Beneath a Meth Moon Read online

  ALSO BY

  JACQUELINE WOODSON

  Last Summer with Maizon

  The Dear One

  Maizon at Blue Hill

  Between Madison and Palmetto

  I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This

  From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

  The House You Pass on the Way

  If You Come Softly

  Lena

  Miracle’s Boys

  Hush

  Locomotion

  Behind You

  Feathers

  After Tupac and D Foster

  Peace, Locomotion

  beneath a meth

  moon

  AN ELEGY

  JACQUELINE WOODSON

  NANCY PAULSEN BOOKS AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.

  NANCY PAULSEN BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2012 by Jacqueline Woodson.

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Nancy Paulsen Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Nancy Paulsen Books, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Published simultaneously in Canada. Printed in the United States of America.

  Design by Ryan Thomann. Text set in Chaparral Regular.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-101-55979-6

  Contents

  moses

  the house

  other houses

  pass christian, mississippi

  this storm coming

  galilee sunrise

  daddy: part one

  water rising up

  galilee

  daddy: part two

  t-boom

  laurel

  galilee moon

  happiness

  making the moon

  stop, look and listen

  thunderation

  confrontation

  kaylee after

  after t-boom

  elsewhere

  leaving galilee

  beneath a meth moon

  erase me

  the second coming of moses

  daneau’s girl

  the missing

  new sunrise

  lord, do remember me

  laughter

  moses and rosalie

  dream

  donnersville moon

  another second chance

  elegy for mama and m’lady

  daddy

  elegy

  for my mom and grandma, in memory

  and for my sister, Odella

  Before I traveled my road, I was my road . . . —Antonio Porchia

  This road . . .

  IT’S ALMOST WINTER AGAIN and the cold moves through this town like water washing over us. My coat is a gift from my father, white and filled with feathers. My hair is healthy again and the wind whips the white-blond strands of it over my face and into my eyes so that from far away, I must look like some pale ghost standing at the corner of Holland and Ankeny, right where the railroad track moves through Galilee, then on to bigger towns. My hands pressing the small black notebook to my chest, my head back, eyes closed against the wind and early falling snow. This is me now. This is me on this new road . . . Later, I’ll write this down—how early the snow came, how surprising, how the flakes drifted white and perfect around me. I’ll write, “The moon was finally out of me, and maybe because of this, everything felt new and clean and good . . .”

  In the distance, I hear a train whistle blowing—coming from far off. But fast-moving . . . toward me.

  On days like this, with so much beauty circling me, it’s hard not to feel a hundred years old. Hard not to let the past come raining down. Hard not to think about not deserving this kind of beauty, this kind of cold. This . . . this clarity. But Moses and Kaylee keep telling me that fifteen is just another beginning, like the poet with the two roads and his own choice about which one he’d be taking. You got a whole lot of roads, Kaylee says to me. And some days, I believe her. As I walk down this one . . . I believe her.

  Kaylee says, Write an elegy to the past . . . and move on. She says it’s all about moving on. I’ve read about it, Laurel. You write all the time. You can do this.

  So I’ll begin it this way—It’s almost winter again . . . Soon, Moses will join me here. He’ll walk along these tracks with his bag slapping against the side of him. He’ll see me in my white coat and smile. He’ll see me here—living. Something neither one of us can hardly believe.

  Together we’ll sit by the edge of the tracks and talk real quiet about moving forward—over that crazy year. I’ll put my head on his shoulder and tell him again about my life in Pass Christian, the house we lived in there, my mama, about Jesse Jr. being born fast in the night. About M’lady.

  And Moses, my brother-friend . . . Moses, my anchor and my shore, will lift the collar of my coat higher up around my ears, pull my hat from my pocket and make me put it on.

  I’m painting over those snowflakes, Moses will say. One by one, they’re slowly fading out of here.

  As I begin this story, I believe him.

  moses

  THE FIRST TIME MOSES dropped a dollar in my cup, I didn’t even know his name. I looked up at him, glad for the dollar. Maybe I said thanks, but it’s blurry sometimes, my memory is. One moment clear as water, then another moment, and it’s like somebody’s erasing bits and pieces of it.

  What I’m seeing as I write this down are the shadows, brown and black and some kind of blue that maybe was the jacket he was wearing, a can of spray paint in one hand, a brush in his other. Maybe it was night. Maybe I asked him his name, because he said, I’m Moses. And I said, Then this must be the promised land. The Bible comes to me that way—quick and sharp like a pain. I had just turned fifteen, and with it came a new way of talking and smiling to get what I wanted. May
be I was thinking I could get another two dollars out of his pockets.

  But Moses just looked at me like he was looking at someone familiar and strange at the same time. Most kids just passed me by, laughing, sometimes throwing whatever they’re carrying at me—half a candy bar, an empty potato chip bag, a soda can. But Moses stopped, looked at me, put that dollar in my cup, said, Did you know Ben? I’m painting that wall for his mom.

  Maybe I knew right then he was different.

  No, I said. I don’t know anybody by that name.

  She wants it to say “Ben, 1995–2009. We’ll always wonder about the man you could’ve been,” Moses said. Then she wants me to put “We love you forever” at the bottom. In small letters. Like she’s whispering it to him. That’s what she said—“Like I’m whispering it.”

  You can hardly see it with the sun almost down. Moses pointed at the wall. Beauty wasted, he said. Look at him.

  Maybe I squinted across where the painting was getting started. Maybe I saw a pale outline—the beginning of the ending of Ben. It didn’t mean anything to me, though.

  I asked Moses if he played ball, because he looked real tall standing there, and I figured he might have seen me cheering. I was hard to miss on the court. At least that’s what people said, but I saw the way his smile went away.

  We don’t all play ball, he said.

  I would have asked him about this we all thing. But other people started passing by, and I needed to make some money. You stay blessed, Moses, I said, by way of saying “good-bye, now,” but trying not to be rude because he had dollars he was sharing with strangers.

  Maybe I smiled, because he looked at me again for a quick second, and I think that was because of where T-Boom chipped my tooth when we were still together. T-Boom’s got the whole tooth missing, and after we knocked out each other’s teeth, I guess we figured there wasn’t anything left to do, so we stopped going out. But of course I still saw him—sometimes two or three times a day.

  Moses had his girl with him. She looked down at me like I didn’t even have a right to be living, but I just gave the look right back to her. She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed a number, said Hey, baby, then turned away from us, talking real quiet into it.

  You must have some people somewhere, Moses said.

  I pulled my top lip down over the chipped tooth, looked away from him and shook my head. I hadn’t felt any shame about that tooth before and didn’t know why I was feeling it now.

  My people are gone.

  Gone dead, Moses asked, or gone gone?

  Both.

  He nodded, squinting at me like he was trying to put some puzzle together.

  The girl put the phone in her bag and turned back around, pulling at his arm, saying they were gonna be late. She talked like she’d been schooled in the real right way to say things: “We’re. Going. To. Be. Late. Moses.”

  I’ll be back around to work on that wall tomorrow, he said to me, then let his girl pull him out of my line of vision.

  And I guess I forgot about him, because it was getting real cold and I was thinking about getting to the House before T-Boom went home to his own mama and ate her dinner, then watched some of his mama’s TV and went to bed in the room he grew up in. And once the House closed, you couldn’t go looking for T-Boom at his mama’s because she didn’t know anything about where his money was coming from, so I let myself shiver until a few more quarters and dollars fell into my hat and then I put my sign away in my bag, blew my nose on my bandanna and packed up shop for the night. I got up and shook my legs to get the blood running back through them. The fuzz went away from my mind. A lady and man were walking toward me, and for a quick minute I smiled, thinking, Here comes my daddy. Coming to take me home. But then the man just patted his pockets and gave me one of those I’m sorry looks. The woman didn’t look at me at all. I stood there watching them move quick past where I was standing. Something got hard and heavy inside of me, and I knew real deep that my daddy wasn’t coming here to get me. Not this time. Not anymore.

  the house

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK by the time I hitched and walked the four miles to it. Another four miles past it and I’d be at my own house—where maybe my daddy and Jesse Jr. were sitting down in front of the television, eating spaghetti with sauce from a jar. No green vegetables to speak of, like how it would be if I was still living with them. It had been weeks, maybe even months since I’d last seen them, and a part of me wanted to keep walking until I got to our door, opened it up and said, Hey, Daddy, your baby girl is home. But it’d been a long time since I’d been his baby girl. A long time since I’d helped Jesse Jr. hold the garlic press up high, letting the juice drip down over a bowl of hot spaghetti till the whole house smelled like the promise of something good coming.

  I felt myself starting to shake and kicked at the broken-down door on the House, hollering loud for T-Boom to open it.

  There was smoke coming out of the chimney, so I knew he was inside. The old gray boards nailed to the windows flapped where wind pushed up underneath them, and even from way off there was the smell of something bitter burning.

  I kicked at the door again, calling T-Boom’s name so loud my throat hurt.

  You lost your mind, girl? You want the police all over me?

  He’d gotten skinnier over the months, and his hair was long, coming almost to his shoulders. The plaid shirt he was wearing had a hole in the arm. I used to love the way he looked in that shirt, the red and black squares of it, the way he’d pull the collar up when he was cold. Now I just stared hard at the hole, trying to find somewhere besides him to put my eyes.

  You heard me calling you the first time. I know you did.

  He held out his hand, and I put the money in it. Mostly quarters but some dollar bills, too. My stomach hurt from missing lunch, but I knew the moon would fill that hunger up quick.

  T-Boom shivered, shaking a little as he counted the money. You still out by Donnersville?

  I hugged myself, nodding. It’d become just this—me giving him the money, him giving me the moon and sometimes a few questions in between it all. No more T-Boom and Laurel. Cheerleader and Co-Captain. No more us together always.

  Yeah, mostly. Still got that room back behind the hardware store. Nobody bother me there.

  Nobody try to come in at night?

  Uh-uh. Got something waiting for them if they do. My foot where they don’t want it. No one’s trying to get in there.

  Donnersville meth heads cleaned it out a long time ago, T-Boom said. Steal the shoes off their own mothers’ feet for some moon. They don’t care. Don’t you become like them, Laurel. You’re better than that.

  I just looked at him.

  My mom said she saw your daddy at the Hy-Vee, T-Boom said. Food shopping with little Jesse. Said Jesse’s getting tall, don’t sit in the cart anymore but was riding on the side of it.

  T-Boom put the money in his pocket and handed me two small bags—more than I had money for. He always gave me a little extra.

  Long as I stay in Donnersville, he’s not trying to get me. After the last time, Daddy said he’s through with me. Jesse Jr. look like he eating? He never liked to eat. That’s why I give him those vitamins. I stopped talking quick as I’d started. Jesse Jr. was my heart, and whenever there was room in my brain, he came to it, quick and fast as a storm. I reached into one of the bags T-Boom had just handed me, put a tiny bit of the moon on my tongue. It burned melting, then the burning was gone and there was the light, the moonlight. And for a minute, there wasn’t Jesse Jr. or Daddy somewhere.

  T-Boom shrugged. He told my mama they were thinking about packing up, he said. Thinking about heading back to Pass Christian.

  He’s been saying that since we left there. Always talking about going home. Like there’s some “home” to go to.

  I closed my
hand tight around the bags and looked out over the land. Galilee was flat and cold. Real different from Pass Christian. When I was still living with Daddy and my brother, I’d put Vaseline on me and Jesse Jr.’s lips every morning, to keep them from chapping and bleeding. Now my own lips were too often cracking and bloodied. The moon soothed them, though. Soothed me. I tried not to wonder if Daddy was remembering about the Vaseline. Tried not to think about Jesse Jr.’s lips cracking in this cold. My hands shook as I put another little bit of it in my mouth, felt the burning. Then the light. I smiled because Galilee wasn’t ugly and flat and cold anymore. It was somebody’s promised land.

  I pressed my hands together and held them to my chin, like I was praying, the tiny plastic bags of moon warm inside them. Closed my eyes against the voices and memories coming at me. Hurricane Camille, my daddy had said a long time ago. Now, she was something to be afraid of. Came through the Pass in 1969 and just about took everything with her. But we came back, my daddy said.

  The Pass always comes back. It was me and my daddy’s voice saying it together. And for a minute, we were back in the Pass, sitting on the beach, the waves washing soft over our feet, the sun bright in our eyes. Daddy smiled, leaned back on his elbows and tilted his face toward the sun. Dark freckles spread across his nose and onto both cheeks. Angel kisses. So many angel kisses. He’d started growing a beard, and there was red in it. Gray too. I reached up and touched his face, amazed at how soft the hair was there. My daddy caught my hand in his and kissed it before letting go. He was telling me about the water, how it had always been there, bringing us everything we needed—food, jobs, hope. It’s never let us down, Laurel. The water’s never let us down.

  You should go with them, Laur. You should go home.

  I opened my eyes to T-Boom standing in front of me, the water gone. I didn’t look at him, just stared hard at the House, trying to snatch those voices and that memory of me and Daddy from my head.