Danny the K said, “He’s ready, Mr. Mwila. Right, Elly May?”
Ellis turned even redder and I felt a little bad for him.
Even though the K was Ellis’s best friend, the K was the first one from the boys’ side of the room to call him Elly May Clampett after the big blond girl on The Beverly Hillbillies.
“Mr. McClaren, would you like to return to your corner?”
Since September, the K had made a few visits to the corner next to Mr. Mwila’s desk. “No, sir,” he answered. The K spoke politely, like he had a Big Ma of his own who had taught him to say “yes, sir” and “no, ma’am.” And I’ll bet she and Danny’s mama were tired of Mr. Mwila calling their house to report on his fooling around. Mr. Mwila believed in dialing up parents. He called that an “opportunity to involve the home community with the school community.”
Mr. Mwila announced, “Today we shall continue our studies on the upcoming presidential election by forming discussion groups.”
Rukia raised her hand but spoke before she was recognized. “We’re going to be talking for the entire period?”
“Organized discussion,” Mr. Mwila said.
“So that means—”
He stopped her this time. “We’re in grade six and not in kindergarten, Rukia. We raise our hands and wait to be recognized.”
The boys loved seeing a girl get reprimanded and couldn’t hold it in. “Oh, snaps,” came flying from their side of the room. Mr. Mwila seemed eager to get on with our new project. He let the boys’ outcries pass.
“We shall break into groups of four,” he said. “Since we’re equally matched, we’ll have two boys and two girls in each group. You’ll have one minute—sixty seconds—to find your group members or I’ll pick your group.” He pushed back his jacket sleeve to see his watch. Starting—”
Lucy Raleigh grabbed Frieda—who I wanted as my second girl—and headed straight to Michael Sandler. Frieda gave me a “sorry” glance from across the room. Michael S. had James T., and their group was set. Evelyn, who was Michael S.’s sort-of girlfriend, made a rhinoceros sound and took Theresa over to Anthony and Ant’s group. Evelyn made Anthony get rid of Antnee and take Upton instead. It was like square-dancing on Hee Haw, except with mostly girls running around from group to group calling out the allemande lefts and dos-si-dos. The girls had the right idea. Pick the boy who caused the least amount of trouble. Who did all his schoolwork and didn’t spend the period with his nose in the corner.
I sat at my desk watching the class move and swirl. I finally lifted myself up to see where I would go and decided on Enrique and James W.’s group. Carmen and Monique were already on their way over to their desks.
Mr. Mwila clapped his hands together once and said, “Time.” Without skipping a beat he pointed to Rukia, then Danny the K, and said, “You’re in this group,” meaning with Ellis and me, although we weren’t together. “Quickly. Quickly,” he said.
I raised my hand but Mr. Mwila wagged his finger and shook his head to stop me. “The election is next week and we have much to accomplish.” Then he wrote subjects on the board and began to talk about the “objectives for our group discussions and presentations.”
I was stuck. No surprise fire drill alarm would sound in time to rescue me from having to look at, let alone talk to, Ellis and the K. Rukia wasn’t so bad, just annoying. I glanced at Lucy and Frieda smiling on the other side of the room. It wasn’t fair. I was supposed to be with Frieda.
Once Mr. Mwila outlined our aim for this period, he sat at his desk and opened his little red book. Things Fall Apart.
I glanced at my Timex. Thirty-two more minutes until our group broke up and Rukia and the K moved back to their own desks. Thirty-two more minutes until Ellis and I could look away from each other.
I felt myself all wound up inside like the innards of a clock. Instead of teaching us about the election, Mr. Mwila expected us to teach ourselves. Occasionally he cleared his throat and said “Decorum” to a group that was getting out of hand. At least they were excited about their discussion and had chosen their subjects. What I wouldn’t have given to be anywhere but with my group. All around the room, groups were talking about voters’ rights, the electoral college, the two-party system, and Richard Nixon versus Hubert Humphrey. We weren’t talking about anything.
Danny the K snapped a rubber band at Ellis. Ellis, whose head went back down on his desk, said, “Quit it,” and closed his eyes. Rukia said for the sixth time, “Can I switch groups?” Danny answered, “Can you?” Or he’d say to her because she was a Muslim, “Asalamu alaykum. Pass the pigs’ feet and the bacon.” Then she’d raise her hand and ask again, “Can I switch groups?”
“We need a subject,” I said.
Ellis shrugged. Danny the K aimed another rubber band, but Mr. Mwila cleared his throat again and the rubber band disappeared.
If I were at home with my sisters, I would pick our subject and tell Vonetta and Fern which subtopics they would discuss, case closed. But I wasn’t at home.
Danny the K finally said, “We already have a subject. The presidential election. Let’s talk about that.”
“That’s the overall subject,” I said. “We need a specific subject and then subtopics.” I pointed to the list of subjects on the blackboard.
“Ooh. Specific,” the K said.
Rukia said, “We should open the textbook and look up what’s on the board. Then we’ll pick something.”
I whirled my hand around helicopter style at all the groups talking and said, “They didn’t look up anything. They’re having discussions.”
But as usual, we had nothing to say to one another. Then Rukia said, “I know what our specific subject can be. We can talk about what would happen if a woman ran for president of the United States.”
“What?” That was all I could say. I had never heard of anything so far-out. And nowhere on the board did it say “women running for president.”
Danny the K laughed. Ellis sat up. Sort of.
“Yeah. That would be funny,” Danny the K began. “We could say, ‘Mrs. President. How will you win the war in Vietnam?’” With his eyelashes fluttering, the K said in a high-pitched warble, “‘I’ll bake the Vietcong a nice apple pie.’” He and Ellis laughed it up.
I said, “The subject is ‘What if a woman ran for president?’ Not ‘What if your pie-baking mama ran for president.’” And before I knew it I had thrown down the glove like they did in The Three Musketeers. Instead of fencing, there was a war of the Dozens between Danny the K and me.
So he said, “At least my mama can shake and bake. Your mama can’t bake a pie because your mama don’t exist. Your mama’s the invisible mom.”
He couldn’t shut me up like he did last year. I said, “My mother don’t bake no pies. My mother writes poems about the revolution. My mama exists. Your mama’s invisible.”
And while all of that was going on and the room was getting quiet, Mr. Mwila appeared at our group, looking down mostly at me.
Rukia saved the day by saying, “We have our subject, Mr. Mwila. Women running for president.”
But it was Ellis who shocked me. Shocked us all. He pointed to the blackboard and said, “Under eligibility.”
Instead of saying that was good, Danny the K said, “Yeah, Elly May. Under eligibility.”
Mr. Mwila congratulated us on our topic. He said we had a lot of catching up to do because the other groups were already writing out presentation drafts. Then he wrote a slip for Danny the K and me to spend the rest of the period in detention.
Suited to Be President
I was onto Mr. Mwila. He thought because Danny the K and I sat in detention, that we’d talk to each other like the grade-six upperclassmen he told us we were.
Danny’s “you make me sick” faces met my “too cool to care” blank stares. The only thing I cared about at the moment was if Mr. Mwila saw this as an “opportunity” to call my house. The more I thought about Big Ma getting that phone call, the more I r
egretted being in detention with Danny the K. I missed being in class where everything was happening. Plus I had to save our group from Rukia Marshall and women running for president. If New York City had never had a woman as our mayor, how would the country elect a woman to be president?
The detention aide got up from her desk and sternly warned us, “Mr. McClaren and Miss Gaither,” to be on our best behavior while she left the room for a few minutes.
I glanced up at the big clock, whose minute hand never seemed to move in spite of the second hand winding around and around. I looked down at my Timex. Four more minutes before I could join my class. And what if Pa decided I couldn’t go to the Jackson Five concert because I was shouting “Your pie-baking mama!” in social studies, like a dice-throwing hoodlum?
I thought of how I wanted the one thing that seemed hardest to get. I wanted Mr. Mwila to think better of me.
Danny the K pursed his lips. I thought to make kissy smacks, but he would be the last person on this earth to blow kisses at me. At first I only heard pitchy whispers stabbing the air around me. Then I saw Danny’s spit shooting through his puckered lips. The whispers grew louder. Clearer. Until there was a tune. A tune I knew.
With his eyes sparkling like beady marble shooters, Danny the K whistled that stupid TV dolphin song, and he dared me to do something about it.
I crossed my arms and looked away.
Danny whistled louder.
I stared up at the big clock. My “too cool to care” face wasn’t holding up. I pinched a chunk of my arm and gritted my teeth. My ears were getting hot as he leaned forward.
The detention aide had not yet returned. Danny the K got up from the bench and danced to the tune of the Flipper song. Danced and whistled. He came closer, probably hoping I’d push him away so he could push back. He wanted me to start it.
I kept looking up at the clock, praying the minute hand would strike 1:40 and the bell would ring. I let out a sigh to pretend I didn’t care, but he whistled even louder. Until he got me with his stupid spit, right below my eye.
I wiped my face and turned away. Turned away when my fists were ready. So ready.
Danny knew it. His whistling got louder and he leapt like a ballerina.
Then Principal Myers walked in.
Mr. Mwila had not called our house yet. Big Ma would have given me an earful the second I came into the living room, where she sat in her chair, resewing Pa’s shirt buttons. I didn’t want to stew over the detention note that she or Pa had to sign. I got it over with and took the mimeographed letter out of my book bag. The smell of purple ink swirled up my nose when I unfolded the bright white paper. The writing on the paper was blurry after too much recopying but Big Ma would be able to read it. This was the second detention letter I had brought home. The first was from punching Ellis in the jaw last year.
I braced myself for either the scolding or the sting of Big Ma’s right hand. I expected to get one thing or the other. Or both.
“What did you do now, Delphine?” At least this time she asked what it was all about first. My sisters and I weren’t supposed to bring trouble in the front door. Especially not from school.
I spoke plain and clear. “I got into an argument in class with Danny McClaren.”
“You’re in class to learn from the teacher,” Big Ma said. “Not to be arguing with some know-nothing boy.”
I heard myself while I retold the whole thing. It sounded silly.
Big Ma never looked up once from her sewing. When I finished telling, she said, “Women are too busy to be running for president of the United States. What are they teaching at that school? Woman president. Hmp.”
“My teacher might call.” Might as well let the other shoe drop.
“Let him call. I’ll straighten him out.”
Big Ma was funny, as in hard to figure out. She had loved President John F. Kennedy but hadn’t wanted a Catholic president. She loved keeping up with the Kennedys in the supermarket gossip papers but also loved wagging her finger at them.
I remember the president’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, came to Bed-Stuy a lot—before the riots and after. His visits were always in the newspapers. Back in spring, when I was in the fifth grade, just months before he, like his brother, was assassinated, Big Ma put on a church outfit to hear the senator speak. Vonetta, Fern, and I asked if we could go with her but she said it wasn’t a meeting for kids. I learned later that plenty of kids had gone, and Rukia Marshall had posed for a picture with Senator Kennedy. That color photograph became her show-and-tell.
Well, Big Ma had gone down to Friendship Baptist Church to hear Senator Kennedy tell the black people they were American citizens who deserved decent homes, decent education for their children, safe neighborhoods, and opportunities. But Big Ma talked more about taking off her glove to shake a Kennedy’s hand than she talked about his speech. You’d have thought Big Ma would’ve been baking cookies for the “Vote for Bobby” office on Fulton Street, the way she talked and talked about Senator Kennedy. But she said she wouldn’t vote for him because his hair was too long and he let people call him Bobby and not Robert. He was too young, talking about changing things in Bedford-Stuyvesant and in every other ghetto. She said that while that sounded good, and the people hollered and clapped for him, he was still a rich, young Catholic boy whose daddy made millions selling liquor.
Instead, she planned to vote Republican for Richard M. Nixon who, to Big Ma, was more suited to be president of the United States than a Catholic boy with hippie hair—or any Democrat, for that matter. She and Pa talked back and forth about that. After the assassination, Big Ma told Pa not to waste his vote on the Democrats. Instead of fixing things for the Negro race, Richard Nixon would win the war in Vietnam, clean up the country of its long-haired, drug-smoking hippies, and get those black militants and bean-pie-selling “Mooslims” in line. He would make America great.
Pa would say that Richard M. Nixon wasn’t good for black America, but Big Ma would say, “Life for colored folks is how it’s been. If Reverend King couldn’t fix it, it can’t be fixed. Only Jesus can give colored folks their rightful place, although Reverend King came close.”
That’s what made Big Ma both funny and hard to figure. When she looked at Richard M. Nixon, she saw what a president should look like. But I bet you wouldn’t have caught Richard M. Nixon at Friendship Baptist Church on Herkimer Street.
Big Ma put down her sewing needle and signed the note.
“Don’t get caught up in foolishness, Delphine. You just study your lesson. Gradurate”—she said it with an r—“and maybe you can go to college. Be a schoolteacher. Something nice like that.”
Then I said the thing I’d never have said to my revolutionary poet mother. Still, I knew it was the right thing to say to Big Ma. I took the signed detention slip and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Sweetie and Honey
Pa came home early enough that night to have dinner with us, but he didn’t come alone. While we sat at the table and Vonetta filled in Miss Marva Hendrix on how good of a saver she was, I heard Pa in the kitchen, taking a tone with Big Ma I had never heard him use. “Get used to it, Ma,” I heard him say.
I pretended not to hear and so did Miss Marva Hendrix, but we both knew what was simmering in the kitchen besides gravy. Big Ma didn’t care for Miss Marva Hendrix too much, but Pa refused to yes her like he did when they’d had words about Cecile.
My stomach knotted and rumbled from hunger and funny feelings. I wanted Pa to win the fuss going on in the kitchen because he was my pa. I wanted Big Ma to win because she didn’t punish me for getting myself in detention. And I guess I was a little mad at Pa because he never fought for Cecile to stay.
Vonetta went on and on about all the money we were saving and how she made sure Fern and I didn’t waste our money buying candy, airmail stamps, and mooning over boys in Oakland. Then she ran to her room, brought out the jar all taped up, and shook it for all of us to hear. Even Uncle Darnell perked up when he heard
the coins shaking. Then she put her mummy jar back in the room. Miss Marva Hendrix couldn’t say enough nice things about Vonetta and how she was doing a good job.
I put up with Vonetta because we were almost halfway to Madison Square Garden. In less than six weeks we’d see Jackie, Tito, and the rest of their brothers live onstage. That was worth Vonetta crowing over her job as our saver, and boy, did she crow.
Big Ma brought out the pork shoulder and burnt gravy.
Pa shooed Vonetta out of the seat next to his fiancée. He pecked Miss Marva Hendrix on the forehead, and Fern said, “Ew. Mushy and gushy.”
Big Ma said, “Let’s not have any of that mushy and gushy at the table.”
Then Pa gave Miss Marva Hendrix a real smack on the lips, and instead of being mad or sickened, I surprised myself and laughed out loud.
“A mercy, a mercy. Bless the table.”
When Miss Marva Hendrix added, “And all of us gathered here,” she didn’t know that wasn’t the blessing. Just Big Ma telling Pa to say grace. Pa said, “Amen. Let’s eat,” and that was that. Then Big Ma gave a look to Pa. The same “mark my words” look that she gave when he spared me from the whipping rod. Pa acted like he didn’t catch Big Ma’s look.
If Uncle Darnell was being his jokester self, he would have gone over to one of us and planted a big smack on our lips. But Darnell sat curled over, sniffling back snot, his lids droopy. No matter how much rest they gave him at that hospital in Honolulu, he stayed sick and sleepy.
And he wasn’t lucky. The post office hadn’t called about the job.
Miss Hendrix looked at Pa like she knew something. Pa looked at her. I could tell by their eyes that they were having a full conversation grown-ups have without saying words. I figured it was grown stuff, which made me want to know what they were keeping from us. Neither Pa nor Miss Marva Hendrix gave me much to work with, but sooner or later, I’d come upon a clue and piece things together.
The not-knowing made me dislike secrets, and then I remembered I had one of my own. I hated keeping things from Pa, and since I was surrounded by my family—minus Cecile; minus Miss Hendrix, who wasn’t family yet; and minus Uncle Darnell, who was there but wasn’t his old self—I decided I might as well tell Pa about the day.