Brown Girl Dreaming (4 page)

At night, every living thing competes

for a chance to be heard.

The crickets

and frogs call out.

Sometimes, there’s the soft

who-whoo
of an owl lost

amid the pines.

Even the dogs won’t rest until

they’ve howled

at the moon.

But the crickets always win, long after

the frogs stop croaking

and the owl has found its way home.

Long after the dogs have lain down

losing the battle against sleep,

the crickets keep going

as though they know their song

is our lullaby.

My grandmother keeps her Bible on a shelf

beside her bed. When the day is over,

she reads quietly to herself, and in the morning

she’ll tell us the stories,

how Noah listened

to God’s word

pulled two of each animal inside his ark, waited

for the rains to come and floated safely

as the sinners drowned.

It’s morning now and we have floated safely

through the Nicholtown night,

our evening prayers

Jehovah, please give us another day,

now answered.

Biscuits warm and buttered stop halfway

to our mouths.
How much rain did it take

to destroy the sinners? What lies did they tell

to die such a death? How loud was the rain

when it came? How did Noah know

that the cobra wouldn’t bite, the bull

wouldn’t charge, the bee wouldn’t sting?

Our questions come fast but we want

the stories more than we want the answers

so when my grandmother says,

Hush, so I can tell it!

We do.

Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven, and Jesus

with the children surrounding him. Moses

on the mountain, fire burning words into stone.

Even Salome intrigues us, her wish for a man’s head

on a platter—who could want this and live

to tell the story of that wanting?

Autumn is coming.

Outside, there’s the sound of wind

through the pine trees.

But inside there are stories, there are biscuits

and grits and eggs, the fire in the potbellied stove

already filling the house with warmth.

Still we shiver at the thought of evil Salome,

chew our biscuits slowly.

We are safe here—miles and years away

from Bible Times.

When we can’t find my sister, we know

she is under the kitchen table, a book in her hand,

a glass of milk and a small bowl of peanuts beside her.

We know we can call Odella’s name out loud,

slap the table hard with our hands,

dance around it singing

“She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain”

so many times the song makes us sick

and the circling makes us dizzy

and still

my sister will do nothing more

than slowly turn the page.

I cannot write a word yet but at three,

I now know the letter
J

love the way it curves into a hook

that I carefully top with a straight hat

the way my sister has taught me to do. Love

the sound of the letter and the promise

that one day this will be connected to a full name,

my own

that I will be able to write

by myself.

Without my sister’s hand over mine,

making it do what I cannot yet do.

How amazing these words are that slowly come to me.

How wonderfully on and on they go.

Will the words end,
I ask

whenever I remember to.

Nope,
my sister says, all of five years old now,

and promising me

infinity.

The South doesn’t agree

with my brother.

The heat sandpapers his skin.

Don’t scratch,
my grandmother warns. But he does

and the skin grows raw beneath his fingers.

The pollen leaves him puffy eyed, his small breaths

come quick, have too much sound around them.

He moves slow, sickly now where once

he was strong.

And when his body isn’t betraying him, Ohio does.

The memories waking him in the night, the view

from my father’s shoulders, the wonder

of the Nelsonville house, the air

so easy to breathe . . .

You can keep your South,
my father had said.

Now Hope stays mostly quiet

unless asked to speak, his head bent

inside the superhero comic books my grandfather

brings home on Fridays. Hope searches for himself

inside their pages. Leaves them

dog-eared by Monday morning.

The South

his mortal enemy.

The South,

his Kryptonite.

There’s the boy from up the road

with the hole in his heart. Some afternoons

he comes to sit in our yard and listen

to our stories. Our aunt Kay, we tell him,

lives in New York City and maybe we will, too,

someday. And yes it’s true, once

we lived in Ohio, that’s why

we speak the way we do.

We don’t ask about the hole

in his heart. Our grandmother warns us

we know better than that.

There is Cora and her sisters, across the road.

One word in my grandmother’s mouth—
You stay away

from Coraandhersisters,
their mother

left the family, ran off

with their church pastor.

Coraandhersisters

sometimes

sit watching us.

We watch them back not asking

what it feels like not to have a mother because

our grandmother warns us

we know better than that.

There are three brothers who live down the road

we know this only because

our grandmother tells us. They live

inside their dark house

all summer, coming out

in the evening when their mother returns from work

long after we’ve bathed and slipped into

our summer pajamas, books curled into

our arms.

These are our almost friends, the people

we think about when we’re tired of playing

with each other.

But our grandmother says,

Three is plenty. Three is a team.

Find something to do together.

And so over and over again,

we do. Even though we want to ask her,

Why can’t we play with them?
we don’t.

We know better than that.

The first time my brother says
ain’t
my mother

pulls a branch from the willow tree growing down

the hill at the edge

of our backyard.

As she slips her closed hand over it,

removing the leaves,

my brother begins to cry

because the branch is a switch now

no longer beautifully weeping at the bottom of the hill.

It whirs as my mother whips it

through the air and down

against my brother’s legs.

You will never,
my mother says,

say ain’t in this house.

You will never

say ain’t anywhere.

Each switching is a warning to us

our words are to remain

crisp and clear.

We are never to say
huh?

ain’t
or
y’all

git
or
gonna.

Never
ma’am
—just
yes,
with eyes

meeting eyes enough

to show respect.

Don’t ever ma’am anyone!

The word too painful

a memory for my mother

of not-so-long-ago

southern subservient days . . .

The list of what not to say

goes on and on . . .

You are from the North,
our mother says.

You know the right way to speak.

As the switch raises dark welts on my brother’s legs

Dell and I look on

afraid to open our mouths. Fearing the South

will slip out or

into them.

On Fridays, our grandfather takes us

to the candy lady’s house,

even though our grandmother worries he’s going

to be the cause of our teeth rotting

right out of our heads.

But my grandfather just laughs,

makes us open our mouths

to show the strong Irby teeth we’ve inherited

from
his
side of the family.

The three of us stand there, our mouths open wide,

strong white teeth inside,

and my grandmother has to nod, has to say,

They’re lucky
before sending us on our way.

The candy lady’s small living room is filled

with shelves and shelves of chocolate bars

and gumdrops, Good & Plenty and Jujubes,

Moon Pies and Necco Wafers,

lollipops and long red licorice strings.

So much candy that it’s hard to choose

until our grandfather says,

Get what you want but I’m getting myself some ice cream.

Then the candy lady, who is gray-haired

and never smiles, disappears

into another room and returns a few minutes later

with a wafer cone, pale yellow

lemon-chiffon ice cream dripping from it.

Outside, even this late in the afternoon,

the sun is beating down

and the idea of lemon-chiffon ice cream cooling us,

even for a few minutes,

makes us all start saying at once—
Me, too, Daddy.

Me, too, Daddy. Me, too.

The walk home from the candy lady’s house

is a quiet one

except for the sound of melting ice cream

being slurped up

fast, before it slides past our wrists,

on down our arms and onto

the hot, dry road.

Because we have a right,
my grandfather tells us—

we are sitting at his feet and the story tonight is

why people are marching all over the South—

to walk and sit and dream wherever we want.

First they brought us here.

Then we worked for free. Then it was 1863,

and we were supposed to be free but we weren’t.

And that’s why people are so mad.

And it’s true, we can’t turn on the radio

without hearing about the marching.

We can’t go to downtown Greenville without

seeing the teenagers walking into stores, sitting

where brown people still aren’t allowed to sit

and getting carried out, their bodies limp,
their faces calm.

This is the way brown people have to fight,

my grandfather says.

You can’t just put your fist up. You have to insist

on something

gently. Walk toward a thing

slowly.

But be ready to die,

my grandfather says,

for what is right.

Be ready to die,
my grandfather says,

for everything you believe in.

And none of us can imagine death

but we try to imagine it anyway.

Even my mother joins the fight.

When she thinks our grandmother

isn’t watching she sneaks out

to meet the cousins downtown, but just as
she’s stepping through the door,

her good dress and gloves on, my grandmother says,

Now don’t go getting arrested.

And Mama sounds like a little girl when she says,

I won’t.

More than a hundred years,
my grandfather says,

and we’re still fighting for the free life

we’re supposed to be living.

So there’s a war going on in South Carolina

and even as we play

and plant and preach and sleep, we are a part of it.

Because you’re colored,
my grandfather says.

And just as good and bright and beautiful and free

as anybody.

And nobody colored in the South is stopping,

my grandfather says,

until everybody knows what’s true.

When my mother’s older cousin

and best friend, Dorothy,

comes with her children, they run off

saying they can’t understand

the way Hope, Dell and I speak.

Y’all go too fast,
they say.

And the words get all pushed together.

They say they don’t feel like playing

with us little kids. So they leave us

to walk the streets of Nicholtown when we can’t

leave the porch.

We watch them go, hear

Cousin Dorothy say,
Don’t you knuckleheads

get into trouble out there.

Then we stay close to Cousin Dorothy, make believe

we’re not listening when she knows we are.

Laughing when she laughs, shaking our own heads

when she shakes

hers.
You know how you have to get those trainings,

she says, and our mother nods.
They

won’t let you sit at the counters

without them. Have to know what to do

when those people come at you.

She has a small space between her teeth

like my mother’s space, and Hope’s and Dell’s, too.

She is tall and dark-skinned,

beautiful and broad shouldered.

She wears gloves and dark-colored dresses made for her

by a seamstress in Charleston.

The trainings take place in the basements of churches

and the back rooms of stores,

on long car trips and anywhere else where people can

gather. They learn

how to change the South without violence,

how to not be moved

by the evil actions of others, how to walk slowly but

with deliberate steps.

How to sit at counters and be cursed at

without cursing back, have food and drinks poured

over them without standing up and hurting someone.

Even the teenagers

get trained to sit tall, not cry, swallow back fear.

But Lord,
Cousin Dorothy says.
Everybody has a line.

When I’m walking

up to that lunch counter and taking my seat,

I pray to God, don’t let

anybody spit on me. I can be Sweet Dorothy

seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day

as long as nobody crosses that line. Because if they do,

this nonviolent movement

is over!