My Monticello(28)
V.
The singing didn’t save us. What saved us—what might save us yet—was the old neighborhood. Whatever else you might say about it, living on First Street schooled us in its own scraped-kneed way. Our front stoops, just big enough to hold a plastic chair or two, seemed to always hold some auntie or other hawking her head out, to make sure nobody’s kid ran out into the road. To see who was about to get together. To see who was getting on whose very last nerve. Older kids keeping an eye on the younger ones, like we were all cousins. In the summers of my childhood, seemed like you could always hear the ice-cream truck down the road, its eerie carnival jingle, and the creepy pale driver who would trade hot quarters for something melty and sweet. We’d hand over our money tactically lest that man grab us and steal us away. Red tongues, sticky hands, and afterward we did a dance of survival on the sidewalk, careful not to step on the cracks, not to break our mommas’ backs, which, as far as what we could tell, were already bowed toward breaking.
Along with the unraveling, First Street had transformed once again. Ms. Edith along with some ladies from her church doled out food from the garden, ragged cabbage heads and sleek eggplants, trading excess herbs with those fierce growers across Ridge. A couple of mothers distributed jugs of water from the giant cistern behind the ball courts. Some of their grown sons, along with Devin and Elijah, protected our cinderblock clubhouse, newly filled by neighbors with supplies: charcoal, canned goods, or whatever folks could get their hands on. In the evenings, in the adjacent parking lot, people bartered for cigarettes, for spirits, for Pampers. People gave away old clothing and children’s toys. Early on, local churches made deliveries of cereal and soap and candles. One time a family of newer residents—a father and son with skin the color of wet sand—shot a deer in the gully behind the garden. They dressed it, shared the meat out widely before it spoiled, the charry smell rising from grills, filling our noses, all up and down First and into the greater neighborhood.
We spent that next morning at the welcome pavilion stunned and homesick, hiding or waiting—it was hard to tell which. Water bottles crinkled in our hands, the water warm and tasting of plastic. Back on First Street, and all our lives, we could reliably claim small things—my room, my sofa, my supper. But at the welcome pavilion, everything belonged to someone else, or to the past. Mr. Byrd had the keys, at least, and he used them, propping open doors. The kids scampered around the pavilion’s outer perimeter, playing tag where the chaser carried an imaginary machine gun or a torch. MaViolet perked up, that old hymn persisting as a low hum in her throat. Devin and Elijah kept up their watch of the front entrance and woods, which separated us from the road below. They hung out and slept in the swept-out Jaunt, while Ezra, still brooding, sulked in and around the theater.
The sun was high in the sky when I saw Mama Yahya walk away. She walked with purpose, in her loose T-shirt and tight patterned wrapper of a skirt, past me and straight out of the courtyard. She left without waking Papa Yahya, who dozed in a café chair, his head falling forward as if he were nodding. She was, as always, carrying the baby, her body rocking slightly as she placed one foot in front of the other, a syncopated motion. She moved past the ticket office door, past the Jaunt, hardly turning her head. Maybe it was something in the economy of her movement, the quiet music of it, that made me follow.
At a distance, I matched Mama Yahya’s pace as she continued on a paved path, bordered in wildflowers, that cut through the high tier of the parking lot. I stopped when she halted at a lone empty plot, prickling with grass. It was edged by a low split-rail fence and surrounded by parking spaces. A sign explained that historians had found the bones of slaves here, though there were no headstones or markers. At the fence line, Mama Yahya worked her lips, talking to the baby in her home language—or else the private language of mothers and children; it sounded nearly familiar.
She’s probably in shock, Knox said. He’d followed me, cautiously, like I’d followed her. He was standing on the path a few paces behind me, his palms slightly lifted, as if trying not to startle me. I started to say, I’m okay. Instead I said, That boy, in the Jeep—did you see him?
I mean, we’ve all gotta be in shock—at least a little—the way those men came, Knox said.
I felt overcome by an almost unbearable lightness, like I might float up. Maybe Knox noticed too, because he wrapped his arms around me, from behind, holding me to the ground. He perched his head on top of mine, so we were looking at that unadorned burial ground together.
After a moment Knox gestured at Mama Yahya. Let’s make sure she gets safely back.
All day, that feeling of weightlessness plagued me. Even as I tried to wash myself with a pump of soap and a bucket of rainwater. Even as I listened to MaViolet and Ms. Edith chat back and forth on a bench near the gift shop, mentally checking in on each neighbor they knew, and where they might be right then. It was only the sound of glass breaking that brought me back into my body—made fine hair along my forearms stand on end, as if jagged things were raining down. I was up and following Mr. Byrd toward the open door of the museum, the source of that splintered sound.
Through the grayness, up a flight of stairs, we found KJ standing between the Yahya children. They weren’t far from the upper doors to the museum, from which thick strands of light poured in. A hammer fell to the floor with a thud and KJ stepped back. But Jobari and Imani stood frozen before the shattered display, their eyes wide with surprise, as if they’d believed things would somehow hold. As soon as they saw us, the Yahya siblings began to wail. Take us home! they cried, snot percolating, tears streaking their dark, chapped cheeks.