P.S. Be Eleven (19 page)

Big Ma looked up at me and said, “Your uncle.” Her eyes were big and sad.

“You've seen Uncle Darnell?” I asked. “He's been here?”

Vonetta must have heard Uncle's name and came out into the living room, her hands and lips all cookied up. “He's here?” She patted her foot. “Wait till I get my hands on him.”

“Yeah,” Fern said. “Just wait.”

“Darnell's gone.” Big Ma spoke plain. Soft. Like nothing mattered any longer. Not the cookies. Not Vonetta's foot-patting. “Darnell's gone.”

I asked, “Gone? Gone where?”

Big Ma's tears welled up. “I must have been at the store. . . .” She looked down at a piece of paper on top of her Bible. It was a sheet from my letter-writing pad, which meant Uncle Darnell had been in my room. I took the paper.

“What did he say, Delphine?” Vonetta asked. Now her hands were placed where her hips would grow in. She hadn't stopped patting her foot.

“Yeah. Read it.”

So I read it aloud:

“‘I have to go, Ma. I'll be all right. Kiss the girls. Everything is everything. Darnell.'”

Then Vonetta said, “I don't want your stupid kiss, you sicko, runaway thief. Keep running for all I care.”

Color returned to Big Ma's face. And then some. Before Fern could tag on a “surely anything,” Big Ma said, “Bring me my belt,” and Fern jumped away from Vonetta and next to me.

I said, “Big—”

“Bring me my belt.”

I looked at Vonetta. Stupid, fast-mouthed Vonetta, and there was nothing I could do to save her. I sped to Big Ma's room. There wouldn't be any group discussion and debate on this subject. If I'd opened my mouth or questioned Big Ma, she would have gotten up out of her chair. And if she got up, it wouldn't be to whip Vonetta but to get me.

I opened the closet and took down the hanger that four of Big Ma's belts swung from. The best I could do for Vonetta was to choose “Wanda, the Good Switch” over “Lightning.” We had all gotten a taste of Lightning. Me, Vonetta, and Fern. One lash was all it took before you saw lightning on a clear day. Lightning was a maroon color gone brown. Its thin leather strap stretched from being fastened around the waist to the last hole, and was now a hardened leather with a blinding, mean snap.

Wanda, the Good Switch was newer and had a little padding to it, if you were lucky to get its softer side. I brought Wanda out to Big Ma.

A whipping didn't come without what Big Ma calls “a wisdom.” According to Big Ma, a whipping and a wisdom went together. The wisdom is what you're supposed to remember long after the sting of the whipping became a memory.

“Don't—you—ever—open your mouth about your uncle, or call him out of his name!”

Don't you ever
. Three. Three lashes across the legs. Fern jumped to dodge each one, although she was far away from Wanda. But Vonetta. Poor Vonetta. Even Wanda's goodness couldn't save her.

When it was over, I hugged my sister, who smelled like Oreos, the saltiness of tears, and hot, crying breath.

She tried to push away from me. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone.” But I wouldn't. I didn't leave her alone to cry and sulk and hope for darkness to come and think bad thoughts about Big Ma and Uncle Darnell. I hugged her until she hugged me back and got all her crying out.

Dinner was quiet. Pa didn't say anything about Darnell leaving. Big Ma didn't say anything about Vonetta needing the whipping she got. Mrs. didn't fill the air with talk.

Saturday morning, Big Ma had on her Second Sunday outfit. She wore no gloves. Her cheery feather slunk to half-mast and lay flat against her hat. Pa had walked her suitcases down to the Wildcat and was putting them in the trunk.

“Come on, Vonetta,” I said. “Let's say good-bye to Big Ma.”

Vonetta crossed her arms.

“Stop acting like a baby,” I told her.

“Yeah, baby,” Fern said. “Quit it.”

Vonetta uncrossed her arms. “Don't call me a baby, baby.”

“You're the baby.”

“You are.”

And they kept at it but Pa was ready to go. I looked out the window. He was pumping the foot pedal, and the Wildcat was growling.

I knew the best way to get my sisters moving. I said, “Beat you down to the car!” Then I took off.

Behind me was the scuffle and clomping of shoes. We came bounding toward Big Ma on the porch. She yelled, “Stop that running like a band of gypsies!” We didn't care. We circled her, and hugged her, and said our good-byes.

Vonetta didn't say she was sorry but she did hug and kiss Big Ma good-bye.

Mrs. was still in her housecoat. It was eight a.m. If Big Ma had a word or two to say about how late Mrs. slept on Saturday mornings, she kept it to herself. Instead, Big Ma said, “Keep an eye on my girls.”

Mrs. said she would.

And then more hugging and kissing went on until Big Ma said, “Let's stop all this carrying-on, making a grand Negro spectacle for all these folks hanging out
their windows.” But no one watched out the window or watched TV more than Big Ma. Before she got halfway to the car, she told us to keep the Lord with us, night and day. Then she said, “Every good-bye ain't gone.”

Fern said, “Surely ain't.”

Then Pa drove Big Ma into Manhattan to catch the Greyhound.

I, for one, was glad for the Christmas break and that we wouldn't return to school until after the New Year had begun. No one at school could stop talking about the Jackson Five concert, and I was tired of hearing about the songs, the steps, the costumes, and the screaming over Jermaine and Michael. At least they didn't say how dreamy Jackie and Tito were. I would have died on the spot.

Pa and Mrs. tried to make a merry Christmas. Pa had Johnny Mathis singing Christmas carols on our deluxe stereo. Mrs. made the kind of biscuits that pop when you twist the can. Not the kind you set on the windowsill to rise the night before you bake them. That was all right.
Her biscuits still smelled doughy and buttery and would go great with cheese grits and sausage. While I got the grits boiling, Mrs. kept saying, “No, darling. Christmas is for kids doing kid things.” But once I had the cheese grated and the sausages dancing in the frying pan, she was anxious for a taste.

Mrs. meant well, but she didn't understand. I had to make the Christmas cheese grits. I wanted something to taste merry like Christmas morning in Big Ma's kitchen.

There was no need to guess which gifts under the tree were from Cecile. Each gift was wrapped in brown paper decorated with either green or red movable type.
JOY
and
VONETTA
was printed on the smallest, round gift.
MERRY
and
AFUA
was printed on the long, rectangular-shaped gift.
PEACE
and
DELPHINE
was printed on the book-shaped gift.

Vonetta pouted because hers was the smallest. That pouting didn't last long when she ripped up
JOY
and found a gold compact mirror decked in jewels. She fell in love with the jewels and the mirror just like Cecile knew she would.

“Open mine.” Fern held out her gift to me.

“You can open it,” I said.

“I don't want to tear the part that says ‘MERRY.' Like some people I know.”

“Baby,” Vonetta said, without ungluing herself from
her mirror. She had smiled ten different ways before her mirror.

“Open it,” Fern told me.

I felt Mrs. looking on. As nice as she was, she would have offered to unwrap the paper for her new “baby,” or, as liberated as she was, she would have told Fern to open it herself. I took the brown package and began to pry the tape off the edges. Fern stood over me, breathing hard. Waiting. Once the largest piece of tape was peeled away, Fern snatched the gift from my hand and finished the tape on the ends.

“Tinker Bell!” She held up a case of white pencils from Disneyland with the tiny fairy painted on each pencil.

I was also careful with my wrapping paper. I wanted to keep every green letter whole. I knew Cecile had sent me a book, but I was anxious and hoping I hadn't already read it.

“What did Santa bring you?” Pa asked.

My gift from Cecile was a secondhand copy of
Things Fall Apart
. I raised it up to show him.

“That looks grown,” Pa said.

“It's fine literature,” Mrs. said.

“Still looks grown.”

I read the note from Cecile.

“‘I know you'll read this now, but wait two years. Fourteen is a good age to read this book and sixteen is even
better. Delphine, you are smart and you are hardheaded. Merry Christmas. Your mother, Cecile.'”

Pa had put together a dollhouse from a kit for Vonetta and Fern to share. The dollhouse was grand, made of metal, and had white aluminum siding on the outside. It had two floors but no staircase. The decorations, the fireplace, rugs, windows, and curtains were all painted on the metal floors and walls. The dollhouse also came with two plastic bags. One bag contained pieces of plastic furniture. The other bag, a tiny pink family ready to move in. Vonetta named them the Taylors, but Fern renamed them the Nixons.

Mrs. threw her hands over her mouth but still managed to laugh out loud. “Get it?” she asked.

“No,” Vonetta said. “The Nixons. That don't make no kinda sense.”

“In the White House,” Fern said.

Even I didn't get it right away, but I eventually caught on.

Then Mrs. said, “Your dad wanted to build a dollhouse.”

“I built up
this
house,” he said. “I can build a bitty dollhouse.” That's a pa. Not a dad or daddy.

Vonetta pulled herself away from her mirror and said, “We like this store-bought house better.”

“Surely do!”

“Fern,” Mrs. said. “What's with this ‘surely this' and ‘surely that'?”

Vonetta, Fern, and I gave one another a look, then started:

“It's just something she says.”

“Like Big Ma says . . .”

“Greedy like a gobbler.”

“And untrained chimps.”

“It's just a thing Fern says.”

“Because it's Fern's thing.”

“Surely is.”

And without a beat or a signal we went from rat-a-tat-tat to the Isley Brothers' song “It's Your Thing.” We even threw in “surely do,” in place of the background “doo-hoo-wops.”

Mrs. liked the green silk scarf we gave her and modeled it like she was showing off a mink coat on
Let's Make A Deal
. We'd bought the scarf at the church bazaar for thirty-five cents, brought it home, and hand-washed it. I ironed it and then we sprayed it with perfume Big Ma left behind.

We gave Pa a wrench from the church bazaar. He already had wrenches, but that was the only thing he would have found useful. And we had to talk the seller down from a dollar to sixty cents.

Mrs. gave us each a new dress and a poster of the
Jackson Five to hang in our rooms. We screamed as if Jackie, Tito, and their brothers were standing in our living room. Pa said she spent too much money on the dresses and scolded her for bringing those teenage hoodlums inside his house. But I caught him winking at her. Sometimes I didn't know what to make of my father.

Mrs. disappeared into the kitchen and then returned with the telephone receiver, its long, coily cord stretching into the living room. She was smiling like she had a surprise of her own and waved the receiver around. “This is my real gift to you,” she said. “Talk as long as you want.”

Pa said, “Now hold on a minute, Marva honey.”

“It's Christmas, Louis sweetie.” She handed the phone to me.

Cecile's was the first voice I wanted to hear. But I couldn't see how Mrs. would know to call the phone booth at Mean Lady Ming's Chinese takeout and tell the first person who answered to run and get Cecile. Nor could I see Cecile standing outside Mean Lady Ming's phone booth at five o'clock in the morning Oakland time to wish us a merry Christmas.

Twelve makes you know better than to wish for things that only eleven would wish hard for.

From the fussing sounds coming out of the receiver, I knew it could only be Big Ma. We could all hear the fussing and we hollered and screamed until Pa said, “All right, girls,” in his firm voice. Then we kept it down to hopping
like holy rollers, excited to take our turn on the phone.

“Merry Christmas, Big Ma!” we all shouted.

“Merr Christmas,” Big Ma said. No merry. Just merr.

“Did you get the gift?” I asked.

Around me my sisters called out:

“Did you like it?”

“I picked it out, Big Ma.”

“No. I did.”

“I did.”

“Delphine, you're hogging up the phone.”

“Surely hogging it up.”

I had no trouble hearing Big Ma. She spoke loud into the receiver as if the cord wasn't long enough from Autauga County, Alabama, to Brooklyn. I could hear that she was happy and sad, even with my sisters yelping and Johnny Mathis caroling. I could hear her missing us and missing Uncle Darnell.

Mrs. told me to try on her royal blue coat, a winter coat with rabbit fur around the collar and cuffs. I slid my arms into the sleeves. Vonetta and Fern couldn't stop stroking the collar and cuffs. They play-fought over who got to model the coat next, neither of them realizing the gray-and-white fur belonged to a real rabbit. I knew. The fur looked too real, unlike Lucy's pink-dyed jacket that once seemed both dreamy and mod to me. And to Frieda.

“Too grown,” Pa said.

“Dear, she's shooting out of her winter coat,” Mrs. said.

“She needs a coat for a girl,” Pa said.

Pictures flashed in my mind of shopping for school
clothes with Big Ma. Running into Lucy. Lucy picking out my first really nice jumper. Lucy telling me to watch
Hollywood Palace
that night. I missed her. And Frieda. We all made up a long time ago but it was never the same.