Behind You by Jacqueline Woodson Page B

there are suicide bombers. People missing and found. Children looking for homes. Candy for sale. This morning, I saw a dog with only three legs. It was black and had the saddest eyes. But what dog isn’t sad eyed. And what child doesn’t want a home. My skin used to be so soft. But now I feel like a hard shell is growing over my blood and bones. The New York Times grows like a sunflower just inside the vestibule. It gets delivered in a blue plastic bag. A blue sunflower, growing out of control. But I can’t stop it from growing. Someone needs to come to this house. Teach me how to dial a phone again. Because then I could call someone—who?—and say—what? Please don’t deliver any more papers. Is that what you say? When a person answers the phone—do you ask for less of something? Who wants less of something? Don’t we all want more?
    I am not old. My hair is still black. The way it curls has not changed. Except in one spot. There. Right where the tiny indent of my neck bends into my head. The hair is straight there. Once it used to curl and the curls moved toward my neck. But now the hair sticks straight down like someone’s bad perm job.
    And my hands. I am not old, but my hands shake sometimes. I cannot find a pen that writes. I cannot find paper to write on. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.
    So I sleep. In this big house with all of its quiet, what else is there to do?

Kennedy
    LOST OUR LAST GAME UP AGAINST DALTON LAST WINTER, 102-62. Dalton don’t have no game. I mean, that team is busted . People trying to say it’s ’cause Miah got kilt—killed—I mean, he got killed . But even if Miah’s dead, that ain’t no reason to get your booty slammed by some I-don’t-want-no-scrubs from Dalton . I mean, show a dead brother some respect and at least go into some overtime or somethin’. Don’t be just straight-up losing like that.
    I’ma tell you—there’s things I love about Percy Academy and stuff that be making me crazy. Like the team. I mean, I love ball, but Percy got the A-1 sorriest team this side of, I don’t know—this side of the galaxy . Probably got a better team dribbling down the Milky Way. Three-inch Martians probably got better jump shots than the guys on my team. But there’s stuff I love about that school too. Like—okay, so I know this is whacked and if someone said I said it, I’d be ready to mess them up real bad and nobody’d believe them anyway ’cause everybody at Percy knows Kennedy don’t be playing that, but . . . I love the uniforms. Carlos be saying, There goes Kennedy in his monkey suit, but I know it’s just jealousy eating him up from the inside out. See, where I live, don’t a whole lotta kids be going to private school. Kids be going to school—it ain’t like how reporters be trying to televise—all that talk about high dropout rate and teenage pregnancy and blasé, blasé . . . Yeah, that goes on where I live, but it be going on where everybody else be living too. Only trouble is—the news got a need to be slanting stuff just to make people afraid. Like if peeps ain’t running around scared enough as it is. I just hate that the news gotta be making people afraid of somebody that look like me. Or Miah. If Miah’s really dead, then that’s the reason—he’s dead because of people being afraid. That’s why I don’t try to be afraid of nothing. In the morning I get up, brush my teeth, take a shower. I look in the mirror and take off my nylon, check my braids, make sure they working underneath it. Maybe if my scalp’s dry, I’ll run a little bit of grease in the parts, spray a little oil sheen on my braids—you know, make them nice. Then I put on my Percy clothes: gray pants—I wear them baggy, the school don’t trip, so that’s cool—white shirt with a maroon tie. Maroon jacket got a Percy Academy