Brown Girl Dreaming (16 page)

Every dandelion blown

each
Star light, star bright,

The first star I see tonight.

My wish is always the same.

Every fallen eyelash

and first firefly of summer . . .

The dream remains.

What did you wish for?

To be a writer.

Every heads-up penny found

and daydream and night dream

and even when people say it’s a pipe dream . . . !

I want to be a writer.

Every sunrise and sunset and song

against a cold windowpane.

Passing the mountains.

Passing the sea.

Every story read

every poem remembered:

I loved my friend

and

When I see birches bend to left and right

and

“Nay,” answered the child: “but these are the wounds of Love.”

Every memory . . .

Froggie went a-courting, and he did ride

Uh hmm.

brings me closer

and closer to the dream.

Every Saturday morning, we run downstairs

to the television. Just as the theme song

from
The Big Blue Marble
begins, the four of us sing along:

The earth’s a big blue marble when you see it from out there.

Then the camera is zooming in on that marble,
the blue becoming

water, then land, then children in Africa and Texas
and China

and Spain and sometimes, New York City! The world

close enough to touch now and children from all over

right in our living room! Telling us their stories.

The sun and moon declare, our beauty’s very rare . . .

The world—
my
world!—like words. Once

there was only the letter
J
and my sister’s hand

wrapped around mine, guiding me, promising me

infinity. This big blue marble

of world and words and people and places

inside my head and

somewhere out there, too.

All of it, mine now if I just listen

and write it down.

I believe in God and evolution.

I believe in the Bible and the Qur’an.

I believe in Christmas and the New World.

I believe that there is good in each of us

no matter who we are or what we believe in.

I believe in the words of my grandfather.

I believe in the city and the South

the past and the present.

I believe in Black people and White people coming
together.

I believe in nonviolence and “Power to the People.”

I believe in my little brother’s pale skin and my own
dark brown.

I believe in my sister’s brilliance and the too-easy
books I love to read.

I believe in my mother on a bus and Black people
refusing to ride.

I believe in good friends and good food.

I believe in johnny pumps and jump ropes,

Malcolm and Martin, Buckeyes and Birmingham,

writing and listening, bad words and good words—

I believe in Brooklyn!

I believe in one day and someday and this
perfect moment called
Now.

When there are many worlds

you can choose the one

you walk into each day.

You can imagine yourself brilliant as your sister,

slower moving, quiet and thoughtful as your older brother

or filled up with the hiccupping joy and laughter

of the baby in the family.

You can imagine yourself a mother now, climbing

onto a bus at nightfall, turning

to wave good-bye to your children, watching

the world of South Carolina disappear behind you.

When there are many worlds, love can wrap itself

around you, say,
Don’t cry.
Say,
You are as good as anyone.

Say,
Keep remembering me.
And you know, even as the
world explodes

around you—that you are loved . . .

Each day a new world

opens itself up to you. And all the worlds you are—

Ohio and Greenville

Woodson and Irby

Gunnar’s child and Jack’s daughter

Jehovah’s Witness and nonbeliever

listener and writer

Jackie and Jacqueline—

gather into one world

called You

where You decide

what each world

and each story

and each ending

will finally be.

author’s note

Memory is strange. When I first began to write
Brown Girl Dreaming
, my childhood memories of Greenville came flooding back to me—small moments and bigger ones, too. Things I hadn’t thought about in years and other stuff I’ve never forgotten. When I began to write it all down, I realized how much I missed the South. So for the first time in many years, I returned “home,” and saw cousins I hadn’t seen since I was small, heard stories I had heard many times from my grandmother, walked roads that were very different now but still the same roads of my childhood. It was a bittersweet journey. I wish I could have walked those roads again with my mom, my grandfather, my uncle Robert, my aunt Kay, and my grandmother. But all have made their own journey to the next place. So I walked the roads alone this time. Still, it felt as though each of them was with me—they’re all deeply etched now, into memory.

And that’s what this book is—my past, my people, my memories, my story.

I knew I couldn’t write about the South without writing about Ohio. And even though I was only a baby when we lived there, I have the gift of my amazing aunt Ada Adams, who is a genealogist and our family historian. She was my go-to person and filled in so many gaps in my memory. Aunt Ada took me right back to Columbus. During the writing of this book, I returned to Ohio with my family. Aunt Ada took us on a journey of the Underground Railroad, showed us the graves of grandparents and great-grandparents, told me so much history I had missed out on as a child. Aunt Ada not only showed me the past but she also helped me understand the present. So often, I am asked where my stories come from. I know now my stories are part of a continuum—my aunt is a storyteller. So were my mom and my grandmother. And the history Aunt Ada showed me—the rich history that is
my
history—made me at once proud and thoughtful. The people who came before me worked so hard to make this world a better place for me. I know my work is to make the world a better place for those coming after. As long as I can remember this, I can continue to do the work I was put here to do.

On the journey to writing this book, my dad, Jack Woodson, chimed in when he could. Even as I write this, I smile because my father always makes me laugh. I like to think I acquired a bit of his sense of humor. I didn’t know him for many years. When I met him again at the age of fourteen, it was as though a puzzle piece had dropped from the air and landed right where it belonged. My dad is that puzzle piece.

Gaps were also filled in by my friend Maria, who helped the journey along with pictures and stories. When we were little, we used to say we’d one day be old ladies together, sitting in rocking chairs remembering our childhood and laughing. We’ve been friends for nearly five decades now and still call each other My Forever Friend. I hope everyone has a Forever Friend in their life.

But at the end of the day, I was alone with
Brown Girl Dreaming
—walking through these memories and making sense out of myself as a writer in a way I had never done before.

I am often asked if I had a hard life growing up. I think my life was very complicated and very rich. Looking back on it, I think my life was at once ordinary and amazing. I couldn’t imagine any other life. I know that I was lucky enough to be born during a time when the world was changing like crazy—and that I was a part of that change. I know that I was and continue to be loved.

I couldn’t ask for anything more.

thankfuls

I am thankful for my memory. When it needed help on the journey, I am also thankful for my fabulous editor, Nancy Paulsen. More help came from Sara LaFleur. This book wouldn’t be in the world without my family, including Hope, Odella, and Roman, Toshi, Jackson-Leroi, and Juliet—thank you for your patience and thorough reading and rereading. Thanks to my forever friend, Maria Cortez-Ocasio, her husband, Sam, and her daughters Jillian, Samantha, and Angelina. Even her grandson, Little Sammy. And of course, her mom, Darma—thanks for feeding me so well over the years.

Toshi Reagon, thanks for reading this and sitting with me as I fretted over it. Thanks for your music, your guidance, your stories.

On the Ohio side: a big big thank-you to my aunt Ada—genealogist extraordinaire!—and to my aunt Alicia and my uncle David and, of course, my dad, Jack Woodson.

On the Greenville side: big thanks to my cousins Michael and Sheryl Irby, Megan Irby, Michael and Kenneth Sullivan, Dorothy Vaughn-Welch, Samuel Miller, La’Brandon, Monica Vaughn, and all my other relatives who opened their doors, let me in, told me their stories!

In North Carolina, thanks so much to Stephanie Grant, Ara Wilson, Augusta, and Josephine for that fabulously quiet guest room and dinner at the end of the day for many days until this book was close to being in the world.

On the Brooklyn and Vermont sides: thanks to my village. So grateful for all of you!

In memory: thanks to my mom, Mary Anne Woodson, my uncles Odell and Robert Irby, my grandmother Georgiana Scott Irby, my grandfather Gunnar Irby, and my aunt Hallique Caroline (Kay) Irby.

These thankfuls wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the myriad teachers who, in many different ways, pointed this brown girl toward her dream.