Brown Girl Dreaming (2 page)

My father’s family

can trace their history back

to Thomas Woodson of Chillicothe, said to be

the first son

of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

some say

this isn’t so but . . .

the Woodsons of Ohio know

what the Woodsons coming before them

left behind, in Bibles, in stories,

in history coming down through time

so

ask any Woodson why

you can’t go down the Woodson line

without

finding

doctors and lawyers and teachers

athletes and scholars and people in government

they’ll say,

We had a head start.

They’ll say,

Thomas Woodson expected the best of us.

They’ll lean back, lace their fingers

across their chests,

smile a smile that’s older than time, say,

Well it all started back before Thomas Jefferson

Woodson of Chillicothe . . .

and they’ll begin to tell our long, long story.

The Woodsons are one

of the few Black families in this town, their house

is big and white and sits

on a hill.

Look up

to see them

through the high windows

inside a kitchen filled with the light

of a watery Nelsonville sun. In the parlor

a fireplace burns warmth

into the long Ohio winter.

Keep looking and it’s spring again,

the light’s gold now, and dancing

across the pine floors.

Once, there were so many children here

running through this house

up and down the stairs, hiding under beds

and in trunks,

sneaking into the kitchen for tiny pieces

of icebox cake, cold fried chicken,

thick slices of their mother’s honey ham . . .

Once, my father was a baby here

and then he was a boy . . .

But that was a long time ago.

In the photos my grandfather is taller than everybody

and my grandmother just an inch smaller.

On the walls their children run through fields,
play in pools,

dance in teen-filled rooms, all of them

grown up and gone now—

but wait!

Look closely:

There’s Aunt Alicia, the baby girl,

curls spiraling over her shoulders, her hands

cupped around a bouquet of flowers. Only

four years old in that picture, and already,

a reader.

Beside Alicia another picture, my father, Jack,

the oldest boy.

Eight years old and mad about something

or is it someone

we cannot see?

In another picture, my uncle Woody,

baby boy

laughing and pointing

the Nelsonville house behind him and maybe

his brother at the end of his pointed finger.

My aunt Anne in her nurse’s uniform,

my aunt Ada in her university sweater

Buckeye to the bone . . .

The children of Hope and Grace.

Look closely. There I am

in the furrow of Jack’s brow,

in the slyness of Alicia’s smile,

in the bend of Grace’s hand . . .

There I am . . .

Beginning.

My great-great-grandfather on my father’s side

was born free in Ohio,

1832.

Built his home and farmed his land,

then dug for coal when the farming

wasn’t enough. Fought hard

in the war. His name in stone now

on the Civil War Memorial:

William J. Woodson

United States Colored Troops,

Union, Company B 5th Regt.

A long time dead but living still

among the other soldiers

on that monument in Washington, D.C.

His son was sent to Nelsonville

lived with an aunt

William Woodson

the only brown boy in an all-white school.

You’ll face this in your life someday,

my mother will tell us

over and over again.

A moment when you walk into a room and

no one there is like you.

It’ll be scary sometimes. But think of William Woodson

and you’ll be all right.

No one was faster

than my father on the football field.

No one could keep him

from crossing the line. Then

touching down again.

Coaches were watching the way he moved,

his easy stride, his long arms reaching

up, snatching the ball from its soft pocket

of air.

My father dreamed football dreams,

and woke to a scholarship

at Ohio State University.

Grown now

living the big-city life

in Columbus

just sixty miles

from Nelsonville

and from there

Interstate 70 could get you

on your way west to Chicago

Interstate 77 could take you south

but my father said

no colored Buckeye in his right mind

would ever want to go there.

From Columbus,
my father said,

you could go just about

anywhere.

You were born in the morning,
Grandma Georgiana said.

I remember the sound of the birds. Mean

old blue jays squawking. They like to fight, you know.

Don’t mess with blue jays!

I hear they can kill a cat if they get mad enough.

And then the phone was ringing.

Through all that static and squawking, I heard

your mama telling me you’d come.

Another girl, I stood there thinking,

so close to the first one.

Just like your mama and Caroline. Not even

a year between them and so close, you could hardly tell

where one ended and the other started.

And that’s how I know you came in the morning.

That’s how I remember.

You came in the late afternoon,
my mother said.

Two days after I turned twenty-two.

Your father was at work.

Took a rush hour bus

trying

to get to you. But

by the time he arrived,

you were already here.

He missed the moment,
my mother said,

but what else is new.

You’re the one that was born near night,
my father says.

When I saw you, I said, She’s the unlucky one

come out looking just like her daddy.

He laughs.
Right off the bat, I told your mama,

We’re gonna call this one after me.

My time of birth wasn’t listed

on the certificate, then got lost again

amid other people’s bad memory.

When my mother comes home

from the hospital with me,

my older brother takes one look

inside the pink blanket, says,

Take her back. We already have one of those.

Already three years old and still doesn’t understand

how something so tiny and new

can’t be returned.

Somewhere in my brain

each laugh, tear and lullaby

becomes
memory.

Six months before my big sister is born,

my uncle Odell is hit by a car

while home in South Carolina

on leave from the Navy.

When the phone rang in the Nelsonville house,

maybe my mother was out hanging laundry

on the line or down in the kitchen

speaking softly with her mother-in-law, Grace, missing

her own mama back home.

Maybe the car was packed and ready for the drive

back to Columbus—the place my father

called the Big City—now
their
home.

But every Saturday morning, they drove

the hour to Nelsonville and stayed

till Sunday night.

Maybe right before the phone rang, tomorrow

was just another day.

But when the news of my uncle’s dying

traveled from the place he fell in South Carolina,

to the cold March morning in Ohio,

my mother looked out into a gray day

that would change her forever.

Your brother

my mother heard her own mother say

and then there was only a roaring in the air around her

a new pain where once there wasn’t pain

a hollowness where only minutes before

she had been whole.

Months before the bone-cold

Buckeye winter settles over Ohio,

the last September light brings

my older sister,

named

Odella Caroline after my uncle Odell

and my aunt Caroline.

In South Carolina, the phone rings.

As my mother’s mother moves toward it,

she closes her eyes,

then opens them to look out over her yard.

As she reaches for it,

she watches the way the light slips through

the heavy pine needles, dapples everything

with sweet September light . . .

Her hand on the phone now, she lifts it

praying silently

for the good news

the sweet chill of autumn

is finally bringing her way.

It is the South that brings my mother

and my father’s mother, Grace,

together.

Grace’s family is from Greenville, too.

So my mother

is home to her, in a way her own kids

can’t understand.

You know how those Woodsons are,
Grace says.

The Woodsons this and the North that

making Mama smile, remember

that Grace, too, was someone else before. Remember

that Grace, like my mother, wasn’t always a Woodson.

They are
home
to each other, Grace

to my mother is as familiar

as the Greenville air.

Both know that southern way of talking

without words, remember when

the heat of summer

could melt the mouth,

so southerners stayed quiet

looked out over the land,

nodded at what seemed like nothing

but that silent nod said everything

anyone needed to hear.

Here in Ohio, my mother and Grace

aren’t afraid

of too much air between words, are happy

just for another familiar body in the room.

But the few words in my mother’s mouth

become the
missing

after Odell dies—a different silence

than either of them has ever known.

I’m sorry about your brother,
Grace says.

Guess God needed him back and sent you a baby girl.

But both of them know

the hole that is the missing isn’t filled now.

Uhmm,
my mother says.

Bless the dead and the living,
Grace says.

Then more silence

both of them knowing

there’s nothing left to say.

Each winter

just as the first of the snow begins to fall,

my mother goes home to South Carolina.

Sometimes,

my father goes with her but mostly,

he doesn’t.

So she gets on the bus alone.

The first year with one,

the second year with two,

and finally with three children, Hope and Dell hugging

each leg and me

in her arms. Always

there is a fight before she leaves.

Ohio

is where my father wants to be

but to my mother

Ohio will never be home,

no matter

how many plants she brings

indoors each winter, singing softly to them,

the lilt of her words a breath

of warm air moving over each leaf.

In return, they hold on to their color

even as the snow begins to fall. A reminder

of the deep green South. A promise

of life

somewhere.

You can keep your South,
my father says.

The way they treated us down there,

I got your mama out as quick as I could.

Brought her right up here to Ohio.

Told her there’s never gonna be a Woodson

that sits in the back of the bus.

Never gonna be a Woodson that has to

Yes sir and No sir white people.

Never gonna be a Woodson made to look down

at the ground.

All you kids are stronger than that,
my father says.

All you Woodson kids deserve to be

as good as you already are.

Yes sirree, Bob,
my father says.

You can keep your South Carolina.

On the bus, my mother moves with us to the back.

It is 1963

in South Carolina.

Too dangerous to sit closer to the front
and dare the driver

to make her move. Not with us. Not now.

Me in her arms all of three months old. My sister

and brother squeezed into the seat beside her. White

shirt, tie, and my brother’s head shaved clean.
My sister’s braids

white ribboned.

Sit up straight,
my mother says.

She tells my brother to take his fingers
out of his mouth.

They do what is asked of them.

Although they don’t know why they have to.

This isn’t Ohio,
my mother says,
as though we understand.

Her mouth a small lipsticked dash, her back

sharp as a line.
DO NOT CROSS!

COLORED
S TO THE BACK!

Step off the curb if a white person comes toward you

don’t look them in the eye. Yes sir. No sir.
My apologies.

Her eyes straight ahead, my mother

is miles away from here.

Then her mouth softens, her hand moves gently

over my brother’s warm head. He is three years old,

his wide eyes open to the world, his too-big ears

already listening.
We’re as good as anybody,

my mother whispers.

As good as anybody.