I begin today clutching a book that I snuck from Granddaddy’s bookshelf and climbing a tree that I decided yesterday would be my favorite tree. My tree’s hidden behind two giant trees with leaves as big around as my hand. But my tree is better, cause even though it’s small, it knows me best. I climb it, easy, even with the book in one hand. My tree has branches in a perfect row, like steps. Once I climb, I sit with legs dangling on either side of a wide branch right in the center. Sometimes I stay in my tree all day, just reading and watching and reading some more.
Since I finished Anne of Green Gables a couple days ago, I been trying my luck with the few books on Granddaddy’s shelves that don’t look too boring. The book I chose today has a tattered brown cover, with its curious title stretched cross the front in block letters. Their Eyes Were Watching God. I picked it for that title, and for the picture of God—not like the framed Black Jesus hanging in Granddaddy’s dining room, but more like the white God in TV shows—strangling a lightning bolt underneath. When I open the wrinkled pages, I can tell the book is for grown-ups, cause it’s filled with tiny text and big words. But as I start to read, I meet a teenage girl with skin like mine and hair like Nia’s, who’s gotta figure stuff out just like us. I keep reading—even after the teenage girl becomes a grown woman with a mean husband—cause I feel like I know her, and cause I only have to skip over a few hard words along the way.
I read all 227 pages without taking a break. When I’m done, I go back and fold the corner of my favorite page, then close the book. Now I’m thinking a lot, bout Janie in the book who reminds me, in some ways, of Momma. In the book, Janie gets three husbands—the first husband picked by her granny, the second husband who’s mean and tries to control her, then the third husband, Tea Cake, who’s bad for her, but who Janie loves the most. Come to think of it, Daddy was probably Momma’s Tea Cake, cause he ended up being bad for Momma in the end. But now I know it ain’t that simple. Cause when Janie and Tea Cake got caught in a bad storm and thought they would die, Janie said to Tea Cake my favorite line of the book: “If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. It’s so many people never seen de light at all.” I wonder if, like Janie, Momma feels like all the bad stuff with Daddy was worth it, for the good.
Thinking bout it this way, I feel more sad for Momma than mad. Maybe Momma really is just like Janie, tryna take control for herself instead of always being controlled. This reminds me of the idea I got during Bible study, which makes me realize, I’m kinda like Janie, too. The whole book long, Janie was tryna find a way for herself, and now I’m tryna do the same. I reach into my pocket, remembering my list with the big circle around money, but it ain’t there. Then I remember: it’s in a different pair of shorts. I climb down and run to the bedroom.
The list is still perfectly folded in the pocket of my old shorts, wrinkled and dirty on the closet floor. I open and refold it, then place it in my new pocket. That Bible verse told me exactly what I needed to do, gather money little by little, and now it’s time to do it.
The sun feels hotter than just a few minutes ago, so hot it could burn patches of my skin. It’s like when kids put magnifying glasses over ants, cept I’m the ant, and ain’t no dirt holes for me to run in and hide. Besides the trees—which I’m walking away from now—ain’t nowhere to escape from the sun on Granddaddy’s big, wide-open block.
In one hand I clutch the handles of a brown paper bag I found underneath the sink. When I would go to the grocery store with Momma and they’d ask her “paper or plastic,” she’d always pick plastic, much to my disappointment, and we’d walk home with bags pulling on our fingers and in the creases of our elbows, plastic that would sometimes break as soon as we walked in the door, leaving all our groceries in a big pile on the floor. The paper bags always seemed stronger, richer. All the fancy people would pick paper and leave the store with arms full of crackling bags that fit snugly between their elbow and chest.
I guess Granddaddy’s one of them fancy people, cause he got a whole drawer full of paper bags. I picked the biggest one, with a picture of a tree on the front and the little recycle symbol on the back. When it’s unfolded, the bag is bout the same size as my backpack, and it’s gon’ hold a bunch of bottles, soon as I find some. That’s my plan—collect bottles to take to the store for money. In Michigan, you get ten cents for every bottle you find, which I know cause Daddy would always yell at me and Nia if we accidentally put one in the trash. If I can find enough bottles, I can get enough money to get back home to Momma. I ain’t sure what it’s gon’ be like to be back with Momma—especially with the way she’s been since Daddy died—but it’s gotta be better than being stuck here with Nia and Granddaddy. Back home with Momma, maybe we can try to be a family again.
The sidewalk on Granddaddy’s street is strange, wide in some places and narrow in others, and it even, sometimes, disappears completely, leaving nothin’ but grass and dirt and pebbles to walk on. My feet crunch and crunch as I walk on the parts of sidewalk that ain’t sidewalk, looking back and forth for bottles to put in my bag. But ain’t no bottles to find, just rocks and bugs and flowers. I count twenty-seven rocks, then eighteen of four different kinds of bugs—ants, bees, worms, flies—and finally fifteen flowers, which I can’t help but stop and smell, one at a time. But I don’t find even one bottle, even after walking all the way down one side of the street and back up the other.
Dragging the empty bag behind me, I make my way back to my tree and begin to climb. I’m just bout settled in my spot when I hear voices coming from cross the street. It’s them white kids again. I ain’t stopped thinking bout them since the first time I saw them playing with the cherry-colored wagon. They ain’t got the wagon today. Instead, they draw pink and blue and yellow pictures on the sidewalk with chalk.
I hop down from my tree to get a closer look, but I don’t dare go over. Not cause of what Granddaddy said but cause of how he looked when he said it. I know he don’t want me to play with them white kids. And even though I got a feeling he’s wrong bout them, I can already tell Granddaddy is stricter than Momma and meaner than Nia. I can’t take no chances.
From my spot near the tree, looks like the boy is drawing a family—Momma and Daddy and son and daughter—while the girl draws a field of flowers. Looks like the flowers in Granddaddy’s backyard, but I can’t be sure. I imagine the kind of pictures I might draw if I could play with them. I might draw flowers, too, or my old house or old school or maybe even a picture of me and Daddy. Just thinking bout it makes me happy. Best of all, I would finally have somebody to talk to and play with. Somebody who wouldn’t be mean to me or leave me behind.
I look around, then take a deep breath. Last I checked, Nia was taking a shower and Granddaddy was enjoying his regular afternoon couch nap. I might have just enough time to make it over there without gettin’ caught. I don’t wanna make Granddaddy mad again, but I really wanna make some friends.
“Hey, can I play with y’all?” Somehow, my legs got me cross the street and standing in front of the white kids. They look up with mouths gaping open, like they don’t speak English. I try again. “My name is KB. Can I play with y’all?”