My sisters waited for my answer, but for the first time I had no straw to spin. I could only clear away the food, plates, and forks.
I Birthed a Nation
I didn’t care what Big Ma said about scrubbing like a gal from a one-cow town near Prattville, Alabama. Only turpentine could wipe away the black and red ink that had seeped into the linoleum floor tiles. I wiped up all the ink I could before we went to bed that night. Everything else—the paper, the metal letters, and the mess the police made—would have to wait until we woke up. The day had been just too long.
When I pushed the kitchen door open in the morning, the room didn’t look any better. Streams of sunlight shot through Cecile’s cheap curtains and pointed out Delphine, you got a whole lot of work to do. A lot, girl.
I was set to do it. Pick up, put away, clean and mop everything. But I was still tired, which didn’t make sense to me. I had slept even longer than usual. Yet all I could do was sigh heavily when I saw the inside of Cecile’s kitchen. Everything that made me tall, able, and ready to do what had to be done made me sigh. I picked up the broken stool—the seat, legs, and scattered wood chips—then brought the pieces out to the trash can. There was nothing I could do about the printing machine. It was too heavy. I used all my strength to sit it upright on the floor. I wiped the rollers and laid them on top of the machine. Then I called Vonetta and Fern out of bed and put them to work helping me.
Without a squawk Vonetta gathered up all of the paper—and there was a heavy snowfall of paper. She made different piles. The scuffed and dirty papers went in one pile. The rally flyers went in another. The sheets of poetry with Cecile’s poet name, Nzila, printed on the bottom went in another. Vonetta spent most of her time separating out the different poems; and in between, she read them.
I had Fern hunt around the floor for the metal letters and put them up on the table where the printing machine once sat. I never realized how many metal letters Cecile had in the drawers and kitchen cabinets. She had boxes and boxes of them. Large and small capitals and lowercase letters. Different sizes and types of Ts. Some more boxy, some more curved. Some slanted but not like Hirohito’s eyes. Slanted like a leaning flower stem on a sunny day. Some Os and Qs and Cs long and narrow. Others round and squat. All sizes, all types. All over. Was this “movable type,” like her poem? Each letter free to be flung to all four corners?
Then Fern found two of Cecile’s special letters. The ones she used for her poetry name. The N and the Z. I found the I, L, and A. I polished those with the dish towel. These were a special type. Tall and curved, hooks on the ends, the Z coiled back to strike like a snake. In all her collection, these were the only letters of this kind. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had thrown out the other twenty-one letters, or if these were the only ones she had bought. Just so that only her name could be spelled out with these letters.
I mopped the floor once the papers, letter blocks, and mess had been cleared away. We brought all of the letters and boxes into the living room and spread out the tablecloth. We spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through Cecile’s letters. It was like a game. Finding the right letters, the right type, the right size. I put the “Nzila” letters in one box by themselves. We didn’t know if that was the right way, but at least it was a way. Vonetta took out one of Cecile’s poems and read it to us.
“I think it’s about us,” Vonetta said. “Look at the title: ‘I Birthed a Nation.’”
“You might be right,” I said.
“Surely might be.”
Vonetta said, “We should do this poem.” She read it again. It was a good poem for reciting out loud. The same way “We Real Cool” was a good poem for reciting. And then we joined her. Each of us taking a line, one after the other. Then we chose our own stanza but recited the last one together. We decided Cecile’s poem was in a way like “Dry Your Eyes.” We decided that it was about Mother Africa losing her children like Cecile had lost us. I didn’t remind my sisters that Cecile had left us.
Then there was a knock on the door and we froze. We remembered we were in Cecile’s green stucco house where the Black Panthers had come and the police had come and Cecile had been arrested and we were supposed to be the Clark sisters down the street. Not Cecile’s daughters reciting her poems in her house.
We became like spies. I mouthed, “Be quiet,” and hoped whoever was at the door would go away. They knocked again. I put my finger to my lips. Then Vonetta popped up her head and looked through the curtain.
“It’s Hirohito!” she cried out. “With an Oriental lady.”
I didn’t know what to be. Mad at Vonetta for being her Hirohito-crazy self. Relieved it was Hirohito. Nervous about the lady.
I cracked the door open.
Hirohito said loudly, “Open up, Delphine. It’s me. And my mom.”
His mother? I looked at my sisters. My sisters looked at me. Vonetta flapped her arms wildly, wanting me to open the door. I didn’t want to, but I did anyway. Hirohito’s mother was holding a pan with tinfoil over it. Then I felt rude and stupid. “Hello,” I said. “You can come in, but my mother isn’t home.”
I had never said that to anyone before. “My mother,” in a real way.
Vonetta and Fern were all smiles.
I closed the door quickly after they stepped inside.
“I know your mother isn’t home, Delphine,” Hirohito’s mother said. “I know.”
“She’ll be home soon,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.” The truth was, I didn’t know anything about Cecile and why they had taken her or how long she would be gone.
“Look. My mom made this food, and I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
To that, Mrs. Woods gave Hirohito a slap against the head and said something to him in Japanese. He said, “Mom, I’m hungry.”
I was embarrassed that we didn’t have tables or chairs. I certainly didn’t want that going around the Center tomorrow. We had been laughed at enough for one summer. But Hirohito’s mother didn’t blink once when I said, “We always eat on the floor.” She put the tins on the floor while I got the plates, forks, and the biggest serving spoon I could find. Vonetta and Fern just giggled and kept asking Hirohito to say something in Japanese. He rolled his eyes.
We sat down and ate fried pork chops, rice, and string beans. I wanted to eat nicely like Mrs. Woods ate, but I ate hungrily like Cecile. Hirohito ate hungrily also. He scooped more rice and string beans onto his plate, and seeing that I was nearly done, he scooped more rice and string beans onto mine. I couldn’t look up at him. I just ate.
Mrs. Woods said, “We know the same things. We have to stick together.”
Stores of the No Sayers
I gave what few flyers Cecile had printed up to Sister Mukumbu. She, Sister Pat, Crazy Kelvin, the ladies who served breakfast, and everyone else all knew that Nzila had been arrested. Sister Mukumbu said we should stay with her until Nzila was released.
It was funny how things changed. If Cecile had been arrested when we first arrived in Oakland, I would have called Pa, and Pa would have made sure my sisters and I were on a plane back to New York. Nothing would have made me happier than to leave Cecile and Oakland back then. But we hadn’t gotten what we came for. We didn’t really know our mother, and I couldn’t leave without knowing who she was. I certainly didn’t want to tell Big Ma that everything she had said about Cecile for the past seven years was right. That Cecile was no kind of mother and had gotten herself locked up to prove it. It was bad enough to hear Big Ma supposing out loud every kind of selfish trouble Cecile was tangled up in. Day in, day out, I’d never hear the end of it. And there was no telling Big Ma that Cecile was a freedom fighter, oppressed by the Man. Day in, day out, Big Ma would give my ear a hurting over Cecile.
No. I couldn’t call Pa yet. What if Cecile were released tomorrow?
I thanked Sister Mukumbu for her offer and told her as quietly as I could that we were staying with Hirohito and his mother. I certainly didn’t want Eunice and her sisters to know we wer
e staying at the Woods’ house. Although Vonetta promised to keep her mouth shut, I didn’t think she could hold it in. Anything to make Janice jealous. “Our mother will expect us to be home when they let her out. She won’t be too happy hunting around town looking for us if we’re not home.”
Sister Mukumbu said we would be safer with Mrs. Woods than by ourselves. Sister Pat added, “The Man is still watching the house.”
I asked Sister Mukumbu why our mother had been arrested in the first place. She said the police were really after the two who had been arrested with her. She also said our mother helped to spread the word by volunteering her printing services. “Information is power,” she told me as if we were having a lesson. “Keeping the people informed keeps the people empowered.”
Cecile wasn’t exactly like Hirohito’s father, going around spreading the word and telling the truth. She fussed about printing anything other than her poetry. I didn’t tell Sister Mukumbu that. And honestly, I believed she said that about Nzila giving power to the people to make me feel good about seeing my mother being taken away in handcuffs.
Crazy Kelvin held up his fist and said, “Stay strong, my black sisters. Hold your heads up.”
Vonetta gave him the power sign back, but Fern pointed at him and said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”
He laughed like Fern was a silly little girl. To someone Kelvin’s age, she was just that. A silly little girl. To his chuckle, Fern said, “Good boy, Fido.” Then she barked. “Arf! Arf!”
Vonetta and I were embarrassed and puzzled by Fern calling Kelvin out like he was a dog and then barking at him. I pulled her away.
Fern laughed and hummed her bus song—“I saw something”—and clapped her hands.
After we practiced being led to freedom by Janice Ankton as Harriet Tubman, Sister Mukumbu announced we would do community work. We would take Sister Nzila’s flyers out into the community and ask store owners to display them in their windows. Each of us had to present ourselves to the manager or owner. We were to be respectful and clear: “Good afternoon. We are from the People’s Center summer camp and are participating in the people’s rally. We are asking you to help the people of your community by displaying our flyer for the people’s rally this Saturday.” Older kids, like Eunice, Hirohito, and me, also included information about free sickle cell anemia testing, voter registration, free shoes for the poor, supporting Huey Newton, and changing the park’s name to the Bobby Hutton Park. If store managers said yes, we were to thank them and tape a flyer to their window. If they said no, we were to leave just as respectfully as we came. “Heads up high. Walking tall,” Sister Mukumbu said.
Hirohito was up first. He went to Saint Augustine’s Church and gave his presentation to a priest he seemed to know. Hirohito had it easy. The priest seemed to be only too happy to take Hirohito’s flyer. It figured. The church served free breakfasts and gave away bags of food to poor people. They were, as Sister Pat might say, “down with the cause,” or as Huey might say, “carrying the weight.” Still, Hirohito congratulated himself as he rejoined the group.
I was supposed to ask Mean Lady Ming, but I knew she would say yes to me. I said, “Fern, Mean Lady Ming likes you. Go get her.” I followed behind her but kept my distance. Fern couldn’t remember all of her speech, but what she said was good enough. “Good afternoon, Mean Lady Ming. We would like to put the people’s flyer in your window for the people’s rally this Saturday. Free Huey. Power to the people.” Mean Lady Ming wasn’t rankled by the name Fern called her. Her complaints, all in Chinese, sounded just like her complaints about customers who wanted extra duck sauce or a free egg roll. That didn’t stop her from taking Fern’s flyer and taping it up in the window.
Vonetta and Janice Ankton approached the Shabazz Bakery together. Another easy presentation. The bakery had pictures of Malcolm X and Black Power slogans on the wall. It didn’t matter to either Vonetta or Janice. They both came out of the bakery waving their arms like homerun hitters.
Black, white, Mexican, or Chinese. Big stores, little stores. Some shook their heads north and south, some shook their heads east and west. There were others who, in the middle of our presentations, simply pointed us to the door. In those cases especially, Sister Mukumbu praised us for how well we presented ourselves and for how we left. Respectfully, with our heads held high.
Both Eunice and I went for the harder ones. Stores of the no sayers. Places where we weren’t guaranteed a listen or a smile. We’d both heard no before. The hardened looks of grown-ups who didn’t like kids or black people, or kids who were black, were nothing new to us.
After Eunice’s third no, Sister Mukumbu pulled her aside for a little chat. Eunice had a hip-switching way about her walk that would have gotten me spoken to but good by Big Ma. When the store managers said no, Eunice would say “Thank you anyway” the same way we’d say “Forget you, forgot you” on the playground. Then she’d walk her hip-switching walk on out of their store.
I said I would go into the Safeway store and find the manager. Surely the grocery store workers had seen my sisters and me skipping through the aisles with our basket. I went up to the manager and said in my cheeriest voice, “Good afternoon. I am from the People’s Center summer camp, and I buy dinner groceries at this store.” I threw that one in there for good measure. Just as I was telling him about the rally and how good it would be for the community, he said no and something about it being “against store policy.” But he did look friendly. He did smile and thank us for shopping at Safeway.
I had no hips to swish away with. Instead, my long legs carried me down the produce aisle, past the bread aisle, and out of Safeway. I had been keeping a list of the east-west no sayers and put Safeway at the very top of it. My sisters, Cecile, and I would eat egg rolls, white rice, bean pies, and fried fish before we spent another penny in the stores of the no sayers.
Glorious Hill
I didn’t know which was weirder. Having Hirohito see me in my pajamas or not having any chores to do. I tried to wash dishes and always offered to mop the floor, but for the fifth day in a row, Mrs. Woods said, “Go outside. Play.”
I felt like a watcher while Hirohito chased Vonetta and Fern around. I sat on the porch with my book in my lap, glad I’d brought it along. In between turning pages, I’d peek at Vonetta, Fern, and Hirohito playing Mother May I or freeze tag. He knew just how to escape their tags and keep the game going. I could see why Hirohito put up with Vonetta and Janice at the Center. Why he let Fern chase him and tag him “it” when she wasn’t fast enough to catch him. Hirohito had no brothers or sisters. He liked being a brother to my sisters and me.
Grateful that Hirohito would soon tire his “sisters” out, I settled into my book on the porch. I could finish the chapter before it was time to come inside. I read my book, bright eyed, breathing heavily, and rooted for Rontu to win against the pack of wild dogs, his former brothers. Get ’em, Rontu. Get ’em. I didn’t hear the quiet. That the sounds of playing in the yard had stopped. I looked up, and they were all standing around me with Hirohito’s go-kart.
“Hey. Delphine.”
Vonetta and Fern giggled. Obviously they were a part of Hirohito’s plan to sneak up on me. He smiled, pleased to have caught me unaware.
“Want to try out my go-kart?”
I rolled my eyes and tried to appear older. Above playing kid games. “Me? On that thing?”
Vonetta and Fern started screaming that they wanted a ride.
He tapped my sneaker with one of his doggedy high-tops. “It’s fun. You’ll like it.”
Before this week I would have said, “How do you know what I’d like?” My goal to come off bored and older slipped right out from under me. Inside, I felt like I was being pulled onto the sixth-grade dance floor. I wanted to give him my hand and let him pull me up, but I felt too big. Tree limbed. Plain faced. I’d probably look silly on that go-kart, just like I’d look silly matching steps with some boy in the multipurpose room at school.
&
nbsp; I glanced down at that sawed-off piece of wood resting on top of a metal frame with skate wheels up front. Tricycle wheels in the back. A rope on one end, a carpet square on the other. I had never seen Hirohito sit on the carpet square. He always rode belly down, arms spread out, and hands gripping the T bar. It was a wonder he wasn’t all scarred up.
“Boy, you must be crazy.”
“Stop being chicken. You can steer it. Those legs’ll reach the turn bar easy. Just hold on to the rope and keep it steady.”
Vonetta and Delphine snickered at Hirohito’s carefree choice of words.
I couldn’t hit him for calling me a long-legged chicken after I had gobbled down his mother’s fish and rice. I said, “I am not getting on your street roller. No way.”
Instead of saying “Not on your street roller coaster” or “Yeah. No way, Jose,” my sisters’ voices failed to come to my rescue. Instead, Vonetta and Fern—mostly Vonetta—screamed and danced around us, pleading to take my turn on the go-kart.
Hirohito shook his head, sorely disappointed, like he was Papa. “I didn’t think you were scared, Delphine.”
“I am not scared of that thing.” My voice hit notes it was not known for reaching.
“Then come on.”
“No.”
“Chicken.”
“I am not.”
He offered the rope to me and patted the carpet seat. “Just a block. Not even a hill.”
I couldn’t let him think I was weak and scared. Girl pride and a lower voice said, “I’m not afraid of no hill.”
Before I knew it, we had become a merry parade. Me sitting on the go-kart, my feet on the bars, Hirohito behind me pushing, and Vonetta and Fern at the rear, parading up Magnolia Street. What a sight. I sat hunched over, holding on to the rope, my big sneakers on the turn bar. All I could do was wrap the rope tighter around my hands and pray.