Angel of Greenwood Read online

  Isaiah would never forget it because it was both shocking and pathetic in its callousness and disrespect. But now Isaiah wasn’t sure Muggy still believed that. Now, it seemed, Muggy saw glimpses of his father in the same way Greenwood saw him—as a complete, irredeemable loser.

  A shocking sizzle ran across Isaiah’s forearm, making him jump into the air.

  “What the hell was that?” Isaiah shouted.

  Muggy laughed in response. “Oh, calm down. Just a glowing matchstick. Won’t even leave a mark.”

  Isaiah held his slightly burned skin with his free hand and sat down next to Muggy. “Why would you do that?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who you’re daydreaming about,” he said. “You don’t just keep that kind of information from your best friend. Who is she?”

  Isaiah shrugged. He knew that he couldn’t be honest and tell him he was actually thinking of Muggy’s mother and father. Their friendship was built on different things, shallower things. But Muggy was not entirely wrong.

  Since yesterday, all of Isaiah’s thoughts were shaded by Angel Hill. A deep brown hue of Angel, catching ahold of every light in her vicinity. Turning impossible turns. Generating heat in his icy heart, canceling out a quadrant of anger that he couldn’t figure out how to rid himself of before he saw her dance. She was a Black magic he’d never witnessed, spinning the congregation around her pinkie in a matter of minutes.

  Angel Hill, he would’ve said out loud to any other kind of best friend. Angel Hill, he might have divulged to a comrade more empathetic of the existence of a love like that. Angel Hill, he wanted to climb atop the empty bleachers and yell back at Muggy, but he wouldn’t understand. A Black boy spun so tightly after magical dancing by a deep dark girl wearing ankle-length white? No one would.

  ANGEL

  Angel stopped in front of Deacon Yancey’s light green house, bent forward, and took one long drag of the upright purple flower.

  “Hello there,” she said to the verbena. “You, my friend, have perfect posture. You should be a dancer.”

  When she stood back up again, Deacon Yancey was making his way onto his front porch holding a coffee mug.

  He bowed to her as if she were royalty and said, “Your praise dance yesterday, Miss Angel, left the whole world a little bit better. Join me for a cup?”

  Though it would only make her later for school, she nodded. “Of course, Deacon.” He was lonely, after all. His wife of twenty-seven years had died the year prior.

  She walked through his squatty white gate to find a hidden field of more peeping verbena—red, pink, and a hybrid orangey swirl. The sight stopped her, and Deacon Yancey walked down to stand by her side.

  “They’re confused,” he said before taking a small sip of steaming green tea. “Poor, sweet things don’t realize my wife has passed on to glory. Have a seat on the swing, I’ll bring you the best cup of honey tea you’ve ever had in your life.”

  As he disappeared into his small home, Angel breathed in crisp, hot air and watched the world from the vantage point of Deacon Yancey’s front porch. His view of Greenwood was wholly different than the one from her own porch swing. For one, she could see the back field of her school from there. She squinted at two boys skipping class and hanging near the back of the wooden bleachers. It was Mother Wilson’s son, Isaiah, and his friend Muggy Little Jr.

  Being from such a small town, there was no avoiding others within it, but every time she caught herself about to pass Isaiah and Muggy in the halls, she purposely found an empty classroom nearby to detour. The few unfortunate times she’d run into them, they laughed at her for no reason at all.

  Muggy especially was hard-boiled toward her. He’d called her ugly multiple times and even tried to trip her once when she wore a floor-length, long-sleeved, flowered dress to school. He’d pulled at her plaits throughout middle school and made her cry in elementary for too many reasons to name. He must’ve been born mean, she thought, because all she had to do was walk by him and his friends for them to double over in hysterics like her existence alone was enough to evoke laughter. But Isaiah was kinder. His nature clearly less abrasive. He simply didn’t stand for anything. Isaiah went along to get along; that much was obvious to Angel, and she did not respect it.

  Isaiah had come by Mount Zion for Sunday school the day before. She tilted her head. He’d even stood up after she danced, and clapped a little. Angel tried not to notice such things. Her praise dancing was for herself and the Lord, but there he was on the front row in an open ovation.

  Angel watched as the cigar smoke rose from the bleachers. She tried to compare the Isaiah she’d always known to the one on the front row of church yesterday. It crossed her mind that maybe he was putting on for his friends. Maybe he wasn’t a follower on the inside as he’d always seemed on the outside. But it surely wasn’t her job to teach him how to stand up for what he believed.

  Deacon Yancey excitedly burst through the screen door holding a Mount Zion mug filled to the brim with tea. “Take a sip of this here and tell me it isn’t the best you’ve ever tasted.”

  Angel took a short sip and tried not to grimace. It tasted like gritty green dirt. Inside of the mug were tiny bits of sticks and leafy flakes; he’d pierced the tea bag, emptying the contents into the liquid. It was irrationally disgusting. Easily the most horrible cup of tea Angel had ever had.

  “Mmm.” She placed the cup on the small side table to her right. “I’ll let it cool for a few moments, but mmm!”

  “Yes, goodness,” he said, still genuinely thrilled by his horrid cup of tea. “I think I just about have it perfect, like Mrs. Yancey used to.” He looked off after mentioning his late wife.

  Angel had noticed it every Sunday since she’d passed. He had no idea how to manage himself without his wife’s help. Wrinkled, loose-necked shirts had replaced crisp, starched ones. He was scaly ankles, uncut hair, and bitter green tea now.

  “How have you been getting along since?” Angel asked, not wanting, or having, to finish her unfinished sentence. He knew what she meant.

  Worry came over his face—the look of a child lost in a boulevard. “Can’t figure how one woman made so much happen in a day is all,” he said, trying to smile but failing. “I didn’t know just how much. I thought, like the fool I am, that a house fixed itself back every morning. In the same way I thought food came home delicious and kids went straight to sleep and shirts got crispy right out the wash. But sometimes, Angel girl, you just can’t know how good you got it until it dies.”

  Angel thought about this before speaking. Death was dangerously close to her home, hovering over her living room like an angry cloud. If it swooped in today and took away her precious father, would she sit alone on a porch swing forever, regretting not appreciating him? Would it eat her up—those things unsaid, unthanked, unacknowledged?

  The firm answer was no. She showed her appreciation to everyone around her, even those who didn’t deserve it. She was a servant, put on this earth to help and love and caretake, just like Booker T. Washington was when he was alive. Deacon Yancey’s fate was that of a man who didn’t appreciate his wonderful wife until he lost her for good. Sad, heartbreaking, unfortunate, but not nearly Angel. She couldn’t comfort him, she realized. Any response would be a lie. She shifted her gaze to the two boys in the practice fields and changed the subject.

  “Deacon Yancey?” she asked while she swallowed the last stick in her green tea. “You seem to know everybody in this town. What do you know about Isaiah Wilson? He came by Sunday school yesterday.”

  Deacon Yancey let out a choking cough as if she’d asked about Satan himself. “Stay as far away from that boy as you can. I mean it.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, never daring question an elder.

  She looked toward the bleachers again. Isaiah had walked closer to the fence and was staring directly at her. She caught his eye and quickly looked away. God had put her in this world to help people, not to stare back at mischievous follower Isaiah W
ilson. She couldn’t be bothered with a phony bad boy who skipped class and smoked expensive cigars by the bleachers with his rich friends. It was cliché at best—good girl saves bad boy from himself. No way.

  Then she sneaked a second look to see that he was still staring, this time with his hand frozen in a wave. When she waved back, his friend Muggy smacked Isaiah’s head from behind. Muggy didn’t approve.

  “Don’t wave back, Angel. I forbid you. He’s trouble with a capital T, that one,” said Deacon Yancey, who didn’t approve, either.

  ISAIAH

  “What was that?” Muggy said before taking a long drag from his second cigar. “Angel’s been a bluenose since we were little.”

  “I can’t wave at a girl?” Isaiah replied, snatching Muggy’s cigar for a puff. “And she’s not a bluenose. She’s a dancer.”

  “A dancer?” Muggy frisked over to the fence to get a closer look.

  “Don’t stare.” Isaiah covered his eyes with his hand. “Muggy, stop that right now, I mean it.”

  Turning toward Isaiah, Muggy asked, “How the hell else am I supposed to get a good look at this dancer?” He looked up. “Oh, I know!” He grabbed ahold of a nearby tree limb and climbed atop.

  Isaiah felt both anger and embarrassment running the length of his body. Though Muggy had done things like this since they were knee-high, he’d never experienced this feeling before. The undeniable instinct to physically fight his best friend.

  Isaiah glanced over at Angel and Deacon Yancey, expecting them to be mortified by the idiot climbing trees and loudly disrespecting her, but they were deep in conversation. Squinting at them, Isaiah saw disgust on the deacon’s face. He looked to be talking about something (or someone) he loathed, maybe even warning Angel about it. She, however, looked just as she had the day before.

  Sure, she wasn’t wearing a white gown; her clothing looked like she’d been dressed long before dawn—wrinkled, overlong navy skirt with a white shirt tucked underneath, and worn-out church shoes. Her hair was braided down into two chunky rows, and her face was completely free of makeup, greased down with one of the butters. She was hiding, he thought, effectively so, too. No one outside of Mount Zion Sunday school could ever imagine the music underneath. She was more than any other girls within Greenwood limits. Beyond more. And more by a lot. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. Now that he’d seen her, the real her, stripped down, he would never be able to unsee her. After yesterday, she couldn’t hide from him if she tried.

  “Isaiah!” yelled Muggy. “Have you heard a single word I said? You’re stuck on this girl, aren’t you? Wait just one damn minute,” Muggy said with a shocked smile. “Is Angel Hill the dame you’ve been daydreaming about? What kind of magic does this dancer have to make you fall so fast?”

  As Muggy jumped down from the tree with one hop, Isaiah grabbed ahold of his forearm. Muggy was a notorious hothead who never made threats that he didn’t back up with action. He was born who he was, impulsive and mean, and for Isaiah to exist in his company, he had to transform himself into the same. That was the very nature of their friendship—Isaiah did as Muggy told him to do or else. Greenwood took care of its own, but even here, there was a social contract. And between Muggy and Isaiah, Muggy’s family wealth gave him the upper hand. Isaiah didn’t see any choice but to follow.

  When Muggy wanted to blow up elderly Mr. and Mrs. Edward’s mailbox in fifth grade, Isaiah lit the fuse. When Muggy locked Scott Hall in the nasty stall in sixth, Isaiah helped him barricade it shut. And when Muggy decided that Angel was unattractive, boring, and too much of a goody-goody to spend time with, Isaiah wrote her off, but not completely.

  The day of the talent show, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. The way she stood. Unaffected by him or anyone else, she stood. Caring not about winning or placing or receiving applause, she stood. She stood. Just like she had in the face of the white boys who tore up her property. Angel was a Black goddess standing unseen by blind eyes. Yet Isaiah, even silently, now saw her.

  Muggy punched Isaiah’s shoulder. “I’m going over to tell her you like her.”

  But now Isaiah had a choice. Stand up to Muggy or do what he’d always done—go along to get along.

  “Don’t go over there, man,” he told Muggy before releasing his arm. “Angel’s the ugliest girl in school. Always has been. Look at her, all tall and skinny. No body. Don’t get her hopes up like that.”

  Isaiah forced himself into a convincing laugh, and Muggy bought it hook, line, and sinker. He backed away from the fence and began walking toward the school’s entrance. “I was beginning to think you lost your ever-loving mind.”

  “Never that,” Isaiah said, catching one last look at Angel as Muggy strode ahead of him. He whispered, “I’m sorry,” into the thick May air and jogged to catch up with his friend.

  * * *

  English literature was the only class Isaiah didn’t have with Muggy. For an hour at a time, five days a week, he didn’t have to deal with his best friend’s cruelty, and it was refreshing. Also, his English teacher, Miss Ferris, made the class even more wonderful. On the inside, Isaiah was a poet, and Miss Ferris was the only person on earth able to tease that side of him out. He’d been written up by every teacher he’d ever had except for her.

  Instead, she put a pencil in his hand and made him write. She’d given him a permanent pass on works like The Scarlet Letter and Shakespeare. They had a no “dead white authors” agreement between the two of them. In exchange, all he had to do was fill up the leather-bound journal she’d bought for him. Since September, he’d been doing just that, and he was slowly changing on the inside. Before, he never would’ve gone to pre-church with his mother. And he never would have had the opportunity to see pure beauty dancing a few feet in front of him.

  Isaiah was angry. Frustrated about parents and girls and the submissiveness around him, waiting unarmed to be destroyed by those on the outside. Isaiah often watched from his bedroom as Greenwood went on about its business of existing in conjunction with the untouchable white world just across the thin tracks. That, after all, was the very nature of his district—to exist in concurrence with everyone else.

  Before he died, Isaiah’s father had told him that Greenwood itself grew out of necessity. Oil brought the white folks, he’d told Isaiah, and whites and Native Americans brought the Black folks. But they didn’t anticipate the ingenuity of us. We built our paradise, he’d told Isaiah, and, son, you better believe they’ll want it back one day.

  Isaiah was conflicted. To get along, he needed to be what was expected of him—strong, protective, no show whatsoever of weakness. But then he saw Angel dance and something cracked his resolve.

  Before he saw Angel dance, waking up to face the day was a challenge. Before he saw Angel dance, going to sleep to say goodbye to the day was equally difficult. Everything in between too hard. Angel was the bolt of lightning, and poetry was the conduit, channeling all of that raw energy into tangible words. Something softened in him, and it felt good to not be so hard all the time.

  “Isaiah.” Miss Ferris broke his concentration. “Would you care to share one of your poems with the class?”

  When he shook his head, she moved on to Annie Carlson without pressure. He’d only shared his poetry once at that same talent show, and afterward, Muggy gave him a hard time for months. He never planned to share any poems again, especially not now.

  As Annie read her poem about remembering the month of November or something like that, Isaiah flipped to a fresh page in his journal and began writing.

  Black Angel

  Spin, spin, Black angel, spin,

  Until the world no longer makes sense,

  To boys or to men,

  Love, spin.

  Around you go,

  Making me confused, lost, slow.

  Around you go,

  Black angel, spin.

  Deep skin,

  Deeper than the deepest deep,

  Deeper than me,


  Better, too.

  Deserve you, Love, I don’t,

  We both know.

  Don’t stop spinning for me,

  Black angel, but I’ve stopped spinning for you.

  Isaiah finished his poem as soon as the bell rang, but he wasn’t ready to leave. He felt more words in his gut, eager to rise up into his fingers and out through his pencil. He wanted another safe hour to write about Angel. Away from Muggy’s prying eyes. Reluctantly, he tucked his journal into his bag and got up.

  “Isaiah,” Miss Ferris called out after him. “Got a minute?”

  Relief came over him. A few more moments of freedom to be who he was.

  “Ma’am?”

  Over her green glasses, Miss Ferris looked through him as if she were reading something new and refreshing in his eyes. She took a seat behind her wooden desk and placed her chin in clasped hands.

  “Something’s going on with you,” she said with a knowing grin. “Tell me what it is.”

  Instead of answering, Isaiah lifted the journal from his bag, opened the page to the newly minted poem, and slid it across her desk. She pushed her glasses farther up her nose and read. Isaiah watched her eyes slowly scan each line, and every time they did, they filled up a little more with tears. By the end, she was absolutely crying. Sobbing actually.

  Miss Ferris had always been easy to cry. Not in a weak way, but in an artistic, vulnerable way. Every once in a while, Isaiah would catch her tearing up in class when they read aloud passages from the abolitionist journals or any works by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, especially the most vivid account of slave auction or motherhood within the body of slavery. Miss Ferris felt the world with her whole heart, refusing to conform to what was expected of her as a figure of authority. Isaiah wanted to be more like Miss Ferris.

  “You’re in love,” she said slowly and deliberately. “You should know that.”

  Isaiah took a moment to think before replying. He wasn’t sure if he was in love or not. How could he be, after all? This was Angel. Bible-hugging Angel. Too-tall, too-skinny, too-raggedy Angel. But he couldn’t stop thinking of her. When Muggy dared try to embarrass her, he thought seriously of pulling him down leg first from a tree. Since Angel stepped out of the pastor’s study the day before, Isaiah couldn’t stop thinking of her skin and wild hair and the way her body moved. Still, Isaiah was not prepared to make such a declaration, even to Miss Ferris.