From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

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Authors: Jacqueline Woodson

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Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Also by Jacqueline Woodson
LAST SUMMER WITH MAIZON
THE DEAR ONE
MAIZON AT BLUE HILL
BETWEEN MADISON AND PALMETTO
I HADN'T MEANT TO TELL YOU THIS
THE HOUSE YOU PASS ON THE WAY
IF YOU COME SOFTLY
LENA
MIRACLE'S BOYS
HUSH
LOCOMOTION
BEHIND YOU
FEATHERS
AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER
PEACE, LOCOMOTION
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group. Published by The Penguin Group.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd).
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd).
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa.
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.
Copyright © 1995 by Jacqueline Woodson. All rights reserved.
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodson, Jacqueline. From the notebooks of Melanin Sun / Jacqueline Woodson.—
1st G.P. Putnam's Sons ed. p. cm. “First published in 1995 by The Blue Sky Press”—T.p. verso.
Summary: Almost-fourteen-year-old Melanin Sun's comfortable, quiet life is shattered
when his mother reveals she has fallen in love with a woman.
[1. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 2. Lesbians—Fiction. 3. African Americans—Fiction.
4. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.W868Fr 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009011314
eISBN : 978-1-101-15246-1

http://us.penguingroup.com

Acknowledgments
Thanks again to all of those who stood behind the dream of this—including Dianne Hess; Anna Grace; Linda Villarosa; my sisters in Alpha Kappa Alpha; Michelle Adams; Catherine Gund; Alicia Batista; MaeBush; Marsha and Carole—and everyone else at the Provincetown Post Office!—and, of course, the MacDowell Colony—for faith, support, and time.
For my family
After John Muir
Today's news is this:
the amphibians are vanishing.
Rice paddie and stomach brooding frogs, gone.
Glass frog, rain frog, golden toad,
Corroboree, toadlet, gone. Yosemite toad.
Tiger salamander, spade foot.
Bufo bufo
, so called “common toad.”
Cascades,
Tara humare,
Goliath,
Medusa excellus.
 
It is as if we woke up one morning
and found our mouths missing,
the small wet we relied upon
with inattention.
It is a dream of a world without lily pads
no tadpoles absorbing tails
no eyes afloat on placid ponds.
No witnesses.
 
But this is it for real:
a world without the single strand
of tapioca eggs
chaining from the underside
of a rare green leaf:
this precarious
this brilliant
this so perfect
as to seem inevitable.
 
—GERRY GOMEZ PEARLBERG
This is Brooklyn
. Summer. Hot like that with a breeze coming across this block every once in a while. Not enough air to cool anybody. Just to let us know we're still alive. A whole city of us—living and kicking. Walk down any Brooklyn street and there we are. Here I am. Alive. If nothing else, Mama says, we have our lives. Who knows what she means by that.
Sometimes, I don't have words. I mean, they're in my head and they're zigzagging around, but there's all this silence in my mouth, all of this air. Maybe people think I'm dumb 'cause I'm kind of quiet and when I do talk, the words come pretty slow. Once they even put me in a slow class, but Mama shot down to that school so fast, the people who had thought up the crazy idea were probably sorry they ever thought anything. Mama says it's okay to be on the quiet side—if quiet means you're listening, watching, taking it all in.
And when I can't speak it, I write it down. I wish I was different. Wish I was taller, smarter, could talk out loud the way I write things down. I wish I didn't always feel like I was on the outside looking in, like a Peeping Tom. I wish I could slam-dunk, maybe break a backboard or two. I wish my name was Donald sometimes, or even Bert or Carlos. Or something real normal, like David. But it isn't. It's Melanin. Melanin Sun. I'm almost fourteen. Five feet ten inches tall. Still growing. Today I'm wearing a striped shirt. Short sleeves. Baggy shorts. Black Pumas with a white stripe. No socks. A baseball cap turned backwards. I have tiny dreads that I keep real neat—you know—keep them nice so the girls keep coming. A pair of shades I bought on St. Mark's Place. Cost me twenty-two dollars, but they keep the sun out. Mama had a small fit talking about how we can't afford twenty-two-dollar shades. Then she tried them on. Checked herself out in the mirror. Checked me out checking her out. “Can I borrow them, Mel?” It's like that in our house.
These are my notebooks. My stories. All the things I can't speak, or try to speak or remember speaking. The stuff I can't say. Secrets. Skeletons. I used to be so afraid someone would find these notebooks and blab everything. But I don't really care anymore. A part of me keeps thinking,
It don't matter.
Maybe not. I figure I should write it all down, though, the way I'd want someone to read it so that it comes from me, not secondhand and stupid. I'm not a regular boy and I'm not slow. I'm on the outside of things. I wish it didn't matter so much. But it does, doesn't it? Difference matters.
So I keep quiet. Watch. And write it all down.
IMAGINE
Imagine yourself on the corner of a city street. Maybe leaning against the lamppost there, or pausing after leapfrogging over the fire hydrant a few feet away.
Down the block, two girls sit on a third-floor fire escape, their faces pressed into its grating. Still another window, another building, a young-looking woman holds her baby up. She holds tightly to the baby. It's a long way down.
Some of the windows are boarded up. Some are hung with ragged dusty blinds. In the center of the block there is a gap where another building once stood. Flattened cans and broken bottles are strewn over the long grass pushing itself up in the lot. Right up in front, an old couch has been set on fire. Its charred remains are scattered in the lot, spilling over onto the sidewalk. Two stained mattresses have been thrown out. Three small kids are jumping on them.
The block grows loud with the sounds of bigger kids returning in groups and pairs, their schoolbags draped carelessly across their shoulders. The girls are laughing and teasing each other. There's Angie, the girl I'm a little bit in love with.
Hey, Angie,
I want to whisper.
You gave me your number today because it's the last day of school and you want me to give you a call sometime.
“The summer is long,” you said. “We should get together.”
Hey, Angie, I'm not like everybody else but you have to have a way to walk in this world so people don't laugh and call you soft. I can't call you right away 'cause people will start talking. But someday . . .
Angie has ribbons braided into her hair. She walks like the world belongs to her. Maybe it does.
The boys are quieter than the girls, their hands shoved deep into the pockets of their oversized jeans. There's me, a couple of steps back from everybody else. Always a bit distant, Mama says. Always a half a step to the left of everybody.
Imagine you could be two places or four or a million. Where would you be? Leaning against the lamppost watching yourself? Trying hard to get a hold of yourself from all the many places you are when you're almost fourteen? Where would you be?
Imagine your mother.
A woman makes her way slowly up the block. She is wearing blue pants and a white shirt, wire-rimmed glasses. A dot of a gold earring shines on the side of her nostril. The woman's name is Encanta. Encanta Cedar. EC to her friends.
Mama to me.
Mama slows as she nears our building, the third from the corner, then swings through the gate that hangs from rusted hinges and makes her way into the dim hallway. She stops for a moment, just inside, immersed in the cool, dark quiet. Slowly, from somewhere in the building, the sound of a baby's cry winds a tinny melody through her quiet. I wonder if that sound reminds Mama of me years and years ago when I was no more than a tiny crying bundle wrapped up in wool.
“Will he always be so dark?” neighbors nosed.
When Mama tells me how they always asked her this, her voice drops down, gets low and steady, like she's wishing she had had some of the answers she has now. “I hope so,” she would tell them, pulling me—her baby, her small warm future—closer to her breasts.
The story is legend. Mama's legend.
“Melanin,” she whispered when the doctor asked her what name should go on the birth certificate. “Melanin Sun.”
Mama always talks about the strange look the doctor gave her. About how he shook his small pale head and glanced at his nurse. About how the nurse gave a slight nod as if to say, “Don't worry, Doctor, I'll handle it.” Then she turned to Mama and said, “But, Encanta, melanin is pigment—a tint, a stain. Surely you don't want this poor boy moving through this world . . . stained!”

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