Locomotion

by Jacqueline Woodson

  PARENTS POEM

  When people ask how, I say

  a fire took them.

  And then they look at me like

  I’m the most pitiful thing in the world.

  So sometimes I just shrug and say

  They just died, that’s all.

  A fire took their bodies.

  That’s all.

  I can still feel their voices and hugs and laughing.

  Sometimes.

  Sometimes I can hear my daddy

  calling my name.

  Lonnie sometimes.

  And sometimes Locomotion

  come on over here a minute.

  I want to show you something.

  And then I see his big hands

  holding something out to me.

  It used to be the four of us.

  At night we went to sleep.

  In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.

  Daddy worked for Con Edison.

  You ever saw him?

  Climbing out of a manhole?

  Yellow tape keeping the cars from coming

  down the block.

  An orange sign that said Men Working.

  I still got his hat. It’s light blue

  with CON EDISON in white letters.

  Mama was a receptionist.

  When you called the office where she worked,

  she answered the phone like this

  Graftman Paper Products, how may I help you?

  It was her work voice.

  And when you said something like

  Ma, it’s me.

  her voice went back to normal. To our mama’s voice

  Hey Sugar. You behaving? Is the door locked?

  That stupid fire couldn’t take all of them.

  Nothing could do that.

  Nothing.

  SONNET POEM

  Ms. Marcus says mostly sonnets are about love

  I think about Mama and Daddy and my sister

  how Mama and Daddy are somewhere up above

  and Lili’s just far away enough for me to miss her.

  Ms. Marcus says “sonnet” comes from “sonetto”

  and that sonetto means little song or sound

  It reminds me of that guy’s name—Gepetto

  the one who made Pinocchio from wood he found

  Ms. Marcus says you gotta write things a lot of times

  before they come out sounding the right way

  I know this poem’s not about love but at least it rhymes

  Maybe I’ll get the sonnet thing right one day.

  If I had one wish I’d be seven years old again

  living on President Street, playing with my friends.

  HOW I GOT MY NAME

  Whenever that song came on that goes

  Come on, baby, do the Locomotion, Mama

  would make us dance with her.

  We’d do this dance called the Locomotion

  when we’d bend our elbows and move

  our arms in circles at our sides.

  Like our arms were train wheels.

  I can see us doing it now—in slow motion.

  Mama grinning and singing along

  Saying all proud “My kids got rhythm!”

  Sometimes Lili got behind me and we’d

  do the Locomotion around our little living room. Till

  the song ended.

  And we fell out on the couch

  Laughing. Mama would say

  You see why I love that song so much, Lonnie?

  See why I had to make it your name?

  Lonnie Collins Motion, Mama would say.

  Lo Co Motion

  Yeah.

  DESCRIBE SOMEBODY

  Today in class Ms. Marcus said

  Take out your poetry notebooks and describe somebody.

  Think carefully, Ms. Marcus said.

  You’re gonna read it to the class.

  I wrote, Ms. Marcus is tall and a little bit skinny.

  Then I put my pen in my mouth and stared down

  at the words.

  Then I crossed them out and wrote

  Ms. Marcus’s hair is long and brown.

  Shiny.

  When she smiles it makes you feel all good inside.

  I stopped writing and looked around the room.

  Angel was staring out the window.

  Eric and Lamont were having a pen fight.

  They don’t care about poetry.

  Stupid words, Eric says.

  Lots and lots of stupid words.

  Eric is tall and a little bit mean.

  Lamont’s just regular.

  Angel’s kinda chubby. He’s got light brown hair.

  Sometimes we all hang out,

  play a little ball or something. Angel’s real good

  at science stuff. Once he made a volcano

  for science fair and the stuff that came out of it

  looked like real lava. Lamont can

  draw superheroes real good. Eric—nobody

  at school really knows this but

  he can sing. Once, Miss Edna took me

  to a different church than the one

  we usually go to on Sunday.

  I was surprised to see Eric up there

  with a choir robe on. He gave me a mean look

  like I’d better not

  say nothing about him and his dark green robe with

  gold around the neck.

  After the preacher preached

  Eric sang a song with nobody else in the choir singing.

  Miss Edna started dabbing at her eyes

  whispering Yes, Lord.

  Eric’s voice was like something

  that didn’t seem like it should belong

  to Eric.

  Seemed like it should be coming out of an angel.

  Now I gotta write a whole new poem

  ’cause Eric would be real mad if I told the class

  about his angel voice.

  EPISTLE POEM

  Hey Pops,

  Today our teacher showed us this poem by this poet guy named Langston Hughes. It made me remember something. That long time ago when you read us that good-night poem about that guy who loved his friend. And it made me kinda think that maybe Langston Hughes is the same guy who wrote that one because his name sounded familiar. Underwater familiar—like I dreamed it sort of. I’m not gonna try to explain. I figure you understand. The only thing about what Ms. Marcus read was it wasn’t a poem poem. She said it’s called an epistle poem and it was a letter. I didn’t know a letter could be a kind of poem. So now I’m writing one to you to say that even though we can’t do stuff like go to the park on our bikes or eat hot dogs from that cart where the guy who always wore the Yankees cap yelled at me for being a Mets fan but gave us a discount if we bought four hot dogs—and we always did—and ate them standing there arguing with him. Even when the Mets lost again and again. I just wanted to say that even though we can’t do that kind of stuff no more, I haven’t forgot none of it. I’m gonna go see if I can find that poem about that guy loving his friend. I hope it’s by Langston Hughes.

  —Love, Locomotion

  ROOF POEM II

  Up here the sky goes on and on like something

  you could fall right up into.

  And keep falling.

  Fall so fast

  and so far

  and for so long you don’t

  have to worry about where you’re gonna live next,

  where you gonna be

  if somebody all of a sudden

  changes their mind about living with you.

  Up here, you could

  just let your mind take you

  to all kinds of beautiful places

  you never been before in real life

  Tahiti, Puerto Rico, Spain,

  Australia with all those kangaroos hopping around

  and then you can come on back

  and call the place you come back to

  home.

  ME, ERIC,
LAMONT & ANGEL

  Once I saw a house fall down on a lady, Lamont says.

  That ain’t nothing, Angel says. Once I saw this dog

  get hit by a car. He went way up in the air and

  when he came down again,

  he got up and ran away. But he stopped at the corner,

  Angel says.

  And died.

  Eric squints up his eyes.

  Looks out over the school yard.

  The sky’s real blue and no wind’s blowing.

  I shake my head, trying to shake that dog out of it.

  Once I saw a little boy, Eric says, all mysterious.

  And then in my dream, he was a man.

  We all look at him and don’t say nothing.

  Far away, I hear some girls singing real slow and sad

  Her mother, she went upstairs too.

  Saying daughter oh daughter

  what’s troubling you . . .

  That ain’t no tragedy, Angel says, giving Eric a look.

  More than what Lonnie seen, Eric says, grinning at me.

  In my head I see a fire. I see black windows.

  I hear people hollering. I smell smoke.

  I hear a man’s voice saying I’m so sorry.

  I hear myself screaming.

  Never seen nothing, I say.

  FAILING

  I got a 39 on my math test

  ’cause

  I don’t understand numbers

  ’cause

  you say 1 + 1 = 2 and I go why? You say just

  ’cause

  like just ’cause somebody said it means it’s the truth.

  And since I don’t believe the things people say is

  always the truth

  ’cause

  sometimes people lie

  it’s hard to understand math.

  NEW BOY

  New boy comes in our classroom today

  Ms. Marcus says

  Say good morning, Clyde, and the new boy says

  Good mornin’, y’all

  and the whole class falls out laughing

  so hard, Ms. Marcus taps her pointer on the desk,

  her face so mad it’s purple

  R-e-s-p-e-c-t, she says

  Respect! we repeat the way

  she taught us to—a thousand times ago.

  New boy’s looking down at the floor

  looks real sad, says I’m sorry, ma’am

  and the class tries hard not to laugh

  but some laugh spills out of us anyway.

  You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Ms. Marcus says.

  Lamont whispers He should be sorry he’s so country

  Eric says Look at his country clothes

  New boy knows

  they’re whispering about him,

  puts one foot behind his leg

  like he wants to crawl right inside himself.

  He’s wearing high-water pants, light blue socks,

  a white shirt

  buttoned all the way up

  tight around his neck

  Check

  Eric says

  Check out his country hat

  New boy’s holding the hat in his hands

  Granddaddy hat in his hands the kind

  with the black band going around gray felt

  New boy looking like he wish he could

  just melt right on outa the room.

  DECEMBER 9TH

  I wake up with my stomach all bunched, throw up

  two times. Miss Edna gives me three Tums,

  the spearmint ones

  but the stomach pains don’t go away and I don’t want

  breakfast.

  Not cereal. Not oatmeal. Not even pancakes.

  Miss Edna frowns, presses her hand to my forehead,

  fixes

  me a bed on the couch.

  It’s December ninth, she says.

  I don’t look at her, just go back into the bathroom

  Nothing but bitter stuff comes up. And tears.

  I hear Miss Edna calling her job saying she won’t

  be coming in. I hear her say Dear Lord, remember me.

  I hear her putting water on to boil

  and smell the ginger she’s chopping up to make me

  some tea.

  It’s been four years, Miss Edna says to the Lord

  How long will he carry this burden?

  I see my old house on President Street

  the window frames black from fire. Glass everywhere.

  I hear people screaming and crying.

  I see the firemen wearing oxygen masks and shaking

  their heads.

  It’s cold out. There’s water everywhere.

  And two of Lili’s dolls—burnt and wet on the ground.

  I hear Lili screaming for Mama

  or maybe it’s me.

  There’s relatives down south who don’t have room

  for us. There’s church people who take us for a while

  then pass

  us on to more church people until there ain’t no more

  church people

  just group homes where people come sometimes to

  bring us food and

  toys and read us books they wrote. Then go on home

  to their own families.

  There used to be four of us

  Mama, Daddy, Lili and me. At night we went to sleep.

  In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.

  That was four years ago.

  I lean my head over the toilet bowl

  and more of the bitter stuff comes.

  LIST POEM

  Blue kicks—Pumas

  Blue-and-white Mets shirt

  Mets hat

  A watch my daddy gave me

  Black pants but not dressy—they got side pockets

  Ten cornrows with zigzag parts like Sprewell’s

  A gold chain with a cross on it from Mama—under

  my shirt

  White socks clean

  One white undershirt clean

  White underwear clean

  A dollar seventy-five left pocket

  Two black pens

  A little notebook right pocket

  All my teeth inside my mouth

  One little bit crooked front one

  Brown eyes

  A little mole by my lip

  Lotion on so I don’t look ashy

  Three keys to Miss Edna’s house back pocket

  Some words I wanted to remember

  written on my right hand

  Leftie

  Lonnie

  LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN HALSEY STREET PARK

  Shoot hoops with me, Dog

  Eric says. Throws me the ball.

  Where you been all day?

  PIGEON

  People all the time talking about how much they hate pigeons ’cause pigeons fly by and crap on their heads and then somebody always says That’s good luck! That’s good luck! so you don’t feel all stupid going through your pockets tryna find a tissue to wipe it off and you never find one ’cause you don’t be carrying tissues like an old lady so you gotta walk up to some old lady with that pigeon crap on your head and ask her for a tissue and she just goes Don’t worry, that’s good luck like everybody else and it makes you hate those sky roaches ’cause they’re everywhere in the city so you better duck if they fly over your head or else

  But

  This guy Todd that lives next door to Miss Edna’s building got a pigeon coop on his roof and sometimes I go up there and watch Todd waving this huge white sheet till all the pigeons come swooping and flying above us—back and forth and up and down making those croaky pigeon sounds. Those days I’m not scared about pigeon crap on my head because the way they fly—just slow back and forth and the sun getting all bright orange behind them and them making those sounds that after a while sound a little bit like a song—all of it together makes you look up into the sky and believe in everything you ever wanted to believe in. Especially with Todd s
tanding there waving that white sheet and his brown face all broken out in the biggest smile you ever seen on a teenager.

  SOMETIMES POEM

  Miss Edna gets her paycheck the second Friday

  of every month and we go to C-Town. Sometimes

  the Twinkies go on sale three for five dollars and

  Miss Edna says

  Get three. You know how we love ourselves some

  Twinkies, Lonnie

  And her smile gets big and so does mine.

  We go up to the cash register with all our food.

  When I put the Twinkies on the counter, the checkout

  lady says

  I guess your son likes Twinkies, huh?

  And Miss Edna looks at me sideways.

  Then she smiles and says

  Yeah, I guess he does.

  WAR POEM

  Miss Edna got two other sons—Rodney and Jenkins.

  Jenkins’s off fighting in the war.

  Rodney, he lives upstate and once a month

  Miss Edna goes up there and visits him. She packs up

  fried chicken and potato salad and

  makes a pound cake. Puts it all

  in a shopping bag and the shopping bag smells

  like lots of good things.

  She leaves two chicken legs and some potato

  salad on a plate for me when

  I don’t

  go with her but sometimes

  I do

  and we take a bus all the way up where there’s

  mountains and grass everywhere.

  Lots of trees too.