Brown Girl Dreaming (3 page)

Soon . . .

We are near my other grandparents’ house,
small red stone,

immense yard surrounding it.

Hall Street.

A front porch swing thirsty for oil.

A pot of azaleas blooming.

A pine tree.

Red dirt wafting up

around my mother’s newly polished shoes.

Welcome home,
my grandparents say.
Their warm brown

arms around us. A white handkerchief,
embroidered with blue

to wipe away my mother’s tears. And me,

the new baby, set deep

inside this love.

It’s my mother’s birthday and the music

is turned up loud.

Her cousins all around her—the way it was
before she left.

The same cousins she played with as a girl.

Remember the time,
they ask,

When we stole Miz Carter’s peach pie off her windowsill,

got stuck in that ditch down below Todd’s house,

climbed that fence and snuck into Greenville pool,

weren’t scared about getting arrested either, shoot!

nobody telling us where we can and can’t swim!

And she laughs, remembering it all.

On the radio, Sam Cooke is singing
“Twistin’ the Night Away”:

Let me tell you ’bout a place

Somewhere up-a New York way

The cousins have come from as far away as Spartanburg

the boys dressed in skinny-legged pants,

the girls in flowy skirts that swirl out, when they spin

twisting the night away.

Cousin Dorothy’s fiancé, holding tight to her hand
as they twist

Cousin Sam dancing with Mama, ready to catch her
if she falls, he says

and my mother remembers being a little girl,
looking down

scared from a high-up tree

and seeing her cousin there—waiting.

Here they have a lot of fun

Puttin’ trouble on the run

Twistin’ the night away.

I knew you weren’t staying up North,
the cousins say.

You belong here with us.

My mother throws her head back,
her newly pressed and curled hair gleaming

her smile the same one she had
before she left for Columbus.

She’s MaryAnn Irby again. Georgiana and Gunnar’s
youngest daughter.

She’s home.

My father arrives on a night bus, his hat in his hands.

It is May now and the rain is coming down.
Later with the end of this rain

will come the sweet smell of honeysuckle but for now,

there is only the sky opening and my father’s tears.

I’m sorry,
he whispers.

This fight is over for now.

Tomorrow, we will travel as a family

back to Columbus, Ohio,

Hope and Dell fighting for a place

on my father’s lap. Greenville

with its separate ways growing small

behind us.

For now, my parents stand hugging
in the warm Carolina rain.

No past.

No future.

Just this perfect Now.

After the chicken is fried and wrapped in wax paper,

tucked gently into cardboard shoe boxes
and tied with string . . .

After the corn bread is cut into wedges, the peaches

washed and dried . . .

After the sweet tea is poured into mason jars
twisted tight

and the deviled eggs are scooped back inside
their egg-white beds

slipped into porcelain bowls that are my mother’s now,
a gift

her mother sends with her on the journey . . .

After the clothes are folded back into suitcases,

the hair ribbons and shirts washed and ironed . . .

After my mother’s lipstick is on and my father’s

scratchy beginnings of a beard are gone . . .

After our faces are coated

with a thin layer of Vaseline gently wiped off again

with a cool, wet cloth . . .

then it is time to say our good-byes,
the small clutch of us children

pressed against my grandmother’s apron, her tears

quickly blinked away . . .

After the night falls and it is safe
for brown people to leave

the South without getting stopped

and sometimes beaten

and always questioned:

Are you one of those Freedom Riders?

Are you one of those Civil Rights People?

What gives you the right . . . ?

We board the Greyhound bus, bound

for Ohio.

The Hocking River moves like a flowing arm away

from the Ohio River

runs through towns as though

it’s chasing its own freedom, the same way

the Ohio runs north from Virginia until

it’s safely away

from the South.

Each town the Hocking touches tells a story:

Athens

Coolville

Lancaster

Nelsonville,

each

waits for the Hocking water to wash through. Then

as though the river remembers where it belongs
and what it belongs to,

it circles back, joins up with
the Ohio again

as if to say,

I’m sorry.

as if to say,

I went away from here

but now

I’m home again.

When my parents fight for the final time,

my older brother is four,

my sister is nearly three,

and I have just celebrated my first birthday

without celebration.

There is only one photograph of them
from their time together

a wedding picture, torn from a local newspaper

him in a suit and tie,

her in a bride gown, beautiful

although neither one

is smiling.

Only one photograph.

Maybe the memory of Columbus was too much

for my mother to save

anymore.

Maybe the memory of my mother

was a painful stone inside my father’s heart.

But what did it look like

when she finally left him?

A woman nearly six feet tall, straight-backed

and proud, heading down

a cold Columbus street, two small children

beside her and a still-crawling baby

in her arms.

My father, whose reddish-brown skin

would later remind me

of the red dirt of the South

and all that was rich about it, standing

in the yard, one hand

on the black metal railing, the other lifting

into a weak wave good-bye.

As though we were simply guests

leaving Sunday supper.

In South Carolina, we become

The Grandchildren

Gunnar’s Three Little Ones

Sister Irby’s Grands

MaryAnn’s Babies

And when we are called by our names

my grandmother

makes them all one

HopeDellJackie

but my grandfather

takes his sweet time, saying each

as if he has all day long

or a whole lifetime.

When we ask our mother how long we’ll be here,

sometimes she says
for a while
and sometimes

she tells us not to ask anymore

because she doesn’t know how long we’ll stay

in the house where she grew up

on the land she’s always known.

When we ask, she tells us

this is where she used to belong

but her sister, Caroline, our aunt Kay, has moved

to the North,

her brother Odell is dead now,

and her baby brother, Robert, says he’s almost saved

enough money to follow Caroline to New York City.

Maybe I should go there, too,
my mother says.

Everyone else,
she says,

has a new place to be now.

Everyone else

has gone away.

And now coming back home

isn’t really coming back home

at all.

Each spring

the dark Nicholtown dirt is filled

with the promise

of what the earth can give back to you

if you work the land

plant the seeds

pull the weeds.

My southern grandfather missed slavery

by one generation. His grandfather

had been owned.

His father worked

the land from dawn till dusk

for the promise of cotton

and a little pay.

So this is what he believes in

your hands in the cool dirt

until the earth gives back to you

all that you’ve asked of it.

Sweet peas and collards,

green peppers and cukes

lettuce and melon,

berries and peaches and one day

when I’m able,
my grandfather says,

I’m gonna figure out how to grow myself a pecan tree.

God gives you what you need,
my grandmother says.

Best not to ask for more than that.

Hmph,
my grandfather says. And goes back

to working the land, pulling from it all we need

and more than that.

At dusk, just as the fireflies flicker on, my grandfather

makes his way

home.

We see him coming slow down the road,

his silver lunch box bouncing

soft against his leg. Now,

as he gets closer, we hear him

singing:

“Where will the wedding supper be?

Way down yonder in a hollow tree. Uh hmmm . . .”

Good evening, Miz Clara. Evening, Miz Mae.

How’s that leg, Miz Bell?

What you cooking, Auntie Charlotte, you thinking

of making me something to eat?

His voice ringing down Hall Street, circling

round the roads of Nicholtown

and maybe out into the big, wide world . . .

Maybe all the way up in New York,

Aunt Kay’s hearing it,

and thinking about coming on home . . .

Then he is close enough to run to—the three of us

climbing him like a tree until he laughs out loud.

We call him Daddy.

This is what our mother calls him.

This is all we know now.

Our daddy seems taller than anyone else

in all of Greenville.

More handsome, too—

His square jaw and light brown eyes

so different from our own

narrow-faced, dark-eyed selves. Still,

his hand is warm and strong around my own
as I skip beside him,

the wind blowing up around us. He says,

Y’all are Gunnar’s children.

Just keep remembering that.

Just keep remembering . . .

This is the way of Nicholtown evenings,

Daddy

coming home,

me

jumping into his arms,

the others

circling around him

all of us grinning

all of us talking

all of us loving him up.

There are white men working at the printing press

beside Daddy, their fingers blackened

with ink so that at the end of the day, palms up

it’s hard to tell who is white and who is not, still

they call my grandfather Gunnar,

even though he’s a foreman

and is supposed to be called

Mr. Irby.

But he looks the white men in the eye

sees the way so many of them can’t understand

a colored man

telling them what they need to do.

This is new. Too fast for them.

The South is changing.

Sometimes they don’t listen.

Sometimes they walk away.

At the end of the day, the newspaper is printed,

the machines are shut down and each man

punches a clock and leaves but

only Colored folks

come home to Nicholtown.

Here, you can’t look right or left or up or down

without seeing brown people.

Colored Town. Brown Town. Even a few mean words

to say where we live.

My grandmother tells us

it’s the way of the South.
Colored folks used to stay

where they were told that they belonged. But

times are changing.

And people are itching to go where they want.

This evening, though,

I am happy to belong

to Nicholtown.

There is daywork for colored women.

In the mornings their dark bodies

fill the crosstown buses,

taking them away

from Nicholtown

to the other side

of Greenville

where the white people live.

Our grandmother tells us this

as she sets a small hat with a topaz pin on her head,

pulls white gloves

over her soft brown hands.

Two days a week, she joins the women,

taking on this second job now

that there are four more mouths to feed

and the money

she gets from part-time teaching isn’t enough

anymore.
I’m not ashamed,
she says,

cleaning is what I know. I’m not ashamed,

if it feeds my children.

When she returns in the evening, her hands

are ashen from washing other people’s clothes,

Most often by hand,

her ankles swollen from standing all day

making beds and sweeping floors,

shaking dust from curtains,

picking up after other people’s children, cooking,

the list

goes on and on.

Don’t any of you ever do daywork,
she warns us
.

I’m doing it now so you don’t have to.

And maybe all across Nicholtown, other children

are hearing this, too.

Get the Epsom salts,
she says, leaning back

into the soft brown chair, her eyes closing.

When she isn’t in it, Hope, Dell and I squeeze in

side by side by side and still, there is space left

for one more.

We fill a dishpan with warm water, pour

the salts in, swirl it around and carefully

carry it to her feet. We fight to see who will get

to rub the swelling from my grandmother’s ankles,

the smile back onto her face,

the stories back into the too-quiet room.

You could have eaten off the floor by the time

I left this one house today,

my grandmother begins, letting out a heavy sigh.
But

let me tell you,

when I first got there, you would have thought

the Devil himself had come through . . .