Lena

An Excerpt from Lena: "You crying, Lena?" I felt Dion's little hand on my shoulder. "What would I be crying for?" I gave my eyes one more wipe and glared at her. Dion shrugged. She took a step back from me, hunkered down on her own knapsack. We must have been a sight--two kids in flannel shirts and jeans and hiking boots at a Trailways station--Dion chewing on her collar, me with my head in my hands. She swallowed like she was a little bit scared of what she was gonna say. "Where we going, Lena? You tell me that and I won't ask you anything else--ever again if you don't want me to." People on the outside who didn't understand would probably look at me and Dion and say, "Those kids running away from home." But I knew we were running to something. And to someplace far away from Daddy. Someplace safe. That's where we were going. "Mama's house," I whispered, my voice coming out hoarse and shaky. "We going to Mama's house." Dion shook her head. "Not the lies we tell people--the true thing. Where we going for real?" "Mama's house," I said again, looking away from her. "Lena?" Dion said "Mama's . . . dead." . . . ". . .I know she's dead. I didn't say we were going to her. I said we were going to her house." "And what's gonna happen when we get there?" "You said you wasn't gonna ask no more questions, Dion." Dion nodded and pulled her book out of her knapsack. I took a box of colored pencils out of mine and the brown paper bag our sandwiches had come in and started sketching. I sketched the corWoodson, Jacqueline is the author of 'Lena', published 2000 under ISBN 9780440226697 and ISBN 0440226694.