Your Mother,
Cecile.
P.S. The Woods boy said hello.
I was in the kitchen making our after-school snack when the doorbell rang. I hurried into the parlor and pulled back the curtain. A white special-delivery jeep stood double-parked outside. I went to the front door, unbolted the top and bottom locks, and turned the knob. The door chain only allowed a few inches between the postman and me.
“Special delivery,” the postman said. “Sign here.”
Our neighborhood postman was probably used to being met with chains over cracked doors. He slid the clipboard and pen through the space. “Print, then sign,” he said.
I printed and signed my name and passed the clipboard and pen back to him. “You can leave it,” I said, and closed the door. Once he was back inside his jeep, I unlatched the chain, opened the door, and picked up the package. It was a white box. The kind they sell at the post office. It was square, like a kitchen floor tile, but bigger and two inches deep, like a cereal box. The right-hand corner of the box was decorated with a mess of stamps. Probably more than it needed. The words WALTER REED HOSPITAL and a Washington, DC, postmark in broken letters showed through faintly over the stamps. There was no return address or sender’s name in the upper left-hand corner, the way a package or letter should be addressed. Just To Miss Vonetta Gaither with our address on Herkimer Street, Brooklyn, NY, in black ink, dead-center of the package. The handwriting wasn’t a hundred percent straight, but it wasn’t wavy.
“VONETTA!”
I shouted louder than I should. Big Ma would have cocked her head and said, “This isn’t no jungle and you’re not Tarzan,” or something like that. But Big Ma’s chair stayed empty. I only heard her in my head and once a month on the telephone.
Vonetta beat Fern out into the living room. I handed her the white box. “It’s for you, Net-Net,” I said.
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.
I felt sorry for her. I was mad at our uncle but now I was more sad about him than mad at him. The way Pa was over Cecile, probably. I didn’t like Uncle Darnell for what he did, but I knew I still loved him. I knew I wanted him to be my uncle. The way he once was.
Vonetta took the box and shook it. She looked at her name. I wondered if she knew who’d sent it. I wondered if she’d want what was inside if she knew.
“Open it!” Fern cried, dancing on her feet like one of Tina Turner’s Ikettes. “Open it up now!”
“I will,” Vonetta said. She was trying to be cool, but she was as curious as we were. The tape that ran across the flaps and sides was the sturdy, good tape with string glued into it. Vonetta tried to scratch a piece of the tape, but she couldn’t catch hold of it. Fern and I hovered over her, waiting.
“I’ll help you,” I said.
“No,” she said, hugging the box away from me. “You’re not the only one who can do things, Delphine.”
I would have popped her upside the head but Cecile had said to keep an eye on her. I just gave Vonetta a look. She gave me one back. Cecile was wrong. It was Vonetta and not I who was hardheaded.
“Open it!” Fern shouted still dancing.
“I will if you two stop breathing on me.”
Vonetta picked at the tape and shook the box again, as if that would help. I went and got the long, metal nail file and handed it to her, hoping she wouldn’t poke herself with it. I’d be on punishment for days if Pa and Mrs. came home and found Vonetta’s hand bandaged up.
Determined to prove she didn’t need my help, Vonetta stubbornly grunted and stabbed away at the taped flaps. Finally, one of the flaps had had enough and caved in after all of that poking and stabbing. Vonetta pulled out what was inside the square package.
We all screamed. And jumped, and screamed some more.
Jackie Jackson and his brothers. There was Jackie Jackson. And Tito.
We screamed for the longest time. Jackie. Jermaine. Tito. Marlon. Michael. Right here in our living room. If this wasn’t a grand Negro spectacle, I didn’t know what was. As long as Big Ma wasn’t here to see it or stop it, we continued to jump, scream, and holler.
After we made ourselves hoarse, Fern said, “Put it on.”
I reached for the album cover but Vonetta snatched it up. “I’ll do it,” she said.
Between us, I was the only one allowed to turn on the deluxe stereo. If Vonetta broke the needle we’d never be allowed to play the stereo again and I’d probably catch Lightning for sure. But I had to let Vonetta put the record on this time. “So do it,” I said.
She opened the stereo case. The same stereo case that filled the house with blue smoke when Cecile played Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone while she tapped out her rhythms and wrote poems on Cream of Wheat boxes and on the walls. The same stereo that Uncle Darnell played the Coasters and the Orlons on even when those records went out of style. The same stereo Big Ma called “the devil’s worldly jukebox” but asked Uncle D to put Mahalia Jackson and Shirley Caesar on. Pa’d take the stereo apart to replace pieces and clean the insides, but he hardly ever spun any records on the turntable. Only Johnny Mathis on Christmas.
I held my breath while Vonetta slid the shiny black LP out of its paper sleeve and placed it onto the turntable.
The record began to spin. Vonetta picked up the cover, ran her finger along the list of songs. When she reached for the turntable’s arm, I couldn’t help myself and said, “Don’t scratch it.”
She gave me that teeth-sucking sound, and Fern said, “Ooh,” probably expecting me to pop her one. I didn’t.
Vonetta remained cool and then blew dust off the needle to show me she knew what she was doing. She counted along the spinning record. Counted the right number of strips on the disc that separated one song from the next. When she found the song she wanted to play first, she gently placed the needle down. I knew she’d never be this careful with the needle again.
Then the piano keys trilled and the guitar and bass and drums pounced on the downbeat and I forgot all about Vonetta, the record needle, and getting in trouble. We all did. The Jackson Five was in our living room on Herkimer Street.
We must have worn the record out playing each song over and over. It was near time for Pa and Mrs. to walk in, so we chose the last song.
“Who’s Loving You” is the perfect Vonetta song. It begins with Michael letting go of all the air in his lungs to lay open his soul and sing one word: “When.” Kind of like Vonetta howling in her crib to be picked up or howling for a cookie.
Vonetta and Fern traded off between the high Michael parts while I sang the lower background parts. As young as they were, it was funny to listen to Vonetta, Fern, and Michael sing about how they’ve been lonely all their lives. I felt like I was watching my sisters singing, really singing, and not clowning. That somehow it would be ruined if they caught me watching them. I didn’t want Vonetta or Fern to stop singing, so I closed my eyes.
I sang and thought, What did little Michael Jackson know about love and loneliness? With all his brothers surrounding his voice with theirs, what did he know about losing all the people he loved one by one?
We sang the highs and the lows with Michael, whose voice was big and filled with pain like he might know what he was singing about. Even so, I couldn’t stop asking myself, What did Michael Jackson know about life without the ones you loved the most, when each of them moved farther and farther away until they were voices you heard and pictures that flashed before you? Vonetta knew. Fern knew. I knew. There wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t wonder about everyone who had flashed before us. There wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t close our eyes and go wishing.
Author’s Note
When my editor, Rosemary Brosnan, emailed me illustrator Frank Morrison’s preliminary jacket sketch of Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern jumping double Dutch in bell-bottoms on Herkimer Street, I said immediately, “This is it!” It didn’t matter that Big Ma would have never let her grands wear bell-bottoms; Frank Morrison captured both the spirit of the Gaither
sisters in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the spirit of the late 1960s and early 70s, which so complements my approach to this story. Although P.S. Be Eleven resumes where One Crazy Summer ends, this sequel yearns to reflect the spirit of that period. I’ve exercised literary license to bring together events and details that reflect the happenings within the Gaither home, the Bedford-Stuyvesant community, and the nation. As Oakland represented the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement in One Crazy Summer, Bedford-Stuyvesant during these volatile years embodies the riots, racial strife between African-Americans and Jews, and the urban blight in this community. On his many trips to Brooklyn, Senator Robert F. Kennedy met with local leaders in Bedford-Stuyvesant to bring economic, education, and housing solutions to the then-depressed area. Today, a sculpture of Senator Kennedy stands in Restoration Plaza on a thriving Fulton Street—one block away from Herkimer Street.
Acknowledgments
Although the story and characters in P.S. Be Eleven come from my imagination, I am beholden to various individuals I’ve met on Herkimer Street, specifically Julie on Troy Avenue and Mark on New York Avenue, for sharing their recollections of Bedford-Stuyvesant of the past. Both Brooklynites generously gave me their time and answered my many questions, but both declined to give their last names. I am especially grateful for the extensive resources of the Brooklyn Collection at the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza, and for its amazing research librarian, June Koffi, who scoured the “morgue” for precious articles to aid me in my storytelling. I must thank Peter Garcia, for answering my military-related questions as well as for talking about his days of summer employment in Brooklyn as a teen during the early seventies. I also posthumously thank my mother, Miss Essie, for not throwing out my diaries and trunkful of writing. Those writings allowed me to tap into ages eleven and twelve in 1968 and 1969.
I thank my fellow writers at the Vermont College of Fine Arts for creating a community around me of people who think in story.
Most of all, I am boundlessly appreciative of everyone at HarperCollins for supporting P.S. Be Eleven wholeheartedly and believing there was more to tell about Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern. I am especially indebted to Susan Katz, Kate Jackson, Barbara Lalicki, Patty Rosati, Molly Thomas, Robin Pinto, Stephanie Macy, Tony Hirt, Kim VandeWater, Andrea Martin, and soul sister number one, Rosemary Brosnan, who also shares these memories.
About the Author
Jason Berger
RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA is the author of the Newbery Honor–winning novel One Crazy Summer, which was also a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of six distinguished novels for young adults: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies (a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book), and Fast Talk on a Slow Track (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults); Blue Tights; and Like Sisters on the Homefront, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, is on the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children & Young Adults Program, and has two adult daughters, Stephanie and Michelle, and a son-in-law, Adam. You can visit her online at www.ritawg.com.
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Also by Rita Williams-Garcia
Blue Tights
Every Time a Rainbow Dies
Fast Talk on a Slow Track
Jumped
Like Sisters on the Homefront
No Laughter Here
One Crazy Summer
Credits
Cover art © 2013 by Frank Morrison
Copyright
Amistad is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
P.S. BE ELEVEN. Copyright © 2013 by Rita Williams-Garcia. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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ISBN 978-0-06-193862-7 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-193863-4 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062208507
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FIRST EDITION
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Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven
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