The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing. You never know when she'll throw away a piece you may need.

If there’s no one else to tell another side - the only story that can be told is the story that becomes true. (p. 173)

I'm not the color of my skin. I'm a story. One with a past and a future unwritten.

The bottle is where everything sad or mean or confusing can go. And the blues--it's like that bottle. But in the bottle there's a seed that you let grow. Even in the bottle it can grow big and green. It's full of all those feelings that are in there, but beautiful and growing too.

I can't get rid of the sadness," Laronne said. "Well," David said, "then we'll just keep it company.

It's easy to smile just to make other people feel better. But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see the edges and the lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me) or the anger (Grandma) begins.

I don't know if it's better to have people laugh at what you are or just not understand.

Math can explain the reason there's one out of four chance that I'd have blue eyes. But it doesn't explain why me.

We live in the same house but we both feel lonely. We and lonely don't belong in the same sentence.

We lie to ourselves in many ways; we write down only what we want to understand and what we want to see.

A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing," Grandma says. "You never know when she'll throw away a piece you may need...

Aunt Loretta has something that maybe you could call class. It's not the made-up kind that Grandma has, fake pearls and Sunday hats, but something that comes to you as if you were born to the king and queen. Aunt Loretta understands better than Grandma that reading a big book is more classy than wearing fake pearls watching TV.

Seeing Grandma this way, it makes me know for certain that everything about a person will show up in another person in the family.

I think of how Grandma makes fun of love. And maybe that’s the key.

I will not be sad. I will be okay. Those promises become my layers. The middle that no one will touch.

In his eyes, I’m not the new girl. I’m not the color of my skin. I’m a story. One with a past and a future unwritten.

That makes me think of how the other black girls in school think I want to be white. They call me an Oreo. I don’t want to be white. Sometimes I want to go back to being what I was. I want to be nothing.

I think what a family is shouldn't be so hard to see. It should be the one thing people know just by looking at you.

But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see edges and lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me) or the anger (Grandma), begins. T

Math can explain the reason there’s a one out of four chance that I’d have blue eyes. But it doesn’t explain why me. And science or math can’t explain what makes one person lucky, or what makes a person lucky enough to survive.

These white girls think all they need is love.

. . . Aunt Loretta doesn't look like herself, but she doesn't look broken.

A ghetto has tall buildings and empty lots, trash all over the street and city noise. Here the houses are two stories; the houses have trees in front and everyone has a yard. I always told Tracy she was wrong, but now I think Tracy was right. The ghetto looks different in different places, but if you live there, it makes you feel the same.

Grandma sees these things when she talks about them and gestures with her hands like she's painting brush strokes in the air. The way Grandma paints her dreams for me, there's a low sky.

She has soft hands, and she smells like lavender.

God stands to the side wondering why we keep asking for wishes to come true from empty chairs.