Lena by Jacqueline Woodson Page A

could about Marie’s dad. He had never said much to me but he always let us come over on Saturdays to take baths and drink hot chocolate. When he saw Marie and me was getting to be friends, he left us alone. He loved Marie more than anything.
    â€œMarie told me he was looking all over for us,” I said.
    Miz Lily nodded. “He said he was worried sick—the idea of you two somewhere on the road. Said he wasn’t going to stop looking until he found you, made sure you were safe. Made sure you had a home.”
    I smiled and looked away from her—my throat getting tight. He had been worrying about us. Worried sick. That meant something. Made sure you had a home. He had said that. Once, Marie told me she caught her daddy sitting in the dark crying. He was staring at a picture of her mother. When she turned on the lights, he wiped his eyes real quick and looked away. Another time she said she had asked him about not liking white people and he said it was ’cause white people didn’t like blacks. He’d said none of it’s right, though. I bit my lip remembering something else—that one time Marie had said me and her daddy were alike ’cause we wanted people to just be able to be people. To just be able to live. And now here he was, making sure me and Dion had a home. A safe place to live.
    â€œI’m going to keep in touch,” Miz Lily was saying. “And you write and tell me how you are. I stuck a card with my address in each of your knapsacks. If you lose it, I’m listed. Lily Price.”
    Dion went over to where she was standing by the counter and hugged her, her hands still dripping with dishwater.
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    â€œYou’re good,” Dion whispered.
    Miz Lily smiled. “We all got our skeletons, honey. Next person walking down the street might not think I’m as good as you do. My daughter could probably tell you a hundred stories about why I wasn’t a good mother. I’ve done my share of right and wrong.”
    â€œYou’re good to us,” I said.
    â€œThen that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
    Me and Dion nodded.
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    â€œOh my stars,” she said when they pulled away from each other. “Let me go get my camera.”
    She climbed upstairs slowly, then came back down a little while later with a Polaroid and made me and Dion stand out on the porch. We stood with our arms around each other’s shoulders smiling into the bright sunlight.
    â€œI’m gonna buy a nice frame when I leave work tomorrow and put it right up there on the mantelpiece with my other pictures.”
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    We didn’t talk much on the drive to the airport. Dion could barely sit still and I had to bite my lip to stop imagining that plane going up into the air.
    But I was thinking about Chauncey too. Seemed my mind was racing my body to get there. I’d never spent the night at Marie’s house but I still knew every nook and cranny of that place. Some Saturdays we’d just go from room to room, Marie telling me everything she could remember happening there. I’d touch photos and bedspreads and paintings and try to imagine living in a place where I knew the history of it the way Marie did. Now I would be living there with Marie. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to imagine it. I was already seeing Marie’s grinning face at the airport, her and her daddy standing there. I smiled. It seemed impossible that come Monday, I’d be sitting in Ms. Cory’s history class again. I was gonna work real hard this time. Maybe Marie was right. Maybe I could go to college if I wanted.
    Dion took my hand. When I looked over at her, she was smiling. I squeezed her hand real hard, then leaned back against the seat and stared out at Kentucky.

Eighteen
    When we climbed out of the car, Miz Lily looked kind of teary-eyed and so did Dion. We walked to the airport all hugged up, Miz Lily’s arm soft and warm against my shoulder.
    Dion