hello and welcome to chapter 13 of the homegoing audiobook my name is Miss Deming and we are almost at the end this is the second to last chapter in homegoing by yeah Jesse and um I couldn't be more excited to read it with you so we are starting on page 264. so meet me there um for context our family trees on the screen Marjorie is on athea's side of the family tree and she's the daughter of yah and Esther her grandmother is akua who they call the crazy woman um who was the one who set the fires all right as we're embarking on this second to last chapter this is the last time we're seeing um a chapter from the perspective of afia's family tree next chapter is Marcus who is Essie's final descendant and so now's a really great time for Jesse to really Hammer home her themes in this novel the lessons that she's teaching us so keep that in mind as we read page 264. here we go excuse me sister I take you to see Castle Cape Coast Castle five studies you come from America I take UC slave ship just five cities the boy was probably around 10 years old only a few years younger than Marjorie herself was he had been following her since she and her grandmother's housekeeper got off the trotro the locals did this waiting for tourists to disembark so that they could con them into paying for things ghanians knew were free Marjorie tried to ignore him but she was hot and tired still feeling the sweat of the other people who had been pressed against her back and chest and sides on the nearly eight-hour trotrow ride from Accra I take UC Cape Coast Castle assist just five cities he repeated he wore no shirt and she could feel the heat radiating off of his skin coming toward her after all the traveling she couldn't stand another strange body so near hers and so she soon found herself shouting in tweet I'm from Ghana stupid can't you see the boy didn't stop his English but you come from America angry she kept walking her backpack straps were heavy against her shoulders and she knew they would leave marks Marjorie was in Ghana visiting her grandmother as she did every summer some time ago the woman had moved to Cape Coast to be near the water in eduesto where she had lived before everyone called her crazy woman but in Cape Coast they knew her only as old lady so old they said she could recite an entire history of Ghana from memory alone is that my child coming to me the woman asks she was leaning on a cane made of curved wood and her back mimicked that curve rounding down so that the woman looked like she was in constant supplication she said my old lady I've missed you Marjorie said she hugged her grandmother too forcefully and the woman yelled you come to break sorry sorry old lady called her house boy to take marjorie's bag and slowly gingerly Marjorie pulled the straps from her aching shoulders her grandmother saw her wince and asked are you Kurt it's nothing the response was a reflex whenever her father or grandmother asked her about pain Marjorie would say she had never known him as a young child someone had told her that the scars her father wore on his face and her grandmother on her hands and feet were born of great pain and because Marjorie had no scars that resembled those she could never bring herself to complain of pain once when she was just a little girl she had watched a ringworm on her knee grow and grow and grow she'd hidden it from her parents for nearly two weeks until the worm overtook the curve where thigh met cap making it difficult for her to bend when she'd finally showed her parents her mother had vomited and her father had snatched her in his arms and rushed her to the emergency room the orderly who came to call them back had been startled not by the Worm but by her father's scar she'd asked if he was the one who needed help looking at her grandmother's hands now it was almost impossible to distinguish scarred from wrinkled skin the whole landscape of the woman's body had transformed into a ruin the young woman had been toppled leaving this they took a cab back to old lady's house marjorie's grandmother lived in a big open bungalow on the beach like the kind the few white people who lived in town had when Marjorie was in third grade her father and mother had left Alabama and returned to Ghana in order to help old lady build it they stayed for many months leaving Marjorie in the care of a friend of theirs when summer came and Marjorie was finally able to go visit them she fell in love at the beautiful house in Huntsville oh beautiful house with no doors it was five times the size of her family's tiny apartment in Huntsville and its front yard was the beach not a sad slab of dying grass like the yard she had always known she spent that whole summer wondering how her parents could leave a place like this have you been good my own child old lady asked handing Marjorie song of the chocolate she kept in the kitchen Marjorie had a sweet tooth reserved for chocolate her mother often joked that Marjorie must have been birthed from a coconut split open and wide Marjorie nodded accepting the treat are we going to the water today she asked her mouth full the chocolate melting Steve Tweety her grandmother answered sharply knocking Marjorie on the back of her head sorry Marjorie mumbled at home in Huntsville her parents spoke to her in Twi and she answered them in English they had done this since the day Marjorie had brought a note from her kindergarten teacher the note read Marjorie does not volunteer to answer questions she rarely speaks does she know English if she doesn't you should consider English as a second language classes or perhaps Marjorie would benefit from Special Care we have a great special ed we have great special ed classes here her parents were livid her father read the note aloud four times shouting what does this foolish woman know after each repetition but from then on they had quizzed Marjorie on her English every night when she tried to answer their questions and tweet they would say speak English until now it was the first language that popped into her head she had to remind herself that her grandmother required the opposite yes we will go to the water now put away your things going to the beach with old lady was one of marjorie's favorite things in the world to do her grandmother was not like other grandmothers at night old lady spoke in her sleep sometimes she thought sometimes she paced the room Marjorie had heard the stories about the burns her grandmother carried on her hands and feet about the one on her father's face she knew why the address of people had called her crazy woman but to her her grandmother had never been crazy old lady dreamed dreams and saw visions they walked to the beach old lady moved so slowly it was like she wasn't moving at all neither of them wore shoes and when they got to the edge of the sand they waited for the water to come up and lick the spaces between their toes clean the sand that was hidden there Marjorie watched as her grandmother closed her eyes and she waited patiently for the old woman to speak it was what they had come for what they always came for are you wearing a stone her grandmother asked instinctively Marjorie raised her hand to the necklace her father had given it to her only a year before saying that she was finally old enough to care for it it had belonged to old lady and to abena before her and to James and Quay and afia the beauty before that and had begun with Mommy the woman who had set a great fire her father had told her that the necklace was a part of their family history and she was to never take it off never give it away now it reflected the ocean water before them gold waves shimmery in the black stone yes old lady she said her grandmother took her hand and once more they felt silent you are in this water she finally said Marjorie nodded her head soberly the day she was born 13 years ago all the way across the Atlantic her parents had mailed her umbilical cord to old lady so that the woman could put it into the ocean it was old lady's only request that if her son and daughter-in-law both old themselves by the time they decided to get married and move to America ever had a child they would send something of that child back to Ghana our family began here in Cape Coast old lady said she pointed to the cape Coast Castle in my dreams I kept seeing this Castle but I did not know why one day I came to these Waters and I could feel the spirits of our ancestors calling to me some were free and they spoke to me from the sand but some others were trapped deep deep in the water so that I had to wait out to hear their voices I waited out so far the war almost took me down to meet those spirits that were trapped so deep in the sea that they would never be free when they were living they had not known where they came from and so dead they did not know how to get to dry land I put you in here so that if your spirit ever wandered you would know where home was Marjorie nodded as her grandmother took her hand and walked her farther and farther out into the water it was their summer ritual her grandmother reminding her how to come home Marjorie returned to Alabama Three Shades Darker and five pounds heavier her period had come while she was with her grandmother and the old woman had clapped her hands and sang songs to celebrate marjorie's Womanhood she didn't want to leave Cape Coast but school was starting and her parents wouldn't let her stay any longer she was entering high school and while she had always hated Alabama the newer bigger school had instantly reminded her of why her family lived on the Southeast side of Huntsville they were the only black family on the Block the only black people from miles and miles and miles at her new high school there were more black children than Marjorie was used to seeing in Alabama but it only took a few conversations with them for Marjorie to realize that they were not the same kind of black that she was that indeed she was the wrong kind why talk like that Tisha the leader of the pack had asked her the first day of high school when she joined them for lunch like what Marjorie asked and Tisha had repeated it her accent turning almost British in order to capture her impression of Marjorie like what the next day Marjorie Sat by herself reading Lord of the Flies for English class she held the book in one hand and a fork in the other she was so engrossed in the book that she didn't realize that the chicken she had pierced with her fork hadn't made it to her mouth until she tasted air she finally looked up to see Tisha and the other black girls staring at her by reading that book Tisha asked Marjorie stammer I I have to read it for class I have to read at full class teach a minute you sound like a white girl white girl white girl white girl they kept chanting and it was all Marjorie could do to keep from crying in Ghana whenever a white person appeared there was always a child there to point him out a small group of children dark and shiny in the equatorial Sun would extend their little fingers toward the person whose skin was different from theirs and Shout obronio brony they would giggle delighted by the difference when Marjorie had first seen children do this she'd watched as the white man whose skin color had been told to him grew shocked offended why do they keep saying that he'd asked the friend who was showing him around marjorie's father pulled her aside that night and asked her if she knew the answer to the white man's question and she had Shrugged her father had told her that the word had come to mean something entirely different from what it used to me that the young of Ghana itself an infant country had been born to a place emptied of its colonizers because they didn't see white men every day the way people of his mother's generation and older had the word could take on new meaning for them they lived in a Ghana where they were the majority where theirs was the only skin color for miles around to them to call someone o'broni was an innocent act an interpretation of race as skin color now keeping her head down and fighting back tears as Tisha and her friends called her white girl Marjorie was made aware yet again that here white could be the way a person talked black the music a person listened to in Ghana you could only be what you were what your skin announced to the world don't mind them marjorie's mother Esther said that night as she stroked marjorie's hair don't mind them my smart girl my beautiful girl the next day Marjorie ate lunch in the English teacher's lounge her teacher Mrs Pinkston was a fat walnut-skinned woman with a laugh that sounded like the slow build of an approaching train she carried a large pink handbag that she would pull books out of unendingly like a magician's hat in her head Marjorie called the books rabbits they know Mrs Pinkston said passing Marjorie a cookie they don't know a thing Mrs Pinkston was marjorie's favorite teacher one of two black teachers in a school that served almost 2 000 students she was the only person Marjorie knew who had a copy of her father's book The ruin of a Nation begins in the homes of its people the book was her father's life work he was 63 when he finished it approaching 70 when he and her mother finally had her he'd taken the title from an old Asante proverb and used it to discuss slavery and colonialism Marjorie who had read every book on her family's bookshelves had once spent an entire afternoon trying to read her father's book she'd only made it to page two when she told her father this he said that it was something she wouldn't understand until she was much older he said that people need time in order to be able to see things clearly what do you think about the book Mrs Pinkston said pointing to the copy of Lord of the Flies that dangled from marjorie's hands I like it Marjorie said but do you love it do you feel it inside you Marjorie shook her head she didn't know what it meant to feel a book inside her but she didn't want to tell her English teacher that lest it disappoint her Mrs Pinkston laughed for moving train laugh leaving Marjorie to her reading we're at the bottom of page 270. and so Marjorie spent three years this way searching for books that she loved that she could feel inside her by senior year she had read almost everything on the South Wall of the school's library at least a thousand books and she was working her way through the north wall that's a good one she had just brought down middle mark from the shelf and was taking in the smell of the book when the boy spoke to her you like Elliot Marjorie asked she had seen him around recently but she couldn't quite remember where with blonde hair and blue eyes he looked like a little boy she'd seen in a Cheerios commercial once now grown up he put his index finger to his lips don't tell anyone he said and she smiled despite herself my name is Marjorie Graham they shook hands and Graham told her about pigeon feathers the book he was reading he told her that his family had just moved there from Germany that his father was in the military that his mother had died long ago Marjorie must have spoken too but she couldn't remember what she said only that she'd smiled so much her cheeks ached before they knew it the bell rang and lunch hour was over and they went on to their next class from then on they saw each other every day they read together in the library while everyone else ate lunch they sat only inches apart at a big long table that could have exceeded 30 or more the many empty seats giving them no excuse to explain their proximity they stopped talking as much as they had that first day reading together was enough sometimes Graham would leave a note with his own writing from Marjorie to find they were mostly little poems or fragmented stories she was too shy to show him the things that she had written at night when she went home she would wait for her parents to go to bed before turning on her lamp to read Graham's notes in a soft light Daddy when did you know you liked mama she asked at breakfast the next day her father had suffered from a heart attack two years before and now ate a bowl of oatmeal every day he was so old that marjorie's teachers always assumed he was her grandfather he wiped his lips with his napkin and cleared his throat who told you I like your mother he asked Marjorie rolled her eyes as her father started to laugh did your mother tell you that abranoma you are too young to like anyone concentrate on your studies he was out the door headed to teach his history course at the community college before Marjorie could protest she had always hated it when her father called her dove it was her special name the nickname born with her because of her Asante name but it had always made Marjorie feel small somehow young and fragile she was not small she was not young either she was old so old her breasts had grown to the size of her mother's so large she sometimes had to carry them in her hands when walking naked through her bedroom to keep them from slapping against her chest who do you like who marjorie's mother asked coming into the room with fresh laundry in her hands though her parents had lived in America for nearly 15 years Esther still would not use a washing machine she washed all the family's undergarments by hand in the kitchen sink no one Marjorie asked has someone come to ask you to prom Esther asked reading widely marjorie's side five years ago she had watched a 2020 special on proms Across America with her mother and her mother had been delighted by it she said that she had never seen anything like the girls in their long dresses and the boys in their suits the thought that her daughter could be one of those special girls was a hope that flicked like light flickered like light in Esther's eye just as it stung like dust in marjories Marjorie was one of 30 black people after school none of them had been asked to prompt the year before oh mama God I am not God and I have never been her mother said pulling a lacy black bra from the depths of the sink water if a boy likes you you have to make it known that you like him too otherwise you will never do anything I lived in your father's house for many many years before he asked me to marry him I was a foolish girl hoping he would see that I wanted the same thing he did without ever making it known were it not for old ladies intervention who knows if he would have ever done anything that woman has strong powers of will that night Marjorie tucked Graham's poem under her pillow hoping she had inherited her grandmother's willpower that the words he'd written would float up into her ear as she slept blossom into a dream we're at the top of 273. Mrs Pinkston was putting on a black cultural event for the school and she asked Marjorie if she would read a poem the event called The Waters we weighed in was unlike anything the school had ever done before and it was to take place at the beginning of May well after Black History Month had passed all you have to do is tell your story Mrs Pinkston said talk about what being African-American means to you but I'm not African-American Marjorie said so she couldn't exactly read the look on Mrs Pinkston's face Marjorie knew instantly that she had said the wrong thing she wanted to explain it to Mrs Kingston but she didn't know how she wanted to tell Mrs Pinkston that at home they had a different word for African Americans that akata people were different from guns too long gone from the mother continent to continue calling it The Mother continent she wanted to tell Mrs Pinkston that she could feel herself being pulled away too almost a Kata too long gone from Ghana to be Ghanaian but the look on Mrs Pinkston's face stopped her from explaining herself at all listen Marjorie I'm going to tell you something that maybe nobody's told you yet here in this country it doesn't matter where you came from first to the white people running things you're here now and here Black is Black is Black she got up from her seat and poured them each a cup of coffee Marjorie didn't really even like coffee it was too bitter The Taste clung to the back of her throat like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to enter her body or be breathed out of her mouth Mrs Pinkston drank the coffee but Marjorie just looked at hers briefly for only a second she thought she could see her face reflected in it that night Marjorie went to see a movie with Graham when he came to pick her up she asked him if he would park his car one street over she wasn't ready to tell her parents yet good idea Graham said and Marjorie wondered if his father knew where he was when the movie ended Graham drove her into a clearing in the woods it was one of those places that other kids supposedly went to make out but Marjorie had been through it a couple of times and it was always empty it was empty this night Graham had a bottle of whiskey in his back seat and though she detested the taste of alcohol Marjorie sniffed from it slowly while she drank Graham pulled out a cigarette after he lit it he kept playing with the lighter making the fire appear then disappear again would you stop that please Marjorie asked once you started waving the lighter around what Graham asked the lighter would you put it away please Ram gave her a strange look but he didn't say anything and so she didn't have to explain ever since she had heard the story of how her father and grandmother got their scars she had been terrified of Fire when she was just a little girl the Fire Woman of her grandmother's dreams had haunted marjorie's own waking hours she had only heard about her from her grandmother's stories on those days when they walked to the water so that her grandmother could tell her what she knew of their ancestors and yet Marjorie thought she could see the Fire Woman in the blue and orange glow of the stove in hot coals in lighters she feared that the nightmares would come for her too that she too would be chosen by the ancestors to hear their family's stories but the nightmares never came and so with time her fear of fire had waned but every so often she could still feel her heart catch when she saw fire as though the fire woman's Shadow still worked what'd you think of the movie Graham asked putting the lighter away Marjorie Shrugged it was the only response she could manage because she hadn't been thinking at all about the movie instead she thought about the location of Grant's hands in relationship to the popcorn or the armrests they shared she thought about his laugh when he'd found something funny about whether or not the tilt of his head toward the left toward her was an invitation for her to tilt her own head toward him or to rest it on his shoulders in the weeks they had spent getting to know each other Marjorie had become more and more enamored with the blue of his eyes she wrote poems about them the blue like ocean water like clear sky like Sapphire she couldn't capture it at the movies she had thought about how the only real friend she had were characters and novels not real at all and then Graham had appeared and swallowed up a bit of her loneliness with his blue whale eyes the next day she wouldn't for the life of her be able to remember what the movie was called yeah I felt the same way Graham said he took a long drag from the whiskey bottle Marjorie wondered if she was in love how could she know how did anyone know in middle school she had been into Victorian literature the sweeping Romance of it every character in those books was hopelessly in love all the men were wooing all the women being rude it was easier to see what love looked like then the embarrassingly grand unabashed emotion of it now did it look like sitting in a Camry sipping whiskey you still haven't let me read any of your writing Graham said he stifled a burp passing the bottle back to Marjorie I have to write a poem for Mrs Pinkston's assembly next month maybe you can read that one that's a few weeks after prom right her mouth went dry At The Mention Of The Dance she waited for him to say more but he didn't and so she just nodded I'd love to read it I mean if you want me to the bottle was back in his hands and though it was dark Marjorie could make out the deeply wrinkled lines of his knuckles turning red from clutching page 276 that week the Bradford pear tree started to bloom at school everyone said they smelled like semen like sex like a woman's vagina Marjorie hated the smell of them a reflection of her virginity her inability to liken the smell to anything other than rotting fish every year by Summer she would grow accustomed to the smell and by the time the blossoms fell the smell would be nothing more than a distant memory but then spring would come and the smell would resurface loudly announcing itself Marjorie was working on her poem for the waters we weighed in when her father got a call from Ghana old lady was frail her caretaker couldn't tell if the dreams were the same or different old lady didn't leave the bed as often as she used to she the woman who had once been afraid of sleep Marjorie wanted her family to go to Ghana immediately she stopped writing the poem snatched the phone away from her confused father and act that on another day would have earned her a knock on the head and demanded that the caretaker put old lady on the phone even if it meant waking her are you sick she asked her grandmother sick I will soon be dancing with you by the water this summer how can I be sick you won't die what have I told you about death old lady said sharply into the phone her voice sounding stronger than it had at the beginning of their conversation Marjorie tugged at the Ford old lady said that only bodies died Spirits wandered they found awesome or they didn't they stayed with their descendants to guide them through life to comfort them sometimes to scare them into waking from their fog of unloving unliving Marjorie reached for the stone of her neck her ancestors gift promise me you won't leave until I can see you again Marjorie said behind her y'all placed a hand on her shoulder I promise I will never leave you old lady said Marjorie handed the phone back to her father who gave her a strange look she went back to her room on her desk a piece of paper that was supposed to hold a poem simply said water water water water Marjorie and Graham went on another date this time to the U.S facing Rocket Center Graham had never been before but Marjorie and her parents went once a year her mother liked to look at all the pictures of astronauts that lined the halls and her father loved to walk through the museum examining every rocket as though he were trying to learn how to build one himself in some ways Marjorie thought her parents had already traveled through space Landing in a country as foreign to them as the Moon Graham didn't heed the do not touch sons he left ghostly fingerprints on fiberglass cases prints that disappeared almost as soon as he left them America wouldn't have a space program if it weren't for the Germans Graham said do you miss Germany Marjorie asked Graham hardly ever talked about the place where he had done most of his growing up he didn't wear the country on his sleeve the same way she worked on on hers sometimes but military brats get used to moving around he Shrugged and pressed his fingers against a case that held a spacesuit Marjorie pictured his hand pushing through the glass lifting his body into the case fitting him into the suit then losing gravity until his body started to float up up Marjorie what I said would you ever move back to Ghana she thought for a moment of her grandmother and the Sea the castle she thought of the Frantic emotion of cars and bodies on the streets of Cape Coast the wide-hipped women selling fish out of large silver Bulls and the young girls whose breasts had not yet to come in walking down the roads median pressing their face into the windows of the taxis saying ice water and please I beg I don't think so Graham nodded and started to move forward on to the next case Marjorie took his hand just as he was lifting it to press it against the fiberglass she stopped him and said I mostly just feel like I don't belong there as soon as I step off the airplane people can tell that I'm like them but different too they can smell it on me smell what Marjorie looked up trying to capture the right word loneliness maybe or aloneness the way I don't fit here or there my grandmother is the only person who really sees she looks down her hand was shaking so she let go of grams but he took it back and when she looked up again he was leaning down pressing his lips to hers for weeks Marjorie waited for word about her grandmother her parents had hired a new caretaker to watch her every day which only seemed to infuriate her she was getting worse Marjorie didn't know how she knew what she knew at school Marjorie was playing she didn't raise her hand in any of her classes and two of her teachers stopped her to ask if everything was all right she brushed them off instead of eating lunch in the English lounge or reading in the cap in the library she sat in the cafeteria at the corner of a long rectangular table daring anyone who passed by by to do their worst instead Graham came over and sat across from her you okay he asked I haven't really seen you since his voice trailed off but Marjorie wanted him to say it since we kissed since we kissed that day Graham was wearing the school's colors an obnoxious orange calmed only slightly by a soothing bread I'm fine she said you worried about your poem he asked her poem was a collection of fonts on a piece of paper an experiment in a in box letter person all caps no I'm not worried about that Graham nodded carefully and held her gaze she had come to the cafeteria because she wanted to be alone while surrounded by people it was a feeling she sometimes liked like stepping off the plane in Accra and being met by a Sea of Faces that looked like her own for those first few minutes she would capture that anonymity but then the moment would drop someone would approach her ask her if he could carry her bag if he could drive her somewhere if she would feed his baby while she stared back at Graham a brunette girl Marjorie recognized from the hallways approached them Graham she asked I don't normally see you here at lunch I would remember seeing you Graham nodded but didn't say anything the girl had yet to notice Marjorie but Graham's lack of attention pulled her glance away from me toward the person who had wanted she looked at Marjorie for only a second but it was long enough for Marjorie to notice the wrinkle of disgust that had begun to form on her face Graham she whispered as though lowering her voice would keep Marjorie from hearing you shouldn't sit here what to have a strong no I thought apologies we're in the middle of 279 what shouldn't sit here people will start to think again a quick glance well you know I don't know just come sit with us she said at this point she was scanning the room for body language turning anxious I'm fine where I am go Marjorie said and Graham turned toward her it was as if he had forgotten whom he had been arguing for in the first place as if he'd been fighting simply for the seat and not the girl who sat across from it go it's fine and once she had said it she stopped breathing she wanted him to say no to fight harder longer to take her hand across the table and run his red and thumbs over her fingers but he didn't he got up looking almost relieved by the time Marjorie noticed the brunette girl slipping her hand into his to pull him along they were already halfway across the room she had thought Graham was like her a reader a loner but watching him walk away with the girl she knew he was different she saw how easy it was for him to slip in unnoticed as though he had always belonged there prom was seems The Great Gatsby in the decorating days that preceded it the school's floors were littered with sparkles and glitter the night of prom Marjorie was sandwiched between her parents on their couch watching a movie on the television she could hear her parents Whispering about her when she got up to make popcorn something's not right y'all said he had never been good at Whispering at regular volume his voice was a boom from the belly deep and loud she's just a teenager teenagers are like this Esther said Marjorie had heard the other LPNs at the nursing home where Esther work talked like this as if teenagers were wild beasts in a dangerous jungle best to leave them alone when she came back Marjorie tried to look brighter but she couldn't tell if she was succeeding the phone rang and she rushed to pick it up she had asked her grandmother to call her once a month as an assurance even though she knew it was cumbersome for the old woman to have to do so but when she answered the phone she was greeted by Graham's voice Marjorie he asked she was breathing into the phone but she had yet to speak what was there to say I wish I could take you it's just that his voice trailed off but it didn't matter she'd heard it before he was going to go with the brunette he had wanted to take Marjorie but his father didn't think it would be proper the school didn't think it was appropriate as a last defense Marjorie had heard him tell the principal that she was not like other black girls and somehow that had been worse she had already given him up can I still hear your poem he asked I'm reading it next week everyone will hear it you know what I mean in the living room her father had started snoring it was the way he always watched movies she pictured him leaning down onto her mother's shoulders the woman's arms wrapped around him maybe her mother was sleeping too her own head meaning toward yaws her long box braids a curtain hiding their faces theirs was a comfortable love a love that didn't require fighting or hiding when Marjorie had asked her father again when he had known he liked Esther he said he had always known he said it was born in him that he breathed it in with the first Breeze of midwesto that it moved in him like the harmattan there was nothing like love from Marjorie in Alabama I have to go she said to Graham on the phone my parents need me she clicked the phone onto its receiver and went back into the living room her mother was awake staring ahead at the television so she wasn't watching it so was that my own she asked no one Marjorie said the auditorium SAT 2000 from backstage Marjorie could hear the other students filing in the insistent chatter of their boredom she was pacing the room too scared to look out past the curtain beside her Tisha and her friends were practicing a dance to music that played faintly from the boombox you ready Mrs Pinkston asked startling Marjorie her hands were already shaking and she was surprised she didn't drop the poem she was holding no she said yes you are Mrs Pinkston said don't worry you'll be great she kept moving off to check on all the other performers when the program started marjorie's stomach began to hurt she had never spoken in front of so many people before and she was ready to attribute the pain to that but then it settled more deeply a wave of nausea accompanied it but soon both passed this feeling came from time to time her grandmother called it a premonition the body registering something that the world had yet to acknowledge Marjorie sometimes felt it before receiving a bad test score once she got it before a car accident another time she got it only moments before she realized she had lost a ring her father had given her he argued that these things would have happened whether she had felt the feeling or not and perhaps that was true all Margery now was that the feeling told her to brace herself and so bracing herself she stepped onto the stage once Mrs Pinkston had introduced her she knew the lights would be bright but she had not factored in their heat like a million brilliant sun shining down on her she began to sweat passed a palm across her forehead she set her paper down on the podium she had practiced a million times under her breath in class in front of the mirror in her bathroom in the car while her parents drove The Sound of Silence cut by the occasional cough or shuffling of feet taunted Marjorie she leaned into the mic she cleared her throat and then she read split the Castle open find me find you we too felt sand wind Air One felt whip whipped once shipped we too black me you one grew from cocoa soil birthed from nuts skin uncut still bleeding we too Wade the water seemed different but are saying our same sister skin who knew not me not you she looked up a door had creeped open letting more light in there was enough light for her to see her father standing in the door frame but not enough for her to see the tears running down his face the only promise old lady akua the crazy woman of eduesso broke was the last one she made she died in the middle of a sleep she used fear she wanted to be buried on a mountain overlooking the sea Marjorie took the rest of the school year off her grade's so good it didn't make much of a difference she walked with her mother behind the men who were tasked with carrying her grandmother's body up her father had insisted on carrying two though he was so old his presence was more of a burden than a help when they got to the grave site the people began weeping everyone had been crying for days and days on end but Marjorie had yet to the men began digging out the red clay two Mounds stood on either side of the big rectangular hole growing deeper a woodworker had crafted old ladies coffin in a wood the same color as the ground and when the coffin was lowered no one could tell where it ended and the Earth began they began to return the clay to the hole they packed it in tight patting it with the back of the shovel once they had finished the sound echoed off of the mountain into the valley once they put a marker on the grave Marjorie realized that she had forgotten to drop in her column built from the dream stories old lady used to tell when she walked Marjorie to the water she knew her grandmother would have loved to hear it she pulled the poem from her pocket and her Trembling Hands made the words way even though there was little wind Marjorie threw herself onto the funeral Mound crying finally mommy mommy her mother came to lift her up off the ground later Esther told her that it looked like she was going to fly off the cliff down the mountain and into the sea back the end of marjorie's story luckily we see Marjorie return in Marcus's chapter which is the very last chapter of our book um I really hope that you enjoyed going on this journey through homegoing with me and um I'm so excited to embark on the last chapter see you soon