Chapter Fourteen
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Jae
Everyone’s already there when I get to the grove Tuesday after school.
Derek’s sitting on a stump with his ankle resting on his knee as he plays with his shoelaces.
When he looks up, he gives me the teeniest of smiles, which makes my insides flip-flop.
Don’t do that, I tell my body, as if my body has ever listened to me before.
The skin around his eyes looks slightly gray, like he didn’t sleep at all last night.
I didn’t sleep either. Being at the beach with Derek took my mind somewhere else for a while.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that.
But then I came home again—to Uncle Rowan’s house—and it was like all the lights in a dark room were turned on at the same time.
The glaring reality of where I was and why.
The laughter, the dancing on the beach, all that felt shortsighted and ridiculous.
Uncle Rowan had expectations, and I had resolutions.
I wouldn’t lose myself in another boy, in another trouble.
I couldn’t sleep without waking up to thoughts of June.
Worries. I wondered what it would have been like if I had kept her—if I should have kept her.
I wondered how she would do in school later, being born in June and being so small.
I wondered if teachers would want to love her as much as I did.
Or if they would see her shiny brown skin and see trouble.
I dreamed and I worried and I made myself forget about the beach and that small sliver of joy I felt.
Until now.
I don’t look at Derek as I take the last stump, right beside him.
“Pssst.” He leans toward me. I pretend not to hear.
Mrs. Aldana’s sitting on the fallen log, hugging her gold shawl tightly around herself. “William, do we have any business to get to before we get started?”
William stands up and redoes his ponytail, smoothing down the blond edges. “All right. We decided last meeting that Derek and Jae would look for a venue for the open mic. Do we have any updates on that?”
I nod. “On Friday we went to the pavilion at Atlantic Dunes Park. There’s lots of standing and sitting space, plus covering for bad weather. And it’s nice with the ocean and everything.”
Swan, sitting cross-legged on the blanket beside CJ, fluffs up her dark hair, which today looks curled and hair-sprayed. “Hey, not a bad idea. Good job, newbies. Would be nice to have a few more options, though.”
“But it’s perfect,” I say.
“What if it’s already reserved? Or we need something else last minute? Anything can happen.” She sighs. “Can you just give us a few more options?”
I exhale slowly and nod. I sneak a glance at Derek and he’s staring at me, so intensely I can see the honey flecks in his dark eyes.
“Well, that’s all the business we have for today,” William says. “Unless someone has something else to add.”
We all shake our heads. William sits down, and we turn our eyes to Mrs. Aldana.
She stands up and walks slowly around the fire pit. She looks almost mythical, like she should cast a spell or start chanting or offer up prayers to the goddess earth.
“Today for our five-minute poem,” she says, “I’d like you to write to someone you need to forgive.”
I suppress a sigh, but Derek doesn’t. He’s staring at the ground and letting out a slow breath through inflated cheeks.
He suddenly looks up at her. “Why? Can’t we write about rainbows and stuff like that?
” She smiles. “I don’t think rainbows and stuff like that could make you feel what you’re feeling now.
This is your mission, if you choose to accept it.
” She watches Derek shift uneasily on his tree stump. “Do you wish to accept it?”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “I dunno. Maybe.”
“Maybe the first person who comes to mind is the person you need to forgive the most,” Mrs. Aldana says to all of us.
I drop my eyes so she can’t see through me to the woman who smells like gardenias. The one who slipped away from me, not once but twice, like I wasn’t worth fighting for. Who, on most days, was red-eyed and barely there.
It was during the holidays, a week before Christmas.
Dad was away on his yearly trip “back home” to Ghana.
I found a picture tucked inside the cover of his physics textbook and beneath a pile of student exams that needed grading.
A woman the color of milk chocolate with red lips and a shiny, tapered wig.
Her hands rested on two kids, one barely up to her hip, the other reaching her shoulder.
And Dad’s hand was on her waist, and he smiled like he belonged there. With them.
There wasn’t enough money to take us all, he’d said before he left. But I understood, even though I was just a knobby-kneed six-year-old holding that photo, that Dad didn’t take us to Ghana because there was already an us there.
When he came back, the house trembled constantly, like we were planted on train tracks and a train was forever approaching. Plates broke. Brooms broke. Mirrors broke. And then it was quiet.
His leaving was sudden, like a sky that pours down rain, giving you no time to find shelter. And when he left us, Mom left me.
There was no more humming in the kitchen.
The leaves on the Guiana chestnut started to yellow.
Her flesh, her voice, her eyes lost their softness.
To the world, she was the same Paula, but at home she sat motionless, like the world didn’t exist. And I knew every time she looked at me that her sadness was the most real thing, and that I would never be enough.
But that first leaving was a long time ago.
When June Baby was growing inside me, making me bigger and bigger, Mom was making me smaller.
Her eyes cut across the room at me when I got up from the couch.
Her tongue clacked when I cried from sadness.
Her head shook when I doubled over from nausea.
Every down moment since I got pregnant was an opportunity to point out my failure.
She wasn’t there for me to lean on until after June Baby was gone, like that was the condition of her love.
So when Mom called last night, I didn’t pick up. When she called Uncle Rowan trying to reach me, and when he came to my room with his phone, I pretended to be asleep. I told myself I’d call her later, but I won’t. Mom is back home in Atlanta where I need her to be, and I’m here, trying to forget.
I can’t share all this with the club. This pain is mine. So I write two poems again. And when Mrs. Aldana calls my name, I read:
you remind me of Uncle Phil
from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
you got that look
like nothing in the world
could please you
so why even try? why even care?
when you’re just Uncle Phil
from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Swan’s poem is a visual poem, words hidden among words, and can’t be read out loud. So she passes around her notebook, showing the meticulous swirl of purple calligraphy filling the entire page. “we’re not supposed to be strangers,” it’s called. “Have you ever looked for me?” it asks.
William shares a poem about his cat, Meow-Meow, who goes for blood, and CJ reads a simple line: I still can’t talk about you.
When it’s Derek’s turn, he winces. “I wrote something. I tried. But I don’t wanna read it.”
I can’t help but think about our poem on the beach and how he surprised both of us. Just read it, I wanna tell him. You’re a writer.
But then Mrs. Aldana praises his progress and moves on with the meeting.
She hands out copies of last year’s anthology and we discuss possible themes for this year’s.
We talk about using the open mic as a fundraiser so we can print anthologies in color.
And then we critique poems we’ve written during the week.
Again, Derek doesn’t read, and I don’t know why it bothers me.
Maybe I’m curious about him, but maybe I just think he’s better than he gives himself credit for.
When the meeting ends, Derek is the first one to get up. He’s walking, head bent over his phone, and a tree branch smacks him in his face. His hat falls to the ground.
“Shit!” he says, and turns around when we laugh. Sheepish, he picks up his hat and runs his fingers through his wavy black hair. He pushes his hat back on, and he’s wearing a smile that looks far from embarrassed now. He’s pleased. Like he’s a court jester who met his first success.
I pick up Lucille and follow him. “You shouldn’t text and walk,” I say.
“Apparently.”
“Can we talk about the open mic? What do you think about having a title? Like ‘Moonbeams: A Poetry Open Mic.’”
“I mean, sure. Or we could just call it ‘Bellwood’s Poetry Open Mic.’ You know? Keep it simple.”
I shrug. “Yeah. Okay. But hey, Derek. You’re not bad at poetry. I heard you last week. Why didn’t you read?”
He smirks. “Why didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Oh, come on.” He stops walking and turns to face me.
“You’re holding out, Jae. You wrote two poems. I wasn’t trying to look, by the way, I just saw.
You wrote two poems in five minutes. Like some kind of savant.
The first one, you finished super fast. And then you sat there like a tortured poet and wrote the other one.
I think the one you read was the easy one. ”
I bite my lip. How did he figure all that out? “Well, if you weren’t so busy spying on me, maybe you could have written a poem you were proud of.”
He chuckles. “All right.”
“All right,” I say.
He holds my gaze for a moment longer than necessary, until I’m thinking about that moment in the bathroom, his midnight eyes in the mirror’s reflection. And that moment after, his shirt pulled up to dry his face. His bare skin, smooth.