The House You Pass on the Way Read Online Free PDF Page A

Monroeville, Alabama, that refused to integrate when someone from The Ed Sullivan Show called.
    “The response to the last show had been so overwhelming,” her father said to Dotti. Again and again he’d told this story. Staggerlee stared at the TV screen. Maybe she’d heard it a dozen times. Maybe a hundred. If her father told it enough, she wondered, did he think he could change the ending?
    “They wanted them to come back to New York to do another show,” her father was saying. “Would fly them out that evening and have them home by the next day if they needed to be. But you see, they were already committed to this demonstration. Hallique was living here at home then—going to college nearby in Bakersville. I was already in New York. She sat there listening to them go back and forth about it. Said she was mad. Had a basketball game that night and wanted them to be there. She was playing college ball—one of the first black women on the team. Hallique told me that Mama and Daddy were standing in the kitchen trying to decide between Ed Sullivan and Monroeville and she was sitting at the table dressed in her basketball uniform hoping they’d just forget both things and come watch her play.” He got quiet for a moment. When he started speaking again, his voice was softer. Staggerlee leaned back against his legs. He stroked her head as he spoke.
    “By this time, they were well known. They knew their appearance at a demonstration meant a lot to the press. And this was supposed to be a big one, with news crews and national papers coming—three gospel choirs from churches as far-off as Berkeley, California. Even the Vice President talked about showing.”
    Her father got quiet again. He always got quiet at this point. It was too hard for him to say—the part about the bombing. Hallique had gone to her game that night and was on her way home when two men ran up and asked if she was Hallique Canan. Staggerlee pressed her cheek against Daddy’s knee. Mama had told them this part—about how the men had told Hallique about the bombing, about her parents dying. Staggerlee had never heard her father say it—say the words—that his parents had died that night.
    “Hallique said they won their game that night,” her father said softly.

    STAGGERLEE SAT WATCHING that same film clip over and over, long after everyone else had gone to bed. Her grandmother’s voice rose up sweet and high as she sang “I Wonder As I Wander.” Staggerlee sat there wondering if her grandparents had found a home somewhere, a place where there was nothing left to fight against. She watched their grainy faces smiling into the camera and wondered how long they’d all be wandering.

Chapter Four
    NEWS TRAVELED QUICKLY THROUGH SWEET GUM. That spring, Staggerlee heard that Hazel was leaving, that her family was moving the first of the month. In school they had hardly spoken. Some mornings, as they passed in the halls, Staggerlee would absently press her fingers to her lips. She wondered, now, as she sat on her porch, if Hazel had forgotten that afternoon in the cornflowers. And if she had, what thoughts, what friendships had replaced the memory? Staggerlee stared out at the sun setting bright orange beyond the fields. Tall stalks of corn swayed slowly, and their shadows, casting out over the land, filled Staggerlee with a sadness she couldn’t name. She was waiting for Hazel. Even though they hadn’t spoken in a long time, she was hoping Hazel would come by before she moved. To say good-bye. To say that she remembered.
    Early in the evening, Staggerlee’s father returned from work and sat with her.
    “You look like you’re waiting for someone,” he said, smiling.
    Staggerlee shook her head.
    “I used to sit like this,” Daddy said softly. “After my parents died, I’d just sit on this porch waiting for them to come on home. Ida and Hallique’d be inside and I’d be sitting here. On these stairs.”
    “But you knew they weren’t coming