If You Come Softly

"I couldnt stop looking at him, at his smile and his hair."

"All people," Marion was often saying. "All people have suffered. So why should any of us feel like were better or less than another?"

"Our doorman, Henry, waved when he saw me then rushed forward, holding an oversized umbrella over mine. We had lived on Eighty-Eighth and Central Park West since I was a baby. And since I was a baby, Henry had been running out from his post by the door with an oversized umbrella to greet us when it rained. It didnt matter if we were carrying our own umbrellas."

"Jeremiah. Who did he go home to? Would he remember me? Had he seen it too, whatever it was that I saw when we looked at each other? What was it?"

"I glanced down at my Percy uniform, wondering if the administration knew the burgundy jackets and gray skirts we had to wear were the same colors that many doormen in the city had."

"He could hear someone laughing. It sounded like the whole world—pointing at him … and laughing."

"Maybe this was what love felt like. I turned the empty orange juice glass around in my hand. Was it lying that I didnt tell him Jeremiah was black? Why should that matter? Why did any of it matter?"

"He found himself watching her when she want looking. Watching the way she used her hand to move her hair out of her face, slowly, wrapping her fingers around it and pulling it back behind her ear. The way she leaned over her notebook to write, a tiny frown between her eyebrows. And her smile—she had a sweet smile. Sweet and sad and something else too. He couldnt explain it. If anyone asked, he wouldnt be able to put into words to how he felt when Ellie looked at him and smiled. He felt something stop and start inside of him."

"He wanted more than that too—somebody deep. Somebody that could know him—know all of him—the crazy things he dreamed on stormy nights, when he woke with tears in his eyes and pulled the covers tight around him."

"He pulled his knapsack off his shoulders and stared up at the sky. It was beautiful today, all warm and gold. The leaves had begun to change, and the trees up and down the block cast pretty shadows over everything. He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it—the ending and beginning of things."

"I dont know." He looked up at his fathers window. "Sometimes I feel like I dont know nothing about nothing."

"Dont get too black. Black monkey. Wheres my beautiful black baby child. Youre a black man. Youre a warrior. Jeremiah sighed and stared out over the block. All the things people had always said to him--yeah, hed heard then again and again. But sometimes, looking in the mirror, he had no idea who he was or why he was in this world."