Brown Girl Dreaming (15 page)

Every autumn, the teacher asks us to

write about summer vacation

and read it to the class.

In Brooklyn, everybody goes south

or to Puerto Rico

or to their cousin’s house in Queens.

But after my grandmother moves to New York,

we only go down south once,

for my aunt Lucinda’s funeral. After that,

my grandmother says she’s done with the South

says it makes her too sad.

But now

when summer comes

our family gets on a plane, flies

to

Africa

Hawaii

Chicago.

For summer vacation we went to Long Island,

to the beach. Everybody went fishing and everybody

caught a lot of fish.

Even though no one in my family has ever been

to Long Island

or fished

or likes the ocean—too deep, too scary. Still,

each autumn, I write a story.

In my writing, there is a stepfather now

who lives in California but meets us wherever we go.

There is a church, not a Kingdom Hall.

There is a blue car, a new dress, loose unribboned hair.

In my stories, our family is regular as air

two boys, two girls, sometimes a dog.

Did that really happen?
the kids in class ask.

Yeah,
I say.
If it didn’t, how would I know what to write?

Do you remember . . . ?

someone’s always asking and

someone else, always does.

Everything happens for a reason,
my mother

says. Then tells me how Kay believed

in fate and destiny—everything

that ever happened or was going to happen

couldn’t ever be avoided. The marchers

down south didn’t just up and start

their marching—it was part of a longer, bigger

plan, that maybe belonged to God.

My mother tells me this as we fold laundry, white towels

separated from the colored ones. Each

a threat to the other and I remember the time

I spilled bleach on a blue towel, dotting it forever.

The pale pink towel, a memory

of when it was washed with a red one. Maybe

there is something, after all, to the way

some people want to remain—each to its own kind.

But in time

maybe

everything will fade to gray.

Even all of us coming to Brooklyn,

my mother says,
wasn’t some accident.
And I can’t help

thinking of the birds here—how they disappear

in the wintertime,

heading south for food and warmth and shelter.

Heading south

to stay alive . . . passing us on the way . . .

No accidents,
my mother says.
Just fate and faith

and reasons.

When I ask my mother what she believes in,

she stops, midfold, and looks out the back window.

Autumn

is full on here and the sky is bright blue.

I guess I believe in right now,
she says.
And the resurrection.

And Brooklyn. And the four of you.

Maria’s mother never left Bayamón, Puerto Rico,

and my mother never left Greenville.

What if no one had ever walked the grassy fields

that are now Madison Street and said,

Let’s put some houses here.

What if the people in Maria’s building didn’t sell

1279 Madison Street

to Maria’s parents

and our landlord told my mom that he couldn’t rent

1283

to someone who already had four children.

What if the park with the swings wasn’t right across

Knickerbocker Avenue?

What if Maria hadn’t walked out of her building

one day and said,

My name is Maria but my mom calls me Googoo.

What if I had laughed instead of saying,

You’re lucky. I wish I had a nickname, too.

You want to go to the park sometime?

What if she didn’t have a sister and two brothers

and I didn’t have a sister and two brothers

and her dad didn’t teach us to box

and her mother didn’t cook such good food?

I can’t even imagine any of it,
Maria says.

Nope,
I say.
Neither can I.

Before German mothers wrapped scarves around
their heads,

kissed their own mothers good-bye and headed across
the world

to Bushwick—

Before the Italian fathers sailed across the ocean

for the dream of America

and found themselves in Bushwick—

Before Dominican daughters donned quinceañera
dresses and walked proudly down Bushwick Avenue—

Before young brown boys in cutoff shorts spun their
first tops and played their first games of skelly on
Bushwick Streets—

Before any of that, this place was called
Boswijck,

settled by the Dutch

and Franciscus the Negro, a former slave

who bought his freedom.

And all of New York was called New Amsterdam,
run by a man

named Peter Stuyvesant. There were slaves here.

Those who could afford to own

their freedom

lived on the other side of the wall.

And now that place is called Wall Street.

When my teacher says,
So write down what all of this means

to you,
our heads bend over our notebooks, the whole class

silent. The whole class belonging somewhere:

Bushwick.

I didn’t just appear one day.

I didn’t just wake up and know how to write my name.

I keep writing, knowing now

that I was a long time coming.

Under the back porch

there’s an alone place I go

writing all I’ve heard.

When my uncle gets out of jail

he isn’t just my uncle anymore, he is

Robert the Muslim and wears

a small black
kufi
on his head.

And even though we know

we
Witnesses are the chosen ones, we listen

to the stories he tells about

a man named Muhammad

and a holy place called Mecca

and the strength of all Black people.

We sit in a circle around him, his hands

moving slow through the air, his voice

calmer and quieter than it was before

he went away.

When he pulls out a small rug to pray on

I kneel beside him, wanting to see

his Mecca

wanting to know the place

he calls the Promise Land.

Look with your heart and your head,
he tells me

his own head bowed.

It’s out there in front of you.

You’ll know when you get there.

On the TV screen a woman

named Angela Davis is telling us

there’s a revolution going on and that it’s time

for Black people to defend themselves.

So Maria and I walk through the streets,

our fists raised in the air Angela Davis style.

We read about her in the
Daily News,
run

to the television each time she’s interviewed.

She is beautiful and powerful and has

my same gap-toothed smile. We dream

of running away to California

to join the Black Panthers

the organization Angela is a part of.

She is not afraid, she says,

to die for what she believes in

but doesn’t plan to die

without a fight.

The FBI says Angela Davis is one of America’s

Most Wanted.

Already, there are so many things I don’t understand, why

someone would have to die

or even fight for what they believe in.

Why the cops would want someone who is trying

to change the world

in jail.

We are not afraid to die,
Maria and I shout, fists high
,

for what we believe in.

But both of us know—we’d rather keep believing

and live.

My mother tells us the Black Panthers are doing

all kinds of stuff

to make the world a better place for Black children.

In Oakland, they started a free breakfast program

so that poor kids can have a meal

before starting their school day. Pancakes,

toast, eggs, fruit: we watch the kids eat happily,

sing songs about how proud they are

to be Black. We sing the song along with them

stand on the bases of lampposts and scream,

Say it loud: I’m Black and I’m proud
until

my mother hollers from the window,

Get down before you break your neck.

I don’t understand the revolution.

In Bushwick, there’s a street we can’t cross called

Wyckoff Avenue. White people live on the other side.

Once a boy from my block got beat up for walking

over there.

Once there were four white families on our block

but they all moved away except for the old lady

who lives by the tree. Some days, she brings out cookies

tells us stories of the old neighborhood when everyone

was German or Irish and even some Italians

down by Wilson Avenue.

All kinds of people,
she says. And the cookies

are too good for me to say,

Except us.

Everyone knows where they belong here.

It’s not Greenville

but it’s not diamond sidewalks either.

I still don’t know what it is

that would make people want to get along.

Maybe no one does.

Angela Davis smiles, gap-toothed and beautiful,
raises her fist in the air

says,
Power to the people,
looks out from the television

directly into my eyes.

There is a teenager on our block with one arm missing,

we call him Leftie and he tells us

he lost his arm in Vietnam.

That’s a war,
he says.
Y’all lucky to be too young to go.

It doesn’t hurt anymore,
he tells us when we gather

around him.

But his eyes are sad eyes and some days he walks

around the block

maybe a hundred times without saying anything

to anyone.

When we call,
Hey Leftie!
he doesn’t even look our way.

Some evenings, I kneel toward Mecca with my uncle.

Maybe Mecca

is the place Leftie goes to in his mind, when

the memory of losing

his arm becomes too much. Maybe Mecca is

good memories,

presents and stories and poetry and
arroz con pollo

and family and friends . . .

Maybe Mecca is the place everyone is looking for . . .

It’s out there in front of you,
my uncle says.

I know I’ll know it

when I get there.

Don’t wait for your school to teach you,
my uncle says,

about the revolution. It’s happening in the streets.

He’s been out of jail for more than a year now and his hair

is an afro again, gently moving in the wind as we head

to the park, him holding tight

to my hand even when we’re not crossing

Knickerbocker Avenue, even now when I’m too old

for hand holding
and the like.

The revolution is when Shirley Chisholm ran for president

and the rest of the world tried to imagine

a Black woman in the White House.

When I hear the word

revolution

I think of the carousel with

all those beautiful horses

going around as though they’ll never stop and me

choosing the purple one each time, climbing up onto it

and reaching for the golden ring, as soft music plays.

The revolution is always going to be happening.

I want to write this down, that the revolution is like

a merry-go-round, history always being made

somewhere. And maybe for a short time,

we’re a part of that history. And then the ride stops

and our turn is over.

We walk slow toward the park where I can already see

the big swings, empty and waiting for me.

And after I write it down, maybe I’ll end it this way:

My name is Jacqueline Woodson

and I am ready for the ride.

Write down what I think

I know. The knowing will come.

Just keep listening . . .

You’re a writer,
Ms. Vivo says,

her gray eyes bright behind

thin wire frames. Her smile bigger than anything

so I smile back, happy to hear these words

from a teacher’s mouth. She is a feminist, she tells us

and thirty fifth-grade hands bend into desks

where our dictionaries wait to open yet another

world to us. Ms. Vivo pauses, watches our fingers fly

Webster’s
has our answers.

Equal rights,
a boy named Andrew yells out.

For women.

My hands freeze on the thin white pages.

Like Blacks, Ms. Vivo, too, is part of a revolution.

But right now, that revolution is so far away from me.

This moment, this
here,
this
right now
is my teacher
saying,

You’re a writer,
as she holds the poem I am just beginning.

The first four lines, stolen

from my sister:

Black brothers, Black sisters, all of them were great

no fear no fright but a willingness to fight . . .

You can have them,
Dell said when she saw.

I don’t want to be a poet.

And then my own pencil moving late into the evening:

In big fine houses lived the whites

in little old shacks lived the blacks

but the blacks were smart

in fear they took no part.

One of them was Martin

with a heart of gold.

You’re a writer,
Ms. Vivo says, holding my poem out to me.

And standing in front of the class

taking my poem from her

my voice shakes as I recite the first line:

Black brothers, Black sisters, all of them were great. . . .

But my voice grows stronger with each word because

more than anything else in the world,

I want to believe her.