The Dear One Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  An unwelcome guest . . .

  Rebecca pulled a small suitcase from the back seat, then followed me inside.

  “Wow!” she said, looking around the living room. “This is like a mansion or something.” I must have frowned a little. “You people are rich. I didn’t know rich black people existed except on the Cosbys. But that’s television.” She put her bag down and walked over to the fish tank. She was a little clumsy because she leaned forward slightly to hide her stomach. “Look at this!” she said. “Look at all those fishes.”

  “Fish.”

  She straightened up and turned to me, her eyebrows meeting at the center of her forehead. “Look! Just ’cause I’m in your ritzy little house,” she hissed, “doesn’t mean you gonna teach me how to talk and tell me what to do. I don’t want to be in this mansion in the boring country nohow! You think you special or something, but I know all about you, Feni Harris. Your mama says you don’t talk to nobody and you don’t have any friends. So you better consider yourself lucky that I’m here, whether I’m here saying ‘fishes,’ ‘fish,’ or ‘fried fish’!” She put her hands on her hips and stared at me.

  “The word is still fish,” I said, taking the groceries into the kitchen.

  “The book rises above the limits of a problem novel by offering portraits of richly developed characters and a satisfying emotional conclusion.”

  —The Horn Book

  “Woodson’s deep understanding of and concern for the role of black women in society is evident . . . in her moving, powerful story.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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

  First published in the United States of America by Delacorte Press, 1991

  Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2003

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004

  This edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2010

  CIP DATA IS AVAILABLE

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47796-0

  Copyright © Jacqueline Woodson, 1991

  All rights reserved

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47796-0

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my readers at MS 51 and

  New Voices Middle School

  ONE THING I LEARNED FROM REBECCA IS THAT WHEN people talk about fifteen-year-olds who are pregnant, they never mention anything about the lost look in the girls’ eyes. Rebecca said those people talking and writing books and articles don’t know what’s really going on. They don’t know that a lot of times, the girls don’t even take all their clothes off. They don’t know that romance is out the window like time flying, and sometimes the kids are so into listening out, making sure nobody’s coming up the stairs, that they miss all the action right there in the bedroom or the corner of the kitchen, or the closet—wherever they are. Rebecca told me that. In the same breath she explained how she couldn’t wait to get with Danny, how she loved the closeness, loved being loved by him. She said there’s something you can’t explain about that feeling, least to a twelve-year-old. How could anyone who’s never met Rebecca know anything about what it’s like to be fifteen with your back pressed against a cold wall, listening . . . listening, hoping nobody catches you in such an embarrassing position? Rebecca said sometimes you’re so scared. But she could never come up with a word to describe just how scary it is.

  My grandmother once told me that all it takes is for one tiny thing to happen and then, Boom! your life is changed forever. That’s what I’m trying to remember now—the one tiny thing. The thing that might have happened to Rebecca before she came, the thing that happened to me after she was here. Because by the time she left, we were different people, all of us—her, me, Ma—even Marion.

  Grandma said if I ever want to remember stuff about anything in the past, then I have to go back as far as I can, reach down as deep as I can, even if all that reaching and remembering hurts sometimes. She said only after I’ve gathered it all up can I make sense out of it. Grandma told me that if I hold on to stuff, I can tell it to my children and they can grow up stronger.

  One

  THE SKY WAS THE PALEST PINK THE DAY I TURNED twelve. Sitting on the ledge of my window, I watched blue jays and cardinals flutter by, their wings black against the little bit of light in the sky, black against the bare trees forming skeletons up and down the block, black against the pale patches of February snow.

  “Why’d you have to be born in the winter?” my friend Caesar had asked me at lunch the previous week. “Winters are too cold, too still, for anybody to be born in.”

  I had looked at Caesar for a long time and thought of the word we had learned in English class just the day before. Profound.

  “That’s a profound question, Caesar,” I’d said, liking the way the sentence rolled off my tongue. Feeling proud and profound. Caesar had giggled. Giggles come easily to her. “You’re right, though,” I’d said. “Winter’s such a dead season.”

  And sitting on the windowsill, I thought of the question and counted back. If I was a February baby, then Ma and Dad would have had to have done it in April or May. Maybe Ma found out that she was pregnant in one of those months. Maybe she and Dad hadn’t started fighting a whole lot yet. If it was a weekend when the doctor gave her the news, maybe she set out the good silverware and china, lit two candles on the dining-room table, and made Dad fettuccine with broccoli in a red sauce. Maybe the two of them held hands across the table when she told him, and maybe he came around to her side of the table and hugged her long and hard when he realized he was going to be a daddy. Maybe he laughed so hard, tears came into his eyes.

  Clair phoned at six in the morning. At first I thought it was Caesar calling to tell me she wouldn’t be at school because of the snow. But then I heard Ma say softly, out of breath
, “Oh, Clair, it’s you. It’s been so long.” After a pause she added, “Too long.”

  Outside, the snow had left a thin white sheet over the trees, and I knew the day would be cold and bright. I tiptoed to the top of the stairs, hid behind the banister, and listened.

  “But what about the father?” I heard Ma say. There was silence. “Well,” Ma said after a long time, “I really want to do this. It would be wonderful having Rebecca here. But what about Feni?”

  “What about me?” I wanted to scream.

  “We’ll have to see how it works out,” Ma said. “When is she due?”

  More silence. I was crouched low in the darkness and the backs of my knees were beginning to hurt.

  “Well, I’m touched that you’re asking me to do this. And you’re right, I think it would be good for Feni. Look, I should be home around five. I’ll talk to her then,” Ma said. She sounded tired. “Right now, I have to make a meeting before work.” Ma laughed nervously. “I’ve stopped drinking, you know. Yes, it is hard but I’m doing it. One day at a time,” she said. “It’s so good to hear your voice too. . . .”

  Ma and Clair talked for a few more minutes. When she hung up, I leaned back against the wall and pulled my knees to my chin. Somebody was coming to stay with us. Sitting against the wall, I wondered who that somebody was.

  I heard Ma dialing and leaned against the banister again.

  “Marion,” she said, “I guess Clair’s called you too.” She sighed. “Well, I’m going to talk to her about it tonight. Are you coming for dinner? . . . Good! We can all talk. Eight o’clock is fine. See you then.”

  When I heard Ma heading toward the kitchen, I tiptoed back to my room and climbed underneath the comforter. It is blue with pink roses. My father had it sent to me from Colorado, where he lives now with his new wife and baby daughter. He left three years ago when I was nine. I used to think about him every day. Sometimes I would come home thinking he’d be sitting in his favorite chair, the brown leather one in the living room next to the fireplace. I’d see him there reading the newspaper and smoking a pipe. I’d think that as soon as I opened the door, the cherry-sweet smell of his tobacco would fill up my nose and mouth and Dad would say, “Let me take a look at what schoolwork Roper Academy is sending home these days.” I’d see myself coming over to him with my coat still on, handing him last night’s homework or that day’s test, and he’d pat me on the arm or hug me real quick and say, “Smartest girl in the school, aren’t you? That must come from my side of the family.” Then maybe he’d laugh, scratch a five-o’clock-shadow kiss against my cheek, set up the chessboard, and show me how to play a fool’s game, capturing my opponent’s king in six moves or less.

  But now when I come home at the end of the day, the house doesn’t smell like anything but maybe a little bit of something we had for dinner last night or one of Marion’s cigarettes.

  Last August I went to visit him and his new wife, Joanne. Joanne is about a foot shorter than my dad and as round as a Thanksgiving turkey. She was constantly nibbling on something or sitting down to a three-course meal, claiming the baby she was three months pregnant with kept her eating. She had stopped working after she married Dad.

  “I always wanted to be barefoot and pregnant.” She would laugh, winking at me like we were in on some secret together.

  Dad rushed around helping her from one chair to another, from the bedroom to the bathroom, as though she were an invalid. They walked the streets holding hands.

  I stayed two weeks. And although Dad and I played chess, took walks full of long silences through Denver, and kissed each other hello and good-bye, the smell of his pipe was all that was familiar about him now. We talked around things the way strangers did.

  When Ma woke me up again later, I had nearly forgotten about the call.

  “Happy birthday, baby.”

  Ma was sitting at the foot of my bed. On her lap was a box wrapped with a yellow bow. On top of that sat a smaller box wrapped with a green one. Ma smiled. Sun streamed through a slit in the curtain and settled on her face. Her skin is dark brown and smooth everywhere but on her forehead, where wrinkles creep across. Her eyes are so dark, they look black beneath her lashes. There is a small pink spot at the center of her bottom lip. She says the spot was left by vodka. Every time she sees it, she tells herself, I don’t need a drink today. Ma stopped drinking right after Dad left and says the spot will keep her from ever drinking again. A beauty mark on her right cheek becomes the head of an arrow when she smiles.

  “Happy birthday,” she said again, and reached to give me a hug. She smelled like sandalwood soap.

  I opened the small box first and found a square of silver. Pressing my nails into the small split on the side, I opened it and it became a framed picture of Grandma. In the picture she was about my age. Her eyes looked right at me and smiled. I swallowed. She was holding a small dog. The dog was looking at Grandma. I held the picture close to me. “Where did you get it?”

  “It was with a lot of pictures in the attic. I found it a while back and knew it would be perfect. Do you like it?”

  I nodded and looked at the picture again. Grandma was still looking at me.

  “Open this one,” Ma said. “Happy birthday to you . . . ,” she sang, her voice soft and clear. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Afeni . . .”

  There must have been a hundred sheets of tissue paper in the second box. At the bottom was a smaller box the color of cement. I opened it slowly. Inside was a pewter mountain with an amethyst moon sitting on top. I touched the stone. It was dark purple in some places, nearly transparent in others. “It’s beautiful, Ma . . . ,” I said, holding the stone up toward the window. Purple rays shot through it onto my hand. “Beautiful.”

  Ma gave me another hug before she rose. We looked at each other for a moment. Her eyes were proud. “Get up now, birthday girl. I’m going to have to drive you to school before I go to work.”

  When I got out of the shower, the phone was ringing again. This time I knew who it was.

  “Happy birthday to you,” Dad sang through the distance, static muffling the words.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Did you get my present?”

  “The mailman hasn’t passed.”

  “I miss you, Feni. When are you coming out to Colorado again?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime . . . I guess.”

  “Are you having a good birthday?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I can’t believe you’re thirteen today.”

  “I’m not. I’m twelve.”

  He laughed nervously. “Of course you’re twelve. What else would you be? How’s your mama?”

  “Fine. How’s your Joanne?”

  “She’s fine. Your mama tell you you have a new little sister? Her name’s Charisse.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll be a month on the eighteenth. She’s something else!”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll let you go enjoy your birthday. Eat some cake for me, sweetheart. I miss you.”

  “Bye, Dad.” I held on to the phone after we’d said good-bye.

  “Feni!” Ma yelled from the kitchen. I jumped. “Is that Bernard on the phone?”

  “It was.”

  “Did he hang up already?”

  “Yes.”

  “My goodness, that was quick. Well . . . come on downstairs so I can fix you up a little before we leave.”

  The soft click-clack of her heels faded as she passed through the kitchen into the den.

  In the kitchen I poured Cheerios into a yellow bowl with blue flowers dancing around it and carried it into the den.

  Ma was sitting at her desk, wearing a dark blue suit and glasses. The glasses were stylish, but thick. Sometimes she wore contact lenses, but most of the time she didn’t want to deal with them. Her briefcase was spilled out over everything.

  “Hey, honey,” she said, not looking up from a page of figures.
/>   I sat on the edge of the leather chair she’d bought for herself on her thirty-fifth birthday, careful not to spill my breakfast. Ma and her best friend, Marion, had the exact same birthday—August 11, 1960. It was fun celebrating two birthdays at one time, but it left me pretty broke. Marion’s girlfriend, Bernadette, had the same complaint.

  “Why’d someone call so early?” I asked, shoveling a spoonful of cereal into my mouth.

  “That was Clair. You remember her, don’t you? Me and Marion’s friend from college?”

  “Yeah, I remember her. But why’d she call?”

  Ma scribbled some figures onto her pad, checked them on a calculator, and scribbled something else. She frowned, lifted her glasses to rub her eyes. For the past six years she has been the vice president of a public-relations firm—working sixty to seventy hours a week.

  “I’ll tell you about it on the way to school,” Ma said, looking up. “Don’t you want to iron that shirt, Feni? After all, it is your birthday.”

  The wrinkled shirt I was wearing had a button missing at the bottom. The head of the alligator emblem on the chest pocket was half gone.

  “No.”

  “What about that nice skirt I bought you, the long one with the stripes?”

  “I don’t want to wear a skirt today.”

  Ma frowned, and the wrinkles buckling across her forehead made her look old. “You have to start caring a little more about the way you look,” she said. “You’re getting too old to dress like that.”

  I bent down to tie my worn hiking boots. “I’m ready,” I said quickly, holding the brush out to her. She closed her briefcase and I sat on the floor with my head leaning against her leg. She pulled the brush through my hair a few times before wrapping it into a tight French braid down the back of my head. But when I looked into the mirror, my hair was already starting to frizz out around my forehead.