“What’s the matter with you?” Momma asked. “Haven’t you ever heard of Nigger Heaven? The way I hear white folks talk about it, that’s the best part of Heaven to go to. It’s full of bright colors, watermelon and gambling. An d all there is in your Heaven is harp music and praying.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with that,” Momma said, “especially if you’d rather have harp music and praying than watermelon and gambling.”
“I’m going down to my room,” is all that Roseann would say.
And Momma shrugged, “You can go down farther than that for all I care.”
The next day Miss Thompson brought Roseann up to Mrs. Clark’s room again. This time Miss Thompson said, “Roseann thought it would be a good idea if you ate in our room today. That way, each of you would be hostess every other day.” So Momma and Roseann walked down to Miss Thompson’s room. Momma took a look at Roseann’s face and didn’t like what she saw. When I ask Momma what it was that she saw there, she says satisfaction.
After Miss Thompson left Roseann picked up her lunch and parked herself behind Miss Thompson’s desk. She unwrapped her sandwiches and began chomping on them.
Momma said to her, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Roseann said, “Only the same thing that you did yesterday.”
And Momm a said, “That’s right, honey. That’s what you’re doing. You’re imitating a nigger.”
They finished their lunch i n silence before Momm a said, “I’m going down to first grade to practice.”
Roseann didn’t say anything, but after about five minutes, she followed Momma down there and watched Momm a practice the beautiful handwriting.
Momma was hostess the next day. Roseann came up without Miss Thompson. She sat in the back of the room, and Momma sat at Mrs . Clark’s desk. Neither of them said a thing. Momma began to hum and glance through some books that were on the edge of Mrs . Clark’s desk. She stopped humming, closed the book hard, and said, “Well , I’ve got to get to work. “
She picked up a piece of chalk from the top of Mrs. Clark’s desk, a long, new piece, and marched to the blackboard, the useless one, in the back of the room. An d she began to draw.
Roseann Dolores Sansevino said, “I know how to draw a fish without once lifting my chalk from the board.”
“If you want to do that kind of baby stuff, take the baby pieces of broken chalk and do it over there,” Momma said, pointing to the blackboard on the side of the room.
So Roseann worked on the side blackboard and Momma filled the back.
Both of them erased both boards clean before even the first person returned from lunch.
The next day when Roseann was hostess in Miss Thompson’s room, Momma finished eating and then said, “Well, I’m going back up. I’ve got work to do.”
She began drawing on the back blackboard again.
When Roseann came in, Momma glanced her way and continued with her work. Roseann scribbled and doodled and erased what she did right after she did it. But not Momma. Momma was involved in a project.
Roseann stopped working at her own board and began to watch Momma. Lunch hour was almost over. Momma stood back from her work, and she knew that she couldn’t bear to erase it. So she walked back to the blackboard and wrote: exactly like the writing on the first grade blackboard. And also like Miss Mayer’s handwriting.
Miss Mayer thought that the work belonged to Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Clark thought that the work belonged to Miss Mayer. Mrs. Clark would never scold Miss Mayer for using up her blackboard be-cause everyone liked Mrs. Clark better and Mrs. Clark knew it, so she was always very polite to Miss Mayer. Anyway, Momma’s work was not erased. Just as Momma had planned.
The next day Momma got to work right after eating and Roseann Dolores Sansevino watched.
The next day Momma finished.
Roseann Dolores Sansevino watched again.
“How come you colored in all their faces?” Roseann asked.
“Because they are black people,” Momma said.
“Noah wasn’t any nigger,” Roseann said.
“I didn’t say he was. I said that he was black.”
“Ha!” Roseann said, “Then why did you color them in white?”
“Because that is the way you show a black Noah on a blackboard. Black and white is how you look at things. I think that this is the way that Noah should look on blackboards. And I think that this is the way he will look in Nigger Heaven.”
“You fresh thing, you,” Roseann said. “I’m going to tell Mrs. Clark and Miss Thompson and Miss Mayer that it’s you who’s been drawing on the black-board.”
Momma said, “You go right ahead.”
Roseann did. She waited in the classroom, glaring at Momma, until Mrs. Clark returned from lunch. Mrs. Clark was hardly in the room real good before Roseann called out, “Look what she did!” She pointed to Momma’s work.
Mrs. Clark smiled at Momma and said, “Did you really do that?”
Momma nodded yes.
“Well, that is wonderful. Just wonderful.” She turned to Roseann and said, “Thank you for telling me.” Then she picked up Roseann’s hand and said, “Let’s go down and tell Miss Thompson together.”
That must have been when Miss Thompson and Mrs. Clark arranged for the fourth grade class-to come up and see what Momma had done because they were only about three problems into their arithmetic lesson when the fourth grade marched in.
Mrs. Clark was proud to introduce Momma to the fourth grade and Momma was proud to stand and take credit. Everyone said, “Gollee” and “Gosh.” Momma says that kids didn’t say “Cool” or “Neat” back then. The one thing they kept saying was, “Did you really? Did you really do it?”
Momma nodded yes. An d then yes again. An d she smiled, smiled, smiled.
The kids kept asking, “Did you really do it?”
And that was when Roseann Dolores Sansevino said, “She really did it. I watched her from start to finish.” She said it loud enough for everyone in the whole fourth and fifth grades to hear.
Momma says that this time, the time that she was bused, was the beginning of two things. Well, Momma is an artist now; she draws the pictures for stories like this one, and she has even won a medal for it. An d this time, the time that she was bused, was the beginning of it.
When I asked Momma, “What is the other thing it was the beginning of?”
Momma says that the other thing is told in the story.
From 2-time Newbery Medalist
E. L. Konigsburg
The Outcasts of
19 Schuyler Place
0-689-86637-2
Altogether, One at a Time
0-689-71290-1
The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper
0-689-82328-2
Father’s Arcane Daughter
0-689-82680-X
Journey to an 800 Number
0-689-82679-6
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER
0-689-71181-6
The View from Saturday
NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER 0-689-81721-5
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth,
William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth
NEWBERY HONOR BOOK
0-689-84625-8
A Proud TasteJor Scarlet
and Miniver
0-689-84624-X
The Second Mrs. Gioconda
0-689-82121-2
Throwing Shadows
0-689-82120-4
Silent to the Bone
0-689-83602-3
Aladdin Paperbacks • Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
www.SimonSaysKids.com
This is what E. L. Konigsburg has to say about writing Altogether, One at a Time:
“Like the mother in ‘Inviting Jason/ I did make my younger son invite the least popular kid to his tenth birthday party. It was not a sleepover party; the kid’s name was not Jason, but he was d
yslexic.
“Like the grandmother in The Night of the Leonids,’ I did wake my older son so he could see the shower of stars. 1 was his mother, not his grandmother; we lived in the suburbs, not the city; the clouds did come ; he did complain ; I felt sorrier for me than I did for him .
“I knew a child who was sent to a ‘Camp Fat,’ She returned home several pounds lighter, but before the school year was over, she had put them back on . But then she did not have Miss Natasha as a nighttime counsellor.
“When I was in the sixth grade, like Momma in ‘Momma at the Pearly Gates,’ I was bused. For a short time, a fifth-grader named Dolores was bused as well. Everyone else walked to school. And everyone else walked home for lunch. Dolores and I carried our lunches and ate together in the back of my classroom. On e day, out of the clear blue sky, she called me a kike, and we did not eat together again. I used my lunch hour to draw on the blackboard. My teacher, not I, wrote ‘Please do not erase’ on my drawing, not of Heaven, but of an enormous fly.
“I added some things; I changed some things. I scraped, shaped, molded and what came out is as true a fiction as I can write. “
E. L. KONIGSBURG is the author of several books for young readers, including the Newbery Medal winners Erom the Mixed-up Files of Mrs, Basil E. Frankweiler and The View from Saturday, and the Newbery Honor Book Jennifer, Iterate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. Mrs. Konigsburg has a degree from Carnegie-Mellon University and has done graduate work in organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. Before becoming a writer, she laught sciene at a private girls’ school. She and her husband live on the beach in North Florida. I heir three children are all married.
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