by caren banke

Created on: June 24, 2008

BILLY

Billy and his mother were preparing for their move to his grandparents' ranch in Billings. At five years Billy only knew what a house was; he had never seen a ranch. And he only knew his grandparents through pictures he had seen, but he had never seen them in person. Billy's grandparents had been angry with Billy's mother for all of Billy's life; Billy's mother explained that they were angry with her because she had married Billy's father; Billy's father was Black while Billy's mother was White, and Billy's grandparents didn't believe in "interracial" marriage. Billy was both Black and White. But Billy was confused; if his grandparents didn't believe in "interracial" marriage, how would they be able to believe in Billy? Why, he wondered, were he and his mother going to a place that didn't believe in them? To be with people who didn't like what they had done, or who they were?

Billy had been acutely aware that both his parents had been arguing with one another much more lately than they ever had before. They had tried to hide their arguments from Billy, but he knew; kids always knew. His grandmother had tried to kill herself; that much Billy had heard through listening at the door to his parents' bedroom. His grandmother had tried to kill herself, apparently, because his mother and father were married. Billy could not understand. Why would his grandmother want to die? But Billy's mother felt guilty about what Billy's grandmother had done; she believed that she needed to go back home and take care of her family.

"But we're your family." Billy's father had said.

The night before Billy and his mother were to fly from San Francisco to Billings, which was in Montana, which was where his grandparents' ranch was Billy lay in his bedroom for what he knew would be the last time. He couldn't sleep. His mother and father had both explained that Billy and his mother were just going to go to Billings for a little while, and that after everything was okay with Billy's grandmother, they would come back home.
"How long will it take for grandma to be okay?" Billy had asked.
What they had said was that Billy's father would visit at Christmas, and that then they would come home. But somehow, Billy knew that this would never happen. How could Billy's father go to a house where he wasn't wanted? All that Billy knew was that he was losing his father.

The next morning, as the three of them prepared to leave for the airport, Billy felt a powerful pain in his chest each time he looked

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