When he said, “Huh?” Fern started it off to help him remember. “Who will save the princess locked in the red castle?”
Vonetta said, “That’s for babies, baby.”
Fern said, “Take that back, Vonetta.”
The sun was in Uncle Darnell’s eyes. He blinked a few times. “I forgot how it went,” he said.
“You say, ‘I hear a voice,’ then I say, ‘The princess is crying. The princess is crying.’ Then you say, ‘Who will save the princess in the red castle?’ Then I say, ‘We will save the princess in the red castle.’ Then we charge to her rescue.”
“Right, right,” Uncle said, but I doubted he really remembered. Or maybe his mind was somewhere else.
Sonny Bono Has a Big Nose
Mr. Mwila told Anthony to close the blinds while he flipped the light switch to make the room dark. There is something about sudden darkness in a classroom of twenty-four sixth graders that sets off mischief. There was giggling on one side of the room. Spitballs on the other. Then Mr. Mwila flipped the light switch on and said, “Anthony.” Anthony and Ant looked up, one guiltier than the other, although Mr. Mwila had clearly spoken to Anthony this time and not Antnee.
“I didn’t do it!” Anthony cried.
“I didn’t accuse,” Mr. Mwila said, as cool as Sidney Poitier telling off the white racist sheriff in the movie In the Heat of the Night. He pulled the plug out of the wall socket and carefully wound the cord in circles. “Anthony,” he began again, “please open the blinds.”
Anthony got up and drew the blinds open.
“Upton,” Mr. Mwila said, “please wheel the projector to the audiovisual room.” We felt his cool, but we also felt his anger underneath. We were in trouble.
“Grade six, classroom six-three . . .”
Big trouble, I thought. He had called us by our formal name, like when your mother or grandmother calls you by all of your names to keep from calling you something worse.
“Take out your math notebooks. We shall have double period math.”
Mr. Mwila didn’t raise his voice or take out the “pine board of education” like Mrs. Peterson had done time and time again. Instead, “Sidney Poitier” said, “You can’t behave as you did in the fifth grade. When you behave like the upperclassmen and upperclasswomen that you are, we’ll engage in grade-six activities. Now, notebooks on desks.”
I had yet to make a really good, face-to-face impression on my teacher, and now he was disappointed with us all. I didn’t want Mr. Mwila to catch me giggling or going, “Aw, shucks,” over having to do two periods of math.
Michael S. raised his hand and was recognized. “Mr. Mwila,” he said—and Lucy practically swooned—“it isn’t fair. Why should we all be punished because someone”—he looked at Ant—“threw the first spitball?”
“This isn’t a punishment, Michael. It’s an opportunity. If we can’t conduct ourselves with decorum during the film, we’ll jump ahead with mathematics, and what can be better than to leap ahead?” He smiled at us as though he had offered us something wonderful. “Homework tonight will be that much easier after this extra time.”
The next day after lunch, the film projector stood on its cart in the back of the room. Mr. Mwila said, “We shall try again.”
Shall was a storybook word that Uncle Darnell never used in bedtime stories of Arabian Knights or princesses locked in the tower. Shall was in one of our school assembly songs, “We Shall Overcome.” But only Mr. Mwila used shall for everyday talking. And now that I’d grown used to his voice, I couldn’t imagine him not saying shall or decorum.
Mr. Mwila made the room as dark as it could get and turned on the projector. No one wanted to “leap ahead” with more decimals, so the room was quiet.
Since separate health classes were no longer taught at our school, each sixth-grade class had to watch six health-and-safety films. Then in the spring, the sixth-grade girls watched a seventh film while the boys got an extra period of gym. The school figured our mothers could tell us everything we needed to know about the five basic food groups, the importance of hand washing, and the circulatory and digestive systems, but not whatever this film would be about. If Cecile lived with us, she wouldn’t hardly tell us about food groups or hand washing. Instead she’d write poems I’d have to figure out about all those body systems, and she’d end each poem with, “P.S. Be eleven” when I had already seen my sister being born. Big Ma cooked the food in the food groups and said, “Kids are starving in Africa, India, and China, so eat every bit.” She was more concerned about me washing dishes and scrubbing floors than keeping my own hands clean. Miss Marva Hendrix wasn’t anything to me, so I didn’t worry about what she had to tell me.
We all settled down and the reel of film rolled on.
Electric guitars picked out a lame rock-and-roll tune, and the title appeared on the screen. Our health film was about drugs. The bad kind.
First we saw teenagers at a party smoking drugs. The music was so jerky and bad, no one at the party could dance to it. Then the police came and arrested the kids, and the kids started telling the camera or us they could smoke drugs if they wanted to. Then we got the surprise of our lives. Sitting on a bed, telling us to make up our minds about the dangers of drugs, was Sonny Bono. Sonny Bono from the radio. Sonny Bono without Cher. Sonny Bono with his groovy hair and gold pajamas.
No one could have heard what he was saying because it was Sonny Bono and we were in shock. The last place we expected to find Sonny Bono was in our sixth-grade health film talking about the dangers of drugs. He was supposed to be singing “I’ve Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” Instead, his face looked serious, and his nose was big, even with that mustache, and he was telling us that despite what the teenagers said about drugs, he knew the real score.
We forgot about the double period of decimals and how we were upperclassmen and upperclasswomen. I forgot how much I wanted to make a better impression on Mr. Mwila. The boys were on their side of the classroom laughing, and I joined in with the girls on our side, singing “I’ve Got You Babe.”
Mr. Mwila stopped the film and flipped on the light switch.
“You are not ready for this film,” he said. And he was not angry but he was disappointed.
We took out our math notebooks before he told us to.
Chinua Achebe
When we were dismissed, I told Frieda and Lucy to go on without me. I had something to do.
I went back to our classroom. Mr. Mwila sat at his desk with a small paperback book in his hands. The book cover was mostly red and worn down, and a marker stuck out from the back of the book. When I stood nearer, I saw that the marker was the top of a photograph. Probably a snapshot of his family.
“Did you forget something, Delphine?”
I did! I forgot what I wanted to say.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “About Sonny Bono. The film.” I meant to say something good and meaningful, but that was the best I could come up with on the spot.
Mr. Mwila nodded. But instead of saying how disappointed he was, he said, “Maybe a different spokesman would have made a better choice.” He smiled a little.
I nodded and felt dumb and looked at his book.
There was something about the small, worn-down book that reminded me of Big Ma’s Bible.
Big Ma had thrown her Bible at a white man wearing a long black coat and a tall black hat. Red Shirley Temple curls ran along the front of his ears. When I told Frieda about it, she said he was an Orthodox Jew. Well, Big Ma threw her Bible at him because he rang our doorbell the third time that week while she was studying the Old Testament. And when he said for the third time, “I’ll give you all the cash I have in this satchel if you sign the deed to this property over to me,” Big Ma raised her Bible like a bad boy holds up a brick at a shiny new window. “By the God of Abraham and Little David, I will smite you down!” she said. Then she threw the black brick at him and told him next time she’d have her shotgun. But I knew her shotgun was down home in Prattville,
Alabama.
Mr. Mwila would never throw this small red book at anyone. But he wore it out like Big Ma reads her Bible.
He caught me craning my neck. “Things Fall Apart,” he said, and at first I thought he had given me a warning, that everything around me would fall apart. Then I saw the book’s title.
I found myself warm faced. I was failing to make a better impression on my teacher. The last thing I wanted was to end up warm-faced or teary.
“Chinua Achebe,” he said.
I touched the tip of my chin.
“Mr. Chinua Achebe,” he said slower. “A fine Nigerian writer.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved, but now embarrassed that I had misheard him.
“Although Mr. Achebe writes about life in Nigeria, I find this book tells a Zambian story. And the longer I stay in this country, I find this book tells an American story.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said, before I actually knew what I meant.
“How so?” he asked.
He must have heard me gulp. I hoped something I had learned from Sister Mukumbu would bounce into my head and slide off my tongue. I hoped I knew what I meant. There was no straw to grasp or spin, but soon I was talking about Island of the Blue Dolphins and how it was about a girl alone on an island. “But you don’t have to be by yourself on an island to feel alone,” I said. “You can feel alone in Brooklyn or alone in Oakland.” I left out that I didn’t have a wolf dog, just two fighting sisters. That I didn’t have a brother who was killed, just an uncle who killed the enemy.
Mr. Mwila only smiled and I hoped what I’d said wasn’t too dumb.
I asked him why it took him so long for things to fall apart. He had been reading the same book since school began.
He laughed. Big. “It is my season to read this book. I know this story well. I’ve read it many times. But it is my season to reflect on certain passages.”
I said right away with my foot planted firmly in the words I spoke, “Like reading the Bible over and over.”
Then I felt a lucky spark. I must have said something right. A genuine look of surprise and agreement spread across his face.
I felt like my mind had grown to catch up with the rest of me.
It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d tell Frieda or Lucy or my sisters, but I was dying to tell someone. Pa spent more time with Miss Marva Hendrix than he spent at home. And I couldn’t imagine telling Big Ma her Bible and a book by a Nigerian writer had something in common. Uncle Darnell was always either out walking or lying on his bed.
That night I wrote to Cecile. If anyone understood things about books, my mother did. The night before we left Oakland she had told me how she found poetry. That the words comforted her when she didn’t have a home. And it wasn’t until our Bible study class recited “The Lord is My Shepherd” that I heard my mother’s voice. How poetry comforted her, like the rod and staff comforts in Psalm 23.
I must have scribbled without stopping. I couldn’t wait to tell her how much I’d grown that day. And that my teacher read a book by Chinwa Acheevie. That I planned to read Things Fall Apart as soon as I finished reading Ginger Pye.
My mother wrote me back.
Dear Delphine,
When you are older I want you to find Chinua Achebe. I want you to read Things Fall Apart. Don’t be hardheaded and try to read this book now. Don’t be hardheaded, Delphine. You are the smart one, but you are not ready. You can read all its words. Even the African words. But you will not know what Achebe is saying. It is a bad thing to bite into hard fruit with little teeth. You will say bad things about the fruit when the problem is your teeth.
I want you to read this book. I want you to know Things Fall Apart. Fourteen is a good age to find Chinua Achebe.
Nzila.
Your Mother.
P.S. For now you are eleven. Be eleven.
Sick Visit
I’d hear Pa say, “Darnell. Isn’t it time you get out there and find work?”
Darnell always said, “Yeah, Lou. I’m looking.”
“Look harder,” Pa’d reply.
Then Uncle Darnell would go out and come back without a job.
“I don’t see why you’re pushing him to get a job when he’s been in Vietnam fighting and saw all those terrible things,” Big Ma told Pa, time and time again.
But each time Uncle came home without a job, Pa said, “You’ll have better luck tomorrow. As long as you’re looking.” But Darnell wasn’t lucky, and Pa finally said, “House is getting small, Darnell. You’ll have to get a job, earn your way.”
“We,” Big Ma said, pointing to herself and Uncle Darnell, “can go home if this house is getting too small.” She meant Alabama home.
Pa’s face looked long and exhausted. “Ma.”
“Don’t ‘Ma’ me nothing,” Big Ma said. “He been to war, Junior. War. Do you know what that is? Stop rushing him out the door so you can bring little Miss Cute Gal in here.”
Then Pa put on his jacket and muttered about having to leave his own house. Uncle Darnell lay down on the sofa, and Big Ma threw a blanket on him and said, “You just sleep, baby.”
Uncle Darnell would sleep half the day away, then walk and walk into the night. His friends from Boys’ High School would come around. Friends who didn’t have to go to Vietnam. Big Ma always told them he was sleeping but she’d let him know they stopped by. Two girls from his high school came by once and Big Ma told them, “Young ladies don’t go calling on boys,” and closed the door.
Papa hadn’t left the house muttering too long ago when the doorbell rang. It was Frieda’s big brother, so I yelled back to Big Ma, “It’s John-Isaac,” before I unlatched the chain and opened the door.
“Darnell home?”
“Yeah,” I said, and let him in. I hoped Frieda had tagged along, but it was just John-Isaac.
Vonetta had a crush on John-Isaac and came running out of the kitchen with her soapy, dish-washing hands. With dish towel in hand, Fern came running behind Vonetta. I couldn’t blame them. He was looking fine in his Black Panther beret and leather jacket.
“Heard you and your sisters got some education out in Oakland.”
They saluted him with power signs.
“All right, my fine young sisters.”
Vonetta was giggling as if Jermaine Jackson had walked into our living room. John-Isaac had been coming over to paint model cars and airplanes since as far back as I could remember. He had even brought Frieda over when we were really little, so I could have someone besides my sisters to play with.
Big Ma came out of the bathroom to see what was going on.
“John-Isaac,” she said, getting a good look at him. “Do you want to go to jail? Get shot up in the streets? Take that Black Panther mess off and act like you know better.”
He put his arms around her. “Hey, Ma.”
“Don’t ‘Ma’ me nothing. Coming in here with that Black Panther stuff on. Don’t spread that mess around here,” Big Ma said. “We can’t use it.”
“We already using it,” Vonetta said.
“Power to the people,” Fern said.
“Slap me some skin,” John-Isaac said, holding a hand out to Vonetta then to Fern. “All right, all right.”
He and Frieda were so different, but probably not any more different than I was from my sisters. I figured he and Frieda were what Big Ma called “war babies.” Their mother was a German Jewish lady, and their father was a black army soldier. They met when Mr. Banks was a sergeant stationed in Düsseldorf. I used to love it when Frieda told that story. Her parents’ love story sounded as magical as Uncle Darnell’s stories, except Düsseldorf wasn’t a make-believe place, and Frieda’s parents were real.
John-Isaac kissed Big Ma, who really liked it but pushed him away, just like she did with Pa and Uncle Darnell. He took off his beret and planted it on Big Ma’s scarfed head and walked right by her over to Uncle Darnell, who was lying on the sofa—and Big Ma never let anyone lie on the living room sofa. Big Ma s
hooed us into the kitchen to finish up our after-dinner chores.
I could hear John-Isaac calling out, “Rooster! Rooster!” Then he crowed like a rooster. John-Isaac nicknamed our uncle “Rooster” because he was so “country” when he first came to Brooklyn from Alabama. And he used to do yard work before the sun came up.
“Rooster. Roo. Man. Get up.”
“Let him sleep,” I heard Big Ma say. “He tired.”
I pushed my mop to the edge of the kitchen to see better. John-Isaac sat by Uncle Darnell like he was visiting a sick classmate in St. John’s Hospital. Uncle Darnell made some “Yeah, man” sounds, but he never got up. When John-Isaac left, he hugged Big Ma for a long time. Like Uncle D was the kind of sick that didn’t get better.
Through the Grapevine
The person who wrote “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” must have sat next to a Lucy Raleigh in school. Lucy ran over toward the girls’ lunch table, her face exploding with news of some kind.
She plunked herself down between Frieda and me, and couldn’t stop panting. All of that panting was meant to have us on a string. Then she’d feel extra special because she held a secret or some news. Finally she stopped panting and said, “You won’t believe what I just heard.”
Lucy was an office monitor. She sometimes heard what we either weren’t supposed to know at all or know yet. We weren’t supposed to know that Mrs. Katzman went on leave because she had a nervous condition. I guessed Lucy’s news was the other kind and she wanted to beat the office memo to our parents.
Lucy couldn’t just tell us. She had to, as Pa would say, “dangle the carrot.”
“You will not, will not believe it.”
“Believe what?” My voice was dry and cool. I wouldn’t let Lucy Raleigh get me jumping around all giddy about what she knew.
“If you must know,” she said, “it’s about the dance.”
So much for dry and cool. My ears, along with everyone else’s, must have stood as straight as a Doberman pinscher’s ears. “The sixth-grade dance?” at least four of us asked at once.