Miracle's Boys Read Online Free PDF Page B

then.”
    He and Aunt Cecile went back and forth for a long time, Aunt Cecile saying Ty‘ree was too young to try to raise me and Ty’ree telling her of his plans to work full-time now that he’d graduated high school.
    While they talked, I felt Mama sit down beside me and I laid my head against her shoulder. It was warm and soft and smelled like the honeysuckle oil she liked to put in her hair. But when I looked a few minutes later, it was just an orange pillow underneath my face, the pillow Mama had sewed back up after I had picked a hole in it.
    After a while Aunt Cecile went into the kitchen and asked if me and Ty‘ree wanted something to eat. We both said yes, and she fixed us each a big plate of food. I ate mine in front of the television halfway listening to Ty’ree and Aunt Cecile talk about how me and Ty’ree would and wouldn’t get by living on our own.
    Ty‘ree had been accepted at MIT. I knew that was good, ’cause people made all kinds of fusses about the school and about Ty‘ree at his graduation. Every time we turned around, he was going up onstage to get another award. He was good in science and stuff. Sometimes he’d take me to the park with him, and I’d get to watch him and his friends launch rockets they’d built. For a long time he’d talked about wanting to work with NASA. After Mama died, he changed his mind about everything. Even stopped going to the park to launch rockets with his friends. Most of the guys he hung with went away to college. Ty’ree had gone to a special high school for smart kids. He was the only guy in our neighborhood to get in. Before Mama died, some guys used to make fun of him and call him Professor. But later on, once he started working full-time and taking care of me, people started showing him respect, saying, “W’s up, Ty,” when he came home in the evening. Slapping him five and asking after me and Newcharlie. Ty’ree said he didn’t really care about not going to college, that keeping his little bit of family together was the most important thing. But once in a while he’d go over and visit some of his old homeboys who were home for Thanksgiving break or Christmas vacation. When he came home those nights, he didn’t have much to say, just sat at the dining-room table slowly going through the pages of his high school yearbook, looking lost. Looking like he’d left something big behind him.
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    AUNT CECILE STAYED WITH US FOR TWO WEEKS. By the time she left, all of Mama’s stuff was gone and Mama’s room had become Ty’ree’s.
    â€œAt least you won’t have to fuss about me sleeping on the couch during your Saturday-morning cartoons,” Ty’ree had said when he caught me standing in Mama’s room looking around for her things.
    â€œI liked you better on the couch,” I said. “I liked it better when Mama was sleeping in here. Where’s her stuff?”
    â€œTook it down to Goodwill this morning.”
    I opened the closet door. Ty’ree’s basketball sneakers were on the floor where Mama’s green sandals used to be. His shirts were hanging where Mama’s dresses used to hang. Her black winter coat and yellow wool scarf were gone. I sniffed the closet. It still smelled like her.
    â€œIf I had a bad dream, Mama’d let me come sleep with her.”
    â€œYou can come sleep with me now if you have a bad dream,” Ty’ree said.
    â€œIt ain’t the same, T.”
    â€œDo you remember the time she—”
    I closed the closet door and looked at Ty’ree, waiting for him to finish. But he just shook his head. The whole room still smelled like Mama, like coffee and perfume and... It smelled like the way she laughed. Tinkly. It smelled like the memories of her—like how she used to try to hold my hand when we crossed the street. Even when I was nine, she was still trying to hold my hand. And