Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon Read Free Book Online

that no matter where he went it was gonna be something he didn’t like, and that he couldn’t run away every time he didn’t want to follow rules. So she told him since he made the choice to up and leave and help Grandma and live with her for a while, that he could only stay for the night and then he was gonna have to take his butt back to the Bronx. Roy wasn’t even around, so I don’t think she was trying to please him when she said it. I think she was really right and trying to teach Drew a lesson. I guess she was right. You can’t have it your way all the time.
    But he was sleep on the couch snoring and slobbing all over the pillows, and my mother had came out to put a blanket on him cause it’s still a little chilly even though it’s spring. So after she put the blanket on him, she came out to the fire escape to smoke a cigarette. She asked me if the smoke was bothering me, and I told her no. Then she asked me if I had smoked before, and I couldn’t even lie. Hell, me and Laneice was smoking L’s last night. I don’t know what it is, but I always find it hard to lie to my mother. That shit is, like, almost impossible. I just started laughing and kind of whispered, “Yeah …” She didn’t get mad though, she just told me that she wished she had never started and then told me I
should stop while I still got a chance. She asked me how I was doing, and I told her I was okay. I started to tell her that I had been skipping school to come to your trial, but I figured I didn’t want to hit her with too much at one time. The smoking was enough for one night. The school can’t call cause our phone disconnected anyway. But she saw my notebook out and me writing, and she said, “Girl, you and them letters.” I thought she was gonna say something smart or crack on me or whatever, but she didn’t. She just kind of looked up at the sky, then down at the street cause it was so quiet and empty. I mean, there wasn’t one car or one person on the block for a few minutes, and you know that never happens around here. Then she just kind of patted my shoulder and told me not to stay up too late. And here I am, staying up late writing to you. But Antonio, I’m going to have to wrap this letter up soon. I gotta do my science and English homework, plus I think I’m gonna go ahead and apply for that thing that Madame Girard want me to apply to. I think that it would be a good learning experience for me, like she said. I never really been out of New York. I been to Albany and Philly to visit some of my relatives, and I been down to VA and North Carolina. But shit, that’s it. Imagine going all the way over the ocean. It’s like 100,000 miles and it takes about eight hours on the plane. I never even been on a plane before. I think it would be amazing to look down and see the tops of all the buildings in Harlem, then New York, then the United States, and then all of a sudden the whole world.
Laneice flew one time, to Disney World with her church, and she told me that it looks like the sky done reversed itself. Like, it switched places with the ground. She said that’s what people mean when they say they’re walking on air, because when you look out the window and see the clouds below you, you feel like nothing can touch you. That’s how I want to feel right now, like nothing in the world can touch me. (Except you.)
    Love,
    Baby Girl
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    April 30, 1990
Baby Girl,
    Â 
    I never thought I would ever see my mother as sad as I saw her today. I never ever seen my moms cry before, never, not even when Daddy was kicking her ass or when it wasn’t no food in the house or when I fucked up in school. I bet she ain’t even cry at the funeral, did she? You don’t have to tell me, I know she didn’t. I never knew before today how much my mother really loves me. I asked her a thousand times since that day, Ma, you still