P.S. Be Eleven (2 page)

The man started out using one of Big Ma's favorite words. “Ma'am,” he said, “it was an accident.” He was full of smiles, one aimed my way.

“Mister . . .” she told the man, who was older than Uncle Darnell and younger than Pa. “Sir,” she started again. “I don't know what gets into children, running in the airport like horses on a racetrack.” I doubted the man understood her. Big Ma's “children” sounded like a “churn” making butter, and depending upon how he heard her, her “horses” watered lawns or housed people. His expression didn't stop Big Ma from apologizing on my behalf. “She wasn't brought up to be running in public places. No, sir. She surely wasn't.”

The young man was uncomfortable with Big Ma's pleading and apologizing and said again, “It was an accident, ma'am.” He folded his newspaper and took off as fast as he could.

If the real Black Panthers and not that fake Crazy Kelvin had seen Big Ma, they would have called her a traitor to her people. They would have drawn an ugly Aunt
Jemima picture of Big Ma with a pig snout and tail, and put it in the Black Panther newspaper, the same way they drew cartoons of the police, and Richard Nixon, who was running for president.

The man's word wasn't enough for Big Ma. She went on scolding, “Delphine. What do you mean running through the airport, knocking down a white man, causing a grand Negro spectacle for all the world to see?”

The more Big Ma carried on, the more she got exactly what she didn't want in the first place. There wasn't an eye that could turn away from us.

Big Ma was still talking about the nice white man who didn't have me arrested, whipped, or strung up. She assured me that all of the above would have happened if we were down home in Autauga County, Alabama. For the life of her, she couldn't understand why I didn't humbly and full-out apologize. Didn't I value any of my eleven years and ten months? She said, “It's that no-mothering mother we got to thank for all of this.” After paying tribute to Cecile, she swore I had stepped on the known and unknown graves of every Charles, Gaither, and Trotter who had to bow and scrape before the white man to keep from getting strung up in an oak tree or drowned in the Alabama River.

Our suitcases couldn't have arrived any sooner. I
grabbed the largest bag, and Vonetta grabbed the next. Big Ma went to take the smallest bag, but Fern took the handle quickly. “I can carry it,” she said, and we lugged our suitcases outside.

The storm over New York had been mild. Barely enough to cool things off.

By now Big Ma had worn herself out scolding me in the names of our family and my lack of good common sense. She wiped her forehead but looked hot and oppressed under her wig and hat. Her “Second Sunday” outfit was soaked around the neck and armholes. There was nothing left to do with her wet handkerchief but to stick it back inside her purse.

We stood at the curb of the terminal where taxis pulled up and wives jumped out of station wagons to kiss their husbands and hand over car keys. A bell captain helped two older girls in jeans and T-shirts get a footlocker and two suitcases inside the back of a Chevy. I made out a blue crown on one T-shirt and under it,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
. The bell captain slammed the trunk door down, the word
NOW
in big, bowl-curved letters above the license plate. The back side of the car sagged but everything fit. The bell captain tapped the trunk and the Chevy drove away. My eyes followed the girls and their Chevy, wanting to drive far. Now.

I didn't drift for long. There were people standing a
ways off to the side, also waiting. I didn't have to turn to look at them. The color black atop their heads came through well enough in my side vision. They were the Mickey-Mouse-ears wearers from the bathroom.

I was glad Big Ma had stopped blaming Cecile and me for everything and was now worried about the hot, sticky air and when Pa would drive up “in that car of his.”

Only days ago Vonetta, Fern, and I were painting protest signs and shouting, “FREE HUEY!” and “POWER TO THE PEOPLE!” Right now, the last thing I could do was to speak up. The last thing I had was any power at all. The only thing I had from being at the People's Center with Sister Mukumbu and Sister Pat was the word for the opposite of power:
Oppression
. The power to do nothing but keep my mouth shut.

I let Big Ma go on and prayed my sisters wouldn't start talking about the People's Center, the Black Panthers, our adventures in San Francisco, and most of all, Cecile. I just wanted Pa to drive up in the Wildcat and take us back to Herkimer Street.

I heard singing. Two of the kids in mouse ears sang while pointing to Fern, “Pee-pee girl, do a dance. Pee-pee girl. Wet your pants.”

Fern cried out, “I did not wet my pants!” She banged her fists against her sides. This would be the point where she'd leap on Vonetta, they'd tussle, and then I'd have to pry them apart.

The kids kept singing their “pee-pee-girl” song, locking their arms in a Mexican hat dance, skipping around to the left, then around to the right. The best I could do was stand to the side of Fern to block her from seeing them and them from seeing her.

Big Ma turned to Fern and said, “Smile at your friends.”

Fern folded her arms and said, “They are not my friends.”

Then Big Ma was ashamed of Fern, and I was ashamed of Big Ma.

The mother said to the singing and dancing two of her three, “That's enough.” All three kids stuck out their tongues at Fern.

Big Ma smiled. She didn't just fear and love white people. She feared and loved their children.

I wanted Cecile to be standing here next to us and not Big Ma. Cecile wouldn't tell us to smile at anyone who tried to oppress us. Cecile would scare them like Black Panthers scare people just by being black and not smiling and by shouting words like
power
and
oppression
.

Finally a Volkswagen bus drove up to the curb and the Mouseketeers waved at its driver. The bus was like one we'd seen in San Francisco painted with daisies, peace signs, and
Flower Power
written in groovy colors. But there were no psychedelic rainbows and groovy words painted on this bus. Just a greenish-blue color with white
trim and a white vw below the dashboard. With the bell captain's help, the family loaded up their bus and, one by one, the kids climbed into the backseats. I was glad we'd soon be rid of them. The father got back into the driver's seat, but the mother didn't get in, although the baggage porter was nice enough to open a door for her. She headed straight our way. She walked up to Big Ma and said, “You should have a better handle on these rascals.” To me, she said, “You should be ashamed, young lady.” She marched over to her Volkswagen bus and climbed into the front passenger seat and the baggage porter slammed the door. Pleased with herself, she clunked down a nod, her Mickey Mouse ears still on.

I turned to face Big Ma to explain. Before I saw it coming, I got the one thing Big Ma always promised in her scolding: the sting of her right hand.

I couldn't stop the tears from rolling down my face. My face burned and the salt trickled down my cheek but I wouldn't utter a sound. The humiliation of being hit like that in front of my sisters hurt more than the slap itself. I held it inside because it was the only power I had.

Big Ma's face was screwed up tight around the lips and jaw but she managed to say, “I don't know what you did, but I know one thing. It was wrong enough for that white woman to come over here, and it was bad enough she thought you had something coming.”

Big Ma didn't stop scolding until the bluish-green Volkswagen was well on its way.

Vonetta inched nearer to me and I felt Fern's small hands over mine.

Then I saw the Wildcat.

Big Ma said Pa had been circling around the airport to give her enough time to fetch us. That way he wouldn't have to pay more than the law should allow to sit his car in an airport lot.

The tan-and-black Wildcat crawled up to the curb, its growl low and tame. Vonetta and Fern hopped around as if the concrete below them was too hot to stand on. They flapped their arms crazily and shouted, “Papa! Papa!” before he got the car door open. There was nothing Big Ma could do about it with Pa right there, and I enjoyed that like I enjoyed a Mr. Goodbar all to myself. My feet, however, didn't dare leave the ground, nor did my arms rise up to fly with my sisters'.

All of the windows in Pa's car were cranked down, and Big Ma scolded, “It's your fault they're out of hand,” shaking her pointer finger at her oldest son.

My tears had long dried but I wiped my face anyway. Pa swung open the door and stepped out of the car. My heart leapt toward him. No one was as handsome as my father was, even when his face was long, plain, and sad, which was always. Today, he looked chipper, I supposed from being glad to see us after all this time.

Although I didn't jump all over him like Vonetta and Fern did, no one had missed him more than I. In Oakland I saw pieces of Cecile in me, but I knew Pa had his stamp all over me, and I was happy to grow in his shade.

I was first. He leaned down and kissed my cheek twice. If he tasted any salt on my face he didn't say a word. I missed him so much that everything about him seemed new. The freshly cut growth that made the side of his face rough. His cool, shaving-cream smell, with something extra. Not perfume. Men didn't wear perfume. It was woodsier, like standing among Christmas trees. And his shirt was new. Robin's-egg blue. Short-sleeved. Not worn and familiar like all the shirts I'd starched and ironed for him.

Vonetta and Fern were busy jumping and squealing from being tickled by Pa, who usually left the playing around to Uncle Darnell. They didn't notice how new Pa looked.

Big Ma noticed. “Junior! Junior!” She rarely called him that. “Stop all this carrying on in public!” She looked around expecting others to gawk and point at us Negroes, carrying on. Folks cared more about their luggage, taxis, and hugging their own families. That didn't stop Big Ma from being embarrassed.

Pa planted a kiss on Big Ma's cheek like he hadn't driven all the way from Brooklyn with her earlier. She bristled from both not liking it and liking it in spite of pushing him away.

The bell captain blew his whistle for us to get a move on. Pa gave the three of us one more squeeze and loaded our suitcases in the trunk.

“What's the matter, Delphine?”

“Nothing, Papa.”

Big Ma chomped at the bit and couldn't be stopped. She was only too happy to report on me. “I'll tell you what the matter is,” she began. “You sent them out in that piss-pot of trouble and now she's too big for her britches. As that one goes”—she meant to point at me, but aimed out of the back side-window—“the other two'll follow.”

Pa looked in the rearview mirror. My eyes caught his before falling to my lap.

Our lessons on solidarity with Sister Mukumbu at the People's Center hadn't gone for nothing. Vonetta came to my defense. “It's not Delphine's fault she knocked the
white man's newspaper down.”

Then Fern added, “It's not Delphine's fault I had to
you know
and the line was too long.”

Then Vonetta: “And that's why she had to jump Fern ahead.”

“Of all those people waiting.”

“All those mad people with Mickey Mouse ears.”

“And the bathroom lady came.”

“Talking about, ‘Look at all this mess!'”

“And you told her she had the mop.”

“Because you peed on the floor.”

Then Fern lurched across my lap and punched Vonetta in the arm. Vonetta socked Fern, and I pulled Vonetta off Fern but Vonetta's fists were still going like spinning bicycle spokes, and Big Ma yelled, “Stop it. Stop it, you wild heathens!” Then to Pa she said, “That's that Cecile in them,” like our mother was typhoid. “I tried to tell you.” Then back to Vonetta and Fern, “Wait until I get you in the house. Just wait and see what I got for y'all.”

And since they had already witnessed how Big Ma hadn't spared me from a small taste of what was waiting for us, Vonetta and Fern pulled apart and settled down on both sides of me.

“And you!” Big Ma's hat and wig turned sideways because she couldn't turn her head all the way around while sitting up front next to Pa. “Wait. Just wait. I'm gonna beat the Oakland out of you. I tell you NOT to go
out there in public stirring up a grand Negro spectacle and you make it your business to do exactly that. Don't you know the world's got its eyes on you? But an eyeful isn't enough. No, sir. You haul out the
Amos 'n Andy Show
for all the spectators. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern, how many times must I tell you, they're always watching. Always.”

I prayed Vonetta and Fern knew when a question didn't call for an answer.

“It's that no-mothering mother . . .” Big Ma went on.

“Ma,” Pa interrupted, probably to keep her from talking about Cecile. “Your blood pressure.”

To that, Big Ma gave a spit sound without actually spitting. “If my pressure don't kill me, these children will.”

Pa sighed. “It sounds like Delphine had to get Fernie to the toilet, and Fernie couldn't hold it,” he said. He was calm while the Wildcat went back to rumbling.

“Surely couldn't,” Fern said.

“That's why you hit everything but the toilet bowl,” Vonetta said.

And before they started up, I gave them my own evil eye, and Fern muffled a “she started it.”

Big Ma said to Pa, “Junior, there's a right way to go about things and a wrong way. Wrong will get that gal strung up. Mark my words.”

“We're in Brooklyn, Ma.”

Another spit sound. “Brooklyn. Alabama. You still have
to carry yourself just to get by.”

Vonetta and Fern hadn't stopped poking at each other. Vonetta said, “I didn't start it but I'm ending it,” and stuck out her tongue. Fern couldn't get back at the Mouseketeers who had stuck their tongues out at her, but only one person separated her from Vonetta. Fern tried to kick Vonetta but ended up kicking me, and then Pa said, hard, firm, but not loud, “All right, girls,” and put an end to it all. My knee throbbed.