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The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Kindle Edition
"The Girl Who Fell from the Sky can actually fly." —The New York Times Book Review
Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.
Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.
This searing and heart-wrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society’s ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAlgonquin Books
- Publication dateJanuary 11, 2011
- File size2783 KB
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"[An] affecting, exquisite debut novel . . . Durrow's powerful novel is poised to find a place among classic stories of the American experience." --Miami Herald
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From the Back Cover
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
a novel By Heidi W. DurrowALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Copyright © 2010 Heidi W. DurrowAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-56512-680-0
Chapter One
Rachel"You my lucky piece," Grandma says.
Grandma has walked me the half block from the hospital lobby to the bus stop. Her hand is wrapped around mine like a leash.
It is fall 1982 in Portland and it is raining. Puddle water has splashed up on my new shoes. My girl-in-a-new-dress feeling has faded. My new-girl feeling has disappeared.
My hand is in Grandma's until she reaches into a black patent leather clutch for change.
"Well, aren't those the prettiest blue eyes on the prettiest little girl," the bus driver says as we climb aboard. The new-girl feeling comes back and I smile.
"This my grandbaby. Come to live with me." Grandma can't lose Texas.
"Thank you, ma'am," I say. I mind my manners around strangers. Grandma is still a stranger to me.
I know only a few things about Grandma. She's a gardener. She has soft hands, and she smells like lavender.
For Christmas, Grandma always sent Robbie and me a card with a new ten-dollar bill wrapped in aluminum foil. On the back of the envelope where she pressed extra hard there'd be a small smudge. The card smelled like the lavender lotion she uses to keep her hands soft.
Grandma doesn't have a single wrinkle on her anywhere. She has eggplant brown skin as smooth as a plate all because of the lotion she sends for special from the South. "They got better roots down there-better dirt for making a root strong." Her body is a bullet. She is thick and short. Her dark hair is pulled back and is covered by a plastic bonnet.
"Well, aren't you lucky to have a special grandma," the bus driver says. "Pretty and lucky."
This is the picture I want to remember: Grandma looks something like pride. Like a whistle about to blow.
Grandma puts the change in for my fare. She wipes the rain off my face. "We almost home."
When we find our seats, she says something more, but I cannot hear it. She is leaning across me like a seat belt and speaks into my bad ear-it is the only lasting injury from the accident. Her hands are on me the whole ride, across my shoulder, on my hand, stroking my hair to smooth it flat again. Grandma seems to be holding me down, as if I might fly away or fall.
The bus ride is seven stops and three lights. Then we are home. Grandma's home, the new girl's home in a new dress.
Grandma was the first colored woman to buy a house in this part of Portland. That's what Grandma says. When she moved in, the German dairy store closed, and the Lutheran church became African Methodist. Amen. That part's Grandma too. All of Grandma's neighbors are black now. And most came from the South around the same time Grandma did.
This is the same house Pop and Aunt Loretta grew up in. On the dining room mantel are photographs of me and Pop. Of me and Grandma. Of me and Robbie. Of me, but none of Mor, that's mom in Danish.
"There, see that smile? That was the time I came to visit you over Christmas. Remember? Playing bingo. Oh! And I have a little present for you."
When she comes back, she holds a large wrapped box. I open the box. Make my first deals with myself. I will not be sad. I will be okay. Those promises become my layers. The middle that no one will touch.
"Thank you," I say and pull out two black Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls.
"Aunt Loretta gave you her room. Dressed it all up in pink. Did you know that's her favorite color?"
I nod.
"And look at your hair. All this pretty long hair looking all wild from outside."
"We're gonna wash that tonight," she continues. "Your Aunt Loretta will help you. Bet she know how to do something better with that mess of hair than what you had done before. You're gonna go to school Monday and be the prettiest girl there."
She doesn't say better than your mama. She doesn't say anything about my mother, because we both know that the new girl has no mother. The new girl can't be new and still remember. I am not the new girl. But I will pretend.
The two rag dolls that Grandma gave me sleep at the bottom of the bed. Grandma and Aunt Loretta want to check on the poor baby. That's me.
I close my eyes and pretend sleep. I pretend sleep all the time now. "Poor baby, so tired." Grandma pats my hair.
It's the kind of hair that gets nappy. Grandma tried to brush it out before bedtime. I held real still, but it still hurt. She said I was tender-headed. The comb got stuck in the bottom in the back. Grandma said the tangled part is what's called my kitchen.
"She's got good hair. Leave her be." Aunt Loretta pulled the comb out, untangled each hair. "It's the same place where my kitchen is," Aunt Loretta said. "Where I get the naps in my hair too."
"Black girls with a lot of hair don't need to be so tender-headed," Grandma said. My middle layers collapsed. And I cried. And cried and cried.
Now my nappy kitchen head is on the pillow. All wild, like Grandma says. And I'm done crying. I don't want to be a mess or nappy or be so tender. "I'll wash it tomorrow, Mama," Aunt Loretta says. Her voice is honey.
I want to be as beautiful as Aunt Loretta. She smiles all the time even when she looks at the picture of Uncle Nathan. Her teeth are white like paper and straight. She shows her teeth when she smiles. I have a cover-up-my-teeth smile. Maybe I started doing it when Pop called me Snaggletooth.
Aunt Loretta is nut brown and knows she's beautiful. She was Rose Festival princess and got to meet President John F. Kennedy. Her skin is even prettier than Grandma's and she doesn't use that sent-for lotion.
Grandma and Aunt Loretta leave the door open enough to let light in. But still I press my back into the bed and open my eyes. No more pretend sleep. Now I will be real awake. Make sure the dreams don't come. Stay awake. Stay away from dreaming.
Tomorrow is my first day at a new school. I have a new notebook and pencils and a pencil holder with a zipper. I am going to think about school and practice the best cursive and learn all the big words I can know. I am going to concentrate. Be a good girl.
In my diary I write: "This is Day 2." Second day at Grandma's house. I wish I could go back home. Home to before the summer in Chicago. Back to base housing in Germany when there was me and Robbie and Mor and Pop. And everything was okay. Even though there wouldn't be an Ariel, that would be okay too.
Aunt Loretta makes pancakes special for me even though she has no business in the kitchen. Two pancakes and not enough syrup is what she gives me. Syrup that makes a stain in the pancake middle, gone so fast like the pancake is thirsty. I eat exactly what she gives me.
Aunt Loretta eats only one pancake. And Grandma none because her teeth don't set right. There is something dangerous about pancakes because Grandma watches us eat. "How you gonna catch a lizard with your backside loading you down?" Grandma fusses at Aunt Loretta. I am smart and know that when she says "lizard" she means husband. That is called learning the meaning from the context. Because Grandma says it and she touches Aunt Loretta's face at the same time. That means she's talking about being pretty and being worth something and making it count.
Aunt Loretta laughs. And so do I. They are happy that I am laughing. It's the first time as the new girl.
"I don't need a lizard, Mama."
When Aunt Loretta says "Mama," I think of saying "Mor" and how I don't get to say it anymore. I am caught in before and after time. Last-time things and firsts. Last-time things make me sad like the last time I called for Mor and used Danish sounds. I feel my middle fill up with sounds that no one else understands. Then they reach my throat. What if these sounds get stuck in me?
I laugh harder, but the real laugh feels trapped inside too.
School is not a first-time thing. I sit in the front, where I always do. I sit quietly, like I am supposed to do. I raise my hand before speaking and write my name in the top right-hand corner of the paper. And the date. Because this is what good students do.
Mrs. Anderson is homeroom and language arts. She is a black woman. I think about this and don't know why. It is something I'm supposed to know but not think about. Mrs. Anderson is my first black woman teacher.
It makes me go back in my mind: Mrs. Marshall, first grade, favorite; Mrs. Price, second grade, not so nice; Mrs. Mamiya, third grade, beautiful; Mrs. Breedlove, fourth grade, smart; Mr. Engels, fifth grade, bald and deep voice. I remember they are all white.
There are fifteen black people in the class and seven white people. And there's me. There's another girl who sits in the back. Her name is Carmen LaGuardia, and she has hair like mine, my same color skin, and she counts as black. I don't understand how, but she seems to know.
I see people two different ways now: people who look like me and people who don't look like me.
"Rachel Morse?"
"Present."
"Where are you from?"
I answer: "4725 Northeast Cleveland Avenue, Portland, Oregon, 97217." I hear laughter behind me.
Day 2 becomes Day 3. And the next day and the next. I count each day in my diary. Each day gets a new page.
Grandma thinks I am adjusting well. She says, "I think you adjustin just fine." I want her to put s's on the ends of her words and not say "fixin to" when she's about to do something. The kids in school say that, and I know they're not as smart as me.
There is a girl who wants to beat me up. She says, "You think you so cute." Her name is Tamika Washington. She says, "I'm fixin to kick your ass." Sometimes she pulls my hair. In gym class she grabbed my two braids. I said "ouch" really loud even though I didn't mean to and Mrs. Karr heard. She said, "Tamika," and blew the whistle real loud. And Tamika said, "Miss K. I'm just playin with her. Dang." When Mrs. Karr turned away again that's when Tamika said it. "I'm fixin to kick your ass after school. You think you so cute with that hair."
I am light-skinned-ed. That's what the other kids say. And I talk white. I think new things when they say this. There are a lot of important things I didn't know about. I think Mor didn't know either. They tell me it is bad to have ashy knees. They say stay out of the rain so my hair doesn't go back. They say white people don't use washrags, and I realize now, at Grandma's, I do. They have a language I don't know but I understand. I learn that black people don't have blue eyes. I learn that I am black. I have blue eyes. I put all these new facts into the new girl.
And I am getting better at covering up the middle parts. When Anthony Miller kicks the back of my chair in class, I focus on the bump bump bump until he stops. I can focus on the bump bump bump and not say anything. I hear the smile on his face as he bumps my chair. Is he counting the number of times he can bump before I tell on him? I don't tell on him. And when Antoine mocks me in a baby voice when I answer the questions right, I don't have to cry anymore or be so tender. When something starts to feel like hurt, I put it in this imaginary bottle inside me. It's blue glass with a cork stopper. My stomach tightens and my eyeballs get hot. I put all of that inside the bottle.
Aunt Loretta brushes my hair each morning and only sometimes makes pancakes. She's bought a special brush for me that's pink with white bristles. She holds my hair in her hands the same way as Mor did. Aunt Loretta's hands get lost in my hair. She has small wrists, tiny enough for me to wrap my fingers around. She has perfect red nails. She uses the nail on her right index finger to make the middle part. It doesn't scratch. She parts my hair from the front to the back to make the line. I feel the line she makes on my scalp. Grandma uses a sharp comb and it feels like she's dividing me in half.
Today is school picture day. Aunt Loretta wants to brush my hair special. I sit between her legs on her bedroom floor still in my favorite pajamas. Aunt Loretta smells of toothpaste and fresh white soap. I bunch my legs against my chest and wrap my arms around my knees. I feel like a boxer getting ready to fight in the ring. Not tender, just taken care of.
"Why do the other kids talk about my eyes?"
"Why?" Aunt Loretta says as if I should already know. "Because they're such a pretty blue."
I giggle when Aunt Loretta says this. A giggle can mean thank you or please stop looking at me. This time it means the first thing because it's school picture day and it's important to be pretty.
"Yeah, they're just like Mor's," I say, and I feel something like happy. I have said "Mor" out loud and made some of the inside sounds outside. I have said "Mor" and the glass inside me didn't shake.
I try the sounds again. "When Mor was little she had two braids in her hair too. Hestehaler. That means horsetails. I saw a picture." In the picture Mor is nine or ten or maybe eleven years old like me. She sits at a desk that opens up like a box.
"Well, today we're going to do something a little different," Aunt Loretta says. "Okay?"
I nod and know that it doesn't matter if I don't agree. I am a doll.
"I remember when I was a little girl," Aunt Loretta says. "I'd have to sit by the stove to get my hair pressed out. If I didn't smell the hair burning I knew it would be no good."
I have heard this story before. I think it's embarrassing but don't know why.
Aunt Loretta puts her nails in my hair and makes one part then another. She uses the big curling iron that goes in her hair even though my hair has curls. I smell hair burning.
I see a girl in the mirror when she is done, and she is not me. There are so many pieces to my hair. Nothing lays flat. There are stiff curls that don't wrap around my finger.
"You look like your grandmother spit you out herself." I don't want to be spit.
I am the letter M and somewhere in the middle for class pictures. When I sit down, my feet don't reach the floor. My middle is all jumbled. I do my best cover-up-my-teeth smile, but the corners of my mouth barely move.
"Such a pretty black girl," the photographer says. "Why won't you smile?"
Grandma's house is two blocks away from the Wonder Bread factory, which means that my house is two blocks away from it too. What's hers is mine, she says. Simple math. Mr. Kimble, my math teacher, says that's what's called the transitive property.
Only I don't like what's Grandma's: an oily pomade she wears that smears my cheek when she kisses me, a green velvet couch with deep brown swirls that no one can sit on unless special company comes by, a porcelain music box decorated with people who look like kings and queens and a servant with a broken arm, a dresser full of fabric she's saving for the day I learn how to sew. Hers is the sent-for lotion, the rocking chair on the porch, and the pictures on the mantel, and the powder that looks like cornstarch that she puts in my underwear drawer. She has a lot more things but these are the main ones. Grandma is a collector. I think of her collections as junk and scraps. Like the other volunteer sorters at the Salvation Army, Grandma sets aside the good stuff for herself. Good stuff is a silver spoon, or a china teacup with or without a matching plate, or a dress-up purse with four beads missing and a torn strap. Grandma has boxes of mismatched coffee cups and saucers and yards of corduroy, gingham, silk, and lace stuffed into dozens of drawers and boxes in the basement. All these things are worth something but maybe only that Grandma sees.
Grandma's things are mine, and I am not allowed to touch them. Only sometimes I do. Because how can you have something without holding it?
On Tuesdays we go to the Wonder Bread factory store and buy old bread even though it doesn't make any sense that the bread would be old because it comes from just next door. But maybe that's one of those things that works differently here in civilian life. That's what Pop would call it. He's a tech sergeant in the United States Air Force. He makes maps.
Civilian life is different than military life. In military life, you buy groceries at the commissary. Civilians buy groceries at "the store" even though that could mean Fred Meyer or the deli. Also in military life, you move a lot. Before we lived in Germany, we lived in Turkey. Pop never wanted to be stationed in the States. I don't know why. The good part about moving is you get to make new friends. The bad part is you don't see the old ones. Civilians live in the same house or apartment and know the same people their whole lives.
"Why would you want to live in the same place your whole life?" I ask my new friend Tracy. She's white. She looks at me like I'm crazy.
"You have to live where your parents live. That's just how it is," she says, and I make her not my friend anymore.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Girl Who Fell from the Skyby Heidi W. Durrow Copyright © 2010 by Heidi W. Durrow. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B004GKNBX8
- Publisher : Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 11, 2011)
- Publication date : January 11, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 2783 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 300 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #434,843 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #285 in Black & African American Literary Fiction
- #1,440 in Education & Reference (Kindle Store)
- #2,563 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Heidi W. Durrow is the New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books), which received writer Barbara Kingsolver's 2008 PEN/Bellwether Prize, and is already a book club favorite. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky has been hailed as one of the Best Novels of 2010 by the Washington Post, a Top 10 Book of 2010 by The Oregonian, a Top 10 Buzz Book of 2010 by the Boston Herald and named a Top 10 Debut of 2010 by Booklist. Ebony Magazine named Heidi as one of its Power 100 Leaders of 2010 along with writers Edwidge Danticat, and Malcolm Gladwell. Heidi was nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Debut.
Heidi W. Durrow is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School.
Originally from Portland, Oregon, Heidi has worked as a corporate litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and as a Life Skills trainer to professional athletes of the National Football League and National Basketball Association. She was the co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat and now host of The Mixed Experience; and was a founder and executive producer of the now defunct Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival. She is now spearheading the Mixed Remixed Festival, an annual free public event, that celebrates stories of the Mixed experience. She is an occasional essay contributor to National Public Radio.
She is the recipient of a Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Writers, a Jentel Foundation Residency, and won top honors in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Contest. She has received grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the American Scandinavian Foundation, the Roth Endowment and the American Antiquarian Society. She has also received Fellowships to the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony and the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Durrow's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Ebony Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Callaloo, Poem/Memoir/Story, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Essence magazine, and Newsday.
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The story is about Rachel primarily, but it is also about Jamie who becomes Brick by the end.
Rachel is half Danish and half black and must live with her grandmother in Portland, OR after an event that happens in Rachel's life when she was living in Chicago. The event is the main mystery of the book, so I will not spoil what happened. All we know is Rachel now lives with her black grandmother in a black neighborhood, her father has gone back on assignment, and her mother and brothers are gone.
A large portion of the book is not only about Rachel's past, but about how Rachel now must fit in a primarily black community as she is light skinned and bright eyed. We follow Rachel throughout her life from early childhood into adulthood as she struggles with not quite fitting into either of the two communities- the white community, where she is too dark, and the black community, where she is too white. Men find her attractive, as she has developed early, and exotic, which doesn't help with the women within each community.
As stated, it is also the story of Jamie aka Brick, who is the sole witness to the event that happened in Rachel's life. His mother is a drug using prostitute of sorts and is absent in Jamie's life. He runs away one day, as a young child in search of Rachel. He only knows she is in Portland, but can only afford a bus ticket half way there. We follow his life as a homeless child growing up on the streets who is used by two other homeless people to make money off of him. Will he find Rachel and be able to tell her what happened? Hint: yes!
The story is told through the eyes of many of the characters, primarily Rachel's, who's narration changes the older she gets. I really appreciated this as most authors don't bother to change sentence structure or tone as the person ages. Durrow did this for Rachel and Brick.
We also get glimpses into the event through the eyes of Rachel's mother, who kept a journal which is found by her neighbor and friend. Even though we get glimpses of the event and know what happened, the bigger question is why did this event happen and we are left in the dark until the very end of the book.
The characters are well developed and grow throughout the book. The writing is top notch too. Durrow definitely drew from her own life and that shows throughout the book, especially within the tension of not fitting into one culture. My copy had an interview with her, where she opens up about some of her life.
I really enjoyed this one and would highly recommend it. It might get dusty a few times in the room, but it is definitely worth the read. I gave this one 4 stars.
Author Heidi Durrow, daughter of a black father and Danish mother, has created a beautifully written and poignant story that examines many of the issues biracial and bicultural children face. My husband and I have one child born in Mexico, one born in the U.S. For years, every fall at school registration I corrected my children's emergency cards to read "½ Anglo, ½ Latino." The secretaries would say they couldn't officially be half and half, which one was it? Some years I'd say "Anglo," some "Latino" until the district finally decided there were so many half `n halves that they added "mixed race"--and let's not even get into the Latino-isn't-a-race argument!
Durrow's tale should resonate with members of this fast-growing group and with their parents. It's filled with plenty of thought-provoking scenes that should leave readers of all colors reflecting.
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!)
one of the reasons y rachel's voice is so well defined is because her perspective coincides with the author's own personal experiences. but the father's? seemed a bit convenient 2 just have him b a drunk deadbeat. in fact, that's kinda one of the inadvertent points of contention i have w/ biracial stories (perhaps a personal foible), the demonization of half a biracial child's ancestry, usually the black half. by simple omission, the mom, her language, & her homeland were pretty much made ideal & dreamy. the black half though? not so much. at the same time, there was something in the father's story that i felt could've been better told. this was the author's debut novel. i think a more advanced writer would've rounded the dad's side out a bit more. or, at least, about as much as the mom. the mom's diary was given whole chapters. the dad's letters? not so much. so there's a glaring imbalance there. i think the father's story was just as important as the mother's. and that's what i mean. society usually just writes off the (black) father as thought his story's already known. but there's always more to consider.
the black side of rachel was demonized every time she was made to feel guilty about remembering her mom, speaking her name or her language, every time she was told she was acting white and urged not to as though it was something awful rather than it being a part of her. it was her grandmama doing that, expecting her to be "fast like her mom." it's like the grandmama was waiting for her to fail, to live up to her white side so she tried to exorcise it in her upbringing. her black schoolmates hated on her simply because her white features made her stand out. she was made to feel guilty for liking the white guy by her black friend. etc etc. all that negativity came from the black side. however, her white encounters were pretty positive and nurturing. despite the white boyfriend abusing her mother, ultimately, her mom abused them worst and she was STILL given a sympathetic slant in the story. which is why it feels a bit imbalanced to me. or, at the very least, we're dealing with an unreliable narrator, which is understandable considering her trauma.
3 stars (that should actually be 3.5). all in all, looking forward to more from Ms. Durrow.
Top reviews from other countries
História diferente, envolvente.
Daqueles livros que te acompanham pelos dias , que te fazem pensar na história o tempo todo .
Versandt ging schnell und kam unversehrt an.
The main character was young and therefore learning about how the opinions of others shapes lives and the devastating effect it can have.
The characters entwined throughout the book and the writers technique delivered this well.
Excellent imagery was used especially at the beginning of the story. There were lots of clues throughout the book as to the era it is set in and the way people thought.
It left you asking a lot of questions of both the main character and society....