Brown Girl Dreaming (10 page)

For a long time, there is only one tree on our block.

And though it still feels

strange to be so far away from soft dirt

beneath bare feet

the ground is firm here and the one tree blooms

wide enough to shade four buildings.

The city is settling around me, my words
come fast now

when I speak, the soft curl of the South on my tongue

is near gone.

Who are these city children?
My grandmother laughs,
her own voice

sad and far away on the phone. But it is
a long-distance call

from Greenville to Brooklyn, too much money

and not enough time to explain

that New York City is gray rock

and quick-moving cars.

That the traffic lights change fast and my sister must

hold tight to my hand

as we cross to where a small man singing

Piragua! Piragua!

sells shaved ices from a white cart filled

with bottles and bottles of fruit-flavored syrup

colored red and purple, orange and blue.

That our mouths water in the hot sun as we hand him

our quarters then wait patiently as he pours
the syrup over the ice, hands it to us

in paper cones.

We’ll be coming home soon, Grandma

each of us promises.

We love you.

And when she says,
I love you, too

the South is so heavy in her mouth

my eyes fill up with the missing of

everything and everyone

I’ve ever known.

In the night in the corner of the bedroom

the four of us share,

comes a pick, pick, picking of plaster

paint gone come morning.

My younger brother, Roman,

can’t explain why paint melting

on his tongue feels good.

Still, he eats the paint

and plaster until a white hole

grows where pale green paint used to be.

And too late we catch him,

his fingers in his mouth,

his lips covered with dust.

When Hope speaks, it’s always about comic books

and superheroes

until my mother tells him he has to talk

about something else.

And then it’s science. He wants to know

everything

about rockets and medicine and the galaxy.

He wants to know where the sky ends and how,

what does it feel like when gravity’s gone

and what is the food men eat

on the moon. His questions come so fast

and so often that we forget how quiet

he once was until my mother

buys him a chemistry set.

And then for hours after school each day

he makes potions, mixing chemicals that stink up

the house, causing sparks to fly

from shaved bits of iron,

puffs of smoke to pop from strange-colored liquids.

We are fascinated by him, goggled and bent
over the stove

a clamped test tube protruding

from his gloved hand.

On the days when our mother says

she doesn’t want him smelling up the house

with his potions, he takes his trains apart, studies

each tiny piece, then slowly puts them together again.

We don’t know what it is he’s looking for

as he searches the insides of things, studies

the way things change. Each whispered
Wow

from him makes me think that he

with his searching—and Dell with her reading

and even Roman with his trying to eat

to the other side of our walls—is looking

for something. Something way past Brooklyn.

Something

out

there.

And then one day, Roman won’t get up,

sun coming in bright

through the bedroom window, the rest of us

dressed and ready to go outside.

No laughter—just tears when we hold him.

More crying when we put him down.

Won’t eat and even my mother

can’t help him.

When she takes him to the hospital, she comes back

alone.

And for many days after that, there is no baby

in our house and I am finally

the baby girl again, wishing

I wasn’t. Wishing there wasn’t so much quiet

where my brother’s laugh used to be, wishing

the true baby in our house

was home.

July comes and Robert takes us on the night train

back to South Carolina. We kiss

our baby brother good-bye in his hospital bed where

he reaches out, cries to come with us.

His words are weak as water, no more

than a whisper with so much air around them.

I’m coming too,
he says.

But he isn’t coming.

Not this time.

My mother says there is lead in his blood

from the paint he finds a way to pick

and eat off our bedroom wall

every time our backs are turned.

Small holes grow, like white stars against

the green paint, covered again and again

by our mother. But still, he finds a way.

Each of us hugs him, promises

to bring him candy and toys.

Promises we won’t have fun down south

without him.

Each of us leans in

for our mother’s kiss on our forehead,

her warm lips, already a memory

that each of us carries home.

My grandmother’s kitchen is the same

big and yellow and smelling of the pound cake

she’s made to welcome us back.

And now in the late afternoon, she is standing

at the sink, tearing collards beneath

cool running water, while the crows caw outside,

and the sun sinks slow into red and gold

When Hope lets the screen door slam,

she fusses,

Boy, don’t you slam my door again!
and my brother says,

I’m sorry.

Just like always.

Soon, there’ll be lemonade on the porch,

the swing whining the same early evening song

it always sings

my brother and sister with the checker set between them

me next to my grandfather, falling asleep against

his thin shoulder.

And it’s not even strange that it feels the way
it’s always felt

like the place we belong to.

Like
home.

In Greenville, my grandfather is too sick

to work anymore, so my grandmother has a full-time job.

Now we spend every day from July

until the middle of August

at Mrs. Hughes’s Nursery and Day School.

Each morning, we walk the long dusty road

to Mrs. Hughes’s house—large, white stone,

with a yard circling and chickens pecking at our feet.

Beyond the yard there’s collards and corn growing

a scarecrow, black snakes, and whip-poor-wills.

She is a big woman, tall, yellow-skinned and thick
as a wall.

I hold tight to my grandmother’s hand. Maybe
I am crying.

My grandmother drops us off and

the other kids circle around us. Laughing at

our hair, our clothes, the names our parents

have given us,

our city way of talking—too fast, too many words

to hear at once

too many big words coming out of

my sister’s mouth.

I am always the first to cry. A gentle slap on the side

of my head, a secret pinch,

girls circling around me singing,
Who stole the cookie

from the cookie jar
and

pointing, as though the song is true, at me.

My sister’s tears are slow to come. But when they do,

it isn’t sadness.

It’s something different that sends her swinging
her fists when

the others yank her braids until the satin,

newly ironed ribbons belong to them,

hidden away in the deep pockets of their dresses,

tucked into

their sagging stockings, buried inside their

silver lunch pails.

Hope is silent—his name, they say, belongs to a girl,

his ears, they laugh

stick out too far from his head.

Our feet are beginning to belong

in two different worlds—Greenville

and New York. We don’t know how to come

home

and leave

home

behind us.

Kids are mean,
Dell says.

Just turn away. Pretend we

know better than that.

Saturday morning’s the hardest day for us now.

For three hours we move through

the streets of Nicholtown,

knocking on strangers’ doors, hoping to convert

them into Sisters and Brothers and children of God.

This summer I am allowed to knock on my first door

alone. An old woman answers, smiles kindly at me.

What a special child you are,
she says.

Sky-blue ribbons in my hair, my
Watchtower
held tight

in my white-gloved hand,

the blue linen dress a friend of my grandmother’s

has made for me stopping just above my knees.

My name is Jacqueline Woodson,
I nearly whisper,

my throat suddenly dry

voice near gone.

I’m here to bring you some good news today . . .

Well how much does your good news cost,
the woman
wants to know.

A dime.

She shakes her head sadly, closes her door a moment

to search beneath a trunk where she hopes

she’s dropped a coin or two.

But when she comes back, there are no coins

in her hand.

Oh I’d love to read that magazine,
she says.

I just don’t have money.

And for many days my heart hurts with the sadness

that such a nice woman will not be a part of God’s
new world.

It isn’t fair,
I say to my grandmother when

so many days have passed.

I want to go back. I want to give her something
for free.

But we’re done now with that strip of Nicholtown.

Next Saturday, we’ll be somewhere else.

Another Witness will go there,
my grandmother promises.

By and by,
she says,
that woman will find her way.

Across the road,

Miss Bell has tied a blue-checked sunbonnet

beneath her chin, lifts her head from her bed

of azaleas and waves to my grandmother.

I am sitting beside her on the front porch swing, Hope

and Dell leaning back against the wood beam

at the top of the front porch stairs. It is as

though we have always been in this position,

the front porch swing moving gently back and forth,

the sun warm on our faces, the day only halfway over.

I see your grands are back for the summer,

Miss Bell says.
Getting big, too.

It is Sunday afternoon.

Out back, my grandfather pulls weeds from his garden,

digs softly into the rich earth to add new melon seeds.
Wondering

if this time, they’ll grow. All this he does from

a small chair, a cane beside him.

He moves as if underwater, coughs

hard and long into a handkerchief, calls out for Hope

when he needs the chair moved, sees me watching,

and shakes his head.
I’m catching you worrying,
he says.

Too young for that. So just cut it out now, you hear?

His voice

so strong and clear today, I can’t help smiling.

Soon I’ll rise from the porch,

change out of my Kingdom Hall clothes into

a pair of shorts and a cotton blouse

trade my patent-leather Mary Janes for bare feet

and join my grandfather in the garden.

What took you so long,
he’ll say.
I was about to turn

this earth around without you.

Soon, it’ll be near evening and Daddy and I

will walk slow

back into the house where I’ll pull the Epsom salt

from the shelf

fill the dishpan with warm water, massage

his swelling hands.

But for now, I sit listening to Nicholtown settle

around me,

pray that one day Roman will be well enough

to know this moment.

Pray that we will always have this—the front porch,

my grandfather in the garden,

a woman in a blue-checked sunbonnet

moving through azaleas . . .

Pretty children,
Miss Bell says.

But God don’t make them no other kinda way.

Too fast, our summer in Greenville

is ending.

Already, the phone calls from my mother

are filled with plans for coming home.

We miss

our little’s brother’s laughter, the way

he runs to us at the end of the school day as if

we’ve been gone forever. The way his small hands

curl around ours when we watch TV. Holding

tight through the scary parts, until we tell him

Scooby-Doo will save the day,

Bugs Bunny will get away,

Underdog will arrive before the train hits

Sweet Polly Purebred.

We drag our feet below our swings,

our arms wrapped lazily around the metal links

no longer fascinated by the newness

of the set, the way we climbed all over the slide,

pumped our legs hard—toward heaven until

the swing set shook with the weight of us lifting it

from the ground.

Next summer,
my grandfather said,
I’ll cement it down.

But in the meantime

you all swing low.

Our suitcases sit at the foot of our bed, open

slowly filling with freshly washed summer clothes,

each blouse, each pair of shorts, each faded cotton dress

holding a story that we’ll tell again and again

all winter long.