The Warmest December by Bernice L. McFadden

Author:Bernice L. McFadden [McFadden, Bernice L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, African American, Contemporary Women
ISBN: 9781617750359
Google: __nyxYnitwkC
Amazon: 1617750352
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2012-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

I left Hy-Lo and went home to search through old pictures, looking for the periods in my life when I was happy. Black-and-whites, colored photos, and bent and ragged Polaroids lay scattered around me. We had boxes of pictures. Endless squares of memories that marked each year of our lives. I snatched up picture after picture and put aside the ones that showed me smiling. Out of the hundred or so that lay around me, I was only smiling in fourteen.

I looked at each one carefully, searching for a trace of real happiness, but after more than an hour I found only three where my smile was genuine. The others held smiles that had been asked for. “Smile for the camera.” “Say cheese, Kenzie.”

Even the pictures of my time spent away from our home showed unhappiness. By then, though, I had been unhappy for so long that it had penetrated my features and had taken hold of my character.

I looked again at the younger me surrounded by my classmates. Them grinning, me grimacing. I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror, still grimacing, still sad, still unhappy.

Mable was the one who had suggested it. I had no idea that anything like it really existed outside of the movies.

Boarding school.

She had a book full of them. Schools all over the country.

Schools that had classes that would enrich the lives of young adults. That was their line. The small black-and-white pictures in the book reminded me of the colorful glossy brochure I had from Camp Crystal Lake. Laughing children. Most of the faces were white. Others were Asian. Very few were black.

“You remember Jessica Nettles from around the corner?” Mable was talking fast and low as if someone would walk in at any moment and catch her sharing a secret with me. “Well, she went to one of these schools, she loved it, and now she’s in college somewhere down south. Black college, I think.”

She moved to the kitchen and grabbed the dish towel off its hook. Nothing needed wiping; she just needed to have something in her hands, something to twist and curl. “They have classes that you wouldn’t get in regular schools. They do things these city schools don’t do.”

I listened to her go on and on as if she were the national spokesperson for boarding schools. I flipped slowly through the pages of the book, through Arizona, Colorado, Delaware. There was at least one school in every state.

“Could I come home on the weekends?” I asked, cutting off Mable’s continuous babble.

She stopped midword and looked at me. “Why would you want to, baby?” she asked without even a hint of humor behind it.

She was afraid for me, afraid of who I might become living with Hy-Lo and Delia. She was afraid for Malcolm too, but would have to deal with us separately.

“Well, it’s just that some of these schools are so far away from home. I mean, could I come home when I wanted to?”

What I wanted to ask was, could I come home if I needed to.

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