P.S. Be Eleven (12 page)

When we were dismissed, I told Frieda and Lucy to go on without me. I had something to do.

I went back to our classroom. Mr. Mwila sat at his desk with a small paperback book in his hands. The book cover was mostly red and worn down, and a marker stuck out from the back of the book. When I stood nearer, I saw that the marker was the top of a photograph. Probably a snapshot of his family.

“Did you forget something, Delphine?”

I did! I forgot what I wanted to say.

“I'm sorry,” I told him. “About Sonny Bono. The film.” I meant to say something good and meaningful, but that was the best I could come up with on the spot.

Mr. Mwila nodded. But instead of saying how disappointed he was, he said, “Maybe a different spokesman would have made a better choice.” He smiled a little.

I nodded and felt dumb and looked at his book.

There was something about the small, worn-down book that reminded me of Big Ma's Bible.

Big Ma had thrown her Bible at a white man wearing a long black coat and a tall black hat. Red Shirley Temple curls ran along the front of his ears. When I told Frieda about it, she said he was an Orthodox Jew. Well, Big Ma threw her Bible at him because he rang our doorbell the third time that week while she was studying the Old Testament. And when he said for the third time, “I'll give you all the cash I have in this satchel if you sign the deed to this property over to me,” Big Ma raised her Bible like a bad boy holds up a brick at a shiny new window. “By the God of Abraham and Little David, I will smite you down!” she said. Then she threw the black brick at him and told him next time she'd have her shotgun. But I knew her shotgun was down home in Prattville, Alabama.

Mr. Mwila would never throw this small red book at anyone. But he wore it out like Big Ma reads her Bible.

He caught me craning my neck. “
Things Fall Apart
,” he said, and at first I thought he had given me a warning, that everything around me would fall apart. Then I saw the book's title.

I found myself warm faced. I was failing to make a
better impression on my teacher. The last thing I wanted was to end up warm-faced or teary.

“Chinua Achebe,” he said.

I touched the tip of my chin.

“Mr. Chinua Achebe,” he said slower. “A fine Nigerian writer.”

“Oh,” I said, relieved, but now embarrassed that I had misheard him.

“Although Mr. Achebe writes about life in Nigeria, I find this book tells a Zambian story. And the longer I stay in this country, I find this book tells an American story.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I said, before I actually knew what I meant.

“How so?” he asked.

He must have heard me gulp. I hoped something I had learned from Sister Mukumbu would bounce into my head and slide off my tongue. I hoped I knew what I meant. There was no straw to grasp or spin, but soon I was talking about
Island of the Blue Dolphins
and how it was about a girl alone on an island. “But you don't have to be by yourself on an island to feel alone,” I said. “You can feel alone in Brooklyn or alone in Oakland.” I left out that I didn't have a wolf dog, just two fighting sisters. That I didn't have a brother who was killed, just an uncle who killed the enemy.

Mr. Mwila only smiled and I hoped what I'd said wasn't too dumb.

I asked him why it took him so long for things to fall apart. He had been reading the same book since school began.

He laughed. Big. “It is my season to read this book. I know this story well. I've read it many times. But it is my season to reflect on certain passages.”

I said right away with my foot planted firmly in the words I spoke, “Like reading the Bible over and over.”

Then I felt a lucky spark. I must have said something right. A genuine look of surprise and agreement spread across his face.

I felt like my mind had grown to catch up with the rest of me.

It wasn't the sort of thing I'd tell Frieda or Lucy or my sisters, but I was dying to tell someone. Pa spent more time with Miss Marva Hendrix than he spent at home. And I couldn't imagine telling Big Ma her Bible and a book by a Nigerian writer had something in common. Uncle Darnell was always either out walking or lying on his bed.

That night I wrote to Cecile. If anyone understood things about books, my mother did. The night before we left Oakland she had told me how she found poetry. That the words comforted her when she didn't have a home. And it wasn't until our Bible study class recited “The Lord is My Shepherd” that I heard my mother's voice. How poetry comforted her, like the rod and staff comforts in Psalm 23.

I must have scribbled without stopping. I couldn't wait to tell her how much I'd grown that day. And that my teacher read a book by Chinwa Acheevie. That I planned to read
Things Fall Apart
as soon as I finished reading
Ginger Pye
.

My mother wrote me back.

I'd hear Pa say, “Darnell. Isn't it time you get out there and find work?”

Darnell always said, “Yeah, Lou. I'm looking.”

“Look harder,” Pa'd reply.

Then Uncle Darnell would go out and come back without a job.

“I don't see why you're pushing him to get a job when he's been in Vietnam fighting and saw all those terrible things,” Big Ma told Pa, time and time again.

But each time Uncle came home without a job, Pa said, “You'll have better luck tomorrow. As long as you're looking.” But Darnell wasn't lucky, and Pa finally said, “House
is getting small, Darnell. You'll have to get a job, earn your way.”

“
We
,” Big Ma said, pointing to herself and Uncle Darnell, “can go
home
if this house is getting too small.” She meant Alabama home.

Pa's face looked long and exhausted. “Ma.”

“Don't ‘Ma' me nothing,” Big Ma said. “He been to war, Junior. War. Do you know what that is? Stop rushing him out the door so you can bring little Miss Cute Gal in here.”

Then Pa put on his jacket and muttered about having to leave his own house. Uncle Darnell lay down on the sofa, and Big Ma threw a blanket on him and said, “You just sleep, baby.”

Uncle Darnell would sleep half the day away, then walk and walk into the night. His friends from Boys' High School would come around. Friends who didn't have to go to Vietnam. Big Ma always told them he was sleeping but she'd let him know they stopped by. Two girls from his high school came by once and Big Ma told them, “Young ladies don't go calling on boys,” and closed the door.

Papa hadn't left the house muttering too long ago when the doorbell rang. It was Frieda's big brother, so I yelled back to Big Ma, “It's John-Isaac,” before I unlatched the chain and opened the door.

“Darnell home?”

“Yeah,” I said, and let him in. I hoped Frieda had tagged
along, but it was just John-Isaac.

Vonetta had a crush on John-Isaac and came running out of the kitchen with her soapy, dish-washing hands. With dish towel in hand, Fern came running behind Vonetta. I couldn't blame them. He was looking fine in his Black Panther beret and leather jacket.

“Heard you and your sisters got some education out in Oakland.”

They saluted him with power signs.

“All right, my fine young sisters.”

Vonetta was giggling as if Jermaine Jackson had walked into our living room. John-Isaac had been coming over to paint model cars and airplanes since as far back as I could remember. He had even brought Frieda over when we were really little, so I could have someone besides my sisters to play with.

Big Ma came out of the bathroom to see what was going on.

“John-Isaac,” she said, getting a good look at him. “Do you want to go to jail? Get shot up in the streets? Take that Black Panther mess off and act like you know better.”

He put his arms around her. “Hey, Ma.”

“Don't ‘Ma' me nothing. Coming in here with that Black Panther stuff on. Don't spread that mess around here,” Big Ma said. “We can't use it.”

“We already using it,” Vonetta said.

“Power to the people,” Fern said.

“Slap me some skin,” John-Isaac said, holding a hand out to Vonetta then to Fern. “All right, all right.”

He and Frieda were so different, but probably not any more different than I was from my sisters. I figured he and Frieda were what Big Ma called “war babies.” Their mother was a German Jewish lady, and their father was a black army soldier. They met when Mr. Banks was a sergeant stationed in Düsseldorf. I used to love it when Frieda told that story. Her parents' love story sounded as magical as Uncle Darnell's stories, except Düsseldorf wasn't a make-believe place, and Frieda's parents were real.

John-Isaac kissed Big Ma, who really liked it but pushed him away, just like she did with Pa and Uncle Darnell. He took off his beret and planted it on Big Ma's scarfed head and walked right by her over to Uncle Darnell, who was lying on the sofa—and Big Ma never let anyone lie on the living room sofa. Big Ma shooed us into the kitchen to finish up our after-dinner chores.

I could hear John-Isaac calling out, “Rooster! Rooster!” Then he crowed like a rooster. John-Isaac nicknamed our uncle “Rooster” because he was so “country” when he first came to Brooklyn from Alabama. And he used to do yard work before the sun came up.

“Rooster. Roo. Man. Get up.”

“Let him sleep,” I heard Big Ma say. “He tired.”

I pushed my mop to the edge of the kitchen to see better. John-Isaac sat by Uncle Darnell like he was visiting a
sick classmate in St. John's Hospital. Uncle Darnell made some “Yeah, man” sounds, but he never got up. When John-Isaac left, he hugged Big Ma for a long time. Like Uncle D was the kind of sick that didn't get better.

The person who wrote “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” must have sat next to a Lucy Raleigh in school. Lucy ran over toward the girls' lunch table, her face exploding with news of some kind.

She plunked herself down between Frieda and me, and couldn't stop panting. All of that panting was meant to have us on a string. Then she'd feel extra special because she held a secret or some news. Finally she stopped panting and said, “You won't believe what I just heard.”

Lucy was an office monitor. She sometimes heard what we either weren't supposed to know at all or know yet. We weren't supposed to know that Mrs. Katzman went on leave because she had a nervous condition. I guessed
Lucy's news was the other kind and she wanted to beat the office memo to our parents.

Lucy couldn't just tell us. She had to, as Pa would say, “dangle the carrot.”

“You will not, will not believe it.”

“Believe what?” My voice was dry and cool. I wouldn't let Lucy Raleigh get me jumping around all giddy about what she knew.

“If you must know,” she said, “it's about the dance.”

So much for dry and cool. My ears, along with everyone else's, must have stood as straight as a Doberman pinscher's ears. “The sixth-grade dance?” at least four of us asked at once.

She gulped and nodded. “They picked the day.” The PTA hosted the sixth-grade dance. Last year the dance was held just before the spring break. Usually they waited until June.

Shouts of “When?” came from all around.

Lucy was in her carrot-dangling glory. “Guess!” she said. “It's not on St. Patrick's Day.”

I cleared my throat. “Decorum. Decorum, upperclasswomen,” I said in Mr. Mwila's African-English accent. “And the grade-six dance shall not be on Groundhog Day.”

That got a few chuckles, but none from Lucy. She hated it when I stuck a pin in her balloon. That was fine because I hated it when everything revolved around what Lucy knew and said.

“Har, har, Miss Too Cool to Care How You Dress. You won't be laughing on Valentine's Day when you're going to the dance alone.”

The whole table went, “Ooh.” She got me good. There was nothing I could say.

But then Frieda said really quickly, “Valentine's Day. That's less than four months away.” Then everyone forgot about me and squealed as if the dance was happening tomorrow.

Just when everyone was chattering about what they'd wear, Lucy said, “Maybe your grandmama could sew you something nice to wear.”

So I said, “Maybe your mama could buy you some manners at Korvettes.”

“Manners. Ooh,” Lucy said.

“Korvettes. Ooh, Lucy Ray.” I made sure I said her name good and country like her mama would.

Sooner or later Lucy and I were bound to go from hot to cold. We always did. Then we'd be hot-and-fast friends again. Frieda was always in the middle.

Lucy was right about my clothes. They were stupid. Even Rukia Marshall looked like a sixth grader, and she wore a cloth on her head.

Big Ma would probably sew my dress. She'd sew a dress that went way past my knees with ruffles and bows like a kindergartner's party dress.

No one would ask me to the sixth-grade dance. No one wanted to dance with a girl whose arms and legs were longer than theirs. No one wanted to dance with the tallest girl in the sixth grade. The tallest girl in the sixth grade, wearing a ruffled party dress with bows.