Cecile burst into the room and pulled them apart. That was the first time she’d touched either one of them.
She turned to me. “Why’d you let them fight like this?”
I didn’t say anything. I just wanted her to come in here and act like a mother. A real one.
“Answer me, Delphine.”
I raised my shoulders up and set them back down. That was my answer.
“And you, Vonetta! What do you call this?” She held up her black-scrawled grandbaby to Vonetta’s face. “No wonder you couldn’t stop lip flapping.” To Fern she said, “You’re too big for this anyway.”
But Cecile still didn’t offer Fern a hug. She didn’t bend down and wipe Fern’s tears. She still didn’t call Fern by her name.
Counting and Skimming
I took a bar of Ivory soap and one of Cecile’s washcloths and scrubbed away at the black ink scrawled all over Miss Patty Cake. Big Ma taught me to be a hard washboard scrubber. To not accept dirt, dust, or stains on clothes, floors, or walls, or on ourselves. “Scrub like you’re a gal from a one-cow town near Prattville, Alabama,” she’d tell me while Vonetta and Fern ran around and played. “Can’t have you dreaming out of your head and writing on the walls. That’ll only lead to ruin.”
I grabbed Miss Patty Cake’s dimpled arms and chubby legs. I went after her cheeks and forehead. I scrubbed every blacked-up piece of plastic, wearing down that Ivory bar from a nearly full cake to nearly half flat. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my knuckles ached. It was quite a job. When Vonetta picked up that black Magic Marker, she had been determined to make Miss Patty Cake as black and proud as Crazy Kelvin wanted her to be.
I soon found it didn’t matter if I scrubbed like a gal from a one-cow town or if I gave up on Ivory soap and turned to stronger cleaners. While the heavy-duty cleaners and scouring pad lifted the black from the white bathroom sink, Miss Patty Cake’s body was another story. The Magic Marker ink seeped down into Miss Patty Cake’s soft plastic skin. At best, the Ajax, Pine-Sol, and scouring pad left Miss Patty Cake gray, scratched up, and strong smelling. Hard scrubbing or not, there was nothing more I could do. Miss Patty Cake would never be Fern’s baby doll the way she’d been as long as anyone could remember. I shook all the water from her insides, dried her off, then put her in my suitcase to spare Fern from seeing her doll baby grayish and ashy.
I was too tired to try to make this thing between Vonetta and Fern wilt away. This wasn’t exactly fighting over who gets the gold crayon or the last cookie. I knew better than to look for help from Cecile. Worn-out, I began to see things like Big Ma did. There was no point in flying us across the country for next to no mothering.
I just kept counting down the days. The best that I could do was keep Vonetta and Fern separated. Vonetta bathed by herself, and Fern bathed with me. Vonetta slept on the top of the daybed, and Fern slept with me below.
Fern no longer looked for her doll when we left Cecile’s for breakfast. I wouldn’t say Vonetta did Fern any favor, but maybe things worked out the way they had to.
Still, Vonetta remained proudly defiant, walking two steps ahead of us and then leaving us altogether once her new friends, the Anktons, were in sight. She and Janice, the middle Ankton, threw pebbles at Hirohito Woods and fussed over who hated him more.
For snack time, Sister Pat passed out grapes. After we ate our fill, Sister Mukumbu gave us a lesson on the California grapes that we had just eaten and how the migrant workers who picked them had to fight for their rights.
I don’t think the lesson went the way Sister Mukumbu had planned. Everyone felt badly for having eaten the grapes. The room was quiet. Then Sister Mukumbu announced free time for the next hour. All the kids went wild at the prospect of running around in the park for an hour, but Fern and I didn’t feel like running with them.
Sister Pat had classes at her college and had to leave. When all the kids except Fern and I ran out to the park, I asked Sister Mukumbu if she had any chores or if she needed help in the classroom. Not that I wanted her embarrassing me, having me stand up front and rotate around the sun. It just felt strange, my Timex ticking and me having nothing to do. If only I’d thought to bring my book with me. A lot of good Island of the Blue Dolphins did me snug inside my pillowcase.
Sister Mukumbu rose immediately. She had just the thing to keep me busy until the class came together for arts and crafts. She asked Fern and me to count the Black Panther weekly newspapers, stacking them crisscross every fifty copies. She said the older kids would take them to local stores or sell the papers themselves. She made it sound like we were doing a great service by helping the newspaper carriers become more “organized and accountable.” It just gave me something to do and Fern a reason to stick with me.
Poor Fern. She didn’t have the knack for counting. She was still angry and heartbroken about Miss Patty Cake. She couldn’t get past twenty copies without losing her place and had to start over, again and again. My stack of papers grew while she had yet to count out her first fifty.
“Can’t we just go to the park and play?” she asked.
I was tempted to let her go but said, “Come on, Fern. We have to get this done. All you have to do is count out ten and lay them this way. Then count another ten and lay them that way.”
I felt Sister Mukumbu watching as I showed Fern the shortcut. You know when someone’s eyes are on your back and whether it’s in a good or a bad way. I felt her watching us in a good way. Soon Fern caught on, counting and crisscrossing. Her stack of papers began to grow. Not as high as mine, but it grew. Fern was now busy and not missing Miss Patty Cake for the moment.
After a short while I felt Sister Mukumbu’s eyes leave us. She must have figured we were all right and had continued doing her own work.
Since the Black Panther newspaper cost a quarter, I told myself I’d only skim the front and back pages as I stacked the papers. I would read what I could see. I knew if I flipped a page over and read it line by line, I was officially reading someone else’s paper. Or as Pa would call it, stealing.
I skimmed the front page of every five copies. I got into a real rhythm. Counting and reading a few key words at a time. There was more artwork than printing on the front page, so I couldn’t read much. One thing was for sure. I’d know Huey Newton if I ever saw him on the street. You couldn’t help but see Huey Newton all over the newspaper. His face was cocked slightly in the upper corner of the paper like the president’s face on a dollar bill. Now the Black Panther leader was in prison where he belonged, according to Big Ma.
As I counted, I dug Huey’s corner picture, him wearing his beret looking cool and revolutionary. I flipped open a newspaper quickly, skimmed the article in five-second glances at a time, then flipped it closed. The article was about Huey talking about Bobby. There was also a photograph of people protesting that I wanted to get a better look at. They were people carrying the same kind of signs that we had colored in. Those could have been our signs. We were probably part of the revolution. Wouldn’t that make a fine classroom essay: “My Revolutionary Summer”?
I wanted to read the newspaper. Not skim. Not steal. I wanted to fold a paper over, sit back, and read every word.
I must have lost count. I was too busy imagining a Black Panther carrying our FREE HUEY sign. Too busy to notice my neat stack had grown into uneven bundles with either more than fifty or less than fifty newspapers.
“Sister Delphine.”
Sister Mukumbu stood before me with a smile on her face.
“Nuts!” Fern said, because Sister Mukumbu’s voice had startled her, making her lose count. She began to recount.
“Yes, Sister Mukumbu?” I answered weakly. I hadn’t even heard her get up from her chair or felt her eyes on my back. It wasn’t like me to get lost like that.
“Do you want to read a newspaper?”
And embarrassed. I’m not the kind to be embarrassed. Thank goodness she was a teacher and not some boy who could read the thoughts spinning in my head.
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I nodded my yes, which only felt worse since I was not a nodder.
I dug out my two dimes from last night’s change. “I’ll bring a nickel tomorrow,” I said.
She smiled and said, “Twenty cents will be fine, Sister Delphine. You’re entitled to the worker’s discount.”
I was too embarrassed to say thank-you and gave her another nod. I took my newspaper and folded it twice to read about Huey, Bobby, and the protesters later.
Now, instead of having two of the ten dimes needed to call Pa and Big Ma, we were back to having no dimes. Fern and I kept counting and stacking.
Big Red S
That night Fern complained about her aching stomach. She meowed and howled and turned in her sleep.
“Go sit on the toilet,” I told her. She clung to my side, meowing and howling. Vonetta yelled, “Quit it, Fern. I can’t sleep.” I paid her no mind and neither did Fern. If Fern couldn’t sleep, then we all couldn’t sleep, so too bad for Vonetta and too bad for me. I just let Fern carry on while I rubbed her stomach. It took a while, but she finally fell into sleep.
Before we left for the Center in the morning, I asked Cecile for food money for tonight’s dinner. If I could hold on to two hundred dollars over three thousand miles, I could hold on to a ten-dollar bill for a few hours. Cecile didn’t bother with any questions. She just gave me the ten-dollar bill and a door key so she wouldn’t have to get up and let us in. I think anyone standing at the front door made her jumpy. Even when we ate on the floor in the living room, I’d catch her eyes shift to the door when she heard a noise. Maybe she thought the Panthers were coming back to bother her for more ink and paper.
I was glad Cecile handed over the money without fuss or questions. That saved me from lying about getting shrimp lo mein when I had no intention of going to Ming’s. Vonetta, Fern, and I had eaten our last plate of shrimp lo mein and egg rolls for the rest of our crazy summer. Shrimp and noodles swimming in sauce and deep-fried egg rolls had taken their toll on us. Not that Mean Lady Ming would cry for her three colored girls. She had other customers to yell at.
All day long at the Center I could think of nothing else but a home-cooked meal. We marched to the Safeway store after playing in the park for an hour. My shopping list was burned into my brain. I picked up one head of cabbage. Seventeen cents. One onion. Eight cents. Two potatoes. Twenty-three cents. One package of chicken thighs and one package of wings. One dollar and forty-seven cents. The price of the chicken would have been thievery of the highest kind, according to Big Ma, who raised chickens down in Alabama and had only to go pull one up by its neck, kill it, pluck it, clean it, and fry it. Lastly, but most important, I dropped a can of stewed prunes into our shopping basket. Forty-nine cents. There was plenty of money left over to call Pa and talk for as long as we wanted.
Vonetta and Fern pouted as the groceries went into the basket. There were even a couple of “Aw, shucks” and finger snapping as our dinner was placed on the cashier’s counter. All the sniping between Vonetta and Fern over Miss Patty Cake was now aimed at their new enemies: the real food that we would eat until we returned to Brooklyn, and me.
I paid for the groceries and put the change in my pocket. I’d give Cecile the dollar bills and keep the coins for our telephone call to Papa.
“Why can’t we have pizza?” Vonetta moaned.
“Or shrimp lo mein?”
“Because,” I said, enjoying my role as their enemy and big sister, “that’s not food for everyday eating.” I held up the brown paper Safeway bag with its big red S printed smack in the center. “This is.”
Big Ma would have been proud of me but also angry that I allowed it to come to this. I’m sure she expected this kind of living from Cecile. From me she expected better.
“Phooey.”
“Double phooey.”
They could phooey all night long for all I cared.
Vonetta said, “I hope you know she won’t let you cook that.”
“Not in her kitchen,” Fern said.
So I said, “Then she’ll cook it in her kitchen.” Papa’s voice poured out of my mouth like warm, steady tap water.
When I put the key in the door, I said, “Go wash your face and hands real good. Play Go Fish until I call you for supper.”
Cecile wasn’t in the living room, which meant she was in her kitchen. I didn’t want Vonetta and Fern to see how afraid I was of Cecile. I thought of how she planted her body between us and her kitchen door, daring us to take a step farther. That she’d rather let Fern dry up of thirst than give her a glass of water with ice. I thought about how crazy Cecile was and that I didn’t know her or what she would do next.
Now that I could smell the cabbage and onion from the brown paper bag, I lost that feeling of being calm and brave like Papa. I didn’t dare walk in, so I called to her: “Cecile.”
It didn’t occur to me to use her poet name, Nzila, to maybe soften her up. But that name didn’t feel right coming out of my mouth.
I dreaded this moment. Dreaded the thought of her swinging the kitchen door open and her seeing me with a bag of uncooked food. There was no putting it off. I called to her again, this time louder: “Cecile.”
Her hands slapped against the counter or tabletop good and hard. In a few stomps the door swung open and she was looking down at me.
I took a step back and hugged the bag. “I have to cook supper.”
She stared down at me and didn’t speak. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I took the change out of my pocket, all of it, and held it out to her. She took it. Dropped it into her pants pocket. Maintained her long, hard stare. If that was supposed to make me feel afraid, stupid, and small, it worked.
Then she spoke. “Whyn’t you go to Ming’s? Or Shabazz?”
We have a Shabazz in Brooklyn. The fish and bean pie place run by the Black Muslims.
I found my voice and said, “We can’t eat takeout every day. Vonetta and Fern can’t stomach it.”
“You can’t come in my kitchen making a mess. This is my workplace. I don’t need you in here turning things upside down.”
I said, “I don’t make messes,” without a lick of sass. I spoke the plain truth. I’d never made a mess in my life. Not even for the fun of it.
Cecile went stomping and cursing back into the kitchen. “No one told y’all to come out here. No one wants you out here making a mess, stopping my work.”
I stood outside the kitchen with the Safeway bag held tight to my chest. I’m sure the Safeway S was in the same spot as Superman’s big red S was sewn to his costume. I felt right about looking out for my sisters, but I didn’t feel brave. All the same, I didn’t want Vonetta and Fern to see me standing there like a scared dummy holding a bag of groceries.
Cecile pushed the door open.
“Get a speck of grease on my work…You hear?”
I knew better than to wait for a nicer invitation and walked inside Cecile’s kitchen. It was larger than our kitchen back home. Hers had both the cooking area and an eating area, which hadn’t been set up for eating. There was a long table, only one chair—hers—and what I figured was her printing machine on top of the table.
I didn’t want to be caught gawking at her and her stuff. I went straight to the sink and started stripping the onion. Washing the cabbage. Washing potatoes. Washing the chicken parts until I could figure out what to do next without having to ask Cecile a thing.
She hovered over her machinery, grunting and cursing. Then she got up, pulled open a drawer, and threw a potato peeler and a knife in the sink. The knife just missed my hand. She didn’t look once but said, “Don’t go cutting off your fingers. There’s no money to take you to the hospital.”
I felt her watching me at work. Thanks to Big Ma, I could skin a potato with a paring knife without wasting a scrap of white potato. I could cut up a whole fryer too, even though this time I didn’t have to.
Cecile grunted. “What you gonna do to that chicken?”
I said, “Bake it
.”
“Frying’s faster,” she said.
I pointed to her papers. “Grease.” Papa’s easy voice just slid right out of me, warm and steady. I could feel myself coming back. My voice. My steadiness.
“What you gonna do with the potatoes?”
“Boil them with the cabbage and onion.”
“Hmp.”
There was something about being here with her in the kitchen. And I knew what it was. I had a flash. A flash of us. Quiet and in the kitchen. Pencil tapping and her voice chanting. I blinked that flash away. I didn’t have time to be pulled into a daydream. I kept doing what I was doing. And then I pressed my luck and asked her for some fatback.
Another grunt. “No fatback. No salt pork. No pig of any kind in my kitchen.”
I shook my head. People in Oakland were touchy about pigs. They were touchy about the pig on their plates and the “pigs,” as Crazy Kelvin called them, in police cars. Back in Brooklyn, Big Ma wouldn’t stand for cooking without pork on a Sunday. I couldn’t even imagine Cecile and Big Ma sharing a kitchen or living in the same house.
Since there was no pork, I used what Cecile had. Butter, salt and pepper, plus the onion. It didn’t smell like Big Ma’s kitchen in Brooklyn, but it was the aroma of real food cooking.
Now that I had our dinner under way, I wanted to take in Cecile’s place of work. See what she was doing hovering over her machine, quietly. Carefully. From where I stood, stealing glances, it seemed like she was laying down puzzle pieces. Picking up one piece of something and laying it carefully down on her equipment. Picking up another piece and laying it down. Then she’d study the pieces. Just the piece she had completed. She had pulled herself into her puzzle laying and had forgotten I was there.
I could see why Vonetta and Fern were not allowed inside Cecile’s kitchen. Cecile was fixed in prayer. I was allowed to be there, but I didn’t dare clear my throat, let alone ask her to show me what she was doing. Vonetta and Fern didn’t have the sense to be quiet.
One Crazy Summer Page 7