Brown Girl Dreaming (13 page)

No one believes me when I tell them

I am writing a book about butterflies,

even though they see me with the
Childcraft
encyclopedia

heavy on my lap opened to the pages where

the monarch, painted lady, giant swallowtail and

queen butterflies live. Even one called a buckeye.

When I write the first words

Wings of a butterfly whisper . . .

no one believes a whole book could ever come

from something as simple as

butterflies that
don’t even,
my brother says,

live that long.

But on paper, things can live forever.

On paper, a butterfly

never dies.

The Sisters in the Kingdom Hall get six minutes

to be onstage. In pairs. Or threes.

But never alone.

We have to write skits

where we are visiting another Sister

or maybe a nonbeliever. Sometimes

the play takes place at their pretend kitchen table

and sometimes, we’re in their pretend living room

but in real life we’re just in folding chairs, sitting

on the Kingdom Hall stage. The first time

I have to give my talk I ask if I can write it myself

without anyone helping.

There are horses and cows in my story even though

the main point is supposed to be

the story of the resurrection.

Say for instance,
I write,

we have a cow and a horse that we love.

Is death the end of life for those animals?

When my mother reads those lines,

she shakes her head.
You’re getting away from the topic,

she says.
You have to take the animals out of it, get right

to the point. Start with people.

I don’t know what I am supposed to do

with the fabulous, more interesting part of my story,

where the horses and cows start speaking to me

and to each other. How even though they are old

and won’t live much longer, they aren’t afraid.

You only have six minutes,
my mother says,

and no, you can’t get up and walk across the stage

to make your point. Your talk has to be given

sitting down.

So I start again. Rewriting:

Good afternoon, Sister. I’m here to bring you some

good news today.

Did you know God’s word is absolute? If we turn to John,

chapter five, verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine . . .

promising myself there’ll come a time

when I can use the rest of my story

and stand when I tell it

and give myself and my horses and my cows

a whole lot more time

than six minutes!

There are seven of them,

haikus mostly but rhyming ones, too.

Not enough for a real book until

I cut each page into a small square

staple the squares together, write

one poem

on each page.

Butterflies by Jacqueline Woodson

on the front.

The butterfly book

complete now.

Down Knickerbocker Avenue is where everyone

on the block goes to shop.

There’s a pizzeria if you get hungry,

seventy-five cents a slice.

There’s an ice cream shop where cones cost a quarter.

There’s a Fabco Shoes store and a beauty parlor.

A Woolworth’s five-and-dime and a John’s Bargain Store.

For a long time, I don’t put one foot inside Woolworth’s.

They wouldn’t let Black people eat at their lunch counters

in Greenville,
I tell Maria.

No way are they getting my money!

So instead, Maria and I go to John’s Bargain Store where

three T-shirts cost a dollar. We buy them

in pale pink, yellow and baby blue. Each night

we make a plan:

Wear your yellow one tomorrow,
Maria says,

and I’ll wear mine.

All year long, we dress alike,

walking up and down Madison Street

waiting for someone to say,
Are you guys cousins?

so we can smile, say,

Can’t you tell from looking at us?!

Then one day a new girl moves in next door, tells us

her name is Diana and becomes

me and Maria’s Second Best Friend in the Whole World.

And even though Maria’s mother

knew Diana’s mother in Puerto Rico,

Maria promises that doesn’t make Diana
más mejor

amiga
—a better friend. But some days, when

it’s raining and Mama won’t let me go outside,

I see them

on the block, their fingers laced together,

heading around the corner

to the bodega for candy. Those days,

the world feels as gray and cold as it really is

and it’s hard

not to believe the new girl isn’t
más mejor
than me.

Hard not to believe

my days as Maria’s best friend forever and ever amen

are counted.

When Maria’s brother, Carlos, gets baptized

he is just a tiny baby in a white lace gown with

so many twenty-dollar bills folded into fans pinned

all over it

that he looks like a green-and-white angel.

Maria and I stand over his crib

talking about all the candy we could buy with just one

of those fans. But we know that God is watching

and don’t even dare touch the money.

In the kitchen, there is
pernil
roasting in the oven

the delicious smell filling the house and Maria says,

You should just eat a little bit.
But I am not allowed

to eat pork. Instead, I wait for
pasteles
to get

passed around,

wait for the ones her mother has filled with chicken

for Jackie, mi ahijada,
wait for the moment when

I can peel the paper

away from the crushed-plantain-covered meat,

break off small pieces with my hands and let the

pastele
melt in my mouth.
My mother makes the best

pasteles in Brooklyn,
Maria says. And even though I’ve

only eaten her mom’s, I agree.

Whenever there is the smell of
pernil
and
pasteles
on

the block, we know

there is a celebration going on. And tonight, the party

is at Maria’s house. The music is loud and the cake

is big and the
pasteles

that her mother’s been making for three days are

absolutely perfect.

We take our food out to her stoop just as the grown-ups

start dancing merengue, the women lifting their long dresses

to show off their fast-moving feet,

the men clapping and yelling,

Baila! Baila!
until the living room floor disappears.

When I ask Maria where Diana is she says,

They’re coming later. This part is just for my family.

She pulls the crisp skin

away from the
pernil,
eats the pork shoulder

with rice and beans,

our plates balanced on our laps, tall glasses of Malta

beside us.

and for a long time, neither one of us says anything.

Yeah,
I say.
This is only for us. The family.

We are good kids,

people tell my mother this all the time, say,

You have the most polite children.

I’ve never heard a bad word from them.

And it’s true—we say
please
and
thank you.

We speak softly. We look adults in the eyes

ask,
How are you?
Bow our heads when we pray.

We don’t know how to curse,

when we try to put bad words together they sound strange

like new babies trying to talk and mixing up their sounds.

At home, we aren’t allowed words like

stupid
or
dumb
or
jerk
or
darn.

We aren’t allowed to say

I hate
or
I could die
or
You make me sick.

We’re not allowed to roll our eyes or

look away when my mother is speaking to us.

Once my brother said
butt
and wasn’t allowed

to play outside after school for a week.

When we are with our friends and angry, we whisper,

You stupid dummy

and our friends laugh then spew curses

at us like bullets, bend their lips over the words

like they were born speaking them. They coach us on,

tell us to
Just say it!

But we can’t. Even when we try

the words get caught inside our throats, as though

our mother

is standing there waiting, daring them to reach the air.

When Robert comes over with his hair blown out into

an afro, I beg my mother

for the same hairstyle.

Everyone in the neighborhood

has one and all of the black people on
Soul Train.
Even

Michael Jackson and his brothers are all allowed to wear

their hair this way.

Even though she says no to me,

my mom spends a lot of Saturday morning

in her bedroom mirror,

picking her own hair

into a huge black and beautiful dome.

Which

is so completely one hundred percent unfair

but she says,
This is the difference between

being a grown-up and being a child.
When

she’s not looking, I stick my tongue out

at her.

My sister catches me, says,

And that’s the difference

between being a child and being a grown-up,

like she’s twenty years old.

Then rolls her eyes at me and goes back to reading.

Your tag is your name written with spray paint

however you want it wherever you want it to be.

It doesn’t even have to be

your real name—like Loco who lives on Woodbine Street.

His real name is Orlando but everyone

calls him by his tag so

it’s everywhere in Bushwick. Black and red letters and

crazy eyes inside the Os.

Some kids climb to the tops of buildings, hang

over the edge

spray their names upside down from there.

But me and Maria only know the ground, only know

the factory on the corner with its newly painted

bright pink wall. Only know the way my heart jumps

as I press the button down, hear the hiss of paint, watch

J-A-C- begin.

Only know the sound of my uncle’s voice,

stopping me before my name is

a part of the history—like the ones on the roofs

and fire escapes and subway cars. I wish

I could explain.

Wish I had the words

to stop his anger, stop the force of him grabbing my hand,

wish I knew how to say,

Just let me write—everywhere!

But my uncle keeps asking over and over again,

What’s wrong with you?

Have you lost your mind?

Don’t you know people get arrested

for this?

They’re just words,
I whisper.

They’re not trying to hurt anybody!

Each morning the radio comes on at seven o’clock.

Sometimes Michael Jackson is singing that A-B-C

is as easy as 1-2-3

or Sly and the Family Stone are thanking us for

letting them

be themselves.

Sometimes it’s slower music, the Five Stairsteps

telling us

things are going to get easier, or the Hollies singing,

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

So on we go . . .

My mother lets us choose what music we want

to listen to

as long as the word
funk
doesn’t appear anywhere

in the song.

But the summer I am ten,
funk
is in every single song

that comes on the cool black radio stations. So our

mother makes us listen

to the white ones.

All afternoon corny people sing about Colorado,

about everything being beautiful

about how we’ve only just begun.

My sister falls in love

with the singers but I sneak off

to Maria’s house where

safe inside her room with the pink shag carpet

and bunk beds,

we can comb our dolls’ hair and sing along when

the Ohio Players say,

He’s the funkiest

Worm in the world.

We can dance

the Funky Chicken, tell imaginary intruders

to get the funk out

of our faces. Say the word so hard and so loud

and so many times,

it becomes something different to us—something
so silly

we laugh just thinking about it.

Funky, funky, funky,

we sing again and again until the word is just a sound

not connected to anything

good or bad

right or wrong.

When the phone call comes in the middle of the night,
it isn’t

to tell us someone has died. It’s Robert

calling from a prison called Rikers Island.

Even from my half-asleep place,

I can hear my mother taking a heavy breath, whispering,

I knew this was coming, Robert. I knew you weren’t

doing right.

In the morning, we eat our cereal in silence as
our mother tells us

that our uncle won’t be around for a while.

When we ask where he’s gone, she says,
Jail.

When we ask why, she says,

It doesn’t matter. We love him.

That’s all we need to know and keep remembering.

Robert walked the wide road,
she says
. And now

he’s paying for it.

Witnesses believe there’s a wide road and a narrow road.

To be good in the eyes of God is to walk the narrow one,

live a good clean life, pray, do what’s right.

On the wide road, there is every kind of bad thing anyone

can imagine. I imagine my uncle doing his smooth

dance steps down the wide road,

smiling as the music plays loud. I imagine

him laughing, pressing quarters into our palms,

pulling presents for us from his bag, thick gold

bracelet flashing at his wrist.

Where’d you get this?
my mother asked, her face tight.

It doesn’t matter,
my uncle answered.
Y’all know I love you.

You doing the right thing, Robert?
my mother wanted

to know.
Yes,
my uncle said.
I promise you.

It rains all day. We sit around the house

waiting for the sun to come out so we can go outside.

Dell reads in the corner of our room. I pull out

my beat-up composition notebook

try to write another butterfly poem.

Nothing comes.

The page looks like the day—wrinkled and empty

no longer promising anyone

anything.