Brown Girl Dreaming (12 page)

I am not my sister.

Words from the books curl around each other

make little sense

until

I read them again

and again, the story

settling into memory.
Too slow

the teacher says.

Read faster.

Too babyish,
the teacher says.

Read older.

But I don’t want to read faster or older or

any way else that might

make the story disappear too quickly from where
it’s settling

inside my brain,

slowly becoming

a part of me.

A story I will remember

long after I’ve read it for the second, third,

tenth, hundredth time.

Every Monday, my mother takes us

to the library around the corner. We are allowed

to take out seven books each. On those days,

no one complains

that all I want are picture books.

Those days, no one tells me to read faster

to read harder books

to read like Dell.

No one is there to say,
Not that book,

when I stop in front of the small paperback

with a brown boy on the cover.

Stevie.

I read:

One day my momma told me,

“You know you’re gonna have

a little friend come stay with you.”

And I said, “Who is it?”

If someone had been fussing with me

to read like my sister, I might have missed

the picture book filled with brown people, more

brown people than I’d ever seen

in a book before.

The little boy’s name was Steven but

his mother kept calling him Stevie.

My name is Robert but my momma don’t

call me Robertie.

If someone had taken

that book out of my hand

said,
You’re too old for this

maybe

I’d never have believed

that someone who looked like me

could be in the pages of the book

that someone who looked like me

had a story.

When I tell my family

I want to be a writer, they smile and say,

We see you in the backyard with your writing.

They say,

We hear you making up all those stories.

And,

We used to write poems.

And,

It’s a good hobby, we see how quiet it keeps you.

They say,

But maybe you should be a teacher,

a lawyer,

do hair . . .

I’ll think about it,
I say.

And maybe all of us know

this is just another one of my

stories.

Saturday morning and Daddy Gunnar’s voice

is on the other end of the phone.

We all grab for it.

Let me speak to him!

My turn!

No mine!

Until Mama makes us stand in line.

He coughs hard, takes deep breaths.

When he speaks, it’s almost low as a whisper.

How are my New York grandbabies,
he wants to know.

We’re good,
I say, holding tight to the phone

but my sister is already grabbing for it,

Hope and even Roman, all of us

hungry for the sound

of his faraway voice.

Y’all know how much I love you?

Infinity and back again,
I say

the way I’ve said it a million times.

And then,
Daddy says to me,
Go on and add

a little bit more to that.

Until the curtain comes up and he’s standing there,

ten years old and alone in the center of the P.S. 106 stage,

no one knew

my big brother could sing. He is dressed
as a shepherd, his voice

soft and low, more sure than any sound I’ve ever heard

come out of him. My quiet big brother
who only speaks

when asked, has little to say to any of us, except

when he’s talking about science or comic books, now

has a voice that is circling the air,

landing clear and sweet around us:

“Tingalayo, come little donkey come.

Tingalayo, come little donkey come.

My donkey walks, my donkey talks

my donkey eats with a knife and fork.

Oh Tingalayo, come little donkey come.”

Hope can sing . . .
my sister says in wonder
as my mother

and the rest of the audience start to clap.

Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden

like this, in all of us. A small gift from the universe

waiting to be discovered.

My big brother raises his arms, calling his donkey home.

He is smiling as he sings, the music getting louder

behind him.

“Tingalayo . . .”

And in the darkened auditorium, the light

is only on Hope

and it’s hard to believe he has such a magic
singing voice

and even harder to believe his donkey

is going to come running.

Greenville is different this summer,

Roman is well and out back, swinging hard. Somewhere

between last summer and now, our daddy

cemented the swing set down.

Roman doesn’t know the shaky days—just this moment,

his dark blue Keds pointing toward the sky,
his laughter and screams, like wind

through the screen door.

Now my grandmother shushes him,

Daddy resting in the bedroom, the covers pulled up
to his chin,

his thin body so much smaller than I remember it.

Just a little tired,
Daddy says to me, when I tiptoe

in with chicken soup,

sit on the edge of the bed and try to get him

to take small sips.

He struggles into sitting, lets me feed him

small mouthfuls but only a few

are enough.
Too tired to eat anymore.

Then he closes his eyes.

Outside, Roman laughs again and the swing set

whines with the weight of him.

Maybe Hope is there, pushing him

into the air. Or maybe it’s Dell.

The three of them would rather be outside.

His room smells,
my sister says.

But I don’t smell anything except the lotion

I rub into my grandfather’s hands.

When the others aren’t around, he whispers,

You’re my favorite,

smiles and winks at me.
You’re going to be fine,
you know that.

Then he coughs hard and closes his eyes, his breath

struggling to get

into and out of his body.

Most days, I am in here with my grandfather,
holding his hand

while he sleeps

fluffing pillows and telling him stories

about my friends back home.

When he asks, I speak to him in Spanish,

the language that rolls off my tongue

like I was born knowing it.

Sometimes, my grandfather says,

Sing me something pretty.

And when I sing to him, I’m not

just left of the key or right of the tune

He says I sing beautifully.

He says I am perfect.

Even though the laws have changed

my grandmother still takes us

to the back of the bus when we go downtown

in the rain.
It’s easier,
my grandmother says,

than having white folks look at me like I’m dirt.

But we aren’t dirt. We are people

paying the same fare as other people.

When I say this to my grandmother,

she nods, says,
Easier to stay where you belong.

I look around and see the ones

who walk straight to the back. See

the ones who take a seat up front, daring

anyone to make them move. And know

this is who I want to be. Not scared

like that. Brave

like that.

Still, my grandmother takes my hand downtown

pulls me right past the restaurants that have to let us sit

wherever we want now.
No need in making trouble,

she says.
You all go back to New York City but

I have to live here.

We walk straight past Woolworth’s

without even looking in the windows

because the one time my grandmother went inside

they made her wait and wait.
Acted like

I wasn’t even there.
It’s hard
not
to see the moment—

my grandmother in her Sunday clothes, a hat

with a flower pinned to it

neatly on her head, her patent-leather purse,

perfectly clasped

between her gloved hands—waiting quietly

long past her turn.

Too fast the summer leaves us, we kiss

our grandparents good-bye and my uncle Robert

is there waiting

to take us home again.

When we hug our grandfather, his body

is all bones and skin. But he is up now,

sitting at the window, a blanket covering

his thin shoulders.

Soon, I’ll get back to that garden,
he says.

But most days, all I want to do

is lay down and rest.

We wave again from the taxi that pulls out

slow down the drive—watch our grandmother,

still waving,

grow small behind us and our grandfather,

in the window,

fade from sight.

Robert only stays long enough

for my mother to thank him

for buying our tickets

for getting us home.

He does a fancy turn on his heel, aims

two pointer fingers at us

says,
I’ll catch up with all of you later.

We tell him that he has to come back soon,

remind him of all the stuff he’s promised us

trips to Coney Island and Palisades Amusement Park,
a Crissy doll

with hair that grows, a Tonka toy,
Gulliver’s Travels
,
candy.

He says he won’t forget,

asks us if he’s a man of his word and

everyone except my mother

nods.

Hard not to miss my mother’s eyebrows,

giving her baby brother a look,

pressing her lips together. Once,

in the middle of the night, two policemen

knocked on our door, asking for Robert Leon Irby.

But my uncle wasn’t here.

So now my mother takes a breath, says,

Stay safe.

Says,

Don’t get into trouble out there, Robert.

He gives her a hug, promises he won’t

and then he is gone.

When I get back to Brooklyn, Maria isn’t there.

She’s gone upstate, staying with a family,

her mother tells me, that has a pool. Then her mother

puts a plate of food in front of me, tells me

how much she knows I love her rice and chicken.

When Maria returns she is tanned and wearing

a new short set. Everything about her seems different.

I stayed with white people,
she tells me.
Rich white people.

The air upstate is different. It doesn’t smell like anything!

She hands me a piece of bubble gum with
BUBBLE YUM

in bright letters.

This is what they chew up there.

The town was called Schenectady.

All the rest of the summer Maria and I buy only
Bubble Yum, blow

huge bubbles while I make her tell me story after

story about the white family in Schenectady.

They kept saying I was poor and trying to give me stuff,

Maria says.
I had to keep telling them it’s not poor

where we live.

Next summer,
I say.
You should just come down south.

It’s different there.

And Maria promises she will.

On the sidewalk we draw hopscotch games that we

play using chipped pieces of slate, chalk

Maria & Jackie Best Friends Forever
wherever

there is smooth stone.

Write it so many times that it’s hard to walk

on our side

of the street without looking down

and seeing us there.

Jacqueline Woodson.

I’m finally in fourth grade.

It’s raining outside.

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There’s nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began—

I loved my friend.

—Langston Hughes

I love my friend

and still do

when we play games

we laugh. I hope she never goes away from me

because I love my friend.

—Jackie Woodson

In the story of the Selfish Giant, a little boy hugs

a giant who has never been hugged before.

The giant falls

in love with the boy but then one day,

the boy disappears.

When he returns, he has scars on his hands and

his feet, just like Jesus.

The giant dies and goes to Paradise.

The first time my teacher reads the story to the class

I cry all afternoon, and am still crying

when my mother gets home from work that evening.

She doesn’t understand why

I want to hear such a sad story again and again

but takes me to the library around the corner

when I beg

and helps me find the book to borrow.

The Selfish Giant,
by Oscar Wilde.

I read the story again and again.

Like the giant, I, too, fall in love with the Jesus boy,

there’s something so sweet about him, I want

to be his friend.

Then one day, my teacher asks me to come up front

to read out loud. But I don’t need to bring

the book with me.

The story of the Selfish Giant is in my head now,

living there. Remembered.

“Every afternoon, as they were coming from school,

the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden . . .”

I tell the class, the whole story flowing out of me

right up to the end when the boy says,

“These are the wounds of Love . . .

“You let me play once in your garden, today you shall
come with me to my garden, which is Paradise . . .”

How did you do that,
my classmates ask.

How did you memorize all those words?

But I just shrug, not knowing what to say.

How can I explain to anyone that stories

are like air to me,

I breathe them in and let them out

over and over again.

Brilliant!
my teacher says, smiling.

Jackie, that was absolutely beautiful.

And I know now

words are my Tingalayo. Words are my brilliance.