acting like two lunatics in Miss Li’s grocery.

  Adare’s face is still tearstained from when I stretched her legs and arms to try to get those shoes on. She runs her palm across her eyes and says in her sweet whisper, “But I love him.”

  “Not possible,” I shoot back. “You don’t even know him.”

  But when I look at her eyes, sad and wishing, searching for that cat, I think maybe it is possible to love someone or something you can’t really ever get at. I think maybe it makes you love that someone or something even more.

  I give in. Like always. “We’ll find him,” I say, even though I know we won’t. He’s a stray and all he knows is how to keep running away. “Someday. We will. Are you all right?”

  Adare doesn’t move, stares between the rings of the fence.

  “We have to go…” I hesitate. Home isn’t the right word. It never is. “Come on.”

  She nods. “Yeah.” Then she shifts, sticks both her legs out in a V. I guess she’s decided she’s ready for her shoes.

  Ennis House is dark, and I hold Adare’s hand tight, the way Mom would. The mush of cockroach is still there. That’s four days.

  Old Lou doesn’t make way for us, not this time, not without Mom. He sits on the last step and his bottom takes up the whole width of the stairs. I don’t know why he sits here like this. One long wait fo
r nobody.

  Behind him, echoes slide down the banister. His eyes are two small squints. A crooked scar from the corner of one eye slashes past his cheek to his ear. I’d be scared if I hadn’t already decided I couldn’t be.

  I think he smiles, but I’m not sure. His voice is ragged and old and it moves slow, like guiding a cane forward. “Where’s your mama?”

  I try to pretend like I know, like she’s where I wish her to be. “Here.”

  “Really? That so?”

  I nod, but of course he would know better. He knows the coming and going of everyone, and if he hasn’t seen her, then she’s not upstairs, and if she’s not upstairs, I won’t know what to do.

  “Where you coming from?” he asks.

  “School,” I say.

  “Bit late. For school.” And this time, he smiles. I’m sure of it.

  So I breathe in deep and ask, “Can I get by?”

  He holds his hand out, dirt trapped under his nails. “Gotta pay the toll.”

  Toll? All I have is my school ID and my lunch card. That’s it, and I don’t think that’s what he’s looking for.

  Words are stuck in me. I wish I never left that tree.

  I shake my head. I don’t understand the game he’s playing.

  I feel Adare clench beside me, see her chest rise up. She’s holding her breath again and I close my eyes as if that will set it free.

  I want to get upstairs—have to get upstairs—because we don’t have any other place to go.

  My backpack slips from my shoulder, like a nudge, so I let it fall to my wrist, twist the straps, unzip it, like I’m looking for cash I don’t have. Just notebooks and one giant textbook for third-period science. We’re on unit 3: “Kingdoms of Life.” The first question is, What makes something alive?

  With Adare’s breath caught, I can’t seem to find my own. The two of us are bunches of tiny cells stacked up and tucked under, and if we don’t let the world in and out, if we hold the air in our cheeks, if we never let go, we’re a part of nothing. We disappear.

  So I feel around, not knowing what I need, only that I need something to get past him. In the back flap of my pack, my Tree Book is smooth and soft.

  I root around until I feel something at the tips of my fingers. An acorn I collected last fall.

  It’s smooth and cold and wears its little cap. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m handing it over, offering it up. Because what else is there?

  When I place it in his palm, he clutches my hand, quick. When I let go of the acorn, he lets go of me, and I take my hand back. Adare’s breath is still jammed.

  He looks at it in his swollen, wrinkled palm. His lips flatten and I’m sure it isn’t what he’s looking for.

  But he laughs and his laugh is crumpled up with a cough, like he had to force it out.

  I feel Adare’s breath release.

  He stands up. He balls the acorn up in his fist, gives a laugh that’s more like a Hooey, and slaps a thigh with the other palm.

  Then he extends his arm like it’s a bow, like we’re two queens. “Go on.”

  I don’t think Adare and I have ever run so fast and sure up the stairs, past Mrs. Johnson’s yelling and the whiff of Fred C.’s brown-bag fast food. We run so fast, I hardly remember what we’re running toward until we reach five, my calves stinging, my lungs aching, and it feels like the two of us crash into the big red door.

  The lock’s broken and the door is off the hinges. When I look inside, most of our stuff is in a heap. My greenhouse sits in shards of glass, all the little true leaves lost in a mound of damp brown dirt. The rest of what we have is spread out like a fallen clothesline. The breeze from the open window sends it all flying around.

  Adare runs to the window. Her tea box is smashed on the sill. She shakes it. It’s empty. All of her gifts are gone.

  She dips to the floor, where her peanut stash sits crushed. She scoops up the dust of peanuts and looks up at me.

  I don’t know what to say.

  I hear Sookie mewing, scared, underneath the dresser.

  Adare and I sit shoulder to shoulder on the lumpy mattress. Her polka-dot leggings shoot straight out while my striped leggings bunch up to my chest. I balance my Tree Book on my wobbly knees.

  I close my eyes and dream about the tree of heaven. Giant naked arms reaching to the sky, waiting for a hug that never comes. My pencil stretches the branches to the ends of each page. It slips off the edge of the notebook.

  I can’t think of a next. I can only push the arms of my tree farther and farther, until we’re shielded in a web of twisted vines, one giant hug to keep us safe.

  When I open my eyes, my pencil hovers in the air. I point the tip back to the lined notebook, and as I press down, the point snaps.

  Everything stays unfinished.

  I rest my head against the wall. I keep getting a whiff of the cat pee, the sounds of feet rambling on the stairs, and the mash of all kinds of yucky smells. Shouts and conversation spill out in gushing half-words.

  “What’re we gonna do?” I say out loud. “Everything’s a mess.”

  “Yeah.” Adare rubs her eyes, then sinks lower to the mattress, nuzzles her head at my shoulder. Sookie scrapes at the floorboards.

  Then I hear more stomping, feet getting louder at each flight, and someone’s at five, and I follow white rubber shoes, closer and closer, khaki pants, a gray puff coat, Mom’s swinging ponytail.

  Her arms are around us before I can stand. Her bag slips past her arm to the mattress with a thud. She’s shaking. I’m so relieved that tears well up in me. My Tree Book is a smash at my chest. It’s like my pencil branches found their way around us.

  “You’re here,” she says at the same time I say, “Where were you?”

  She holds us tight, fitting her head between ours. She speaks like a slow leak. “You meet me at the park,” she says, her warm breath at my neck. “Always.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I thought—” But I don’t know what I thought. That she had forgotten us. Me.

  “The store— I had no choice. I tried to leave on time.” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re okay. That’s what matters.” She pulls back, holds Adare’s chin in her hand. Adare’s smile is so wide, you could fall in. “You’re okay, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then Mom looks around, at the mess, at the swinging door and the broken lock, and asks what we’ve been wondering. “Sweet Jesus, what happened?”

  “It was like this,” I say, and for a moment I think I have to convince her. “It wasn’t us.”

  She tries to close the broken door. She twists the doorknob and it spins like a loose wheel.

  She’s gentle but stern. “See, Cora, this is why you can never come here alone.”

  I watch her gaze circle the room. Mom’s face, you can’t read it. Her expressions have a way of going missing.

  But I know what will happen. I know, as she sets her teakettle on the hot plate, that the three of us are as good as gone.

  “Willa’s?” I ask, confused.

  Mom’s nod is quick, like she’s not even sure herself. She’s got her hand wrapped around Adare’s wrist. Clumsily packed bags dip from her elbows and bulge over her shoulders like a humpback. I clutch my backpack and a laundry bag full of clothes while we stand on the corner of Smith and Ninth Streets to hail a cab, something we never do, but Mom says these are special circumstances.

  I remember Willa visiting us at our old place on Hoyt Street. She was giraffe-tall and I remember the weird way her knees bunched up when she sat on Mom’s beanbag chair. She eyed us and our place like she was Dorothy landing in Oz, except we were in black and white and she was in color. When Mom and Willa talked, Mom’s Texas accent crept in, like some tired, moping dog.

  “Can’t we stay at Jessie’s?” I as
k. She’s one of Mom’s old artist friends and I like her purple couch. I like the way we sit out on her fire escape at night while she blows smoke rings into the sky with her cigarettes.

  Mom shakes her head. “Jessie’s gone.” She says it like a magician’s Poof! The way a lot of Mom’s artist friends disappear.

  “But we barely know Willa,” I argue.

  “She’s my oldest friend, Cora.” She raises her arm in the chill of the air. “Some people are like family.”

  Family. Something I’ve been told repeatedly we don’t have.

  But before I know it, I’m rubbing against the musty leather of the cigarette-smelling cab, slicing through the streets to some shiny new condo towers in Downtown Brooklyn, and standing in a chandeliered lobby, where a man in a suit stands behind a desk and asks us who we’re here to see.

  “Willa Rose,” Mom says.

  He picks up a telephone and dials, pokes his chin out at us. “And who should I say is here to see her?”

  Mom hesitates before she says, “Liana.”

  He repeats it into the phone. “Ms. Rose, Liana is here to see you.”

  Mom looks like she’s holding her breath and I look from her to the man, to the way his mustache twitches, to the mirrored walls, reflecting the light and us, with all our things in a lump at our feet.

  He pokes his chin at us again. “Go on up.”

  I watch Mom’s shoulders fall, like she’s relieved, and we lug our things up a fancy elevator. Velvety carpet lines its way down a narrow sliver of a hallway where Willa stands in an open door.

  Her arms are folded and she looks past us into Mom’s eyes, which don’t look straight at anybody for too long, and Mom says, “You said if we ever needed a place to stay…”

  Willa nods and her lips curve up into a cautious smile. “You’re both so big. It was only last year I saw you, wasn’t it? And look at you.”