Harbor Me

by Jacqueline Woodson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat--by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them--everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

 

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Release date: August 28, 2018

Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books

Print pages: 188

Sample

1

We think they took my papi.

It’s over now. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe, even as I sit on my bed in the dying light of the late afternoon, it’s beginning again. Maybe Ms. Laverne is looking over the new class list, her finger moving down the row of names. Maybe her, she is thinking. And him. And her. But it won’t be the same. It won’t ever be the six of us together again.

We think they took my papi.

My uncle is a musician and a storyteller. He says the hardest part of telling a story is finding the beginning. I’ve pulled the voice recorder from my closet and have it sitting on the middle of my bed now. When I press play, Esteban’s voice fills my room. It is scratchy and faraway- sounding, but still, Esteban is here again and all of us are sitting in our small circle in a place we called the ARTT room.

Nobody knows where he’s at.

Outside, a blue jay perches on the edge of a branch. Ailanthus tree. Tree of Heaven. Ms. Laverne taught us that. It’s the same tree the girl in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn saw from her fire escape. The thing about that tree was it could grow anywhere. And keep growing. And that was the metaphor: that even when things got really hard for everyone in that story—even when the dad died and the mom had to scrub more and more floors to make money, even when the kids didn’t have anything to eat for days and the apartment was freezing—the tree kept growing. The main character, her name was Francie— she was like that tree. Ms. Laverne said that all of us—Esteban, Tiago, Holly, Amari, Ashton and even me—we’re like that tree too.

My uncle is moving out tomorrow. He’s really the only parent I’ve ever known. He says, This is a beginning. He says, Now you’ll have two houses to go to. He says, You’re twelve now, Haley. You’re ready.

But I’m not ready.

This afternoon, I miss everything.

I miss my uncle even though he is upstairs packing. I miss the ARTT room, I miss Holly and Amari arguing and Ashton pushing his hair away from his forehead. This afternoon, I miss Tiago’s dreams of the sea and Esteban’s poems and all the stories we finally trusted each other enough to tell. I miss the beginning of our story together. And the deep middle of it.

Once there were six of us. Once we circled around each other, and listened. Or maybe what matters most is that we were heard.

Downstairs, my father is playing the piano—soft, sad notes floating up from the living room. The piano is old—found on the street a few blocks away the day my father moved back home. My father, uncle and three other men lifted it up the stairs, then had to remove the door to get it inside. It’s an upright—scratched wood and yellowing keys. My father took a whole day tuning it, and now the notes move through the house, dipping down at the end like tears. Rising up like prayer. Upstairs, I can hear my uncle moving from dresser to bed and back again and I know he is neatly folding shirts and sweaters into his suitcase. Most of his stuff is already downstairs. Boxes line the hall by the front door. His favorite chair is draped with a blanket. His guitars are stacked in their cases beside it. Tomorrow, he will move to Manhattan and start his new life. I’ll be the bachelor I was always meant to be, he said. Then, seeing the look on my face I failed at hiding, he added—And I’ll be back every single Sunday to spend time with my most favorite person in the world.

I don’t remember a life without my uncle in it.

In two weeks, I’ll begin seventh grade. My best friend, Holly, will be there. But there will be holes where Ashton, Amari, Tiago and Esteban once were.

We think they took my papi.

I play the first words of Esteban’s story over and over as my father’s song lifts up to my room, as my uncle packs above me, as the blue jay perches in the Ailanthus tree. As the world keeps on spinning.