Brown Girl Dreaming (7 page)

It’s barely morning and we’re already awake,

my grandmother in the kitchen ironing

our Sunday clothes.

I can hear Daddy coughing in his bed, a cough like

he’ll never catch his breath. The sound catches

in my chest as I’m pulling my dress

over my head. Hold my own breath

until the coughing stops. Still,

I hear him pad through the living room

hear the squeak of the front screen door and

know, he’s made it to the porch swing,

to smoke a cigarette.

My grandfather doesn’t believe in a God

that won’t let him smoke

or have a cold beer on a Friday night

a God that tells us all

the world is ending so that
Y’all walk through this world

afraid as cats.

Your God is not my God,
he says.

His cough moves through the air

back into our room where the light

is almost blue, the white winter sun painting it.

I wish the coughing would stop. I wish

he would put on Sunday clothes,

take my hand, walk with us

down the road.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe

that everyone who doesn’t follow

God’s word will be destroyed in a great battle called

Armageddon. And when the battle is done

there will be a fresh new world

a nicer more peaceful world.

But I want the world where my daddy is

and don’t know why

anybody’s God would make me

have to choose.

We pray for my grandfather

ask God to spare him even though

he’s a nonbeliever. We ask that Jehovah look

into his heart, see

the goodness there.

But my grandfather says he doesn’t need our prayers.

I work hard,
he says.
I treat people like I want

to be treated.

God sees this. God knows.

At the end of the day

he lights a cigarette, unlaces

his dusty brogans. Stretches his legs.

God sees my good,
he says.

Do all the preaching and praying you want

but no need to do it for me.

Beautiful brown dolls come from New York City,

fancy stores my mother has walked

into. She writes of elevators, train stations,

buildings so high, they hurt

the neck to see.

She writes of places with beautiful names

Coney Island, Harlem, Brownsville, Bear Mountain.

She tells us she’s seen the ocean, how the water

keeps going long after the eyes can’t see it anymore

promises a whole other country

on the other side.

She tells us the toy stores are filled with dolls
of every size and color

there’s a barbershop and a hair salon everywhere
you look

and a friend of Aunt Kay’s saw Lena Horne

just walking down the street.

But only the dolls are real to us.

Their black hair in stiff curls down

over their shoulders,

their pink dresses made of crinoline and satin.

Their dark arms unbending.

Still

we hug their hard plastic close and imagine

they’re calling us Mama

imagine they need us near.

Imagine the letters from our own mother—

Coming to get you soon—

are ones we’re writing to them.

We will never leave you,
we whisper.

They stare back at us,

blank-eyed and beautiful

silent and still.

Be careful when you play with him,

my grandmother warns us about the boy

with the hole in his heart.

Don’t make him run too fast. Or cry.

When he taps on our back door, we come out

sit quietly with him on the back stairs.

He doesn’t talk much, this boy with the hole

in his heart

but when he does, it’s to ask us about our mother

in New York City.

Is she afraid there?

Did she ever meet a movie star?

Do the buildings really

go on and on?

One day,
he says—so soft, my brother, sister and I

lean in to hear—
I’m gonna go to New York City.

Then he looks off, toward Cora’s house down the road.

That’s south,
my sister says.
New York’s the other way.

It is nearly Christmastime.

On the radio, a man with a soft deep voice is singing

telling us to have ourselves a merry little . . .

Nicholtown windows are filled with Christmas trees.

Coraandhersisters brag about what they are getting,

dolls and skates and swing sets. In the backyard

our own swing set is silent—

a thin layer of snow covering it.

When we are made to stay inside on Sunday

afternoons,

Coraandhersisters descend upon it, take the swings

up high,

stick their tongues out at us

as we stare from behind our glassed-in screen door.

Let them play, for heaven’s sake,
my grandmother says,

when we complain about them tearing it apart.

Your hearts are bigger than that!

But our hearts aren’t bigger than that.

Our hearts are tiny and mad.

If our hearts were hands, they’d hit.

If our hearts were feet, they’d surely kick somebody!

We are the chosen people,
our grandmother tells us.

Everything we do is a part

of God’s plan. Every breath you breathe is the gift God

is giving you. Everything we own . . .

Daddy gave us the swings,
my sister tells her.
Not God.

My grandmother’s words come slowly meaning

this lesson is an important one.

With the money he earned by working at a job God

gave him a body strong enough to work with.

Outside, our swing set is empty finally,

Coraandhersisters now gone.

Hope, Dell and I are silent.

So much we don’t yet understand.

So much we don’t yet believe.

But we know this:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday,

Saturday and Sunday are reserved

for God’s work. We are put here to do it

and we are expected to do it well.

What is promised to us in return

is eternity.

It’s the same,
my sister says,

or maybe even better than

infinity.

The empty swing set reminds us of this—

that what is bad won’t be bad forever,

and what is good can sometimes last

a long, long time.

Even Coraandhersisters can only bother us

for a little while before they get called home

to supper.

Deep winter and the night air is cold. So still,

it feels like the world goes on forever in the darkness

until you look up and the earth stops

in a ceiling of stars. My head against

my grandfather’s arm,

a blanket around us as we sit on the front porch swing.

Its whine like a song.

You don’t need words

on a night like this. Just the warmth

of your grandfather’s arm. Just the silent promise

that the world as we know it

will always be here.

The letter comes on a Saturday morning,

my sister opens it. My mother’s handwriting

is easy, my sister says.
She doesn’t write in script.

She writes so we can understand her.

And then she reads my mother’s letter slowly

while Hope and I sit at the kitchen table,

cheese grits near gone, scrambled eggs

leaving yellow dots

in our bowls. My grandmother’s beloved biscuits

forgotten.

She’s coming for us,
my sister says and reads the part

where my mother tells her the plan.

We’re really leaving Greenville,
my sister says

and Hope sits up straighter

and smiles. But then the smile is gone.

How can we have both places?

How can we leave

all that we’ve known—

me on Daddy’s lap in the early evening,

listening to Hope and Dell tell stories

about their lives at the small school

a mile down the road.

I will be five one day and the Nicholtown school

is a mystery

I’m just about to solve.

And what about the fireflies and ditches?

And what about the nights when

we all climb into our grandparents’ bed

and they move apart, making room for us

in the middle.

And maybe that’s when my sister reads the part

I don’t hear:

a baby coming. Another one. A brother or sister.

Still in her belly but coming soon.

She’s coming to get us,
my sister says again,

looking around

our big yellow kitchen. Then running her hand

over the hardwood table

as though she’s already gone

and trying to remember this.

Then one morning my grandfather is too sick

to walk the half mile to the bus

that takes him to work.

He stays in bed for the whole day

waking only to cough

and cough

and cough.

I walk slow around him

fluffing his pillows,

pressing cool cloths over his forehead

telling him the stories that come to me

again and again.

This I can do—find him another place to be

when this world is choking him.

Tell me a story,
he says.

And I do.

When my mother returns,

I will no longer be her baby girl.

I am sitting on my grandmother’s lap

when she tells me this,

already so tall my legs dangle far down, the tips

of my toes touching the porch mat. My head

rests on her shoulder now where once,

it came only to her collarbone. She smells the way

she always does, of Pine-Sol and cotton,

Dixie Peach hair grease and something

warm and powdery.

I want to know whose baby girl I’ll be

when my mother’s new baby comes, born where

the sidewalks sparkle and me just a regular girl.

I didn’t know how much I loved

being everyone’s baby girl

until now when my life as baby girl

is nearly over.

My mother arrives in the middle of the night,

and sleepily, we pile into her arms and hold tight.

Her kiss on the top of my head reminds me

of all that I love.

Mostly her.

It is late winter but my grandmother keeps

the window in our room slightly open

so that the cold fresh air can move over us

as we sleep. Two thick quilts and the three of us

side by side by side.

This is all we know now—

Cold pine breezes, my grandmother’s quilts,

the heat of the wood-burning stove, the sweet

slow voices of the people around us,

red dust wafting, then settling as though it’s said

all that it needs to say.

My mother tucks us back into our bed whispering,

We have a home up North now.

I am too sleepy to tell her that Greenville is home.

That even in the wintertime, the crickets

sing us to sleep.

And tomorrow morning, you’ll get to meet

your new baby brother.

But I am already mostly asleep again, two arms

wrapped tight

around my mama’s hand.

His name is as strange as he is, this new baby brother

so pale and quiet and wide-eyed. He sucks his fist,

taking in all of us without blinking.

Another boy,
Hope says,

now it’s even-steven around here.

But I don’t like the new baby of the family.

I want to send it back to wherever

babies live before they get here. When I pinch him,

a red mark stays behind, and his cry is high and tinny

a sound that hurts my ears.

That’s what you get,
my sister says.

His crying is him fighting you back.

Then she picks him up, holds him close,

tells him softly everything’s all right,

everything’s always going to be all right

until Roman gets quiet,

his wide black eyes looking only at Dell

as if

he believes her.