Gone from Home: Short Takes - Softcover

Johnson, Angela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440229421 ISBN 13: 9780440229421

Verlag: Laurel Leaf, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

A collection of short stories in which young people extend help to those around them while trying to find hopeful answers to life's problems.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Angela Johnson is the author of several picture books and highly acclaimed novels for young readers, including <i>Maniac Monkeys on Magnolia Street</i> and two Coretta Scott King Award winners: <i>Heaven</i> and <i>Toning the Sweep</i>.<br>

Aus dem Klappentext

Meet Sweetness, who has saved an abandoned baby and held up a convenience store, both on the same day. And Starr, who arrives on her Day-Glo orange bicycle to baby-sit for a summer ― and changes a family forever. And Victor, who cannot hear but sees clearly that his brother and sister will soon learn to fly.<br> <br>In 12 taut, emotional stories, Angela Johnson explores the hardship, hope, and surprising acts of compassion in the lives of young people gone from home.

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Sweetness

Sweetness found a baby once in the furnace room of an old burned-out building by the city bus garage. The baby was wrapped in a blanket and had only a diaper on. (Sweetness used to hang out there 'cause it was quiet, something her house never was.) She picked the baby up and it started to cry. Sweetness figured it was glad to see someone; anyone.

She waited right there. That's what she told me. She'd even left the baby for a minute in the building and called her mom on a nearby pay phone, to tell her she'd found a baby. Her mom hung up on her.

She went back to the building, but the afternoon got dark and nobody came. The baby stopped crying, smiled, and slept. Sweetness held the baby the whole night long.

In the morning she found a box near the building and put the baby in it. She said the baby was real wet by then, but kept smiling at her as she walked the ten blocks to the police station. Sweetness looked all around before she left the baby on the station steps. She called the station from across the street at a doughnut shop. And a few seconds later a cop came out and took the baby back in with him.

Sweetness told me a long time after that she wasn't ever going to have kids. She said she didn't know what made people do what they did. Nobody in the world should do something so sick as to leave a little baby alone. . . .

An hour after she dropped the baby off, Sweetness robbed a convenience store with a gun she'd stolen from one of her uncles. She'd never been in trouble before and it was a long time before I understood. She was calling out for help. Mama said she was, but nobody heard her; not even her mom.

The kid minding the store said he could barely see Sweetness from behind the high counter, but he could see the gun. She got one hundred dollars and a box of candy bars.

Sweetness said she never cried when they caught her, guns pointed, in the building where she found the baby. She had to swallow the candy bar in her mouth before she put her hands up and said real softly that she didn't have a gun. (She'd thrown it inside a mailbox after the robbery.) She said ten years old was too old to cry.

The cop who had taken the baby away held her hand as they walked her to the squad car.

That was the beginning. Sweetness stayed in and out of trouble. I'd get letters from her when she was in juvenile detention and foster homes. I waited for them; and I always waited for her to come back.

In Ohio you can bury yourself under the early morning cool dirt in August and not stay the least bit cool. Sweetness walks around all summer with one of those ice packs stuck to her head.

She comes over most days, early, and I find her swinging on the hammock on the screened-in side porch. She swings in time to some music my mama's put on in the house. Her sweaty brown legs aren't much longer than they were five years ago when she was taken away from that burned-out building.

Today she winks at me and pushes off against the wall and has fallen asleep before I can say anything much that would have mattered.

When Sweetness wakes up I'm scooping ants and putting them out a hole in the front screen of the porch.

"Reyetta. Do you think August is the most dangerous month of the whole year?"

I push the last ant out and go back over to the wicker chair beside her.

"I don't know about dangerous, girl, but it's the hottest. I guess it could be dangerous, too."

"I heard some old men sit over by Hannah's Market talking about how they can't wait for all the neighborhood kids to get back in school. They talk about how everybody is getting nastier and nastier to each other in the heat."

I put my feet up on the wall next to her.

"They should open up more hydrants."

"What? So the man from the city can try to close them and get beat up again? You know what happened--and he even lived in the neighborhood."

"Yeah, that was pretty sick."

I hear the front door slam and Mama calling to me.

She clicks down the front steps in her heels.

"Rey?"

I press my face to the screen so she can see me.

"Stay around the house today, okay?"

I start to get a big whine going before she puts her hands on her hips and points at me.

Okay was all she wanted to hear before she got in the car and pulled it onto the road.

I look up the avenue and I can already see the heat waves. Sweetness says it's like no day she ever remembers and it's just seven in the morning. She's already feeling restless.

I say, "You aren't going to get in trouble today, are you?"

Sweetness smiles.

Me and Sweetness set up the wading pool in the backyard and get out Mama's Motown. We splash and dance around the yard till the water is warm. We dance for two straight hours, and lip-sync to Supremes songs, then get my cat, Moogie, wet. . . . Most of the morning is gone and we eat bologna sandwiches and pickles till we almost get sick.

Five years ago, when the welfare gave Sweetness back to her mom, the first thing she did was ride her bike over to my house. I remember how we pedaled as hard as we could to the Dairy Queen, feeling ten and celebrating that the only things Sweetness missed were me and ice cream.

We'd gone to preschool together and had pretty much never been apart except for the time she spent in foster homes.

We don't talk about what Sweetness does when she's not around me. I guess it's better that way.

I don't think I've ever seen her frown. Sweetness comes by her name honestly. She says "Thank you" and "Yes, ma'am" to my mama. She helps carry groceries to old people's cars and gives up her seat on the bus a lot.

Mama says the reason Sweetness is always in trouble is that her mom spends so much time in church, and not enough time with Sweetness. Mama says Miss Lorene can see God, up high, but can't even see her own child.

Sweetness once told me, "My mom is one of those high-heeled church ladies who sings gospel and hugs everybody with a 'Bless you, baby' and a 'Praise the Lord.' But she's the same woman who didn't miss me for three days 'cause she was at some revival."

Miss Lorene has found herself a quieter place. Away from her kids and the worries of the world. Sometimes she's in the house and sometimes she's not. That's about it for her.

Sweetness said when she was little she used to get on her knees beside her mom and pray with her. She said she used to pray to see God. Her mom would tell her that if she didn't see Him, she wasn't right with Him.

"So I went looking for Him," Sweetness said. "I looked for Him behind our house and in cars. I'd looked at Third Avenue Baptist first and hadn't found Him. By the time spring came around I'd been looking all winter and because I couldn't find Him--I refused to recite my Easter speech."

Miss Lorene had a screaming fit outside the church and Sweetness didn't look for God anymore. She just gave up looking, I guess.

My mama's room smelled like peppermint gum and lemons. Most of the clothes from her closet were spread all over the white cotton bedspread as me and Sweetness tried them on.

Sweetness had on one of Mama's strapless dresses and a pair of red high heels. She strutted back and forth past the standing mirror.

"I'm fine, girl!"

I grabbed one of Mama's hats and put it on her head. I had on a long, white silk blouse, dark round sunglasses, and no shoes. We looked at each other and fell on the floor laughing. We lay there and looked up at the turning ceiling fan. It was the first time that day I felt cool.

We watched the blades turn, then we watched each other. The last thing I heard was...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Laurel Leaf
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0440229421
• ISBN 13: 9780440229421
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 108
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar