Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing

“Amen,” Eli said.

Willie looked up at him, then returned her gaze to the preacher, who was saying, “And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

“Bless God,” Eli said.

The bag crinkled, and Willie looked up to see Eli pulling out an apple. He winked at her as he took a bite, and she quickly snapped her head back as the preacher said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“Amen,” Willie murmured. Carson started to fuss, and she bounced him on her leg a bit, but that only made him squirm more. Eli gave him an apple, and he held it in his hands, opening his mouth very wide to take just a tiny bite.

“Thank you,” Willie said.

Eli tipped his head toward the door. “Take a walk with me,” he whispered. She ignored him, helping Carson hold the apple so that it would not drop to the floor.

“Take a walk with me,” Eli said, louder this time. An usher shushed him, and Willie worried that he would say it again, but louder, and so she got up from her seat and left with him.

Eli held Carson’s hand as they walked. In Harlem, Lenox Avenue was impossible to avoid. It was where all the dirty, ugly, righteous, and beautiful things were. The Jazzing was still there, and as they passed it, Willie shuddered.

“What’s wrong?” Eli asked.

“Just caught a chill is all,” Willie said.

It seemed to Willie that they had walked all of Harlem. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked so much, and she couldn’t believe that they had gone so far without Carson crying. As they walked, her son kept working on his apple, and he seemed so content that Willie wanted to hug Eli for giving her that little bit of peace.

“What do you do?” Willie asked Eli once they had finally found a place to sit.

“I’m a poet,” he said.

“You write anything good?” Willie asked.

Eli smiled at her and took the apple core Carson was dangling from his hands. “No, but I write a lot of bad.”

Willie laughed. “What’s your favorite poem?” she asked. He scooted a bit closer to her on the bench, and she felt her breath catch, something it had not done for a man since the day she first kissed Robert.

“The Bible’s the best poetry there is,” Eli said.

“Well, then why don’t I see you in church more often? Seems like you should be studyin’ the Bible.”

This time Eli laughed. “A poet’s got to spend more time livin’ than he does studyin’,” he said.

Willie found out that Eli did a lot of what he called “livin’.” In the beginning she called it that too. It was a rush, being with him. He took her all around New York City to places she never would have dreamed of going before him. He wanted to eat everything, try everything. He didn’t care that they didn’t have any money. When she got pregnant, his adventurous spirit only seemed to grow. It was the opposite of Robert. Carson’s birth had made him want to set roots, whereas Josephine’s birth made Eli want to grow wings.

The baby was barely out of her stomach before Eli flew. The first time, it was for three days.

He came home to her smelling of booze. “How’s my baby doin’,” he said. He wiggled his fingers in front of Josephine’s face, and she followed them with wide eyes.

“Where you been, Eli?” Willie said. She was trying not to sound angry, though anger was all she felt. She remembered how she had stayed quiet on the nights that Robert used to come home after being gone awhile, and she didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice.

“Aw, you mad at me, Willie?” Eli asked.

Carson tugged on his pants leg. “You got any apples, Eli?” he asked. He was starting to look like Robert, and Willie couldn’t stand it. She’d just cut his hair that morning, and it seemed the more hair he lost, the more Robert started to peek through. Carson had kicked and screamed and cried the whole time she cut. She’d spanked him for it, which had quieted him, but then he had given her a mean look, and she was not sure which was worse. Seemed like her son was starting to hate her as much as she was fighting not to hate him.

“Sure, I got an apple for you, Sonny,” Eli said, fishing one from his pockets.

“Don’t call him that,” Willie hissed through her teeth, remembering again the man she was trying to forget.

Eli’s face fell a little bit. He wiped at his eyes. “I’m sorry, Willie. Okay? I’m sorry.”

“My name’s Sonny!” Carson shouted. He bit into the apple. “I like to be Sonny!” he said, bits of juice squirting from his mouth.

Josephine started crying, and Willie grabbed her up and rocked her. “See what you done started?” she said, and Eli just kept wiping his eyes.

—

The kids grew older. Sometimes Willie would see Eli every day for a month. That’s when the poems were flowing and the money wasn’t too bad. Willie would come home from cleaning this or that house, and find scraps and stacks of papers all around the apartment. Some of the papers would have just one word on them like “Flight” or “Jazz.” Others would have whole poems. Willie found one that had her name on the top, and it had made her think that perhaps Eli was there to stay.

But then he would go. The money would stop. At first, Willie took baby Josephine to work with her, but she lost two jobs that way, so she started leaving her with Carson, whom she couldn’t ever seem to keep in school. They were evicted three times in six months, though by that time everyone she knew was getting evicted, living with twenty strangers in a single apartment, sharing a single bed. Each time they got evicted, she would move what little they had no more than a block down. Willie would tell the new landlord that her husband was a famous poet, knowing full well that he was neither husband nor famous. One time, when he’d come home for just a night, she had yelled at him. “You can’t eat a poem, Eli,” she said, and she didn’t see him again for nearly three months.

Then, when Josephine was four and Carson ten, Willie joined the choir at church. She had been wanting to do it since the first day she heard them sing, but stages, even those that were altars, made her remember the Jazzing. Then she’d met Eli and stopped going to church. Then Eli would leave and she’d start going again. Finally, she went to a rehearsal, but she would stand in the back, quietly, moving her lips but letting nothing escape them.

—

Willie and Carson were nearing the limits of Harlem. Carson crunched on his cone and looked up at her skeptically, and she just smiled back reassuringly, but she knew, and he knew, that they would have to turn soon. When the colors started changing, they would have to turn.

But they didn’t. Now there were so many white people around them that Willie started to feel scared. She took Carson’s hand in hers. The days of Pratt City mixing were so far behind her, she almost felt as though she had dreamed them. Here, now, she tried to keep her body small, squaring her shoulders in, keeping her head down. She could feel Carson doing the same thing. They walked two blocks like this, past the place where the black sea of Harlem turned into the white rush of the rest of the world, and then they stopped at an intersection.

There were so many people walking around them that Willie was surprised she noticed at all, but she did.

It was Robert. He was bent down on one knee, tying the shoe of a little boy of maybe three or four. A woman was holding the little boy’s hand on the other side of him. The woman had finger-curled blond hair cut short so that the longest strands just barely licked the tip of her chin. Robert stood back up. He kissed the woman, the little boy smushed between them for only a moment. Then Robert looked up and across the intersection. Willie’s eyes met his.