Rain (Volume 1) - Couverture souple

Andrews, V.C.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 067100767X ISBN 13 : 9780671007676

Editeur : Pocket Books, 2000

Synopsis

Book by Andrews VC

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Chapter One: The Beginning of the End

For as long as I could remember, we lived in an apartment located in a building complex everyone called The Projects. Even as a little girl I hated the name. It didn't sound like a home, a place to live with your family. It sounded just like the word suggested: some government undertaking, some attempt to deal with the poor, some bureaucrat's program. Beni called it The Cages, which made me feel like we were being treated like animals.

I suppose at one time the buildings looked clean and new. In the beginning there wasn't gang graffiti scribbled madly over every available space creating the Books of Madness, as I liked to describe them. The streets in front weren't dirty and the small patches of lawn didn't look mangy and sick. Now the whole place seemed like someone's ashtray.

Our apartment was on the second floor: two-fifteen. We were lucky because we could use the stairway when the elevator was broken, which was often, and we weren't on the first floor where there was a greater chance for burglaries. Some of the tenants on the first floor actually had bars installed in their windows, which was why Beni named the complex The Cages. It didn't do any good to tell her that bars on cages were meant to keep animals in, not people out. She claimed the government wanted to keep us locked inside.

"We're like some ugly pimple on the face of the capital. I bet the government people don't want foreigners to see us. That's why they don't take them through our streets," she declared, parroting one of Ken's frequent speeches of self-pity.

I couldn't deny that there was a lot of fear and crime around us. Everyone had some kind of an alarm and often they went off accidentally. It had gotten so no one paid much attention to them. If there was ever an example of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, it was here in The Projects.

Beni, Roy and I had only three city blocks to walk to school, but sometimes we felt we were going through a minefield in a war zone. During the last six months, two people had been killed by stray bullets fired from passing cars, one gang shooting at members of another without regard for innocent bystanders. Everyone thought it was terrible, but went on and accepted it as if it was simply a part of what had to be, like some nasty storm coming through. There wasn't much anyone could do about bad weather and most people had the same attitude about our street crime.

Mama was visibly terrified whenever one of us went out after dark. She'd actually start to tremble. I began to think we weren't living much differently than people in the Middle Ages. When our teacher talked about the fortresses, the moats and drawbridges and the dangers that lurked outside the fortress walls back then, I thought about The Projects now. Beside having alarms and bars on windows, everyone locked his doors three or four ways with chain locks, bolts and bars and did the same with the windows. Many of the elderly sat away from their windows and shivered at the sounds of the night, the screaming in the hallways.

From my window I could just manage to see the lights in some of the government buildings, and when we walked a few blocks east and looked toward the Capitol, we could see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial all lit up with promises. We were able to take some class trips to the sites and even tour places like the Treasury Building where we saw money being printed, and the FBI building, where we learned about crime labs and fingerprints. We never saw the Congress in action, but we did visit the buildings.

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I sometimes felt like an astronaut on these class trips. It was as if we were being transported to another planet. We saw the fine homes, the embassies, how rich and prosperous people were. We heard about all the wonderful hopes these buildings and monuments represented, but we always returned to our reality where it was possible to witness a drug sale on the corner, or see an unattended child wandering near broken glass and rusty metal. What will become of him? I wondered. What will become of us? In school we studied about democracy and we were taught dreams that were apparently reserved for other sleeping faces, not ours.

Recently, someone overdosed on heroin under a stairwell in our building. The police swarmed over the hallway like blue bees and then left as quickly as they had come, none of them seemed surprised or even concerned. I think they, too, had come to accept the horrors the same way we had.

Mama always dreamed of getting us out of here, of course. To me it seemed most of the people who lived here could no longer even imagine that for themselves. Mama wouldn't talk to anyone but us about it because she hated the dark, heavy notes of discouragement. Once, when Ken was doing well, not drinking as much and making a decent wage, we were able to put away enough money to actually consider the possibility of at least renting a small house in a better neighborhood, but then one day Ken went and secretly withdrew the money. I remember how Mama came home looking drained of blood after she had discovered what he had done.

"He killed our dreams," she mumbled.

I thought Mama was going to have a heart attack. Her lips looked so blue and she seemed to have trouble breathing. She had to have a shot glass full of whiskey to calm herself. She sat staring out the window most of the afternoon, sat there gazing down at the streets with a strange, soft smile on her face and hummed an old tune as if she were looking at a beautiful field or majestic mountains. I tried to talk to her, give her something to eat, but she didn't seem to hear me. I was very frightened, afraid for all of us.

Finally, Ken came home. Roy wasn't there at the time. I was glad of that because there would have been a fight for sure. Beni and I were in our bedroom doorway, holding our breath. We expected Mama was going to explode with a fury we had never seen before, but she fooled us. She spoke calmly in the beginning, just asking him to tell her why he had done such a thing without telling her, and what he had done with the money. At first, we thought he wasn't going to tell. He moved across the kitchen, getting himself a beer, wrapping his long, thick fingers around the bottle, opening it and taking a long gulp. He leaned against the counter by the sink.

"I needed it," he finally said, "to pay a debt."

"A debt? What debt? The electric bill that's past due? The dentist bills for Beni and Rain? What debt, Ken?" she demanded.

"A debt," he repeated. He avoided her eyes. She rose slowly.

"Some of that money was money I slaved to earn. Don't I have a right to know where it's gone?" she asked, still remarkably softly for her.

"I had a debt," he repeated.

She seemed to inflate, her small shoulders rising, her bosom lifting. I looked at Beni. Her face was full of anger and my stomach felt like hornets had built a nest inside.

"You gambled away our money, didn't you, Ken Arnold? Go on, tell me. You just threw away all that money, months and months of work, gone!"

He turned to face her, the beer bottle to his lips, his neck working like the body of a snake. Suddenly, Mama slapped the bottle out of his hand and it flew across the kitchen and smashed on the floor.

Ken was stunned. For a moment he couldn't move. He was so amazed at her aggression and her anger, it stopped him from breathing too. For Beni and me the sight of Mama, all five feet four, one hundred and five pounds of her fuming in front of Ken with his six feet five inch, two hundred and fifty-pound body with his massive shoulders and thick neck, was terrifying. He could squash her like a fly, but she stuck her face into his and didn't blink.

"You go and destroy my hope just like that and then tell me it was some debt? You go and spill my blood and sweat in the street and tell me it's just some debt?"

"Back off, woman," Ken said, but I saw he was shaking. Whether he was shaking with his own overwhelming anger or fear was not clear. Suddenly though, he realized we were there, too, and his pride reared up like a sleeping lion.

"What do you think you're doing slapping my beer across the room? Huh?" he roared, his eyes wide. "You're a crazy woman and I ain't standing here and listening to a crazy woman."

He turned and rushed out of the house. Mama stood looking after him for a moment and then she went to clean up the mess. I jumped to help her.

"Watch you don't cut yourself, Rain," she warned in a low, tired voice as I picked up the pieces of glass. Beni was still shivering in her chair.

"I'll do it, Mama," I said.

She didn't argue. She went to her bedroom to lie down. I thought she might never get up, but somehow, Mama found the resilience to fight on, to restore her optimism, to replant in her garden of hope and dream on for all of us.

I think it was Mama's courage more than anything that kept me full of dreams, too. If she could be this way after what had happened to her, I thought, I, who was so much younger and still had so much of a chance, had to be full of heart. I had to hold onto my smiles and not be like Beni. I had to push back the urge to hate everyone and everything. I had to see blue sky and stars even in days of rain, so many days of rain.

Our school was nothing to look at. In fact, I often closed my eyes when I first turned the corner and the tired, broken-down building appeared. It looked more like a factory than a school and all the windows on it had bars. There was a chain link fence around the property, too, with big metal signs warning against trespassing.

Two uniformed guards were at the front entrance when the students first arrived for class. To get into the building, we all had to pass through one of those metal detectors you see at the airports. On too many occasions, students, especially gang members, had slashed other students with knives and on one occasion, a tenth-grade boy was found carrying a loaded revolver. The teachers were adamant about added security. There was almost a strike before the powers that be installed the metal detector and kept uniformed guards patrolling the halls and supporting the teachers.

Mr. McCalester, my history teacher, said all the teachers should be given battle pay as well as their salaries. He made it sound like we should all be thankful if we made it through a school day without being harmed. It was hard to concentrate and care about poetry and plays, algebra and geometry, chemistry and biology while outside the fenced-in area angry young men waited to destroy each other and anyone who got in their way.

Most of my and Beni's friends were battle worn, veterans of the hard streets. Everyone knew about drugs and no one was surprised to find someone using crack, pot or whatever happened to be the flavor of the day. Neither Beni nor I ever used or tried any of it. Roy was the same way. There were times when I was afraid Beni would give in. Girlfriends challenged us, said we weren't being "sistas" and we were acting stuck-up.

Some of the girls resented me anyway because of my looks. Mama always taught me that vanity was a sin, but I couldn't help wondering if I had been given some special gifts. My hair was straighter, richer than most. I had a creamy caramel complexion, never bothered much by acne. I also had light brown eyes, more toward almond, with long eyelashes. Roy once said he thought I could be a model, but I was afraid to even wish for such a thing. I was afraid to wish for anything good. Nice things had to happen to us accidentally, by surprise. If you wish for something too hard, I thought, it was like holding a balloon too tightly. It would simply burst, splattering your dream into pieces of nothing.

When I was younger, Mama loved to brush my hair and hum one of the soft melodies her mama had sung to her.

"You're going to be a beautiful young lady, Rain," she would whisper softly in my ear, "but you've got to know that beauty can be a burden too. You've got to learn to say no and watch yourself more because men will be looking at you more."

Her warnings frightened me. I couldn't help but walk through the school corridors with my eyes firmly fixed straight ahead, not returning a glance, not welcoming a smile. I knew most of the kids thought I was a snob, but I reacted this way because of the tiny hummingbird that fluttered in my heart every time a boy gazed at me with interest. That flutter sent a chill through my spine and down to my feet. I'd almost rather be unattractive, I thought.

I know Beni didn't think she was pretty, even though I thought she had nice features and beautiful ebony eyes. She had a bigger bust than I did and liked to keep a button or two undone or wear tighter clothes, but she was wider in the hips and Roy always criticized her for looking like a tramp. My lips were thinner and my nose was straighter and more narrow than Beni's. Sometimes, when Beni wasn't looking, I would study her face more and try to find resemblances between us. She and Roy looked more alike, although his hair was closer to mine.

Once, I asked Mama about it and she said sometimes your grandparents show up in you more than your parents do. I thought about it and studied the pictures we had of Ken's parents and Mama's parents, but I didn't see resemblances to me in any of them.

Neither Mama's nor Ken's parents were alive. Ken's father had been killed in a car accident and his mother had died of liver damage caused by alcohol. Mama's mother died before her father. She had had a heart attack. I got to meet my grandfather, but he lived in North Carolina and he died of emphysema before I was five, so I didn't remember all that much about him except he smoked so much, I thought it came out of his ears as well as his nose and his mouth. Mama had one sister in Texas. Her name was Alana, and she had a brother named Lamar somewhere in Florida. They rarely contacted each other. I never met Lamar, but I did meet Alana one Christmas when I was seven.

Ken never talked about his older brother Curtis, who was in prison in Oklahoma for armed robbery. A man was killed so he had been given a long sentence.

Aunt Alana was supposed to have had a baby she gave away, but we didn't know any real details about it except that it was a girl. Sometimes, Beni and I would wonder aloud. We imagined she would be about our age and she probably looked a little like one of us. Occasionally, Beni would tease Roy and say things like, "Be careful 'bout the girls you sleep with, Roy. One might be your cousin."

Roy hated that. He hated it when Beni talked about sex. He was always after her to put something on lately, too. She would parade about in her panties and bra and sometimes, she would put on a robe with nothing underneath and not tie it too tightly. Roy would get so angry his eyes would nearly explode. He had Ken's temper for sure, only not for the same reasons.

He was different with me. If he caught sight of me underdressed, he looked away or walked away quickly. I always tried to be properly dressed if I was in the kitchen or the living room.

Despite his gruff manner at times, Roy was as loving and as protective a brother as Beni or I could want. He tried to be right beside us as much as he could be when we were in the streets. Now that he was taking a job at Slim's Garage after school, he was troubled about our walking home without him. He had told us both at least six times to be sure we went directly home and not stop at any of the jukebox joints to listen to hip-hop music. "The worst types hang out there," he warned.

"He just wants to keep us little girls forever," Beni compla...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

RAIN ALREADY KNOWS HOW HARD LIFE CAN BE. BUT SHE IS ABOUT TO DISCOVER A SHATTERING SECRET FROM THE PAST THAT WILL CHANGE HER FUTURE FOREVER....
Growing up in the ghettos of Washington, D.C., the cards are stacked against a hardworking dreamer like Rain Arnold. Rain has fought to be the best daughter she can: she studies hard and gets good grades; she helps her mother cook and clean. And unlike her defiant younger sister, she avoids the dangers of the city streets as if her life depends on it...and it does. But Rain can't suppress the feeling that she has never truly fit in, that she is a stranger in her own world.
Then one fateful night, Rain overhears something she shouldn't: a heartbreaking revelation from the past, a long-buried secret that is about to change her life in ways she never could have imagined. In the blink of an eye, everything Rain has ever known -- the family she has loved and the familiar place she has called home is left behind, and Rain is sent to live with total strangers, the wealthy Hudson family. But just as she did not belong to the troubled world she was raised in, Rain is also out of place in this realm of luxury and privilege. With nowhere to turn, Rain finds an escape in the theater, inside the walls of an exclusive private school. But will it be enough to fulfill her heart's deepest wish -- and give her a place to call home?

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Pocket Books
• Date d'édition: 2000
• ISBN 10: 067100767X
• ISBN 13: 9780671007676
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 448