Life Is Funny Read online

  “This is Ebony,” Ebony says. Then she gets real quiet. I guess it’s not the twins.

  “Who is it?” Ms. Giles asks.

  “Uh huh,” Ebony goes.

  “Ebony?”

  “I don’t remember,” Ebony tells the phone. “I didn’t get any.” Then she says, “Hang on.” She holds out the phone.

  “He says he’s my daddy,” she goes. “He’s crying.”

  Ms. Giles grabs the phone and covers the receiver with her hand.

  “Go upstairs,” she orders us. “Now.”

  * * *

  We stretch across Ebony’s bed and try to figure out how to listen in, but even though Ebony’s got mad phone stuff, like call waiting and speaker and three way, we can’t figure out anything for spying.

  “What did he sound like?” Grace asks.

  “He was all happy at first,” Ebony goes. “He was real happy.” She’s swinging around her sock monkey doll by his tail.

  “He was all how he sent me these letters on my birthdays, and did I like them.”

  “You never told us about any letters,” Grace says.

  “Well, I never got any, girl,” Ebony goes, popping Grace’s knee with that monkey.

  “You said he was crying,” I say.

  “He was.”

  “But you said he was happy.”

  “He was crying from happiness,” Grace guesses, rolling her eyes.

  “Wrong,” Ebony says. “He was crying when I told him I never got any dumbass letters.”

  We all think about that for a minute, trying to figure it out, and then Grace asks me, “Did you ever see your dad cry?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did y’all ever see your mothers cry?” Ebony goes.

  We shake our heads, and then Ebony’s mom walks in.

  “Was that really my daddy?” Ebony asks. She doesn’t sit up or anything. She just keeps swinging that sock monkey over her head.

  “Yes,” her mom says. “Do you want to talk about this now, with your friends here?” she goes. “Or do you want to wait until you and I can discuss it on our own?”

  Ebony shrugs. Me and Grace look at each other. I know she’s hoping what I am. We want to hear all about it.

  “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow then,” Ms. Giles says.

  Ebony shrugs again.

  * * *

  Grace sneaks home an hour later, and I wake up in the middle of the night without Ebony next to me. I get spooked, but when I find Ebony all tucked in with her mother, I step away because it seems like something private.

  “ ‘. . . and how you first fluttered,’ ” I hear Ebony’s mom whispering, “ ‘then jumped and I thought it was my heart.’ ”

  * * *

  At the tire swings Ebony chomps at her nails and spits the bits out in a pile.

  “That’s disgusting,” Grace tells her.

  Ebony’s daddy called again yesterday. Her mom doesn’t know. Ebony said he was telling her all about some woman he wants her to meet. Ebony said he was talking slow and sounded like he was forgetting words a lot of the time. Grace said maybe he’d been drinking.

  “Y’all want to sleep over at my house on Friday?” I go, while I’m looking at Eric, trying to figure out what that mad bulge is in his back pocket.

  “Mmmkay,” Ebony says.

  “I’ll come by for a while,” Grace goes. She’ll have to sneak out again. She’s still got a week left on punishment.

  Ebony squints over at Eric. “He stinks,” she tells me, evil. “I can smell him from here.” That’s a lie.

  “It’s not his fault,” I go.

  “How do you know?” Grace says, not evil, only curious.

  “I just do.”

  “You’re the one who said he was scary,” Ebony tells me, standing up from the swings.

  “I changed my mind,” I say. “And stop talking loud. He’s not deaf.”

  “So?”

  “Hi, girls,” we hear, and Ebony’s mother comes through the gate.

  “Do we still get paid for today?” Ebony asks when her mom gets to our swings.

  “Of course,” Ms. Giles says. “I can’t stay anyway. I’m on my way to Fifth Street to show a two-bedroom.”

  I’m trying to catch Eric’s eye, but he’s stupid stubborn. I guess Ebony’s mother sees me looking. “Who’s that?” she asks.

  “Some fool,” Ebony says.

  “He’s not a fool,” I tell them.

  “He kind of is,” Grace says.

  “He is not!” I go, loud.

  “What’s your problem?” Ebony snaps, and then Grace, instead of rolling her eyes at me, she sucks her teeth hard at Ebony and kicks near the fingernail pile.

  “He’s not a fool,” I tell Ebony’s mother. My voice is crazy shaky, and my face is all hot, and I don’t even know why.

  Ms. Giles puts her hand on my shoulder and looks over at Eric. I try to keep from crying while the bell rings and the kids fly through the doors. Ebony’s mother watches the day care lady glare at Eric until Mickey comes out, his nose all nasty. Eric yanks a tissue from his back pocket bulge and holds it up to Mickey’s face.

  “Blow,” he goes.

  “Battered by the tides like an abandoned ship, a spirit adrift,” Ms. Giles says, real low.

  “Mom!” Ebony groans at her.

  “Just chill,” Grace snaps at Ebony. “Jesus.”

  “He’s got poetry,” I go, all choky. “He’s got mad poetry.”

  * * *

  I get a runny head and start feeling wobbly, and my mom takes my temperature and then kicks my daddy off the couch during Jeopardy so I can lie down. My daddy gives me the clicker and sits in the armchair, and my mom puts the tissue box and a blanket, even though it’s about a million degrees outside, on the coffee table. Then she brings me this special kind of aspirin she gets for free from her boss at the drugstore and lemon honey tea and tells me to drink it hot. My daddy feels my forehead and the fat mug with the back of his hand and then makes my mom drop ice cubes into the tea, to cool it.

  “You’re going to kill her,” he scolds. “She’s going to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  Then they sit with me watching whatever I want to for a while, and right in the middle of a car commercial I understand “a spirit adrift,” and I feel this thing ease through my skin with the fever, showing me how mad stupid mean the world can be and just how lucky I got, and it’s a warm sad feeling, like tea steam wrapping comfort around some new, crying part of my heart.

  Keisha

  OKAY. WHAT HAPPENED was, at the end of last year Mara was best friends with Jessie, but then Mara’s boyfriend, who’s in high school now, fooled around with Jessie. So Mara beat up Jessie, and then Jessie and this girl Trisha were best friends, and me and Mara and this other Jessie were best friends. But then this Jessie number two moved to Queens and Jessie number one beat up Mara on the first day of school this year for beating her up last year, and then she and Mara were best friends again, and Trisha ended up being best friends with some girl from California.

  So then Mara started going out with this white boy, and Jessie started going out with DeShawn. But then the white boy got suspended for a week after he called that ugly special ed Eric kid “welfare chickenhead can’t read chicken feed” and the Eric kid threw a chair at the white boy, and the white boy threw a chair back, and it hit this hyper round-face Gingerbread boy in the back of the head, and the white boy and ugly special ed Eric both got suspended, and then DeShawn wouldn’t talk to Mara even though she wasn’t any part of it, and then Mara told Jessie if she hung with DeShawn, they couldn’t be friends. So Jessie dumped DeShawn at lunch, and DeShawn said he was going out with JaNeesha anyway, which wasn’t true because I used to be friends with JaNeesha and she never even liked him.

  Okay. So when we had the food map project for history class, Mara and Jessie and me were all in the same group and they let me be their second best friend, so ever since Thanksgiving we’ve all three been
mad tight, and we’re all going to the same high school one day and then later go out with NBA players and live near a park and travel to Disney World every summer. We’re all going to end up the same except Mara’s going to stay darker than me, and I’m going to stay darker than Jessie, and also Mara wants three girls and three boys, and Jessie only wants boys, and I don’t want either because when I get old, I’m just going to keep my aunt Eva and my little cousin Tory for family the same way Aunt Eva keeps me and my brother, Nick, right now.

  So anyway, what happens is me and Mara and Jessie are in the girls’ bathroom before the lunch bell when JaNeesha comes out of the last stall, and she gets up in Jessie’s face. She goes, “That’s mines.” She’s talking about Jessie’s beeper, which Jessie got for her birthday two weeks ago from her grandma. So anyway, JaNeesha’s kind of small, but she’s strong and everybody knows it ever since last year she beat up some boy who got transferred for pinching her tit, which she didn’t even really have tits yet.

  “You bugging,” Jessie says. Usually she talks more like me, with more white English and all because her grandma is kind of like my aunt Eva about that, but when somebody’s in your face, it’s better to talk normal. So anyway, I can tell she’s crazy scared because she’s real small and not too strong, which everybody knows, even though she fights hard.

  The thing is, you’re supposed to take your friend’s back if they get jumped. But JaNeesha used to be my friend, too, and we never had a fight, and I’m not real sure what I’m supposed to do: take Jessie’s back against JaNeesha’s or JaNeesha’s back against Jessie’s. I think I’m supposed to take Jessie’s back since we’re the best friends right now. But then Mara does a real kind friend thing because she gets close to me and goes, quiet so nobody else can hear, “I got her back if you got to check out.”

  But I stay where I am because maybe it won’t get like that anyway, and I want to see what’s going to happen.

  So JaNeesha goes, “That’s mines, motherfucker.”

  And she grabs for Jessie’s beeper, and Jessie jumps up mad quick right on the sink so she’s way taller then the rest of us, and she goes, “What you got to start with me for, bitch! That ain’t your beeper, and you ain’t getting nothing till I shove it up your behind!”

  JaNeesha plays like she’s going to crash Jessie in the knees and right off that sink, but Jessie kicks out real hard, and the next thing you know, JaNeesha’s teeth are all over the floor, and now Jessie won’t have to worry about people starting with her anymore.

  Then JaNeesha looks at me with crazy blood pouring out of her mouth and tries to yell something, but she kind of can’t, I guess because it hurts and she’s missing all these teeth, and then here comes Ms. Lyons, screaming, and if it weren’t for Jessie looking so scared up there on that sink and JaNeesha bleeding all over everything, I’d laugh because white people scream for the dumbest reasons and never get loud when they ought to.

  So then after the principal gets through talking to everybody who saw, this eighth grader Indian girl who comes from the high school to peer-tutor Jessie and some other kids for math on Thursdays, this girl, Sonia, who stepped out of the third stall right when Jessie got up on that sink, she tells us if you don’t want to see the guidance counselor on the second floor, there’s some old art closet where there’s a couple of chairs and some old mattress and you can stay in there if you want to be by yourself and nobody ever finds you, not even other kids if you don’t want because you can lock it from the inside.

  So now that’s why I’m sitting here, because I have to be alone to try and figure out two things that are getting on my nerves, bad. One of them is what do I do to stay out of fights at least for the next seven years until I’m done with high school because I’m supposed to graduate and my aunt Eva will kill me if I don’t, but everybody’s always wanting to fight, and then you get suspended and kicked out and all that mess. And then the other thing is what do I do if I don’t want my brother, Nick, to be touching me on my privacy every night and he comes and does it anyway?

  Year Two

  Sonia

  Monique

  Sam

  Drew

  Sonia

  Gingerbread

  Sam

  Josh

  Carl

  Sonia

  WHEN MY FAVORITE brother said the man who jumped off the Statue of Liberty was Sarim, I didn’t believe it. Nif is honest as a reflection with me, but still. I just couldn’t picture Sarim up there, on that stone pedestal underneath Liberty’s toes, floating along balloonlike in that peaceful way he has and then spinning out of control, popped, zigzagging up and over the edge. I couldn’t believe it.

  Not even after the whole neighborhood gathered in our living room, the women staying nearer to the kitchen and the men sitting on our couches closer to the television. They were all talking about Sarim, about the way his body must have looked crushed into the lower balcony’s cement, the way the cement must have looked. Mostly they spoke in Hindi, the Asian tones automatically sounding more like grief to me than anything English, and I still didn’t believe it was Sarim. My mother and the other women cooked all week, for the neighborhood gathered at our third-floor apartment. They gathered here because we are across the street from the brownstone building where Sarim lives. Used to live.

  I believe it more now. It’s been two weeks, and he hasn’t come home. And my four older brothers swore it was Sarim’s body they saw at the funeral before it was sent back to Pakistan to be cremated. And everyone says it was his watch and his wallet, his Bic pens and Certs and his tigereye touchstones they found, scattered near and far from the body, like coins around the center of a gory wishing well. I guess it must be him.

  Even now nobody wants to use the word suicide because killing yourself goes against the beliefs of my religion, and everybody feels uneasy with improper behavior. Lots of things are improper for Muslims. Especially for girls. Especially in my family. Wearing shorts, cutting your hair, doing poorly in school, arguing with anyone who is older, talking to a boy or to a man who is not related to you. I’ve always made my parents proud of me by appearing to follow each rule perfectly. Up until Sarim, I made myself proud, too, and pleased, because when you behave properly, you know just exactly where you belong. And knowing where you belong is very comforting, like a large hand resting on the top of your head.

  I’m not sure what happens after you die. I think my brothers learn about that at their school or maybe during their weekend religious classes, but not even Nif talks about those things with me. I’ve read enough to know that a lot of Americans don’t believe in God, don’t think there’s anything after death. For others, there’s heaven and hell, or reincarnation. I want to find out what Muslims believe, what I’m supposed to believe, but the person I’d normally ask isn’t here anymore.

  * * *

  I worry about what happened to him. First I worry that he’s somewhere out there and can see everything that I’m doing and hear everything I’m saying. That his spirit is like eyes and ears of air. That if he thinks there are moments when I’m not missing him and thinking about him, his feelings would be hurt. Which is why I try to whisper his name at least every half an hour, why his photograph has to be admired every night in my closet, behind a stack of blankets and with Nif’s pen flashlight. Why I excuse myself from every class every day at least once to pray in the girls’ bathroom for him, why when I’m alone I’ll speak out loud to him, hoping he will hear.

  I miss you, Sarim, I hope it didn’t hurt too much, Sarim, I know you’re not crazy, Sarim.

  I have to say his name with each new sentence so that he will know it’s him I’m talking to.

  Then, other times, I worry that he’s nowhere. Blackness. Not even blackness. Nothingness.

  * * *

  Sarim moved to Brooklyn, across the street from my family, just before the school year began. The first time I spoke to him was two weeks later, on his twenty-sixth birthday, when he had a party for the whole nei
ghborhood. He charmed all the parents and the grandparents with his quiet, small-smile face and with stories of growing up Muslim in France and then returning to Pakistan to discover an entire world of boys just like him: dark-skinned and praying five times a day. Even my mother and father let him make them laugh and told him to knock on our door anytime he might need milk, bread, or company.

  After the women had swept away any sign of biscuit crumbs or crumpled napkins, after almost everyone had left with sugar stomachs and tea breath, Nif and I and three kids from the next block stayed to play one last game of hide-and-seek. I’d ducked into the front coat closet to find Sarim already there, grinning at me through thick wool sleeves and dangling knit scarves, pulling me in before I could blink. We talked for a long time before we heard my brother clomping toward us. I forgot all about the rules.

  Sarim told me he was a graduate student studying law. He told me he’d grown up in a small town near Paris, the only child of a widow. He didn’t remember his father, who died in some kind of accident when Sarim was only three months old. Sarim asked me all about the eighth grade and about my family and how I felt when I left Pakistan. He talked to me as though I were an adult; he listened as though everything I said were actually important. He was the first one who made me feel like me.

  On the short walk home that night, Nif pulled me back from my parents and older brothers and threatened to tell my father about the closet. I shouldn’t have even talked to Sarim. Shouldn’t have shut myself up inside a box with him where our legs could bump and our faces almost touched in the dark. Shame filled my throat and ears like a hot swarm of bees. If you’re a part of my family, you want to be the most perfect you can be. You want your parents always to lift their heads high when they speak about you to their friends. You want always to know yourself what you do and don’t deserve and where you belong. To have all of that, it’s very important to follow the rules. It’s important not to question your father or husband or any holy man or to ask for explanations. You must trust the wisdom of the men. You must follow their wisdom at all times. The embarrassment my parents would feel when they discovered how terribly I’d behaved would sit on our home like a wet stink. They might send me back to Pakistan.