One Crazy Summer

  Vonetta was a perfectionist, but only about certain things. Things that would get her noticed or earn her applause. Big Ma said Vonetta wouldn’t be such a show-off if Cecile had picked Vonetta up more when she was a baby hollering in her crib. I didn’t need a flash of memory to recall Vonetta’s crying. She cried loudly and a lot.

  Our door was open and Cecile was in the living room, lying on her beat-up sofa. Cecile could hear Vonetta perfectly well. Vonetta had said this poem seven times so far. I was certain her aim was to say it ten times each night, but Cecile didn’t let her get that far. It took only six angry foot stomps for Cecile to make it back to our room.

  “Cut that crap out. That’s not even a poem. I coulda knocked that out in my sleep. You’d think Gwen Brooks was some sort of genius.” Then she stomped away, this time into the kitchen. I heard her hands smack the swinging door hard.

  Back in the fourth grade, my teacher would have us lay our heads on our desks after we came in from recess. She would recite poetry to calm us down and get us ready to learn more science or history. Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Countee Cullen, and William Blake—all fine poets whom we should know, she’d say. Well, I knew a real, live poet. I didn’t know how fine Cecile’s poetry was, but I had seen her writing poems in the kitchen and sometimes on the walls or on cereal boxes. Who else in my classroom could claim they knew a poet and that she was their mother? So, on the afternoon that Robert Frost’s horse had clip-clopped through the snow, I’d raised my hand and told the class my mother was a poet. “Now, now, Delphine,” Mrs. Peterson said, “nice girls don’t tell their classmates lies.” She’d kept me after school and told me she knew the truth about how my mother had left home and that wanting a mother was no excuse for dreaming one up. I couldn’t leave the classroom until I’d written “I will not tell lies in class” twenty-five times on the blackboard. And then I’d had to erase the board clean.

  Vonetta sulked something pitiful when Cecile told her to cut it out. Vonetta only heard that her recitation stunk. She wasn’t thinking about how Gwendolyn Brooks was a great Negro poet and that Cecile, also called Nzila, was printing her own poems in her kitchen.

  Last year, Vonetta practiced her curtsying more than she practiced her wings and time steps for the Tip Top Tap recital. She fell on her fanny in the middle of her solo and was miserable for days. Usually I’d pick up Vonetta’s broken spirits until she was once again crowy and showy, but now I let her sulk after she received no praise from Cecile. Serves you right, I thought. Just to be evil, I rubbed it in with an insult.

  “I don’t know why your lip is hanging,” I said. “You’re just like her.”

  We both knew which her I meant. I said that to make her feel mad on top of being hurt. Just like I know how to lift my sisters up, I also know how to needle them just right.

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  We did a few rounds of that, then a final “Not” and “Too.”

  “Okay, Vonetta. Suppose you were going to be on TV.”

  She perked up on that one.

  “Playing Tinker Bell on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. But it was PTA Night. Or School Talent Night. And your little girl—”

  “Lootie Belle,” Fern added in.

  “Lootie Belle,” I picked up, glad to have Fern’s support, “had a part in The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

  “In her Itsy Bitsy Spider costume.”

  “And she’d been practicing her Itsy Bitsy Spider song and dance for days.”

  “Weeks.”

  “A whole two months. The Itsy Bitsy Spider—”

  “Went up the waterspout.” I knew I could count on Fern to climb high with her tiny, sweet voice.

  Vonetta sat there defiant, unmoved, proving my point. It was like looking dead at Cecile.

  “A shiny white Cadillac comes to carry you off to be Tinker Bell on TV. But your precious little girl—”

  “Lootie Belle!”

  “Lootie Belle is standing at the door in her costume, waiting for you to take her to School Talent Night. What would you do?”

  “That’s easy,” Vonetta said. “I’d get in the shiny white Cadillac with my matching vanity bag and luggage.”

  “And what about your little girl in her costume?” I asked.

  “Yeah. What about Lootie Bell in her costume, wanting to dance for her mama?”

  Each and every one of us knew the feeling of having no mother clapping for us in the audience. Only Big Ma and sometimes Papa when he came home from work in time.

  Crowy and showy Vonetta said, “First of all, I wouldn’t dare name her anything as silly as Lootie Belle. And my little girl would be happy I was a Disneyland movie star. She would tell her jealous friends at school, ‘There goes my mother on TV. I’ll bet your mother just fries pork chops and wrings wet clothes. My mother is on TV flying around in blue fairy dust, waving a magical wand in a cute sparkly outfit.’”

  The magic of Disneyland had won Fern over to Vonetta’s side. It was all of that blue fairy dust and magical-wand stuff. Fern’s eyes twinkled as she imagined having a colored fairy mother. I was looking to get Vonetta’s goat, but I only ended up losing Fern. And Vonetta was her old self.

  “And that’s why you’re like Cecile. You want to be a fairy on TV more than you care how your kids will feel and if they miss you.”

  “Do not” and “Do too” went on between us until Cecile stomped back to the room and said, “Cut that crap out!”

  Movable Type

  We had another long day at the Center. When I came into the kitchen to make spaghetti that evening, there was a stool by the stove. It was like everything else Cecile brought into her green stucco house. Secondhand. Still, it was unexpected, and I welcomed it. I normally stood by the stove quietly while the food cooked. My feet always ached, but I never complained. Instead, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and learned to make quick-cooking meals. Cecile had allowed me inside her kitchen. She’d let me cook dinner, wash dishes, and clean up after myself. But she didn’t really want me in there with her. She didn’t want me stretching my neck over her way, ripping open the peace with any talking.

  The stool made things different. It was an invitation for me to sit down and be there. Not talk. Just cook. Be. As the spaghetti boiled, pictures flashed in and out of my mind. Flashes of sitting with Cecile and being quiet. It was the welcome that had brought me back. That I’d sat with her before and it was all right. Not in this kitchen, but in the kitchen in Brooklyn. Back when Sarah Vaughan filled the house with her smoky voice, Vonetta was far away crying to be picked up, and Cecile’s stomach was big with Fern.

  I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said I was born knowing what to do when I sat with Cecile: Don’t cry. Stay quiet. Want nothing. I could talk, but I’d learned that, as long as I was quiet, I was allowed to stay with her while she tapped against the wall with her pencil, wrote and wrote and said her rhymes over and over. Don’t cry. Stay quiet. Want nothing.

  Then Fern had come, and days later Cecile left. Big Ma had moved in and told Pa, “That gal’s dumb as a dry pump,” meaning me. Cecile wouldn’t have minded if I had been born deaf and mute, but Cecile was gone. Big Ma was another story. I quickly learned to speak up around Big Ma.

  After we ate our spaghetti, I washed the dishes and wiped the sink down.

  Cecile said, “I’d let you help me if your hands were clean.”

  My hands were already clean. I had just finished washing dishes. But I soaped them with dish-washing liquid, then rinsed and dried them.

  “Stand over here.”

  I stood where she told me. For a long while that was all she said, that I stand right there. I looked down on a flat frame with wooden blocks. On the wooden blocks were metal letters facing backward. Backward? They spelled out words, line by line. But you would have to be able to read backward to read the lines.

  I wanted to be able to read them. On the counter next to the printing machine was a newly inked sheet of
paper with the words printed in the right direction.

  Movable Type

  Push here

  I move

  there

  Push

  there

  I move

  two squares over

  Buy those squares

  from under my

  feet

  I land on

  the free square.

  Raise my

  Rent

  I

  Pica

  Elite

  Courier

  Sans Serif

  Pack light. Leave swift.

  I’m that type.

  I move.

  NZILA

  She took the sheet and hung it up to dry.

  “I’m going to press down and roll the crank,” she said. I figured I would catch on.

  She turned the lever on the side of the printing machine. Her weight pressed into the machine and down on the metal and paper. The rollers spun slowly. The paper pushed its way out onto the tray of backward letters.

  When the paper was fully inked, I believed she was pleased. Not that she was smiling or jolly or singing. But she liked what she had done. She studied her printed sheet and held it up to the light. The poem in black ink. Her name, Nzila, in special-shaped letters: large, curved, lovely, and green.

  I thought about Cecile’s poem. I figured it was about how she was the type to not be still. But I believed she liked this green stucco house. I think she liked being in this kitchen, mothering and praying over this big machine and these blocks of backward letters. This was Cecile being happy.

  “See this here?”

  I must have made a move like I was going to touch it.

  Cecile spoke sharply. “I said ‘see,’ not ‘touch.’ See.”

  I nodded and put my hands behind my back. I was used to busy hands. To doing. I did what she said. I looked.

  “Those are the rollers. You feed the paper through the rollers. You feed it even. If it’s crooked, it’s a waste of paper. You crank it steady or it’s a waste of paper. Waste of ink.”

  I watched her feed the paper between the rollers and turn the crank. Each time the ink spread evenly on the paper. She hung each sheet to dry.

  “Go ’head.” She pointed to the paper and the rollers and the crank.

  I almost didn’t move.

  “Come on. Let’s see if you can follow directions.”

  I took a sheet from the paper stack and held it from end to end so it would go in even. No matter how much I told myself to keep steady, my hands made the paper shake. I was mad at my own hands. I didn’t want Cecile to think I was afraid of doing wrong, but I was.

  I didn’t look up at her to see if I had done right in her eyes. I just did what she said and turned the crank slow, hard, and steady until the paper came out on the other side, I hoped, fully inked.

  She held up my newly printed sheet and pointed to a spot on the N in “Nzila” that missed the rollers. She shook her head. “A waste of paper.”

  San Francisco Treat

  Cecile didn’t care where we went or what we did on Saturdays and Sundays, as long as we stayed far away from her peace and quiet. Our first weekend, we had played Go Fish and tic-tac-toe in our room and waited for Cecile to announce that we were going to some adventurous place that existed only in California. By the second weekend I knew we had to have a plan. Since the sun rose high that Saturday, I figured it was a good day to go to the beach and collect seashells for souvenirs. Vonetta, Fern, and I had put on our bathing suits and sunglasses, and I’d asked Cecile to take us to the beach. I had never spoken Martian to someone and had them give me the look that could only be given to a Martian. Instead of answering our question, Cecile gave us a look that said, Who are you and what planet did y’all come from? I ended up taking my sisters to the city pool, where we swam and splashed around without thinking about all that chlorine water knotting up our hair. When we’d come back to her house smelling like chlorine, I’d asked Cecile if I could use her hot comb to press our hair, seeing how knotty it got.

  I’d expected she’d say no outright because I’d smoke up her precious workplace with hair burning from the hot comb. In fact, I’d expected a no followed by an “I didn’t send for y’all in the first place.” It hadn’t occurred to me that Cecile didn’t own a hot comb or curling iron, even though that fact was as big and thick as her unpressed braids. She’d said, “Naughty? Your hair ain’t naughty. It ain’t misbehaving. It’s doing what God meant it to do.” That would have been news to Big Ma. We never entered the house of God without our hair pressed and smelling of Dixie Peach hair grease.

  For our third Saturday in Oakland I had a better plan. I told my sisters, “We’re going on an excursion.” Miss Merriam Webster would have been proud. Excursion. To Vonetta’s and Fern’s uncomprehending faces, I said, “We’re taking a bus ride to our own adventure.” It didn’t make sense to fly three thousand miles to the land of Mickey Mouse, movie stars, and all-year sun and not see anything but Black Panthers, police cars, and poor black people. I wasn’t foolish enough to set out for Hollywood, Disneyland, or the beach where they filmed Happening ’68 with rock and rollers like Paul Revere and the Raiders. Instead, I planned that we would spend our nearly last Saturday in California traveling across the bay to San Francisco to ride a cable car and see Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Now, that was an excursion worthy of a back-to-school essay. Even if we didn’t have a camera to take pictures of us on our adventure, we would know we’d been there.

  I told my sisters, “Don’t say a word. Just let me do all the talking.” Even though I knew Cecile didn’t care, I didn’t want her to suddenly take an interest in us and ask a lot of questions. If she asked questions, I’d have to spin a lot of straw; and I couldn’t spin a lot of straw and look her in the face the way I’d like to. Like I’m eleven going on twelve and I know what I’m doing.

  “Cecile, we need money. I have all-day activities planned, and we have to eat while we’re out doing our activities.”

  “Yeah, gotta eat.”

  I turned to Fern. Don’t say no more, Fern. She got it.

  “If I pour cereal for them before we go,” I said, “I’ll only need change for the bus, and some lunch money, and a little extra if you want us gone long.”

  Cecile almost raised an eyebrow but not quite. She figured we were up to something but probably didn’t want to know the details.

  She reached into her man’s pants and poured a lot of nickels, dimes, pennies, and some quarters into my hands. I needed both hands to get every coin. She dealt out eleven single dollars from a wad of bills and gave me those also. I was so giddy about having all of that money, I just dumped it in my shoulder bag. I could sort it out later. Just by the weight of the silver and copper I knew we had more than the fifteen dollars I’d counted on us getting.

  I ate my cereal and washed the dishes with my shoulder bag slung around my neck Brooklyn-style. The best way to lose your money is to hold your bag off the shoulder, but this way, with the bag slung crosswise, you were ready for anything.

  As we were walking out the door excited about our excursion, Cecile called out, “I’m not coming down to no police station if you’re out there stealing. Y’all have to spend the night in jail.” That was as good a “Be safe and have a good time” as we were going to get from Cecile. We took it and left.

  Outside, the yards and streets were filled with screaming kids playing. It was all I could do to keep Vonetta and Fern in line for my fully planned excursion. I had worked too hard writing everything down to have them not want to go. I had asked Sister Pat about the bus and cable car. I had gotten all the sightseeing information from the library. I wasn’t about to let a kickball game and some Barbie tea parties throw mile-long pouts on Vonetta and Fern because they wanted to stay here in black, poor Oakland.

  Then the worst possible thing happened. Hirohito came rambling up to us on his homemade go-kart. He skidded to a stop using
his high-top sneakers, right at Vonetta’s feet. She squealed and laughed and said, “Whatcha know, Hirohito?” That was some cute thing she and Janice Ankton came up with. I was sick of hearing it.

  “Delphine. Want to watch me fly down that hill?”

  “No,” I said, while my sisters screamed, “Yes!”

  I glanced at my Timex. Don’t stand there watching Hirohito on his go-kart, it said. The East Bay bus leaves in twelve minutes. You don’t have time for that.

  Vonetta and Fern folded their arms and wouldn’t budge. They watched Hirohito do that run and flop onto the flying T and go bumpity-bump down the hill. When he neared the end of the hill, he dragged his sneakers like Fred Flintstone and came to a full stop. Then he jumped up and turned to us, waving. Vonetta and Fern waved back.

  “Let’s see him do it again,” Vonetta said.

  “It’s a boy going down the hill,” I said. “We seen it already. Let’s go.”

  I couldn’t say it was thrilling, how he jumped on that board thing and rolled down the hill, twisting the T left and right and then swerving it around. I couldn’t say how I admired him for not crying about his father being in prison and for trying to be a normal kid. If you wanted to call Hirohito Woods normal. I certainly didn’t want Vonetta to get the wrong idea and think I was as stuck on Hirohito as she and Janice were. Because I wasn’t. He was just a boy, and I didn’t want to miss the bus to our adventure.

  Our bus pushed out of poor and black Oakland, where lines formed for free breakfasts and men stood around because there were no jobs and too much liquor. We were glad to be going. Each of us looked out and off into different directions, taking in all that we could. Finally we were on our way to an adventure.

  I watched Fern, glued to the bus window and singing to herself. I wondered if she missed Miss Patty Cake at all. How she loved, loved, loved Miss Patty Cake long before she could walk. She teethed on Miss Patty Cake’s arms and legs, ate her hair when she didn’t know better, squeezed her, slept with her, fed her, and sang to her. Seven years of loving Miss Patty Cake and now not one mention of her.