There were words thrown back and forth. Long, unfamiliar words ending in tion, ism, and actic, with more talk about “the people” thrown in for good measure, like Big Ma throwing a pinch of salt into the cake batter.
They weren’t just talking. The three Black Panthers were rapping. Laying it down. Telling it like it is, like talking was their weapon. Their words versus her words. Hers falling, theirs rising. When her voice fell as low as she would allow it, she stamped her foot and said, “All right. All right. But you gotta take my kids.” And shortly after, they were gone.
We retreated from the door and jumped on the top daybed. This was the next part after the spy missions. Pooling together what we’d learned.
Vonetta asked, “Is she giving us away?”
Then Fern: “To those people?”
I shook my head no. “She couldn’t explain that to Papa.”
“Or to Big Ma,” Fern said.
“Then who were those people?” Vonetta asked.
“In the black clothes.”
“Telling her to carry the weight.”
“Talk, talk, talking, on and on and on,” Fern said.
“They’re Black Panthers. They’re probably who she’s running from.”
Vonetta asked, “Who are the Black Panthers?”
“You know. Like Frieda’s brother.” I made the Black Power sign with my fist. Only Big Ma and I watch the news. Big Ma enjoys hearing about all the trouble going on in the world. It isn’t that she actually likes it. She just needs to hear about everything and talk about it. Since Pa works all day and is tired at night, Big Ma gives me her opinions while I wash dishes. You name it. President LBJ. Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam. Martin Luther King’s funeral. Bobby Kennedy’s funeral. The race riots. The sitins. Elizabeth Taylor’s next husband. The Black Panthers. Each holds Big Ma’s interest.
“It has something to do with Cecile’s paper,” I said.
“And her ink,” Vonetta said.
“And the people,” Fern said.
We couldn’t imagine what tied all three things together. Then Vonetta suggested, “Maybe they want her to write a poem.”
“About the people,” Fern said.
“Using her special inks and papers,” Vonetta said.
Pa had told us Cecile wrote poems, but I’d already known that. Flashes of Cecile chanting words, tapping a rhythm with her pencil, then writing. And Uncle Darnell had said I was always there, quiet, in the kitchen while she chanted, tapped, and wrote. I’d get those flashing pictures. But in pieces.
Vonetta asked, “Can they make you write poems?” Then Vonetta fixed her voice deep like a man’s. “You better write a poem about the people, or else.”
Fern and I laughed at her. She loved entertaining us.
“They don’t send the Black Panthers to your house to make you write a poem,” I said.
Vonetta’s eyes lit up fox bright. She had an idea.
“Cecile prints up her own money. How else do you think she got this house? Cecile is printing her own money in the kitchen. That’s why we can’t go in there and that’s why she didn’t cook fried chicken.”
“Or ’nana pudding.”
I shook my head. “With all the money she’d have to print up to buy this house, the FBI would have tracked her down and thrown her in the pokey.”
“The pokey!” That made Fern laugh. Then Vonetta and Fern started dancing and singing: “You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about.”
Glass of Water
If we were at home with Pa and Big Ma, we would have been bathed and in bed an hour and five minutes ago. But we weren’t in Brooklyn. We were in Oakland with Cecile.
I glanced at my trusty Timex. I wasn’t mad that Vonetta had gotten the Timex with the pink wristband and couldn’t hold on to it, while mine is plain brown and still on my arm. My brown leather wristband is just fine. It’s the clock part that matters anyway. I can count on it to keep things running on schedule.
Its waterproof face told me what I needed to know at nine thirty-five in the evening. That it took three minutes for warm water and a handful of Tide soap powder to make the right amount of suds. Fifteen minutes was enough time for the day’s dirt to fall to the bottom of the tub, while Vonetta and Fern styled bubble beehive hairdos on their heads and beards on each other. But give them one minute longer and I’d end up pulling Fern off of Vonetta and mopping up sops of water splashed onto the bathroom tiles.
After I got my sisters in, out, dried, and lotioned, I took my bath, setting my watch on the porcelain edge to keep an eye on my own twelve minutes in the tub. The watch part might have been waterproof, but the plain brown leather band didn’t care for soap and hot water. Bath-water made the leather hard and clammy against my skin. I always took it off.
Only when I sat in the tub did I wish my Timex wasn’t so reliable or the ticking so steady. Oh, how I wished the minute hand would slow down and give me time for a nice, long soak. Wish all I wanted, I couldn’t leave Vonetta and Fern alone to sort out who’d sleep at what end of the daybed. Three extra minutes in the tub and I’d be sorry. I stuck to the schedule.
We were in our summer nighties. Vonetta and Fern lay side by side, their elbows propped up on the higher bed, while I sat on the lower bed. Fern’s eyelids grew droopy. Still, she yawned and demanded story time.
I opened Peter Pan, one of the books I’d checked out for a two-week loan before we’d left Brooklyn. I had it all worked out and counted the pages I’d read each night, dividing that by twenty-eight days. I had two dollars and eighty cents in my drawer at home to pay for the late fees for the remaining two weeks when we returned to Brooklyn.
This Peter Pan was better than the Peter Pan coloring books at home. It was a real book, thick with more than one hundred pages of adventure. Vonetta and Fern were soon under the spell of Peter and Wendy flying like fairies. Both Vonetta and Fern gave out three pages sooner than I had planned. I put my bookmark—a coaster from the airplane—in the right spot and pulled the blanket over my sisters.
As quiet as a spy, I unbuckled my suitcase and took out my borrowed copy of Island of the Blue Dolphins. I turned off the goosenecked floor lamp and sat in the hallway, where light beamed from the living room. Cecile was in her kitchen doing whatever she did in there.
I fell asleep with my book in my lap. What woke me was a thump. Through clouded, sleepy eyes, I made out the back of Fern’s ruffled nightie. Her little heels were headed to Cecile’s kitchen. I shook myself awake and jumped to my feet. As sure as I knew Cecile was crazy and unmotherly, I knew I must stop Fern.
It was too late. I wasn’t fast enough to catch hold of Fern’s nightie. Cecile was right there, guarding whatever she was hiding in her kitchen.
Sleepy and sweet voiced, Fern asked, “Can I have a glass of water?”
Papa could never bring himself to say no to Fern. He left that to Big Ma, Vonetta, and me. But Cecile said, “Drank the water in the bathroom.”
“It’s nasty,” Fern said.
“Then you ain’t thirsty, little girl.”
“I’m not Little Girl. I’m Fern.”
“She didn’t mean…” My mouth sped to Fern’s rescue, but Cecile’s raised hand stopped me. I got the message, and she lowered her stop sign.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Little Girl. No one’s going in my kitchen.”
It’s hard to believe the last time they’d seen each other, Fern had been a loaf of bread in Cecile’s arms. That was how Uncle Darnell told it to me. Some pieces of it I even remember. How Cecile had nursed Fern, burped her, and placed her in her crib before leaving us. It’s funny that Cecile had at least thought to give Fern a last drink, but all the same left Fern wanting her milk. Now they stood across from each other: Cecile towering over Fern with her arms crossed, and Fern looking up at Cecile. Fern balled both fists, banging them against her sides like she usually did before she jumped on Vonetta.
I took one of Fern’s fists i
n my hand and eased it flat. Then I put on my “talking to white folks” voice and said, “Can you get her a glass of cold water?”
I’m used to doing what’s hard. Like three days’ worth of homework in one night to catch up from being out of school sick. Like forty-six push-ups in sixty seconds to win a bet with a boy. Like standing mean mouthed over Vonetta and Fern until they swallow a tablespoon each of hard pine cough syrup. But saying “please” without actually saying it to someone you don’t want to say “please” to in the first place tops the list of hard.
When Cecile raised her hand, I pushed Fern back, not knowing if she raised her hand only to point down at Fern. I didn’t know Cecile yet. I didn’t know how mean or crazy she was.
She said, “Stay out there.” Then she backed into the kitchen muttering, “Didn’t ask no one to send you here, no way.”
When the door had swung, I heard a rustle between the flash of opening and closing. Like fall leaves rustling. I looked up in time to see white wings hanging from above in the quick flash of the opened door.
To the normal kids in my classroom, that would have looked crazy. White wings hanging in the kitchen. But I remembered strange things that got me laughed at in school. Things about Cecile. I’d been dumb enough to volunteer facts about my mother for show-and-tell. “My mother writes on cereal boxes and on the wall,” I’d said proudly in the second grade. And this, the white wings hanging in her house, wasn’t strange at all. It was halfway what I’d expected. I would hate to think she had left us to lead a normal, cookie-baking, pork chop–frying life.
The sink ran full force. I heard opening and slamming. Metal banging against the countertop maybe. Cracking and shaking. The rock crackling of ice in a metal tray. More opening and slamming again. Fern clung to my side and then inched behind me.
Cecile came out holding the extra paper cup from Mean Lady Ming’s. Seeing Fern hiding behind me, she said, “It’s too late for all of that. Here. Take it.”
Fern stayed put, so I went to take the cup. Cecile pulled back, spilling a few drops at her feet.
“Little Girl, you better take this if you want it.”
Fern’s fists balled from behind her nightie and again I reached out, but Cecile glared, like, Girl, I will knock you down.
Fern stepped from behind me and took the cup from Cecile’s hand. “I’m not Little Girl. I’m Fern.”
“Well, you better drink this cup of ice water, Little Girl. Every last drop.”
Fern drank it all down without stopping. Probably to prove she could. Probably to not stand near Cecile any longer than she had to. Then she handed me the cup with ice, and I returned it to Cecile.
As many times as Big Ma said it, I never fully believed it. That no one, not even Cecile, needed to have their way so badly or was so selfish. That she could leave Pa, Vonetta, Fern, and me over something as small and silly as a name. That Cecile left because Pa wouldn’t let her pick out Fern’s name. But I saw and heard it with my own ears and eyes. She refused to call Fern by her name, and that made Big Ma right about Cecile.
Inseparable
“If you girls want breakfast, go’n down to the People’s Center.”
We said all together, “The People’s Center?”
Without skipping a beat Cecile said, “Next to the library on Orchard. Just keep walking till you see kids and old people lined up.”
“You’re not going to take us?” I didn’t mean it to worm out as a question and was mad at myself for asking instead of stating.
“You don’t need me to walk down the street. The park is on the other side. Y’all can run around after breakfast or stay for the program at the Center. It don’t make me no difference.”
Cecile pointed a fountain pen at me. Two more pens were stuck in her hair. “You the oldest. You can read street signs.”
Vonetta, indignant, said, “I can read street signs too.”
“Me too.”
Instead of saying “I didn’t ask for all of that” like I expected, Cecile smacked her palm against her thigh and said, “Then that settles it. Step out this door, cross the street, keep going a block till you get to Orchard. If you can read, you can’t miss the O in ‘Orchard.’ Turn left. Keep walking till you see the library. Center’s on the same block. Can’t miss it. Nothing but black folks in black clothes rapping revolution and a line of hungry black kids.”
Then she cut herself off from us, tapped her fountain pen, and repeated, “Black folks, in black clothes, rapping revolution.”
We had Black Panthers in Brooklyn. Black Panther posters with SEIZE THE TIME stapled onto telephone poles. We just never had any Black Panthers marching down Herkimer Street, knocking on our door demanding that we give to the cause or calling us some kind of Sister name we had never heard of.
My sisters and I didn’t make a move toward the door. We couldn’t believe our ears. Our crazy mother was sending us outside to find militant strangers if we wanted to eat.
She said, “Wait.” I hoped she had changed her mind about us going to the Center. She went into the kitchen and came out with a cardboard box, a little smaller than the shoe box for Papa’s work boots. “Here,” she said. “Take this to the Center. Give it to the Panthers. Tell them it’s from Inzilla.” That’s what I thought she said. Inzilla.
She put the box in my hands.
“Who do I—”
“Just find a black beret. Any black beret will do. Make sure you tell them I gave to the cause. You tell them, ‘Don’t come knocking on my door asking for my materials.’”
I knew I wouldn’t be telling no Black Panthers what Cecile said. That she gave to the cause and not to come knocking on her door for her stuff. I just took the box and nodded, because that’s how you treat crazy people. You nod and count down twenty-seven days for crazy to come to an end.
Vonetta and Fern looked to me for what to do next, and Cecile noticed this. There was no lip smile from Cecile, but her eyes found it funny that they always looked to me first.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get breakfast.”
We were about to leave, but Fern stopped cold. Her eyes bugged out and she balled her fists. “Wait! Wait!”
Vonetta and I waited while she ran into the back room, her steps all buffalo stomps. I didn’t mind Fern’s stomping because it annoyed Cecile that her house had been invaded by our mouths, wants, and feet. It served her right.
Both Vonetta and I knew why Fern ran back to the room. We’d been seeing this go on for years. Fern returned with Miss Patty Cake in tow. From her look of disgust, I believed Cecile would have spat on her own floor if she wouldn’t have had to clean it up.
“Aren’t you too big to be dragging that thing with you?”
As far as I was concerned, Cecile had nothing to say about Fern and Miss Patty Cake. Miss Patty Cake was there when Cecile wasn’t.
Now I smiled. I’d understood that Fern and Miss Patty Cake were like that Nat King Cole song “Unforgettable.” When I’d first heard his satiny smooth voice sing “Like a song of love that clings to me,” I knew Miss Patty Cake was like that song of love to Fern.
Cecile thought Fern would buckle under a seven-year-old’s shame. When Fern didn’t answer, she asked again, “Aren’t you too big for alla that?”
Fern shook four braids and barrettes and said, “No,” taking delight in answering no for no’s sake. No, because Cecile didn’t have a hug and a kiss that Fern expected. No, because Cecile didn’t leap up and get that cold glass of water. No, because Cecile had yet to call Fern, Fern.
Vonetta groaned. She had fought enough name-callers on behalf of Miss Patty Cake. I had fought my share too, but so what. It was for Fern and her doll. Except for going to school and church, Fern and Miss Patty Cake had been inseparable for as long as Fern or anyone else could remember.
Cecile shook like we had given her the willies. She probably asked herself, Who are these kids?
There was no use in standing around for a long farewell and a list of dos
and don’ts. We weren’t leaving Big Ma. We were leaving Cecile with her kitchen and her palm tree. And just as I felt we had gotten the last lick by turning and going, Cecile said, “Don’t kill yourself to get back here. Stay out till sundown.”
We walked along the street, a moving triangle. Me in the front. Vonetta and Fern with Miss Patty Cake behind me at both sides.
“I wanna go home.”
“Me too.”
I knew which home they meant. I said, “We’re going back home in twenty-seven days.”
“Let’s call Papa,” Vonetta said.
“And Big Ma.”
I said, “Not yet. Big Ma hasn’t gotten over the collect call from yesterday. We gotta get up enough dimes to make a real call across the country.”
Vonetta said, “We should call Papa. Tell him she’s mean.”
“And she don’t want us.”
“And she won’t cook or let us in the kitchen.”
“To get a cold glass of water.”
“In her kitchen.”
“In her house.”
I said, “We will. Just not yet.”
Vonetta said, “If Big Ma knew…”
“And Papa.”
“They’d be here lightning quick to get us.”
“Yeah. Quick like lightning.”
I said, “We’ll need a lot of dimes.”
Breakfast Program
We found the Center like Cecile said we would. A line of hungry kids waited for breakfast, except they weren’t all black. There were older teens in mostly black clothes and Afros posted like soldiers guarding the outside. That hardly seemed necessary when a white-and-black police car circled around the block.
Vonetta was already smiling and showing anyone who’d look her way that she was worth a smile back. She had picked out three girls who looked alike enough to be sisters, each one as thick as my sisters and I were lanky. They wore white boots and daisy dresses with flared sleeves. They might as well have been going to a go-go, not to a free breakfast.