“Nana, it’s been a very long day and I’ve got homework to finish tomorrow. I should tuck in.”
“Are you asking my permission to be excused?”
I waited a few seconds.
“Uh-huh. Sure, Nana.”
“Yes, Ailey. You may be excused.”
That next morning, I rose early and called myself a taxi without even leaving a note to explain why I wasn’t attending Mass with her. I paid the taxi driver with my emergency ten dollars and felt grown when I told him to keep the change.
At home, my mother was sitting on the couch, almost like she knew that I’d be returning early. She patted the spot beside her, saying that she needed to talk to me.
“Your sister’s gone away again for a few days. Actually . . . well . . . it’s going to be more like a month.”
“Where’d she go, Mama?”
She told me, I was a big girl now, so she would tell me the truth. My sister had been in trouble with drugs. I tried to fix my face, to mirror one of the actresses in a movie that Nana loved. Mama wasn’t fooled, though. She touched my hand, saying she should have known I’d work things out. I’d always been such a smart child.
That evening, I consoled my mother at dinner; it was just the two of us. It was early November, I pointed out. Lydia would miss her birthday and Thanksgiving, but she’d be home for Christmas. And Coco would take the train down from New Haven and she and I would roll our eyes at our big sister playing that Donny Hathaway holiday song that she loved so much. It would be all right.
*
Two weeks later, my mother told me Lydia had disappeared again. She’d run away from the rehab center. My father had looked for her, but she couldn’t be found. Mama said she’d wanted to keep Lydia’s problems a secret from the rest of the family, but now that my sister had disappeared, she’d have to let everyone know. We were a family. It was our right to worry.
I was in the kitchen when Mama told me. She put a breakfast plate in front of me, but I pushed it away. I put my head down on the table and cried.
Jingle Bells, Damnit
I didn’t know how much I actually didn’t know until I enrolled at Braithwaite Friends. How I had treaded water at Toomer High, never having to work too hard to get the highest marks. I was frightened by the possibility that I wasn’t as smart as my teachers and my parents—and even Uncle Root—had told me I was. What if I couldn’t keep up? Not only would I disappoint everyone in my family, I’d be humiliated in front of all the white kids at my school, so I rose earlier than anyone, in the pitch dark. I sneaked downstairs and made coffee and made sure that I washed out the carafe and dumped the grounds before Mama came down to make breakfast. I stopped eating in the school dining room at lunchtime and ate my homemade sandwich in the picnic area while I studied.
I started written assignments weeks ahead of time, because my teachers required papers that were much lengthier than the one-hundred-and-fifty-word paragraphs that had been assigned at Toomer. Now I had to write at least three papers during the term. I called up Coco to complain, but she told me my new school was like college on purpose. Those rich, white folks expected their children to get into Harvard or Yale, or at the very least Brown or Dartmouth. Teaching somebody to write a short paragraph was not going to get it, but the good news was that when I went to college I’d be so prepared that I wouldn’t be pressed.
In my history class, we had begun a Civil War unit. Mr. Yang and I conferenced ahead of time about my final, longer assignment on the role of Blacks in that conflict. He said he expected that I would maintain a high level of engagement, because my Lewis and Clark essay had been very thoughtful.
“You weren’t, like, mad, Mr. Yang?”
“About what? You earned a ninety-four. Does that sound like a mad grade?”
“I just thought, like, you know, what I said about how white people ruin everything might have hurt your feelings.”
He leaned forward, whispering. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Ailey, I’m not white. But please don’t tell anybody. I’ve kept that secret for so long.”
When he laughed, I thought, I could look at Mr. Yang all day. His skin was flawless, like in a beauty commercial. You couldn’t even tell he had pores. And his shoulder-length, dark hair was so sexy.
“The way you compared the Lewis and Clark expedition to the aftermath of Christopher Columbus’s landing in America was pretty brilliant. Your language was a little strident, and I would like for you to lean more into fact-based argument—this is, after all, a history class—but I like your honesty. It’s refreshing that you aren’t afraid to speak your mind. Ms. Rogers tells me you’re an excellent student in her class, too, and you have a real flair for language.”