ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PEARL CLEAGE is the author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day …, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do, a Good Morning America Read This! book club pick; Babylon Sisters, for which she was named the 2006 Go On Girl! Book Club Author of the Year; Baby Brother’s Blues, winner of the 2006 NAACP Image Award and the African American Literary Award for fiction; and Seen It All and Done the Rest. The first author selected for the Essence Book Club, she collaborated with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett Jr. on the poem We Speak Your Names. She is also an accomplished dramatist whose plays include Flyin’ West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, and A Song for Coretta. Cleage and her husband live in Atlanta.
www.pearlcleage.net
Till You Hear From Me is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Pearl Cleage
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
ONE WORLD is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cleage, Pearl.
Till you hear from me : a novel / Pearl Cleage.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51971-9
1. African American women—Fiction. 2. African Americans—Politics and government—Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.L389T56 2010
813′.54—dc22 2010001774
www.oneworldbooks.net
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One - Tacos and Sangria
Chapter Two - Every Trick in the Book
Chapter Three - The Enemy of My Enemy
Chapter Four - Old-School
Chapter Five - Greeting the Ghosts
Chapter Six - The Race Card
Chapter Seven - Fast-Talking Chicago Negroes
Chapter Eight - Business Opportunities
Chapter Nine - The Knowns and the Unknowns
Chapter Ten - A Perfect Morning
Chapter Eleven - Our Most Recent Family Feud
Chapter Twelve - A Bunch of Dinosaurs
Chapter Thirteen - Knee-Deep in Collard Greens
Chapter Fourteen - Till You Hear From Me
Chapter Fifteen - Serious Soul-Searching
Chapter Sixteen - Tavis Smiley Syndrome
Chapter Seventeen - Between the Lines
Chapter Eighteen - The Old Neighborhood
Chapter Nineteen - No Surprises
Chapter Twenty-One - Weak for You
Chapter Twenty-Two - Full Disclosure
Chapter Twenty-Three - A Morning in Hell
Chapter Twenty-Four - Grown Man Fine
Chapter Twenty-Five - Make It Plain
Chapter Twenty-Six - Sunflowers and Roses
Chapter Twenty-Seven - A Few Juicy Whispers
Chapter Twenty-Eight - All Manner of Misinformation
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Sugar for Sex
Chapter Thirty - A Fair Shake
Chapter Thirty-One - Do the Math
Chapter Thirty-Two - The Heart of Darkness
Chapter Thirty-Three - The Good Old Days
Chapter Thirty-Four - Two Grown Men Doing Business
Chapter Thirty-Five - A Sister in Transition
Chapter Thirty-Six - Second-Generation Ballbuster
Chapter Thirty-Seven - A Post-Campaign Wave of Paranoia
Chapter Thirty-Eight - Me and Mrs. Jones
Chapter Thirty-Nine - Considering the Questions
Chapter Forty - Rocket Science
Chapter Forty-One - Freedom High
Chapter Forty-Two - Heart and Soul
Chapter Forty-Three - Targeting the Warriors
Chapter Forty-Four - The Matter at Hand
Chapter Forty-Five - Invisible Horns
Chapter Forty-Six - The Smaller the Crew, the Safer the Secret
Chapter Forty-Seven - Home From the Wars
Chapter Forty-Eight - There Are Always Consequences
Chapter Forty-Nine - The Confidence of a Sleepwalker
Chapter Fifty - No Regrets
Chapter Fifty-One - Burglars and Betrayals
Chapter Fifty-Two - Blood on Those Ballots
Chapter Fifty-Three - Feet of Jesus
Chapter Fifty-Four - On the Right Side Again
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright