The First Part Last Read online

  the first part last

  the first part last

  ANGELA JOHNSON

  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

  New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Angela Johnson

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part or in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster.

  Book design by O’Lanso Gabbidon

  The text for this book is sent in Aldine401.

  Printed in the United States of America

  8 10 9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Johnson, Angela.

  The first part last / by Angela Johnson

  p. cm.

  Summary: Bobby’s carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.

  ISBN 0-689-84922-2

  eISBN 978-1-439-10658-7

  ISBN 978-0-689-84922-0

  [1. Teenage fathers—Fiction. 2. Teenage parents—Fiction. 3. Father and child—Fiction. 4. Babies—Fiction. 5. African Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J629 Fi 2003

  [Fic]—dc21

  2002036512

  For Elizabeth Acevedo and the rest of the students in the 1999-2000 sixth-grade class at the Manhattan School for Children

  the first part last

  part I

  now

  MY MOM SAYS that I didn’t sleep through the night until I was eight years old. It didn’t make any difference to her ’cause she was up too, listening to the city. She says she used to come into my room, sit cross-legged on the floor by my bed, and play with my Game Boy in the dark.

  We never talked.

  I guess I thought she needed to be there. And she must have thought her being there made everything all better for me.

  Yeah.

  I get it now. I really get it.

  We didn’t need to say it. We didn’t have to look at each other or even let the other one know we saw each other in the glow of the Game Boy.

  So last week when it looked like Feather probably wasn’t ever going to sleep through the night, I lay her on my stomach and breathed her in. My daughter is eleven days old.

  And that sweet new baby smell … the smell of baby shampoo, formula, and my mom’s perfume. It made me cry like I hadn’t since I was a little kid.

  It scared the hell out of me. Then, when Feather moved on my stomach like one of those mechanical dolls in the store windows at Christmas, the tears dried up. Like that.

  I thought about laying her in the middle of my bed and going off to find my old Game Boy, but I didn’t.

  Things have to change.

  I’ve been thinking about it. Everything. And when Feather opens her eyes and looks up at me, I already know there’s change. But I figure if the world were really right, humans would live life backward and do the first part last. They’d be all knowing in the beginning and innocent in the end.

  Then everybody could end their life on their momma or daddy’s stomach in a warm room, waiting for the soft morning light.

  then

  AND THIS IS how I turned sixteen.…

  Skipped school with my running buddies, K-Boy and J. L., and went to Mineo’s for a couple of slices. Hit a matinee and threw as much popcorn at each other as we ate. Then went to the top of the Empire State Building ’cause I never had before.

  I said what everybody who’d ever been up there says.

  “Everybody looks like ants.”

  Yeah, right.…

  Later on that night my pops, Fred, made my favorite meal—cheese fries and ribs—at his restaurant. I caught the subway home and walked real slow ‘cause I knew my mom had a big-ass cake for me when I got there, and I was still full. (In my family, special days mean nonstop food.)

  I never had any cake though ’cause my girlfriend Nia was waiting on our stoop for me with a red balloon. Just sittin’ there with a balloon, looking all lost. I’ll never forget that look and how her voice shook when she said, “Bobby, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Then she handed me the balloon.

  now

  I USED TO LAUGH when this old dude, “Just Frank” from the corner, used to ask me if I was being a “man.” He never seemed to ask anybody else if they were being men; at least I never heard him. I laughed ‘cause I didn’t consider him much of one, a man, hangin’ on the corner, drinking forties at ten in the morning. Hell, he was a joke. Always had been.

  Two days after I brought Feather home, Just Frank got killed trying to save a girl in the neighborhood from being dragged into an alley by some nut job.

  Didn’t have any family. Didn’t have any money, Just Frank. So the block got together to pay for his funeral, or the city was going to bury him in Potter’s Field. I went to his funeral at Zion AME, then walked home and held Feather for the rest of the night, wondering if I would be a man, a good man.

  Feather sleeps like these kittens I saw once at a farm my summer camp went to. They were all curled up in an old crate, sleeping with paws on their brothers and sisters. Sleeping safe and with family.

  I haven’t been able to put her in her own bed at night, which used to be mine, since she came home from the hospital.

  Mary, my mom, says I’m going to pay.

  “Put that baby down, Bobby. I swear she’s going to think the whole world is your face. She’s going to be scared out of her mind when she turns about six and you haven’t put her down long enough to see any of it.”

  Or …

  “Bobby, you could have let your Aunt Victoria hold the baby for more than the thirty seconds it took for you to go to the bathroom. You are going to pay when she starts walking and won’t let you out of her sight. You’ll pay.”

  I wonder if somebody threatened her that one day I’d love her and want to be with her all the time. Some threat.

  K-Boy and J. L. stand over Feather’s bed, making faces and loud noises at her.

  She screams.

  They shake a rattle at her and tickle her feet.

  She screams again.

  I dive across my bed and put my Walkman on and watch them, laughing. “Yeah, you two are real good with her. If I was a baby I’d stop crying if a couple of tall men made scary faces at me and shook loud rattling sticks at my head.”

  J. L. picks her up like she’s a football and walks her to the bedroom window. “Hey, man, my sister’s got a baby, and I always get him to stop crying.”

  He starts to rock back and forth on his heels, humming something that I really can’t hear. After about a minute she’s stopped crying, and J. L. has slid to the floor with her. He keeps on humming. I see Feather’s hands slowly rise then relax, and I know she’s finally asleep. And in a few minutes J. L. is too.

  K-Boy is standing at my desk, running his hand over a drawing that I did of Feather last night. “Nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  K-Boy takes his baseball cap off and his locks fall all over his face. He’s mahogany and tall, and can’t walk down the street without everybody staring at him. He’s beautiful, but
acts like he doesn’t know it (Mom says). When we were ten he was almost six feet tall, and people who didn’t know him treated him older. It would piss him off, people expecting teenage stuff from him when we were still jumping off swings at the playground.

  K-Boy doesn’t date. He just hangs out with girls. When I say stuff like this can happen to anybody (meaning a baby), even if you are just kicking it with some girl, K-Boy says no. It’s different.

  Everything is different if there ain’t no love.

  Didn’t want to hear that then. And I guess I don’t really want to hear it now. He’s one of my best friends, but he’s always saying stuff that makes me crazy.

  Worse even is when he doesn’t say anything at all. Then I got to wonder.

  He keeps looking at the drawing of Feather.

  “So. You going to keep her or what?”

  I turn down my Walkman and look at him for a long time, wondering why he’s my friend. “What do you mean am I going to keep her?”

  He sits down on the bed beside me and grabs the TV remote and starts watching a gardening show, muted. “It’s a question, man.”

  “It’s a stupid fucking question, K.”

  “Naw, Bobby, it’s just a question. What’s the problem?”

  “Ain’t no problem. No problem,” I almost scream. Feather jumps in J. L.’s arms and his eyes snap open.

  J. L. yawns. “What up?”

  Nobody says anything. K-Boy turns the volume up on the TV, and I turn the volume up on my Walkman. J. L. nods off again.

  A few minutes later this woman on TV is pointing at a mountain of dirt, and I say—like I’m talking to myself—“No doubt in my mind that I’m keeping her.”

  A few minutes after that, K-Boy has turned to the Weather Channel, but is looking across the room at J. L. and Feather. He says, “Too right you should keep her, man, too right.”

  then

  FRED AND MARY SAT REAL STILL, and for a while I thought what I just told them about Nia being pregnant had turned both of them to stone.

  It had been a long time since either of them ever agreed on anything.

  So I waited. I waited to hear how they’d been talking to me for years about this. How we all talked about respect and responsibility. How Fred and me had taken the ferry out to Staten Island and talked about sex, to and from the island. And didn’t we go together and get me condoms? What the hell about those pamphlets Mary put beside my bed about STDs and teenage pregnancy?

  How did this happen? Where was my head? Where was my sense? What the hell were we going to do?

  And then, not moving and still quiet, my pops just starts to cry.

  now

  MY BONES ACHE TIRED, but I’m wide awake.

  I must be the only person up now. Even the city is quiet. Our neighborhood at least. I don’t know what that means, except everyone in the world must have a new baby who kept them up most of the night and they’ve all passed out.

  The rules.

  If she hollers, she is mine.

  If she needs to he changed, she is always mine.

  In the dictionary next to “sitter,” there is not a picture of Grandma.

  It’s time to grow up.

  Too late, you’re out of time. Be a grown-up.

  I can hear Mary turn over in her sleep in the next room. She doesn’t wake up ’cause Feather hasn’t screamed yet. She whimpered herself awake, which means she only wants to be put in the bed beside me. No diaper change or formula needed. No big screaming fit. She only wants Daddy.

  That scares the shit out of me.

  Just me.

  This little thing with the perfect face and hands doing nothing but counting on me. And me wanting nothing else but to run crying into my own mom’s room and have her do the whole thing.

  It’s not going to happen, and my heart aches as I straighten out her hands and trace the delicate lines. Then kiss them. Her hands are translucent and warm. Baby hands. Warm, sweet-smelling baby hands. And all I can do is kiss them and pull her closer so she won’t see my face and how scared I am.

  When there’s nothing you can do, do nothing.

  But then I realize. I’ve done it. I know something. I know something about this little thing that is my baby. I know that she needs me. I know what she does when she just needs me.

  No big screaming thing.

  Just a whimper, then she only wants me.

  Eight extra diapers.

  Baby corn starch.

  Baby wipes.

  Three binkies (in case two get lost).

  Four six-ounce bottles.

  Three Onesies.

  Three changes of outfits (she’s barfing a lot).

  One change of booties.

  Diaper rash ointment.

  Non-aspirin baby drops.

  Two rattles.

  One extra beanie.

  Two cans of soy formula.

  One can opener.

  Two bottles of spring water.

  And one cell phone all fit into the diaper bag K-Boy’s mom gave to me two days after Feather was born. It all fits. Everything I need to get me from the Upper West Side to Bed Stuy for a whole day with Grandpa.

  A few trains later and a nap (the motion just about puts me out right along with Feather) gets me to Pops.

  When we get buzzed in and I’m holding her in the carrier, going up in the ’vator, I think about the first time I came here, hand in hand with Fred, after him and Mary separated. I have to lean against the sides ’cause I could break down any minute. Just fall apart anytime before I get to my pop’s apartment, which probably smells like chili-cheese fries. Just for me.

  then

  THEY ALWAYS LIKED ME.

  Nia’s parents always treated me good and trusted me. She told me they did. I didn’t think much about it the whole time me and Nia used to be with each other.

  I didn’t think about it when we were on the subway to school, or hanging out at Mineo’s, or skating in the park. What was I supposed to think about it, except it just was. It’s good to be trusted, but you take it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  Every wall in their loft is so white it almost hurts my eyes. Everything is straight lines and post-modern sculpture backlit. Stark white and so neat and clean you could probably make soup in the toilet.

  I used to love this house ’cause I grew up in a place so different.

  We have overstuffed pillows and Moroccan rugs and Jacob Lawrence prints all over the walls. Color and sound is what my parents were always about. Me and my brothers grew up in a loud house with jazz, Motown, or reggae music always playing in the background and something always on the stove.

  Black-and-white pictures of my brothers and me in Africa, Spain, and Venezuela and Malaysia sit on every table, shelf, or furniture surface there is in the whole place. ’Cause even though Fred said we were poor, we never were too poor to travel, ’cause that made your spirit rich. He said.

  To me, our house was crowded and noisy.

  Nia lived in space and quiet.

  When she comes through the Japanese doors that separate the bedrooms from the rest of the loft, Nia is backlit too. Just like a sculpture.

  I see her like I never saw anybody before. Bathed in light like one of those angels in the paintings at the museums. So when she comes and sits by me, I almost holler when her hand covers mine and her silver and cowrie bracelet brushes against me.

  She says, “They’re coming in a minute. My dad’s on the phone and my mom …” She doesn’t have to say anything else ’cause in a second her mom’s backlit too, beside her father, and all I want to do is to get out of the light, back to the soft edges and color with something cooking on the stove.

  They’re cool and calm and sit hand in hand on the white couch with iron arms.

  She smiles, her hair pulled back from her round face. I can just make out the circles under her eyes that she’s covered with makeup.

  He looks straight ahead like he’s watching a movie outside the loft windows. It’
s like nothing that is about to be said or happen has that much to do with him.

  He reminds me of my uncle L. C. when anybody starts talking about my cousin Sam who quit law school and went to be an aid worker in Africa. He just looks straight ahead and talks abut the weather.

  Oh, hell is all I can think when I know it’s my turn to talk.

  Yeah, Mr. Wilkins, I got your daughter pregnant.

  Yeah, Mrs. Wilkins, I know that this is a tragedy ’cause you all expected more responsible behavior from us.

  Oh, hell yeah, we know what’s in store for us.

  I can’t tell you how upset my parents are, and the way my dad cried, and the way my mom wanted to slap me so hard she bit her lip till it bled down her chin.

  No. I don’t have any plans except shooting hoops with my partners at the rec center, and hanging out till we get bored and take in a movie. (Is this what you meant, Mr. Wilkins? Is this what you wanted me to say instead of I’m going to be the best father to me and Nia’s baby that there ever was?)

  But I say,

  Yes, sir.

  Yes, ma’am.

  I don’t know, ma’am.

  I know, sir.

  And on and on till it’s like I’m almost blind from the cool white walls and the smile that hasn’t left Nia’s mom’s face. ’Cause I know Nia told me she only does that when she’s pissed and can’t deal.

  Then I know it’s over when they both stand up and say something about wanting to speak to my parents, and Nia starts crying. I hate it that she cries first, before I do.

  now

  I HOLD MY BABY in a waiting room that I used to sit in, way before I had her.

  The nurse is the same one that has been smiling at me since my mom used to carry me in on her hip. The corkboard by the water fountain is still filled with pictures of kids, most laughing. The play area still has beat-up stuffed animals and cans of crayons pushed up against building blocks, dolls, and trucks.