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"Beyond Summer"
Chapter 2
Sesay
They are interesting to watch—the people. They move in the same patterns each day, but some things are always different. Their clothes change. The clothes whisper as they pass, telling the stories of the people. I can hear them, because I remain very still and listen the right way. My grandfather taught me long ago, as we walked far across the burned country the soldiers had left behind, all the way to the shore. He told me of the story children, and how they became scattered over the world. Then he put me on a boat with my auntie, and let me go.The boat was old, and it was packed body to body, and the waves pushed over it, but there wasn’t water enough to drink. Auntie died on the boat, but I did not. I came here, to a new place. I think I am from Haiti. I think I am the boat people, but I cannot say for certain. I can tell many stories much better than I can tell my own. I think most people are this way.
Sometimes, I share the stories with the storyteller. I go into her shop, where the sign says Book Basket. I know this, although I cannot read it. The storyteller will trade a book for a good story, and sometimes she’ll trade a doughnut, as well. I come early, while there may yet be a doughnut in the bag on her shop counter. Sometimes, I share an old story, and sometimes I tell the stories the clothes have told me about the people. Today, there’s another yellow house on Red Bird Lane. It was pink, but they’ve painted it yellow. There are four others like it on the same street. Yellow ones.
I tell this to MJ at the Book Basket, and she is not pleased. “Householders!” she snorts, her nostrils going wide. “They’ll have control of the whole neighborhood before long. Tear it down and put up more stinking condos.” Her eyes get hard as hearth coals then, and her lips pull back, showing her teeth white against coffee-bean skin. Her skin is dark like mine, but much prettier. She has beautiful teeth, as well. White like linen. I think it must be wonderful to have lovely teeth. But mine are not, so I hold my smile on the inside.
“It was pink—the house,” I say, and MJ nods.
“I know that place,” she replies. “It belonged to the woman who started The Summer Kitchen in the church. Her uncle built that house a long time ago.” She points across the road to the old white church. I know The Summer Kitchen, of course. I go there for lunch some days. MJ tells stories to the children after the meal, and I think one day I may help her, if I have a mind to.
“A woman should not sell the house her family built,” I tell MJ, and I think of my father’s home. My mind must stretch very hard to go there. “Not to the yellow house people.”
MJ frowns again and pushes long, thin braids over her shoulder. Three of them have fallen forward. Most often, she keeps them wrapped in a turban, but not today. Today, she wears her hair down, and I know why. I can hear the man working in the back portion of her building. She sells that space to him—the big area that was once for repairing automobiles--but as far as I can see, he never comes into the store to talk to her. He keeps to himself, as do I.
“SandraKaye didn’t want to let go of the house,” MJ tells me. “Her mother sold it out from under her, oh…a couple months ago. Just before you came to the neighborhood, I guess. SandraKaye wanted to run the café there, but after the house sold, she had to move the café to the church building instead.”
“It’s bad to have a mother like that, a selfish mother,” I say. I cannot remember my own mother well, but I have a good feeling when I imagine her. I see her on the veranda of my father’s big house. She opens her arms, and calls to me, and smiles. I think it must have been very hard for her to send me away with my grandfather when the soldiers came to take my father’s house.
“Yes, it is,” MJ agrees, and her eyes tell me a bit more about her. She understands what I have said about mothers.
The man in back makes a noise. He drops something metal—most probably a can of paint—and it echoes through the vast, empty space there. MJ turns an ear to it.
“People moved into the new yellow house this morning,” I say. “A young woman, and a man, and two little boys. They look like him.” I point toward the door, so she will know I speak of the man in back. His hair is long and dark, and he ties it with a leather thong when he’s working on a painting. He looks like the Indian chiefs on the old television shows at the Broadberry Mission down the road. “He went to the house and helped to carry in the heavy furniture. I saw him there.”
“Hmmm…” MJ’s eyes dart toward another metal sound. “I’ll have to ask him about it.” But I know she won’t. She never disturbs the painting man. The artist. He is an artist, truly. Like the ones who painted the pictures that hung on my father’s walls.
“It’s bad that they have moved in there,” I tell MJ. “They are nice people. I can tell. And they are friends of his.” I indicate the man again, the painter. Through the small square of glass in the door, I can see the top of his head, his dark hair flowing long and loose today, like a horse’s forelock. “He should not allow his friends to move into a yellow house. A Householders house.” Perhaps he is not aware that those houses tell a bad story; as far as I can see, the man doesn’t often go around the neighborhood. He paints here, and then goes to the place where he lives, a few blocks away on Blue Sky Hill, where the mansion homes are. His home is not a mansion. It is atop someone else’s garage.
“I’ll warn him about it,” MJ replies. Both MJ and I know what happens to people in those yellow houses. “I hope they haven’t signed anything.”
I back away from the counter, because the talk of signing papers weaves my stomach tight, like a basket drying in the sun. People make you sign a paper so they can take away your soul. I know this.
I go to the front of the store and quickly pick out a book from the many stacked on the shelves. “I will take this one today,” I say, and hold it up. I like the picture on the front.
MJ nods. “They’re starting another evening class at the church. Three nights a week.” She adjusts the pad of paper on her desk and pretends to be searching for a pencil, so as not to look at me. She knows I cannot read the book. The class at the church will be about reading, of course. She has told me before.
“I like this book,” I say, and give her a little smile. One that doesn’t show my teeth. When the book has pictures, you do not need to read the words to hear the story.
MJ holds up the white bag that has been waiting on her desk. “Don’t forget your doughnut, Sesay.”
I come back to the counter and pinch the bag between my fingers, then tuck it into the pocket of my big brown coat. I haven’t taken it off this morning, but I will when I go outside. It is hot here, even in the mornings. “Remind me to tell you about the children of Story Mouse,” I say to her. “I was thinking of that today.”
“I will.” She looks at me with interest, which causes me to like her even more. Most people can’t see me. Outside, I am invisible for hours at a time.
The man drops something in the back room again, and MJ looks away.“Warn him about the yellow house,” I tell her.
“I will,” she answers. “Have a good day, Sesay.” She waves as I go out the door. I allow myself the real kind of smile, once my back is turned. I am invisible now, anyway.
Because no one can see me, I sit under the tree by the fence to eat my doughnut and look at my book. From there, I can watch through the big garage door into the place where the Indian chief is working. He is painting something large—just beginning it with a thick brush, in bold shapes of brown and green. He leaves white space that looks like mountains as he lays the colors on the canvas. He does not know I am watching him, as I often do. I like to see the picture take life.
It tells a story, and stories are something I keep. I am a storyteller, like my grandfather.
