This Side of Home Read online

  For Linda Christensen

  my teacher, mentor, and friend

  Contents

  Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Fall

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Winter

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Spring

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Summer

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Acknowledgment

  Also by Renée Watson

  Summer

  Chapter 1

  June.

  The season is changing.

  Portland’s rain is stubborn. It shares the sky with summer’s sun, refusing to leave, refusing to let the flowers breathe. But summer is determined. Her sun pushes through the cracks of the clouds, making room for her light.

  By July, the sun will win. And in August we will ask her to go easy on us. We will sweat and suck Popsicles, sleep under fans, and swear this is the hottest summer ever. Even though we said that last year.

  But now we are going back and forth, umbrella up, umbrella down, jacket on, jacket off. Some days there is sunshine and rain at the same exact moment.

  The season is changing.

  And every time the season changes from spring to summer adults start saying, “Be careful out there,” because they know that summer can bring shootings and chaos with her. And when violence comes no one says, “This isn’t supposed to happen here,” as if this is a place where we should be accustomed to tragedy.

  Every summer the media come to my neighborhood, and every fall they come to my school. Never for good.

  But there is something good to see here.

  And not just all the new pretty houses and shops that line Jackson Avenue now. There is something good here. And not just because more white families have moved to this side of town.

  There’s always been something good here. People just have to open their minds to see it.

  Chapter 2

  This is the way it is.

  Nikki and I are identical twins, and our best friend is Essence. Mom says it’s like she has triplets the way the three of us do everything together, the way we’d do anything for one another. And she’s right. Essence is more like a sister than a friend, so when she stops at my locker after school and whispers to me, “We’re moving,” I get a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “The landlord is selling the house,” she says. Casual. Like what she’s saying is no big deal. Like she hasn’t lived directly across the street from me and Nikki our whole lives. Like we never sat on her porch swing on summer nights swinging away to imaginary places. Like she never tiptoes across the asphalt in the middle of the night to come to my house so she can escape her drunk mother.

  “He said he’s tired of renting,” Essence says. This time not as casual as before, as if this is the first time she’s realized that just because her posters have been hanging on her bedroom wall all these years doesn’t mean those walls belong to her.

  She owns nothing. Not even those hand-me-down blues records singing in her eyes.

  “Where will you go?” I ask.

  “Gresham probably, or maybe North Portland. We don’t know yet.”

  Both places are far—at least forty-five minutes away by bus. Too far for best friends who’ve had to take only ten steps to get to each other their entire lives.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Essence says. This is her way of telling me she is about to cry, and Essence hates to cry.

  I look away, pretend I’m okay.

  Chapter 3

  Getting bad news is not the way I wanted to start off my summer vacation.

  It’s the last day of our junior year of high school. We are officially seniors. Next year, when I come back, I’ll be student body president. The results were posted this morning. I have a lot of ideas about what I want to see change at Richmond, but for now, all I am thinking about is summer vacation and enjoying every minute of it with Essence. We wait at my locker for Nikki and the boys to show up.

  Devin.

  Ronnie.

  Malachi.

  Devin, Ronnie, and Malachi are in my dad’s mentorship program. In the fifth grade when we became friends, we had no idea the boys would end up the finest guys in our high school. Once they get to my locker, Essence is all smiles because now her arms are wrapped around Malachi. Essence and Malachi have been together since freshman year. They are the only couple at Richmond High who might actually know what love is. They love like spring.

  Ronnie takes Nikki’s hand. Their fingers intertwine like knitted yarn. Ronnie is the first boy Nikki kissed, the only boy she ever cried over after a breakup, ever got back together with and loved again.

  I walk next to Devin. No hand-holding or long embrace. He kisses me on my cheek, delicately, as if my face is made of hibiscus petals. I am not used to the way his lips feel against my skin. We have always had love for each other. A brother-sister friendship. But now we have more.

  The six of us leave Richmond High and head home. We walk the same way every day down Jackson Avenue, making stops at one another’s blocks like a city bus. Jackson Avenue looks like most of the streets in Portland: wide sidewalks with trees that hover and shade the whole block. Branches reaching out to hug you; plump houses with welcoming porches.

  Every time we walk down this street, Essence says, “This is my street.” Because Jackson is her last name. She looks at me. “You guys don’t believe me, but I’m telling you, this whole street was named after my great-grandfather.”

  Essence has all kinds of stories about her family history. I know she makes them up, but it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes you have to rewrite your own history.

  Malachi comes to her defense. He says to me, “Look, you and Nikki aren’t the only ones who have famous names.” He laughs.

  The story goes like
this: Mom and Dad, who are both community activists, wanted us to have names that represent creativity and strength. Mom always tells us how the agreement was that Dad could choose our names if we were girls and she would choose if we were boys. If we were boys, we would have been named Medgar and Martin. But once they found out we were girls Dad decided to give us the names of our mom’s favorite poets, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni.

  Nikki hits Malachi lightly on his shoulder. “Don’t be jealous,” she says.

  Devin jumps in. “Malachi has a biblical name. That fits as famous, right?”

  Ronnie shakes his head. “Uh, no. I mean, who remembers what Malachi did in the Bible? No one ever mentions him.”

  We all laugh.

  As we walk down Jackson Avenue, I take in all the newness, all the change. I turn to Devin and say, “Remember that house?” I point to the pale-yellow bungalow that takes up the entire corner with its wraparound porch. It no longer has its wobbling steps, chipped paint. “I will never forget that day!”

  “Don’t remind me,” Devin says, even though the memory brings a smile to his face.

  We retell the story as if we don’t already know.

  Devin says, “That dog came out of nowhere! Just came right up to the fence growling like crazy.”

  I laugh. “Only I didn’t know it stopped at the gate. I swear, I thought it jumped over and was chasing us.”

  “You took off running, Maya! Ran so fast, I could barely catch you.”

  And this is a big deal because Devin is an athlete and I have never been.

  Then we remind each other how Ms. Thelma sat on her porch pretending to mind her business, when really she was eavesdropping and watching us to see what we were doing so she could tell our parents if we were misbehaving.

  “It’s so strange to see her house as a coffee shop,” he says. And there is no more laughter in his voice.

  For the past four years, there has been constant construction on just about every block in my neighborhood. They’ve painted and planted and made beauty out of decaying dreams. Block after block, strangers kept coming to Jackson Avenue, kept coming and changing and remaking and adding on to and taking away from.

  About a year ago Ms. Thelma’s old house became Daily Blend: Comfy. Cozy. Coffee. I wonder if those laptop-typing, free–wi-fi–using coffee drinkers know that Ms. Thelma’s grandson died in that house. That a stray bullet found its home in his chest while he lay sleeping on the couch. He was only eight and only spending the night with his grandma while his parents were away to celebrate their anniversary. Wonder if they know that she had her husband’s eightieth birthday celebration right there in the backyard; wonder if they know the soil used to grow Ms. Thelma’s herbs and flowers and that her house always smelled good because her kitchen was full of basil, or mint, or something else fresh from her garden.

  After Ms. Thelma’s husband died, she moved to Seattle to live with her son, who never came to visit enough, she always said. Mom keeps in touch with her, mostly through holiday cards and phone calls on birthdays.

  I wonder what Ms. Thelma would think of all these people being in her house. Wonder if she had any idea that in just four years our neighborhood would be a whole new world. And I wonder what will be different in the next four years.

  Mom keeps telling me that life is only about change. Just last night she looked at me and Nikki and said, “I can’t believe my little girls are all grown up now.”

  Nikki and I just sighed. We hate when she gets all sentimental.

  “You’ve grown up, got your own identity and styles now,” Mom said.

  And this is true.

  When we were kids, we spent our childhood looking just like each other, ponytails all over our heads, matching outfits with our names written on the tags so we would know what was mine, what was hers.

  We have seen our reflections in each other our entire lives.

  But then, freshman year, no more matching outfits. Nikki’s style is made up of mismatched findings at secondhand stores and garments from the too-small-to-wear-anymore section of Mom’s closet.

  Sophomore year she started experimenting with color on her eyelids, lips, fingernails.

  I stayed plain faced. Modest in everything except attitude, Nikki says.

  Junior year, Nikki’s hair had a personality all its own. Pressed straight most days, but sometimes she let it be. Natural waves swimming all over her head. My long, black strands twist like licorice and hang down my back, always braided.

  All these adjustments to our outsides.

  Reversible if we want to go back, be the same again. It’s the changes on the inside that I’m worried about. I keep telling Mom that it feels like Nikki and I are growing apart.

  She says, “There are going to be a lot of things that start changing now that you’re older. You’re growing up, that’s all.”

  Maybe she is right.

  Part of me is excited, but it makes me nervous, too. There are some things I like just the way they are.

  Chapter 4

  Essence’s mom is a cracked vase. A woman who used to hold beauty.

  I’ve seen pictures of Ms. Jackson and Mom when they were in high school. Mom has told me the story of how they met, of how they’d stay after school to watch the football team practice. Ms. Jackson was watching a guy named Reggie. Mom had her eyes on Dad. Mom never tells the part about how Reggie left Ms. Jackson, how when he came to the hospital two days after Essence was born he told Ms. Jackson, “This baby don’t look like me,” and walked out.

  But Ms. Jackson tells the story all the time. Especially when she’s drunk. Tonight she is pacing their living room with an empty bottle in her hand that she tries to drink from. “Got to move out of my house ’cause your trifling, no-good daddy ain’t paid no child support.” She stumbles over half-packed boxes, almost trips, and then yells at Essence. “Didn’t I tell you to get this living room packed up? You think this stuff is going to pack itself?”

  Essence finishes wrapping the plates and glasses in bubble wrap. She places them in a box, then walks over to a closet in the hallway and pulls out a dusty box that’s falling apart and bursting at the seams. It has a missing flap, so it can’t close properly. Essence reaches in and pulls out a stack of magazines. They are small, almost the size of thin books. “What do you want me to do with your Jet magazines?”

  “If I got to tell you what to do, why you helping?” Ms. Jackson says. She snatches the magazines from Essence. They slip out of her hands and scatter on the floor.

  I bend down and start picking them up.

  “I ain’t asked you to do nothing!” Ms. Jackson kneels down and picks up the magazines, cradling them in her arms in a way a mother holds her child, in a way I don’t think she ever held Essence.

  “Ms. Jackson, I was—I was just trying to help,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t want your sorry. And what I tell you about calling me Ms. Jackson?” she says. “I done told you my name is Darlene.”

  Mom says calling adults by their first name is disrespectful. “Sorry, Ms. Darlene,” I say.

  She stands up, barely able to walk straight. She continues her rant, talking to me even though she isn’t looking at me. She paces the living room, still nurturing her magazines. There are so many they barely fit in her arms. “Coming over here acting all siddity. You can leave and go tell your momma everything you seen here. I know that’s what you gonna do. Comin’ over here like a spy or somethin’—”

  “Mom!” Essence says.

  “You shut up and help me pack. Didn’t I ask you to help me?”

  Essence can’t or won’t look at me. I’m not sure which. She always gets this look when Ms. Jackson relapses. As if it’s her fault, like she should be able to keep her mother sober. “I can’t wait till I graduate so I can get away from you,” Essence says.

  I think Ms. Jackson might throw the magazines down and slap Essence, but instead she just yells back. “And where you think you gonna go? You hang
with Maya and Nikki, but you ain’t smart like them—and you don’t have Mr. I-Have-a-Dream Thomas Younger as a father to pay for college.”

  When Ms. Jackson is drunk she calls Dad all kinds of names. Sometimes, Mr. Thomas-Younger-Our-Next-President, or Mr. Make-the-World-a-Better-Place. I don’t want to say what she calls Mom.

  “I’m getting away from you,” Essence says. “And I’ll work my way through college if I have to. I can do hair.” She holds a handful of her own braids in her hands as proof.

  Ms. Jackson rolls her eyes. “You ain’t gettin’ into college. Not with that Richmond High education. That school ain’t nothing. Not like it was when I went there. Back then we had good teachers—”

  “Well, you can’t tell that by looking at you!”

  I wish Essence hadn’t said that.

  “What did you say?” Ms. Jackson asks.

  I look at Essence. Hard. I shake my head.

  When Essence opens her mouth, I am afraid of what might come out. She sighs and says, “Nothing, Mom. Nothing.” Essence walks over to her mother. “I’m done arguing with you. Just give me the magazines so I can repack them,” she says.

  “I’ll take care of these. You pack up that stuff.” Ms. Jackson points to a bookcase that holds family pictures and a framed handprint that Essence gave her for a Mother’s Day gift. We were in the third grade, and our teacher had each of us dip our hands in our favorite color of paint and make prints.

  Essence walks over to the bookcase with an empty box in hand. She dumps the picture frames in the box.

  Ms. Jackson neatly packs her magazines. One by one she puts them on top of each other. “These are classics. Might be worth something one day,” she says. Her voice is calm now, and I don’t think she’s talking to us. Or maybe she is but it doesn’t matter to her if we are listening. “Do they even make Jet magazine anymore?” she asks. “This one here has Michael Jackson on the cover. This was back in his normal days. Back when everything was—” Ms. Jackson is still for a moment, just looking at a young Michael Jackson. She touches his face before she puts it in the box, then takes another one. “And this one—Luther. I can’t throw out Luther Vandross.”

  Ms. Jackson talks about each magazine as she puts them in their new home. She has her own personal black history time capsule. She walks over to the sofa, dragging the box with her, and sits next to me. For each magazine, she has a story.