P.S. Be Eleven

  I hadn’t had my father to myself in so long. Not to spring out of bed to warm up his dinner when I heard his key in the door. Not to sit in the front passenger side of the Wildcat. For a second, I liked the loneliness of it. The two of us sitting in the cold on Atlantic Avenue. I felt like I’d never have this chance to have him to myself again.

  “Just you. Just me,” he said. “Up to you, Delphine.”

  I loved being there with my father, but I chose a long time ago. I was going to the sixth-grade dance, whether anyone asked me to be their special date or not. The worst thing was to not go at all. It would be like everyone else was in the sixth grade and I was in the fifth. That was how Rukia would feel on Monday when everyone else came in still talking about the dance. As sure as I was dressed, my hair looked good, and the dance was going on right around the corner, I knew I wasn’t going to the RKO Theatre with my father.

  Pa stopped drumming and turned toward me.

  I still had my father all to myself. Even if for a few blocks. A few minutes. I knew I could ruin the magic around us, but I had to ask him what Cecile wouldn’t tell me. What only he could tell me.

  “Why didn’t you marry our mother?”

  I took him by surprise. He sighed. Shook his head. A sad, slow shake. I couldn’t tell if he was angry at me for asking or mad at himself for being caught off guard.

  “That’s not for you to know,” he said.

  I had ruined it. My father was trying to rescue me from being a long-legged wallflower and all I had done was make him mad. Or sad.

  Still, a stubborn streak showed on my face. He must have seen it and knew I wouldn’t stop asking.

  “Look at you, Delphine,” he said, trying to not be mad at me. “Pretty dress. Hair done up like Diana Ross. . . .”

  Tell me, Pa. Please tell me.

  I had to know. For me, and for my sisters. “Did you love Cecile, Pa?”

  Another sigh.

  “I love your mother, Delphine. I do. That’s all you need to know,” he said.

  He glanced at his mirror before pulling the Wildcat out of its spot and making a U-turn. I thought we were going back home. That I had pushed him further than a girl should push her father. Instead, we circled around to get back to the school. I guess Pa just wanted to take the long way.

  I saw Evelyn Alvarez and Anthony walking up to the entrance, trailed by Evelyn’s three teenage brothers, her chaperones. The Alvarez brothers waited out on the sidewalk until she and Anthony were inside. If Evelyn went with Anthony, then Michael S. must have asked Lucy.

  Pa double-parked our car just outside the entrance. I checked the mirror to see if I could get out, but Papa pointed his finger at me and said, “Stay put.” He got out of the car, walked around, then opened the passenger door and held out his hand. I couldn’t stop smiling. I tried to act like I couldn’t see other kids and Evelyn’s brothers watching my father taking my arm and escorting me like he was Nat King Cole, but I could feel them all watching.

  As we walked toward the door, he said, “Delphine, you need to also know you’re a lady. It’s always a lady’s choice and never the other way around.”

  I didn’t know if he was telling me how to behave at the dance or if he was telling me why he and Cecile never married. I still said, “I know, Papa,” just the right way, although I didn’t know a thing.

  He bent down and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Have a good time, princess.” I kissed him back and then I went inside.

  Dance, Grade Six

  “Delphine Gaither. Six-three.”

  The PTA mom at the door table smiled up at me, checked off my name, and gave me a red paper heart with my name on it from the shoe box marked 6-3. I unbuttoned my coat and pinned the heart onto the shoulder part of my dress. We’d learned everything we needed to know about the dance at our sixth-grade assembly. If a boy wanted to ask me to dance, he was to walk up to me and first read my name on my heart if he didn’t know me. If I was engaged in conversation, he was supposed to say, “Pardon me, Delphine. May I have this dance?” I was supposed to say, “Yes, you may.” Last year the boys had to bow and the girls curtsied, but no one would bow or curtsy so they cut that out this year.

  All of the hangers on the coatracks along the hallway were already used. I did what others had done and hung my coat over someone else’s. If I came with a date, our coats would be hanging together, like Michael S.’s and Lucy’s coats probably were.

  I entered the gymnasium. Right at the entrance stood a huge heart shape, with “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sixth Graders!” painted in white, glittery, cursive letters. Ruffled tissue paper had been stapled around the heart, probably by the PTA mom who sat at the table next to it. She had one hand on a big camera strung around her neck, another on top of a collection can.

  “Where are your friends, doll?” she asked.

  I pointed inside toward the dancing area. “In there, I guess. Dancing.”

  “Go round them up so I can snap your picture.”

  “Just me,” I said. “I’d like three, please.” I wanted my picture taken before my bangs fell and the rest of my hair looked wild from dancing. I took three quarters out of my shoulder purse and dropped them into the PTA can.

  “Three?” she hollered. “How many boyfriends you got, doll?”

  I smiled big, showing all my teeth. The camera bulb flashed white, blue, and yellow. I blinked at least once, maybe twice while she snapped away. At least I’d have three pictures. One for Cecile. Another for Big Ma. And one to keep.

  I’m here, I kept telling myself. At the sixth-grade dance! With my eyes temporarily blinded from the flashbulb, I moved toward the center where everyone was. The speakers crackled loud and scratchy while the Archies sang “Sugar, Sugar.” All I could see were pink and red hearts hanging from crepe-paper chains, clusters of girls and boys and a few kids dancing in the center, and Principal Myers manning the record player. I closed my eyes, then opened them, searching. I didn’t have to search for long. Frieda and Lucy came running toward me. A chaperone said, “Young ladies! No running!”

  “Delphine!”

  “Your hair!” Lucy bounced my bangs. “You must have Cherokee blood,” she said of the straightness, when all I had was Big Ma’s hot comb and Mrs.’s curling expertise. Only Lucy would say a thing like “Cherokee blood.” She couldn’t stop fussing with my hair. “I love it!”

  “I like yours too,” I said. “Nice dress, Frieda. Yours too, Lucy.”

  “You know it.” Lucy twirled and modeled without shame. “It was the only one like this in the store. I made my mother buy it.”

  “It could have been the last one,” Frieda teased. “Not the only one.”

  “Well, I’m the only one at the dance wearing it,” Lucy said, taking a spin around and pretending to look for anyone wearing her dress. When she stopped spinning, she said, “So, Delphine . . . did you come with anyone?”

  There was no sense spinning any straw. Lucy knew no one had asked me to the dance. I shrugged and said, “My father drove me.” Pa was a word I kept at home.

  “You drove here?” Frieda asked. “John-Isaac walked me over.”

  I offered to give her a ride back but she said her brother would be here looking for her.

  “Did Michael bring you?” I asked Lucy.

  Frieda’s cheeks filled with warm colors. She put her hands over her mouth but laughed anyway. “Tell Delphine what happened!” Frieda said. “Tell her.”

  Lucy laid the back of her hand against her forehead, flung her head back like an old-time Southern belle, and gasped. “Michael S. comes over and rings the bell,” she said. “My mom says, ‘Who’s that boy ringing my bell?’ I say, ‘It’s my date, Michael S.’ My mom says, ‘Date? Lucy Ray Raleigh, there’s no dating going on under this roof. You’re only eleven years old.’”

  “All of that while he’s waiting on the stoop,” Frieda said.

  “I’ll be twelve in three weeks,” Lucy said. “She didn’t have to go make a federal case
out of it.”

  “How awful,” I said.

  “You better believe it,” Lucy said. “It was awful. Embarrassing. Mortifying. You know how loud my mother talks.”

  I said, “Simply mortifying, Lucy Ray Raleigh,” in her mother’s loud voice. We all laughed. I missed how we used to be with each other. Joking, but underneath it, still friends. I felt like we were back. Really back to being friends.

  “So she sent Michael away?” I asked.

  Frieda laughed louder than Frieda usually laughs. The same chaperone wagged her finger at us. A fine bunch of young ladies, or as Mr. Mwila would say, “upperclasswomen,” we were. “Michael walked her, all right,” Frieda said between snorts.

  “Yeah. And my mama walked with us.”

  “In between them!” Frieda said. “So they couldn’t hold hands.”

  Lucy gave Frieda a playful shove. “We weren’t going to hold hands.”

  “You know you wanted to,” I teased.

  “So what if I did, Miss Too Cute in her Happening Bangs.”

  The three of us walked around the gym arm in arm, then ran over to the giant valentine and paid a quarter to take a picture together.

  To my surprise and horror, Mr. Mwila had come to the sixth-grade dance. The last thing any of us wanted was to see our teacher dance or to know he was watching us dance. When he entered the gymnasium, falling in with the music, bobbing his head slightly, I knew it couldn’t be helped. We would have to watch him dance, and I just couldn’t picture it. He caught me looking his way and called out, “Save me a dance, Miss Gaither.” I nodded and dragged Frieda and Lucy to the refreshments table at the other end of the gym.

  We stood over the bowl of candy valentines. I looked into the bowl, searching for the perfect valentine to pick out, but Lucy caught me and said, “No, Delphine. Just close your eyes and pick one.” So we each did. Frieda’s said “Be Mine.” Lucy’s said, “Sweet Heart.” Mine said, “O U Kid.” No one knew what that one meant. We put them on our tongues.

  “So your breath will smell like candy when you’re dancing the slow dance.”

  “Slow dance,” I said.

  We “ewwed” and giggled.

  Principal Myers put on a good record. The kind of record that makes a boy want to dance with a girl without feeling stupid. We inched up closer to the circle of dancers waiting, but not too close. Just close enough to join the dancing, and close enough to watch.

  Michael S. walked over, I thought, to look for Lucy. But he walked over to Evelyn Alvarez. Instead of asking the way the boys were instructed during the sixth-grade assembly, Michael S. did this head thing. A jerk to the dance floor and Evelyn walked away from Anthony B. and followed Michael S.

  Lucy tried to act as though she was looking away, but she was watching them. And then she started chattering about another dress she almost bought and how that color wouldn’t go right with her skin tone and the collar was too babyish with all of those bows but her mother really liked that dress. We chatterboxed with her but even though she said yeah in the right places, her eyes were filling up.

  Then Anthony B., who had come to the dance with Evelyn and her brothers, headed straight for the punch bowl. We were so busy watching Anthony, no one noticed James T. had walked up to Frieda and asked her to dance, but Frieda said she’d dance the next dance with him. Lucy then pushed Frieda into James T. and they started dancing. All I could think was that was nice of Lucy.

  I grabbed Lucy’s hand and dragged her out to the center of the dance floor. I sang like Fern, “Lucy, Lucy goosey,” in time with the record playing. “Come on. Lucee, Lucee goosey.”

  She wiped her face quickly and said, “You can’t dance with me, Delphine.” And she was doing her Lucy-goosey dance. I started to copy her, then she started to laugh, maybe because my arms are so long and I do it a little different. A crowd of girls rushed over, some even leaving their dance partners, and we took turns doing the Lucy goosey, each of us doing it our own way.

  Principal Myers put on James Brown’s song “There Was a Time,” and the girls moved back. Every boy forgot about the girls they wanted to dance with. They peeled themselves off the wall, away from the punch, cookies, and candy, and made it to the center of the dance floor. Whatever dance James Brown called out, the boys from all the sixth-grade classes threw down their Three Musketeers gloves to challenge one another. We watched them dance. The expressions on their faces said “Take that!” “Copy that!” “How ya like that?” as they did the splits, the camel walk, and the mashed potato. All those shoes sliding and scraping up the floor, leaving black shoe polish across the newly varnished floor.

  We hollered for all the boys in our class. Anthony, Ant, Enrique, the Jameses, the Michaels, Upton, Willy. All of them. As much as I hated to admit it, Danny the K had the best camel walk of the boys, throwing his head side to side, crunching up his shoulder, sliding across the floor. I forgot how much I couldn’t stand him and I cheered along with the six-three girls. Then right in the middle of the K’s camel walk, Ellis Carter did a James Brown slide and split out in the center of the floor. Danny knew what was best and camel-walked out of Ellis’s way. And when Ellis rose up, his long legs made a clean triangle, then he snapped his legs together and spun one, two, three times, then did a mashed-potato slide off center stage.

  The gym went crazy. We were screaming like Ellis was Jackie Jackson and his brothers rolled up into one. If the PTA were giving out a James Brown trophy, six-three would have won it easily, thanks to Ellis Carter and maybe Danny the K.

  After all of that excitement, the principal cooled things down with a slow record—the first slow record of the dance. Boys wiped the sweat and cookie crumbs off their hands and went up to girls to ask them to dance.

  Upton walked up to Frieda. “Frieda, may I have this dance?” he asked. She answered, “Yes, you may.” Then Michael S. walked over to Lucy and said, “Lucy, may I have this dance?” Lucy rolled her eyes and said, “No, you may not.” Then I pushed her into Michael S. and she cut me a glare. But she followed him onto the dance floor.

  I watched them all dancing. All dancing in twos. They looked right. The same height for boy-girl dancing. Even the girls dancing in twos looked nice dancing together in their dresses. If Rukia had been allowed to come to the dance and she didn’t have a partner, I would have danced with her even though I’m way taller and we would have looked way dumb.

  Mr. Mwila walked between the dancers, tapping couples on the shoulder. I could hear him saying, “Decorum,” or something like that. Then he looked my way.

  I turned away only to face two short boys from class six-five.

  “You go ask,” one said.

  “No. You go.”

  I felt like a giant. Too tall to look right with anyone. I turned again, wanting to get out of there.

  Ellis Carter stood a few feet away from me. He had finished wiping his forehead and his hands with a handkerchief and slipped it into his pocket. He walked up to me.

  “Delphine, may I have this dance?” He held out his hand.

  I was supposed to say, “Yes, you may,” but I sort of nodded and took his hand and we walked out there where everyone danced in twos, each step out to the center in time to the dip of the music, like we were already dancing.

  He smiled a little and so did I while we figured out how our hands were supposed to go. Ellis was taller than me. By a full inch. Finally we took one step together. Then another. And another. And another. A perfect box step. And in the middle of the fifth step the slow song faded away. I let go of his hand.

  Then Principal Myers put on a fast record. And Mr. Mwila got everyone clapping their hands in rhythm.

  Ellis began to clap and so did I.

  Then Mr. Mwila called out to all of the PTA moms, the chaperones, and the other teachers and they all surrounded him.

  “This dance,” he said, “is from my native Zambia.”

  Ellis and I looked at each other, mortified. But we still clapped.

  ??
?Here we go,” Mr. Mwila said. He shook his hips left, then right, while doing this marching step that ended in a hop or a kick. It was hard to tell. Next, the chaperones followed his movements. They were all doing the hop-kick at the same time. When they were all doing the march-and-hop, they formed a train, hands on shoulders, and did a choo-choo or conga around the gym.

  “Dance, grade six!” Mr. Mwila shouted. “Dance!”

  One by one, the kids caught on and joined the train. Ellis grabbed my hand and said, “Come on!” Before I had time to think about it, I placed my hands on Ellis’s shoulders and I marched, kicked, and shook like they did. Somewhere on the gym floor, doing the dance from Zambia, I lost my red paper heart.

  The pink envelope was sitting on my dresser when I got home. I didn’t rush to open it, like I thought I would. Instead, I arranged my dress on a hanger and hung it on my doorknob so I could fall asleep looking at it. I took two sponge rollers and wound my bangs around them.

  Then I took the envelope from my dresser, postmarked Oakland, CA. The handwriting was cursive and extra neat. Neither the address nor the handwriting were Cecile’s. I pried the pink envelope open carefully, not wanting to tear a thing, and pulled out the card. I didn’t expect anything, but if I had, I would have expected he’d send me a funny valentine. But I wouldn’t call his valentine card funny. Not at all.

  Who’s Loving You?

  Dear Delphine,

  I would have picked a different dress for you. A different color. A different style. And your hair is too grown for your face. You’re just a minute past twelve taking on Sweet Sixteen. Sixteen wasn’t sweet on me, but I want yours to be nothing but sweetness, in time.

  Time turns always, Delphine. Don’t push it.

  The palm tree in my yard keeps trying to stand up in spite of a cold couple of months. We’ll see how it’s leaning in the spring.

  Look after Vonetta. Fern can look after herself.

  Study your lessons.