Big Ma and I must have thought the same thing: Miss Marva Hendrix was almost out of a fashion magazine. No wonder my father wore brand-new shirts that he only trusted with the cleaners.
I didn’t like her before I’d seen her. Now that I saw her, nothing had changed.
“Mama, darling daughters—”
This got an eye roll from Big Ma.
“I’d like you to meet . . .”
Heckle and Jeckle giggled and shook and I wished they’d be still. After not having a mother for so long, we had finally met and hugged our mother and lived in her house and said her poetry and cleaned up her kitchen and gathered up her papers and her movable-type pieces after the police messed up her work space. We had just met, hugged, and maybe even loved our mother, smelled the coconut oil in her big braids, and there my sisters were, wiggling like worms in a bait box.
“Miss Marva Hendrix,” Pa said proudly.
I knew better than to cross my arms and roll my eyes. I knew better but I couldn’t help myself. My forearms bolted across my chest, each hand clamped fast around my arm muscles. I at least had enough sense to not roll my eyes. I said, “Nice to meet you, Miss Hendrix.”
“Marva,” she offered.
“Miss Marva Hendrix,” I said. Big Ma’s firm nod told me to not forget my home training no matter what Pa’s lady friend said.
“That’s Delphine, my oldest,” Pa said, although looking at us, there was no need to offer that open-faced fact. “This is—”
Vonetta shot up, curtsied, and said in her best showy and crowy voice, “I’m Vonetta. The middle!”
Fern did Vonetta one better, daintily holding out her skirt hem as if she wore a hoopskirt, and said, “I’m Fern, but my mother calls me Afua.” She curtsied on the “Afua.”
Miss Hendrix smiled and nodded, a kind of a bow to Fern’s curtsy. “Which do you prefer, Fern or Afua?”
“You can call me Fern.” Then she added, “Only my mother calls me Afua.”
I envied my baby sister. I wished I could just say things. Did she know she had just told Pa’s lady friend that she was not her mother?
Miss Marva Hendrix didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps it was that Fern was still little and sweet-voiced. Her eyes were bright and aimed to please. Big Ma, however, was none-too-pleased by Fern owning up to her ooga-mooga name. But Fern’s words had given me a spark, and I felt a little better.
Miss Marva Hendrix tugged at Pa’s shirt, looked up at him while batting her heavy eyelashes, and said, “No time like the present, Lou.” Her voice was singsongy, but I could hear her telling my father. Not asking.
Pa seemed to agree. He smiled at her, turned to Big Ma, and said, “Ma.” Then he said, “Girls,” and turned to each of us. Me first, Vonetta, and then Fern. “I’ve asked Marva to be my wife.”
Vonetta and Fern squealed. Big Ma put on a polite smile. My father’s words ran through me like something I shouldn’t have eaten. I felt weak down to my toes and warm all over. Somehow, I managed to do like Big Ma. I put on a polite smile and said, “That’s nice, Papa.” I didn’t know what else to say.
What else do you say when your father announces he’s getting married? What do you say when you don’t like his lady friend—can’t possibly ever like her—but you don’t dare shame your Pa, Big Ma, or, as Big Ma would say, “all the Charleses, Gaithers, and Trotters in Prattville, Alabama.” What can you do when your lip has dropped into a mile-long pout while everyone else is happy, or at least being polite? You put on a smile and say it again. “That’s nice, Pa. Very nice,” because none of Miss Merriam Webster’s words will show up in time to save you. You remember how Mrs. Peterson forbade the use of the word very in book reports because very was fine for fourth graders, but too lazy for fifth graders. Yet here you are, getting ready to start the sixth grade using fourth-grade words. You can’t help yourself and add another very. “Very, very nice, Papa.”
“You asked her to be your wife?” Vonetta asked. “What did she say?”
It was clear to me, but Fern asked, “Will she?”
Miss Marva Hendrix extended her hand to show the two white stones on her ring finger. “I told your father I will.”
Big Ma said, “My. Isn’t that pretty.” She was still being polite. Good old Big Ma.
Vonetta and Fern started another bout of squealing. My old Papa would have reeled in their noise. My new Papa let Vonetta’s and Fern’s excitement run wild. New Pa bent down and gave Miss Hendrix a smack on the lips to encourage Vonetta and Fern, who obliged him with a lot of high-pitched oohing. Then Big Ma told Pa and his lady friend, “That’s enough of that. You’re not married yet.” Even so, she said to Miss Hendrix, “Welcome to the family, Marva dear,” as nicely as she could, but she didn’t give her a big hug.
Later that night when were all sitting on my bed, Vonetta announced, “I’m the flower girl.”
“Me too!” Fern cried.
“I called it first!”
“But I’m younger and shorter and you’re too big, you big fourth grader.”
I stared at them in Cecile-like disbelief. How could my own sisters go on and on about being flower girls, wearing pink satin dresses, and getting their hair pressed and curled for Papa’s wedding to another woman? How could they fight over Cecile’s postcard one day and throw their mother away without a care the next day?
Soon enough, my sisters’ wedding plans turned to arguing over how to throw rose petals. I couldn’t take another word of it. “Y’all need to quit it,” I said. “Pa and Miss Hendrix are too old to have a fairy-tale wedding with flower girls and harps playing.”
But Fern heard harps playing. She ballet-teetered on her toes to the harp strings plucking in her head, and Vonetta joined her, twirling and leaping. I watched my own sisters through my mother’s eyes, happily dancing this woman into our house.
To and from Cecile
Vonetta wrote:
Dear Cecile,
How are you? I am fine. Delphine made us write “Dear Cecile” but this is my letter and I can write what I want. Which do you like best? Mother? Mommy? How about Little Ma, since we already have Big Ma? Since you are bigger than Big Ma, I’ll just write Cecile.
Remember I said I’m going into the fourth grade? In two weeks I’ll be in my fourth-grade classroom. My new teacher’s name is Mrs. Dixon. I’ll tell her you’re my mother and Big Ma is my grandmother because she’ll see Big Ma at the parent-teacher confrens and she won’t see you.
Pa is getting married to a nice lady with groovy makeup and clothes. I’m going to be the flower girl. I will look pretty in my flower girl dress. I want my dress to be yellow, pink, or violet.
Delphine is a giant crab.
Yours truly,
Vonetta Gaither
Fern wrote:
To Nzila
I like leaves in the summer.
I like leaves in the fall.
There’s no leaves in the winter.
So don’t leave
Afua.
She made the first A in Afua extra large and the small a with a curly tail to match the way Cecile signs her poems in movable-type printing blocks. A large and fancy N and a fancy z with a tail.
I said, “Fern, you forgot the period.”
She pointed to the one after her name and said, “There it is.”
I pointed to the word leave. “It goes there. After ‘don’t leave.’”
She said, “No, it doesn’t.”
I said, “It’s wrong, Fern.”
She bobbed her little turtle head and snapped, “It’s right so don’t touch it.”
“Fine,” I said. “Send it that way.”
“I’m sending it that way, and you better not touch it.” She folded her arms, happy to be wrong.
I checked Vonetta’s letter and rolled my eyes about the “giant crab” part.
“You shouldn’t write all of this stuff about Cecile being big and how that lady Pa’s marrying is nice.”
“Cecile is big. Bigger than Big Ma
. Bigger than you,” Vonetta said. “And Pa’s fiancée is nice and wears nice clothes.”
“Surely is. Surely does.”
“That still doesn’t mean you should write it,” I said. How could she use that word? Fiancée. Pa’s fiancée.
“You can’t tell us what to write. We have the freedom to write what we want.”
“And to put a period where we want to.”
“And to say Miss Hendrix is nice.”
“Power to the people.”
“Power to the people, right on.”
I wanted to write a letter to Hirohito but I didn’t know his house number. If I took a guess and sent it, and the post office returned it, Big Ma would get my letter first. She’d probably open it and read it and tell me I was too young to be writing to a boy.
I decided to write to my mother instead. Cecile had already told me to mind my business about her feelings and about Pa, but I still wanted to know why my parents didn’t get married. Why my father bought Miss Marva Hendrix a ring but he didn’t buy one for my mother.
Instead, I told Cecile how I tried to help Vonetta and Fern with their letters but they didn’t want my help. I said Vonetta and Fern were driving me crazy and that I couldn’t wait for school to start so I could officially be in the sixth grade.
I didn’t ask her for Hirohito’s address like I wanted to. She’d make a big federal case out of it like Big Ma had and write back and say things that made me feel bad or want to scratch my head. I just closed my letter with “Yours truly” and my name.
If Cecile cared where Fern put her period and if Papa’s lady friend was nice, or if Vonetta planned on being a flower girl, she didn’t mention it in her letter to me. When the envelope with an Oakland, California, postmark arrived, I opened it and gave Vonetta her letter and Fern hers. I thought they would read their letters out loud, but they took them and ran back to their room.
To me she wrote:
Dear Delphine,
You all have something. I saw it at the rally. Vonetta is a natural-born performer. She can open her mouth and holler when she wants to.
That Little Girl is a natural-born poet. You saw her being born on the kitchen floor, and I saw a poet being born up on that stage. Her rally poem isn’t exactly Longfellow but it is a running start. She might run far. Let her go. Let her run.
Don’t concern yourself with old things. Concern yourself with finding your own thing. But don’t rush. Listen to Billie sing, “God bless the child who has her own.” Enjoy the time it takes to find your own.
Study hard.
Your Mother.
Cecile
P.S. Be eleven.
She’d written it again. “P.S. Be eleven.”
I stared at it like it was the wrong grade marked on the bottom of my paper. My mother was a touch crazy, not dumb. But now I felt dumb because I didn’t know Billie or why Cecile had written that twice. “P.S. Be eleven.”
I was eleven. How could you become what you already were?
School Shopping
“Big Ma, please.”
I’m no pleader or whiner, but I found myself making those sounds at Big Ma in Korvettes department store on school shopping day. Big Ma kept pulling hangers of pleated wool skirts off the rack and putting them back. She paid me no mind. I still hoped she had heard me.
“Can I just try on—”
“You’ll try what I give you. Now hush, Delphine.”
Vonetta and Fern stuck their tongues out at me.
I was tired of wearing the same pleated wool skirts my sisters wore, but Big Ma wouldn’t hear about anything different. According to Big Ma, we should look like we were prepared to sit at our desks at school and not to dig ditches in the dirt. Pants-wearers dug ditches, and no female should wear any pants other than underpants. The only exceptions were shorts with matching tops for summertime running around. According to Big Ma, pants were a man’s business and no woman had any business in them.
My mother wore pants. Men’s pants.
It’s not that I wanted them. I didn’t. I knew better than to ask for a pair of bell-bottoms or jeans, although Miss Honeywell looked snappy and mod in her shocking-pink bell-bottom pants and matching jacket with big gold buttons. It was all the school talked about. Miss Honeywell, a teacher and a grown woman, was escorted to the principal’s office like a bad boy walking the “paddle mile,” while a hallway aide watched her classroom. My soon-to-be teacher wasn’t sent home to change clothes, but she never wore her shocking-pink pantsuit or any other pants to school again.
All I wanted was to start the sixth grade with a sixth-grade look. I wanted to pick out my own skirts and jumpers. I didn’t care that we shopped at Korvettes and not at Macy’s or Gertz. I only wanted to have a say in what I looked like.
Big Ma had picked out three skirts each for Vonetta and Fern in the children’s department, and now it was my turn. Nothing Big Ma held up to me had a prayer of fitting.
“Dag nabbit!” Big Ma never swore, but she did that day. Skirt after skirt failed, and Big Ma let loose another “dag nabbit.”
It was a sign. A sign from above. My long arms and legs were good for something. Maybe even part of His plan to come to my rescue.
We were now forced to shop among the junior miss racks. I had a better chance of picking out my own clothes. And if I didn’t, I’d at least look mod, although I’d have been happy just to look normal.
Big Ma must have prayed harder to find wool pleated skirts, because among all those mod new jumpers and skirts, she managed to find a rack of babyish pleated skirts. She held one up to me. The hem fell at least five inches below my knee. I would start off the sixth grade looking like a schoolmarm on Gunsmoke.
Please. Please, I prayed. If Big Ma wouldn’t listen, maybe the Lord would.
I was tired of staring down every other girl in my grade who snickered at my pleated wool skirts and Peter Pan collars. All I wanted was to look like everyone else. Wasn’t fighting with immature boys in the school yard more than enough to bear?
I focused my eyes away from inward prayer only to zero in on Lucy Raleigh, Miss Everyone Else, shopping at Korvettes with her mother. How could a prayer go so wrong? I must have stood out like a giraffe because she saw me before I could turn away. Mrs. Raleigh called after her, her arms laden with outfits—all mod, I was certain. Lucy ignored her mother and charged our way. You’d have thought Lucy would have been ashamed to be caught shopping in Korvettes when she bragged her clothes came from Macy’s and Gertz. Yet, there she was doing the opposite of shrinking and fleeing.
Lucy Raleigh was one of my oldest friends, but she could also snicker at me with the best of the snickerers. We ran hot, warm, and cold with each other. I always adjusted my friendliness to meet hers.
When she made it over, Fern sang, “Luceee, Lucee goosey.” Lucy thought Fern’s song was cute and danced to it, and Vonetta had to get in on the Lucy Goosey dance too. Big Ma didn’t appreciate any of this finger popping and making a grand Negro spectacle of ourselves in the junior miss section of Korvettes department store.
Big Ma’s disdain bounced right off of Lucy. In fact, Lucy was loud and gushy, and she was never too gushy with me. “You’re back! You’re back!” she said. “Hi, Mrs. Gaither. Nice hat. Jazzy feather.”
Lucy Raleigh always managed to rub Big Ma the wrong way. She once called Lucy my “some-timey friend,” meaning Lucy wasn’t true-blue.
Lucy reached into a rack and pulled out a mod jumper and said, “Get this,” and shoved it at Big Ma until she had no choice but to take it. Lucy then squeezed my hand and led me away from my grandmother and sisters. I was bigger and stronger than Lucy, but I allowed myself to be pulled away.
Lucy held both my hands and jumped small “testifying before the altar” jumps. “Turn on channel seven and watch The Hollywood Palace tonight.”
“Why?” I asked her. It was something big. Something important. Lucy Raleigh liked being the one in the know and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care. r />
“Because if you don’t, you’ll kick yourself from Sunday to Monday and back to Sunday. I’m telling you, Miss Too Cool to Keep Up. You have to watch it. You and your sisters.”
“Why can’t you tell me who’s going to be on?” I asked. “What’s so special? And why do they have to see it too?”
“I told you. If you miss it, you’ll die. And if they miss it, they’ll want to kill you.”
We might have been whispering for a minute but it was a minute too long for Mrs. Raleigh.
“Girl, I’m ’bout to leave these clothes and you in here if you don’t come on. What do you mean, running off, Lucy Ray?”
I giggled a little. Lucy liked to put on how she was all Brooklyn when her mother was as country as Big Ma.
“Coming, Mama,” Lucy said, rushing back to her. She turned to me and said, “Channel seven. Hollywood Palace. Tonight!”
I had my own grandmother to face. She settled on two pleated skirts for me but hadn’t put back the jumper Lucy had shoved in her hands. I got an earful from Big Ma, but she paid for the mod jumper.
Prayer works.
I Want You Back
One thing was certain. Lucy Raleigh didn’t have a bedtime like my sisters and me. Vonetta and Fern had to be bathed, in pj’s, and in bed by eight thirty. My bedtime was nine o’clock or after I finished reading them a bedtime story, scrubbing their tub, and taking my own bath. Since Big Ma counted on me to look after my sisters, my bedtime began to shift and slide past nine. I’d sit quietly on the rug watching an episode of The FBI that Big Ma had fallen asleep on. Even after I climbed in bed I’d sleep lightly enough to hear my father’s keys jingling at the door around midnight, and I’d go warm up his food.