P.S. Be Eleven (11 page)

Mr. Mwila must have seen my eyes filling up. He scribbled a pass quickly so I wouldn't be standing there crying in front of him. “Go now.”

Lucy and Frieda were waiting for me in the hall. I wished they had gone on to chorus. They could see my face. Tears about to roll. I sniffed back the snot and blinked back the tears.

“Delphine, you're in trouble?” Lucy asked. “Did you write some Black Panther stuff? Girl, you can't write that stuff in school.”

“She can write Black Power papers,” Frieda said. Her brother was in the Brooklyn chapter. “John-Isaac will have an army of Brooklyn Panthers down here if you want.”

I wanted to cry and was still in shock, not knowing what to tell my friends. Then Mr. Mwila said it for me: “Lucy Raleigh. Frieda Banks. To chorus. Now.”

They shot me looks of sympathy and solidarity before taking off. I walked to the library and showed the librarian my note.

I did as Mr. Mwila told me. I went straight to the reference section and found the Encyclopedia Britannicas. I took the
M
for
Merriam
and the
W
for
Webster
, just in case, and brought the heavy, leather-bound books over to a table. I dried my eyes some more and started with the search for Merriam. But I didn't find her. Instead, it was as Mr. Mwila had said. She turned out to be a he. And he was three he's. There was a Noah Webster and two Merriam brothers. My eyes flooded up before I could read any of it. And then I just put my head down and cried. There were other kids in the library but I couldn't stop crying.

I felt the way Fern must have felt when she found her doll baby, Miss Patty Cake, all blacked-up thanks to Vonetta's Magic Marker. Like someone she loved had been turned into a joke and taken away from her.

I'd had a picture of Miss Merriam Webster in my head for so long. I heard her showing me where to look for words. How to pronounce them. What they meant. How to spell them. I imagined she was plain, and that it was all right to be plain.

When I finished crying, I knew I had to do like Fern
had done with Miss Patty Cake. I had to leave Miss Merriam Webster and all my pictures of her behind.

I asked Mr. Mwila if I could just do my paper over, and he nodded.

Uncle Darnell had been home for a few weeks, but he still woke up in the middle of the night. I'd hear the floorboards creak under his footsteps but I'd pretend to be asleep. From my window I'd watch him leave out the front door and walk down Herkimer Street. Pa told Big Ma Uncle D spent a lot of time in Fulton Park with the other soldiers who were home from Vietnam. Then I wouldn't see him until we came in from school and he'd be laid out on his bed in the parlor room where Cecile slept when my father and uncle first took her in.

We got home from school and found Uncle Darnell buttoning his shirt, getting ready to go out. He said he was going to the candy store around the corner and we
asked if we could go with him. He said, “Drop your books and come on.” Uncle Darnell was always easy that way.

“Put on your army clothes,” Vonetta said. “So we can show everybody.”

Uncle Darnell almost grinned, but he didn't give his all-out dimpled grin. “Show 'em what, Net-Net?”

Without missing a beat Vonetta said, “That you been to Vietnam.”

Fern added, “Fighting the war.”

He made a low hum. “They know,” he said. “'Sides. Better to show 'em I'm back home, right?”

“Right on,” Vonetta said. Then Fern had to say it too.

Uncle Darnell wore what he called his “civvies.” His regular clothes. We were so glad to have him home and just walk with him. We also knew he'd buy us candy or take us down to the record shop so we could moon over the Jackson Five album. We'd be with our uncle, moon over the Jackson Five, and get candy without spending money that could go toward our Madison Square Garden savings.

We passed by Friendship Baptist without Uncle Darnell making mention of the Arabian Knight or his sword, plastered into the yellow brick face of the church. The pastor said the church had been built by an Arabian Order of Shriners decades before Friendship Baptist made it its spiritual home. Uncle Darnell used to tell us stories about the Arabian Knight and how he died defending this block
from urban decay and that his face had been immortalized in plaster to keep watch over Herkimer Street. Vonetta, Fern, and I were so giddy about candy and maybe strolling over to the record shop that we hadn't noticed that our uncle didn't say what he always said when we walked by the Arabian Knight: “He's got his mystic eye on us.”

Instead, we called out to anyone on their stoop or in the street, “Our uncle is back from Vietnam.” Mrs. Allen from Friendship Baptist was the first person we called out to. She said, “Bet you're glad you don't have to go back.”

Uncle Darnell said, “Don't you know it.” He sounded old, like Pa. Not young like someone out of high school for a year and three months. The men mostly shook his hand and thanked him for doing his duty. But one man said, “I wouldn't go to no foreign country and shoot up poor people.” Vonetta got mad and said, “My uncle did not go to Vietnam and shoot up poor people.” Fern said, “He shot the enemy.” I didn't say anything. I listened to what the newscasters said about the soldiers harming civilians and doing worse. But I also knew my uncle didn't do any of those things while he was in Vietnam. I just couldn't open my mouth.

“Come on, y'all,” Uncle Darnell told us. “Peace, man,” he said to the guy who wouldn't even look at him.
Peace, man
.

One day when he was in Vietnam, I'd gotten a letter from him that said:

His crazy, loopy handwriting swam around that yellow, lined paper. I showed the letter to Pa and Big Ma.

Pa said, “That boy's trying to sing you a Stevie Wonder tune in a letter.” And he laughed a big, whopping laugh, which Papa didn't hardly do.

I figured Pa was right. Uncle D was writing me a letter and hearing a familiar song in his mind. Maybe the bombing and shooting had started and he had to write fast. That was why his writing was nothing like the writing on his other letters. Uncle Darnell made his letters tall and lean slightly to the right, like I did. Then I remembered. He taught me how to handwrite the alphabet before I went to school.

The air was a little crisp, and Uncle Darnell's nose started to run, so he wiped it on his sleeve. He had written to me about how it rained off and on in Vietnam, but Vietnam rain couldn't top Brooklyn chill in early October. Uncle D never mentioned getting sick over there, but now he always kept a cold.

We stepped out into Bedford Avenue, and Fern, who hadn't forgotten, looked up at the armory and cried, “Say it, Uncle Darnell. Say it!” She might have walked past the Arabian Knight but she hadn't forgotten about the princess.

He looked around like he was lost in thought. Then he came back to us and said, “Huh?” like he didn't remember we were on the corner and could see the armory and how its round towers rose into the sky like the Magic Kingdom. It was the storybook place at Bedford and Atlantic, where the princess had been calling out to be rescued since Fern was about four or five.

When he said, “Huh?” Fern started it off to help him remember. “Who will save the princess locked in the red castle?”

Vonetta said, “That's for babies, baby.”

Fern said, “Take that back, Vonetta.”

The sun was in Uncle Darnell's eyes. He blinked a few times. “I forgot how it went,” he said.

“You say, ‘I hear a voice,' then I say, ‘The princess is
crying. The princess is crying.' Then you say, ‘Who will save the princess in the red castle?' Then I say, ‘We will save the princess in the red castle.' Then we charge to her rescue.”

“Right, right,” Uncle said, but I doubted he really remembered. Or maybe his mind was somewhere else.

Mr. Mwila told Anthony to close the blinds while he flipped the light switch to make the room dark. There is something about sudden darkness in a classroom of twenty-four sixth graders that sets off mischief. There was giggling on one side of the room. Spitballs on the other. Then Mr. Mwila flipped the light switch on and said, “Anthony.” Anthony and Ant looked up, one guiltier than the other, although Mr. Mwila had clearly spoken to Anthony this time and not Antnee.

“I didn't do it!” Anthony cried.

“I didn't accuse,” Mr. Mwila said, as cool as Sidney Poitier telling off the white racist sheriff in the movie
In the Heat of the Night
. He pulled the plug out of the wall
socket and carefully wound the cord in circles. “Anthony,” he began again, “please open the blinds.”

Anthony got up and drew the blinds open.

“Upton,” Mr. Mwila said, “please wheel the projector to the audiovisual room.” We felt his cool, but we also felt his anger underneath. We were in trouble.

“Grade six, classroom six-three . . .”

Big trouble, I thought. He had called us by our formal name, like when your mother or grandmother calls you by all of your names to keep from calling you something worse.

“Take out your math notebooks. We shall have double period math.”

Mr. Mwila didn't raise his voice or take out the “pine board of education” like Mrs. Peterson had done time and time again. Instead, “Sidney Poitier” said, “You can't behave as you did in the fifth grade. When you behave like the upperclassmen and upperclasswomen that you are, we'll engage in grade-six activities. Now, notebooks on desks.”

I had yet to make a really good, face-to-face impression on my teacher, and now he was disappointed with us all. I didn't want Mr. Mwila to catch me giggling or going, “Aw, shucks,” over having to do two periods of math.

Michael S. raised his hand and was recognized. “Mr. Mwila,” he said—and Lucy practically swooned—“it isn't fair. Why should we all be punished because someone”—he
looked at Ant—“threw the first spitball?”

“This isn't a punishment, Michael. It's an opportunity. If we can't conduct ourselves with decorum during the film, we'll jump ahead with mathematics, and what can be better than to leap ahead?” He smiled at us as though he had offered us something wonderful. “Homework tonight will be that much easier after this extra time.”

The next day after lunch, the film projector stood on its cart in the back of the room. Mr. Mwila said, “We shall try again.”

Shall
was a storybook word that Uncle Darnell never used in bedtime stories of Arabian Knights or princesses locked in the tower.
Shall
was in one of our school assembly songs, “We Shall Overcome.” But only Mr. Mwila used
shall
for everyday talking. And now that I'd grown used to his voice, I couldn't imagine him not saying
shall
or
decorum
.

Mr. Mwila made the room as dark as it could get and turned on the projector. No one wanted to “leap ahead” with more decimals, so the room was quiet.

Since separate health classes were no longer taught at our school, each sixth-grade class had to watch six health-and-safety films. Then in the spring, the sixth-grade girls watched a seventh film while the boys got an extra period of gym. The school figured our mothers could tell us everything we needed to know about the five basic
food groups, the importance of hand washing, and the circulatory and digestive systems, but not whatever this film would be about. If Cecile lived with us, she wouldn't hardly tell us about food groups or hand washing. Instead she'd write poems I'd have to figure out about all those body systems, and she'd end each poem with, “P.S. Be eleven” when I had already seen my sister being born. Big Ma cooked the food in the food groups and said, “Kids are starving in Africa, India, and China, so eat every bit.” She was more concerned about me washing dishes and scrubbing floors than keeping my own hands clean. Miss Marva Hendrix wasn't anything to me, so I didn't worry about what she had to tell me.

We all settled down and the reel of film rolled on.

Electric guitars picked out a lame rock-and-roll tune, and the title appeared on the screen. Our health film was about drugs. The bad kind.

First we saw teenagers at a party smoking drugs. The music was so jerky and bad, no one at the party could dance to it. Then the police came and arrested the kids, and the kids started telling the camera or us they could smoke drugs if they wanted to. Then we got the surprise of our lives. Sitting on a bed, telling us to make up our minds about the dangers of drugs, was Sonny Bono. Sonny Bono from the radio. Sonny Bono without Cher. Sonny Bono with his groovy hair and gold pajamas.

No one could have heard what he was saying because
it was Sonny Bono and we were in shock. The last place we expected to find Sonny Bono was in our sixth-grade health film talking about the dangers of drugs. He was supposed to be singing “I've Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” Instead, his face looked serious, and his nose was big, even with that mustache, and he was telling us that despite what the teenagers said about drugs, he knew the real score.

We forgot about the double period of decimals and how we were upperclassmen and upperclasswomen. I forgot how much I wanted to make a better impression on Mr. Mwila. The boys were on their side of the classroom laughing, and I joined in with the girls on our side, singing “I've Got You Babe.”

Mr. Mwila stopped the film and flipped on the light switch.

“You are not ready for this film,” he said. And he was not angry but he was disappointed.

We took out our math notebooks before he told us to.