We spread the tablecloth on the floor and sat cross-legged as if we were eating Mean Lady Ming’s takeout or fried fish from Shabazz. While Vonetta and Fern ate begrudgingly, Cecile cleaned her plate and left three blanched chicken bones.
“This don’t taste like Big Ma’s,” Vonetta said.
“Surely don’t,” Fern followed.
“We shoulda got pizza.”
“Or shrimp lo mein.”
Cecile reached onto Vonetta’s plate and took the thigh that Vonetta had left. To me, she said, “That’s gratitude for you.”
I didn’t care that they were ungrateful. I told my sisters, “Get used to eating like this.”
Vonetta said, “I’m going to tell Big Ma.”
“And Papa.”
To them, I said, “Tell.”
When we were done, Cecile handed me every plate, after she’d eaten whatever Vonetta and Fern had left. “You started this mess, Delphine. You clean every dish and spoon.”
We had eaten with forks, but I wasn’t about to correct her. I just took the forks while Vonetta and Fern disappeared into our room. At least I could look Pa in the eye and say, “Yes, Pa. I did what you said. I looked out for my sisters.” At least I got Cecile to let me into her kitchen.
Then she added, “And don’t expect no help from me.”
I said, “I don’t mind.”
She gave another “Hmp” and a headshake. “We’re trying to break yokes. You’re trying to make one for yourself. If you knew what I know, seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t be so quick to pull the plow.”
I sort of knew what she meant, but someone had to look out for Vonetta and Fern while we were here.
I stacked the plates in the sink and ran the hot water.
“It wouldn’t kill you to be selfish, Delphine,” she said, and moved me out of the way to wash her hands. Then she went back to praying over her puzzle pieces.
China Who
Sister Mukumbu gave Eunice, Hirohito, and me two empty milk cartons each to fill with water from the hallway fountain. Today our class was to take sponges that she and Sister Pat had cut up into different shapes and make printed designs on old T-shirts. We’d use red, black, and green paint, the same colors as the ink Cecile used for her poems and whatever flyers the Panthers asked her to print up.
As Sister Mukumbu readied the paints, I thought of all those colors, dripping and splattering on Vonetta’s and Fern’s clothes, and having to scrub them without a washboard.
“Don’t start anything until I get back with the water,” I told Fern.
Fern seemed off in a world of her own.
Sister Mukumbu clapped her hands, pressing me to get going. Fern would be all right for two minutes without me.
I followed Eunice and Hirohito with a mind to hurry back. I had to admit, I liked being seen as one of the classroom helpers. Vonetta and Janice were put out by the fact that they weren’t asked to take a skip down the hall with Hirohito. They had both raised their hands to ask if they could help too. Although I didn’t like Eunice much, we glanced at each other and knew the same thing: our middle sisters were boy crazy for Hirohito. He was probably twelve or thirteen and only saw Vonetta and Janice as pests he could both mess with and keep at a distance.
Hirohito beat us to the fountain. As he filled up his cartons, I studied every feature of his face. I wanted to ask him how it felt to have slanted eyes, hair like pine needles, and coppery-colored skin. Which one was he more: Chinese or colored? If I were Vonetta, I would have at least asked him that, as much as she’s always in his face. I would have asked him something interesting instead of “Do you like short girls or tall girls?”
I knew my curiosity didn’t excuse my staring or wanting to pry. After all, I certainly didn’t like questions about not having a mother. So I scolded myself good, while Hirohito filled up his second carton: I should keep my curiosity to myself; I should not stare at his long black eyelashes and coppery-colored skin. Besides, I couldn’t go from planning to sock him to asking him about being a colored Chinese boy in one good blink. But before I had a chance to look away, he caught me staring at him.
“What?”
I gave it back. “Did I say something to you?” Thank goodness you can’t see cherries in a chocolate bar. I’d have been a red-faced rose if not for my Hershey brown complexion.
“Take a picture. It lasts longer.”
“I was not looking at you, boy.” Girl pride made me lie hard and strong.
Eunice gave me a “Were too” glare, but I couldn’t let this boy think I was staring at him even if he caught me red-faced beneath my brown skin. I couldn’t let this boy with slanted eyes and copper-colored skin think I thought a thing about him. Because I didn’t.
“And if you try to run me and my sisters off the sidewalk with that skateboard, I’m going to stomp on you good.”
We were about the same height, but I hadn’t met a boy I couldn’t throw down to the ground. But then, I was taller than all the boys I knew.
“I yelled for you to get out of the way. Can I help it if you’re slow?” He was no Ellis Carter, Anthony, Antnee, or the other boys who tapped me from behind and ran. He spoke calmly, with no fear of my boy-throwing abilities.
“Well, you shouldn’t be skateboarding where people walk.”
“Girl, that’s no skateboard,” he said, full of what I guessed was boy pride. “That’s my go-kart.”
“Who cares, China boy.”
He gave me a look like he was going to drop both cartons and put up his dukes. One eyebrow went up. “China who?”
I was glad he said that because my “China you” shot out right on time.
Eunice jumped in and said, “For your information, he’s black and Japanese. Can’t you tell the difference between a Japanese name and a Chinese name?”
I didn’t like having my ignorance shoved at me, especially by the likes of Eunice Ankton. But there I was. Not knowing a half-Chinese face from a half-Japanese one. I wasn’t about to get a better look so I’d know the difference. Looking at that stupid boy got me red-faced in the first place. The last thing I’d do was own up to my ignorance and then apologize.
I turned to Eunice as if Hirohito weren’t there. “I don’t care what he is. He just better watch out when he’s riding that skateboard on the sidewalk.”
Hirohito turned and started walking back to the classroom. “Go-kart.”
I said, “Forget you, Hirohito.”
He said, “Forgot you, Delphine.”
Then I said quickly to get the last lick, “Never thought about you.”
Eunice said, “Is that what you all say where you come from? That’s so corny.”
For Eunice’s information, there was more to that rhyme. Swallow a snake, jump in the lake, come back home with a bellyache. It did sound corny, so I kept it to myself. “I don’t care.”
She walked ahead of me. “If you knew about Hirohito and Brother Woods, you’d leave him alone.”
Then I got suckered into a school-yard comeback I should have seen coming. “What about Hirohito and Brother Woods?”
Wouldn’t you know it? Eunice had hips. She made sure I knew that fact as she walked ahead of me. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
Expert Colored Counting
Vonetta and Fern figured that since I talked my way inside Cecile’s kitchen, I should fight harder for other things, namely to have a television set in the house. It was bad enough knowing our California vacation wasn’t much to hang a back-to-school essay on. There were no Disneyland rides to write about. No Hollywood movie stars in the Safeway store to sign autographs. No surfing at the beach or shaking peaches or plums from fruit trees in the backyard. There wasn’t even a long-lost mama hugging and crying at the airport.
I soon saw my sisters’ point. The least we could have was a television set. Cartoons on Saturdays, funny shows after dinner, the evening news and true-crime shows for me. And of course, The Mike Douglas Show five days a week
because Mike Douglas always had Negro performers on his variety show. Outside of the Flipper incident, we didn’t fight over TV, which would mean less noise to bother Cecile. If she bought a portable TV set, we could put it in our room and she wouldn’t have to see us for hours. Then it would feel like a real vacation. Watching hours and hours of Get Smart and The F.B.I. without Big Ma making us turn the set off.
Once again I found my calm, steady voice and brought our demands to Cecile at our next sit-down dinner. That’s what protesters did. They brought their protest songs and their demands to the Establishment, because the Establishment was in control. The Establishment was someone over thirty years old who had the power. I didn’t know Cecile’s exact age, but she had to be over thirty. That, plus her holding on to the money Pa had given us, had made Cecile the Establishment. All we needed were some protest signs and an “or else” that wouldn’t make Cecile mad enough to hurt us. Without an “or else,” protesters are just people with protest songs and demands who don’t stand a chance of getting anything. The only things Cecile seemed to care about were her poems and her peace and quiet. The only thing we seemed to care about was our television set. Armed with that, I brought up our sole demand and stood ready with our reasons, as if my Safeway S were pressed to my chest.
She said, “No one needs a television set.”
“We do,” I said.
“To catch our shows,” Vonetta said.
“Yeah,” Fern said. “To catch our cartoons.”
“And the evening news,” I threw in. You could practically see the whole world on the evening news.
“And Mike Douglas.”
“That’s right. We want Mike Douglas.”
How else would we see Motown groups, James Brown, or Aretha Franklin?
The Mike Douglas Show wasn’t the only place to find colored people on television. Each week, Jet magazine pointed out all the shows with colored people. My sisters and I became expert colored counters. We had it down to a science. Not only did we count how many colored people were on TV, we also counted the number of words the actors were given to say. For instance, it was easy to count the number of words the Negro engineer on Mission Impossible spoke as well as the black POW on Hogan’s Heroes. Sometimes the black POW didn’t have any words to say, so we scored him a “1” for being there. We counted how many times Lieutenant Uhuru hailed the frequency on Star Trek. We’d even take turns being her, although Big Ma would have never let us wear a minidress or space boots. But then there was I Spy. All three of us together couldn’t count every word Bill Cosby said. And then there was a new show, Julia, coming in September, starring Diahann Carroll. We agreed to shout out “Black Infinity!” when Julia came on because each episode would be all about her character.
We didn’t just count the shows. We counted the commercials as well. We’d run into the TV room in time to catch the commercials with colored people using deodorant, shaving cream, and wash powder. There was a little colored girl on our favorite commercial who looked just like Fern. In fact, I said that little girl could have been Fern, which made Vonetta jealous. In the commercial, the little girl took a bite of buttered bread and said, “Gee, Ma. This is the best butter I ever ate.” Then we’d say it the way she did, in her dead, expressionless voice; and we’d outdo ourselves trying to say it with the right amount of deadness. We figured that that was how the commercial people told her to say it. Not too colored. Then we’d get silly and say it every kind of colored way we knew how.
We gave Cecile all of our reasons why she should have a television set in her green stucco house. We even showed her how it would give her peace of mind to do her work without us bothering her. To our reasons, the Establishment said, “Television is a liar and a story.” But we weren’t ready to give up.
“The evening news comes on television,” I said. “That’s all true because it’s on the news.”
She grunted.
“And the weatherman gives the weather report. That’s important.”
Another grunt.
“And the Monkees do the monkey.” Then Fern swung her arms up and down and bopped her head like a go-go dancer.
Cecile made a “what” expression. Flummoxed. Good old Fern! Fern had managed to completely flummox the Establishment.
And then we started singing our protest song, chewing away at her peace and quiet: “Here we come. Walking down the street….” like Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and the other singing Monkees.
The next day when we came back from the Center, we found a radio in our room, the cord wrapped around its plastic body. It was a sho-’nuf, left-by-the-garbage-dump, secondhand radio. Vonetta and Fern squealed as if the little colored girl in the commercial were standing in our room eating buttered bread.
Civic Pride
We’d been learning about civics since the first grade. There was always a field trip to the fire station on Henry Street. We watched the same film about the firemen, policemen, and mayor, who kept our community safe and orderly. The film’s narrator reminded every boy—from Ellis Carter to the Jameses, the Anthonys, and every other pants wearer—that they too could grow up to be guardians of our community. We girls were reminded that we could look forward to becoming teachers, nurses, wives, and mothers. Poets were never mentioned.
At the Center we had a civics lesson. We were being taught our rights as citizens and how to protect those rights when dealing with the police. Sister Mukumbu used the word “policeman,” while Crazy Kelvin, who filled in for Sister Pat, preferred to say “the racist pig.” He broke our rights down step-by-step as if there was no time to lose. Any given day a police car could stop my sisters and me on our way from the Safeway market and search our bag of groceries. We had to be armed with our rights.
As the lesson went on, it seemed like all Crazy Kelvin wanted was to get us to call the police “the pigs.” He started with Hirohito. “My man, Hirohito, who knocked down your door and arrested your father?”
Hirohito’s face fell to the table. He looked worse than when Sister Mukumbu asked him to revolve and spin around the sun. He picked at a flaky piece of skin on his thumb. Normally I’d think, Ew, nasty boy. How disgusting. Instead I felt sorry for him with Crazy Kelvin poking at him.
Hirohito answered, “The police.”
Crazy Kelvin said, “The who?”
Hirohito said, “The Oakland police.”
That wasn’t good enough for Crazy Kelvin, whom we had to call Brother Kelvin in the classroom. He looked like a bony, big-beaked chicken going “The who? The who?” It was like the time he shouted “black girl” at my sisters and me, while we shouted back “colored girl.”
It didn’t take sharp eyes to see Sister Mukumbu was annoyed with her helper and as usual, stepped in to put an end to it. Crazy Kelvin was supposed to talk to us about our rights, not to stand there going “The who? The who?”
Big-beaked Crazy Kelvin wasn’t done. He said, “The pigs broke down the door of a Vietnam war hero’s house. The pigs handcuffed him without respect for his rights as a citizen. The racist pigs then separated Brother Woods from his family because he dared speak the truth to the people.”
Hirohito tried to show no change in his face, but he was changing on the inside, where people change when they’re sad or angry. He looked directly at me, then looked away. I felt like I was supposed to say something to him, but I didn’t know what.
Sister Mukumbu thanked Brother Kelvin for being our guest speaker and showed him to the door.
Fern tugged the hem of my top. “I don’t like him. Surely don’t.”
I glanced Eunice Ankton’s way. I had just found out what she had meant when we were out by the water fountain. That Hirohito’s father was in prison for speaking out to the people. Hirohito’s father was what Sister Mukumbu called a “freedom fighter” and a “political prisoner.” Although, now that I knew, I didn’t find any satisfaction in having found out.
Imagine. To have your father sitting down eating dinner or shining his shoes whil
e watching TV. To have your front door blown off its hinges and the police rush in. To see your father in handcuffs, led away.
Hirohito didn’t have to imagine. He knew.
I had been scared once. Truly scared for Papa. It happened two summers ago. Big Ma had gone back to Alabama ahead of us to visit family and take care of her house. We had packed up the Wildcat and had driven down to Alabama so my sisters and I could stay there for the summer. We had been driving all day, all night. Talk about being a long way from home. If we needed to stop, we found a gas station or a nice colored family to open their home to us. As we drove deeper south, down dark highways and even darker back roads, I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I told myself, “Delphine, we are no longer in Brooklyn.”
Papa had pulled the car off the road so we could catch a few hours of sleep. I remember Vonetta snoring on one side of me, Fern with Miss Patty Cake burrowed into my side. Somehow I managed to find myself snoring with my sisters and Papa. Then there had been a loud rap against the window. Balls of flashlight ghosts had flown all around the back-and front seats, all over our faces. It had been a state policeman. Papa had rolled down his window and shown the state policeman his license and said he was driving his girls down to see their grandma in Alabama. The state policeman hadn’t offered directions. He hadn’t called Papa “Mr. Gaither, sir,” or “citizen” like the helpful police officer in our civic-pride film. I heard what that state policeman called Papa. I heard it all right. I held on to Fern tight, afraid for Papa. Afraid Papa might talk back or fight back.
When we had arrived at Big Ma’s, I’d expected that Pa would have told Big Ma all about it. How we couldn’t stop and pee anywhere we wanted to. How the state police had rapped on the window. What he’d called Papa. How Papa hadn’t hauled back like Cassius Clay and socked the policeman’s jaw into the next county. Papa could tell some stories. He speaks them so plain, you believe every word. I knew Papa would have entertained Big Ma.
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