When Jenkins comes home, things are probably going to be real different. Miss Edna’s house isn’t that big and my room used to be Rodney’s room, so now Rodney’s in Jenkins’s room. Miss Edna has one more room next to the kitchen that she keeps all kinds of stuff in and she’s been throwing stuff out and moving it to her room and some into the living room closet. She says eventually we’re going to have to move to a building with an elevator, but until we can, that’s going to be Jenkins’s new room. I don’t know how much he’s going to like being kicked out of his old room. Miss Edna says he’ll be glad because there’s a window in his new room and he used to complain when he was a kid that it wasn’t fair that he didn’t have a room with a window. Even though Miss Edna’s been my foster mama for a long time and I’ve been living here for all these years, it’s hard not to feel like I’m putting people out.
So yeah, I am a little bit scared. I guess Clyde could tell because he said, It’s gonna be all right, man. Just gonna take some time and all. Then he told me that whenever his mama decides to come live with them again, it’s always a whole lot of changing going on—first him and his sister have to get used to her being there. He said his sister gets used to it real fast since she’s only nine and she starts hugging his mama and kissing her and staying real close to her, hugging her leg or arm or neck like the scariest thing in the world is that she’s not going to be touching her mama.
Clyde said he just keeps an eye on his mama and tries to figure out when she’s going to leave again so that he can know when to get ready to take care of his sister, because she gets real sad. Clyde said you get used to people coming and going. We talked a long time—just throwing the ball back and forth and me practicing my dribbling. I told him that sometimes I think I’m going to see Mama and Daddy coming around the corner, laughing and holding hands. Then me and you go running up to them and you jump up in Daddy’s arms. Clyde thought that was a good memory to have in my head. We played some more taps, then I asked him if he wanted to go to the park to shoot some hoops and Clyde said he needed to get home to make his sister some dinner because his aunt was at work. Then I went on inside and did my homework. That was mostly what the day was.
Peace, Lili.
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
Today me and Miss Edna did grocery shopping. We took the bus over to Vanderbilt Avenue because that’s where there’s the good store that has cheaper prices. At least, that’s what Miss Edna says. She checks the prices of everything and if something costs too much, she frowns and puts it back on the shelf. I know we’re not rich because of a lot of reasons, but mostly when I see Miss Edna putting stuff back or counting the money in her wallet or at night sometimes when she’s paying bills—that’s when I really know. Sometimes she’ll say to me, Lonnie, turn off that light if you’re not using it. You act like we own the electric company. Once I asked her if we were real poor and she rubbed her hand over my head and said, You too young to be worrying about money. We’ll always get by. Then she said something that made me real happy, Lili. She said, And you’ll always have everything you need. I didn’t mind about not having everything I wanted, because I know sometimes I want stuff that I don’t really need. But when Miss Edna said that, it made me believe that I’d always have food and warm clothes and her and you.
On the way home, me and Miss Edna were each carrying two bags and I even had some groceries in my knapsack. There was a man sitting on the corner in a wheelchair and one of his legs was missing. I got scared and dropped one of the bags and some of the cans in it rolled out. I kept telling Miss Edna I was sorry and she kept saying, Don’t worry, Lonnie. Nothing broke. The man in the wheelchair said he wished he could help us and I saw Miss Edna get kinda teary, but she just smiled at him and told him to stay blessed. He said, Same to you.
All the way home on the bus, me and Miss Edna didn’t say anything to each other. But after we got home and put the groceries away, we each went into our rooms and stayed there mostly the whole afternoon.
Peace, Lili.
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
Outside, the snow is coming down crazy. There’s already a whole lot of it on the ground and the branches on that big tree down the block look like they’re gonna fall right off with all that snow on them. Me and Clyde had a snowball fight on the way home from school and I threw one that got him right in the back of the head. He was real mad for a minute but then he just started laughing. He said—Man, you sure can throw! Then he snuck one up on me—a big one that he had been hiding behind his back. He smushed it down my back. It was freezing! Man, that snowball fight was real fun. But then Miss Shore saw us throwing all that snow around and came outside with two shovels. She told us that since we liked the snow so much, we could get busy getting it out from in front of her house, then we could see if any other seniors was needing someone to shovel for them. That’s what she calls old people—seniors. Like they’re about to graduate from high school or something. Miss Shore told us not to shovel too deep where her dirt was because of those bulbs she’d put in the ground. She said if even a single one of her bulbs didn’t come up, she’d have us working all spring to fix her garden. Man—that is one cranky lady. I can’t believe her garden looks so nice in the spring with all that evil she got in her. Clyde was supposed to come over to hang and do homework but we ended up shoveling every old person’s front on the block and by the time we finished, we each had a few dollars (we didn’t want to charge, but some of the old people just gave us money), mostly wrinkled old dollars that looked like they’d been under somebody’s mattress for a hundred years. Clyde said his grandma used to keep money under her mattress and the dollars she gave him always smelled like mothballs. We sniffed some and sure enough—mothballs! After all that shoveling, we were so tired, Clyde just went on home and I came upstairs. Now I’m sitting by the kitchen window watching the snow and trying to be warm again.
I hope you got to play in the snow today, Lili.
Love,
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
I’m glad you like those little Polly dolls. I don’t know how anybody can get those tiny plastic clothes on those tiny plastic bodies. I swear, those are the tiniest dolls I’ve ever seen in my life, but I’m glad I got the right thing. If they’re really all the rage like you say they are, then I know you and your friends are probably playing with them right now.
It was nice to see you get that big smile on your face when I gave them to you. And it was nice when you hugged me. Happy birthday, Lili. Please tell your foster mama I said thank you again for the lemon pound cake she sent home with us. She really does make the best pound cakes ever. I gave Rodney and Miss Edna some and both of them said it was the best pound cake they’d ever eaten. When I went to school today, I gave Clyde a piece at lunchtime and he took a tiny bite and then he closed his eyes and nodded. This cake tastes like down south, he said. Then he ate the rest real slow because he said he wanted to keep tasting down south since he missed it there a lot. I asked him what he missed most about it and he said he missed the dirt. I looked at him like he was crazy and asked him how can you miss dirt? Clyde said he missed the way the dirt made his shoes this reddish color and when it rained, the mud wasn’t brown, it was red. The red mud ran down into these ditches and made little red creeks. Clyde sat there eating that lemon pound cake and talking about that red mud to me, but his eyes had this real faraway look, like your foster mama’s pound cake had taken him right back down south. It was like he never wanted that cake or that memory to end. I put my arm around his shoulder. When me and you get big, I said, let’s take us a bus down south. Clyde smiled. Then he nodded and told me that was a real good idea.
Love and Peace
and Red Dirt, Lili.
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
Today Miss Alina said, So when am I going to see some of that poetry you’re so famous for writing? She was handing back math tests and I got a forty on mine. That means I failed it
. Real bad. I only got four out of ten right. Clyde got a hundred. He looked over at my test and said, Man, you sure can’t do math. Miss Alina must have seen me get choky. I wasn’t going to cry. Not in class. Not in front of people. But I wish, wish, wish I understood math and I don’t. It goes right out of my head. Even though Clyde tries to help me and Miss Alina explains stuff again and again. I just don’t get it. Clyde said it’s a good thing I’m going to be a writer. He said he’d be my accountant. That made me smile a little bit. I took out my notebook and tore one of my poems out of it and gave it to Alina. She said she didn’t want to take my only copy but I told her the truth, that I always make copies of my poems right after I finish writing them. (I didn’t tell her I always make two copies so that I can save one for you.) She winked at me and told me she couldn’t wait to read it. Read it now, I said. I wanted her to read it and get the bad taste of my forty percent math test out of her head. But she said, Nope. You took the time to write it. I want to take the time to read it. Then she put it in her folder of take-home stuff. But it’s Friday, so now I gotta wait all the way until Monday to see what she thinks. But I bet she’s reading it right now. Keep your fingers crossed that she likes it.
Love and Peace and Poetry,
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
It was real nice seeing you today. I’m glad we got to go to the park. Even though it was freezing, I loved how bright everything was and how when me and you looked up into the sky, all we could see was all that blue. I felt bad that your foster mama and Miss Edna had to sit on those cold benches and couldn’t play on the swings like we did. Miss Edna said they weren’t cold though. She’d packed that thermos of hot cider and she said they enjoyed themselves, sitting outside in the cold, drinking hot cider. Your foster mama smiled a lot today. I guess she was enjoying herself. I know you got mad when Miss Edna and your foster mama laughed because me and you had our hair braided the same way. Even though you said you weren’t, I know you were. Your eyebrows get all wrinkled up when you get mad. They weren’t laughing at us, Lili. Miss Edna said it just tickles her how much me and you look alike already and then we go and get the same style—and not even on purpose. It’s like me and you are connected way deep. Once I read this story about these twins that never even met each other. They didn’t even know each other because they’d gotten separated when they were born. But then, when they got to be grown-ups, they met and everything about them was just alike. They were even both wearing blue turtleneck sweaters! After me and Miss Edna got home, she went to take a hot bath and I sat down and reread the poem I gave Miss Alina. I added a new line. I wonder if you can guess what it is. Here’s the poem, Lili. I hope you like it.
Love forever,
Locomotion
Little Things by Lonnie C. Motion
Sometimes
Like after it snows
Or when we have Miss Edna’s homemade chicken and dumplings or
When me and my sister are sitting on the swings at
The 9th Street playground in Prospect Park,
Just swinging a little and talking a lot,
It’s hard not to think
That there’s stuff in the world that’s perfect
Little things people probably don’t think real hard about.
Me and Clyde having a snowball fight
Or just talking
The way pound cake makes Clyde remember good things
The poster of the Nets that Rodney gave me
Sometimes when all the real big things feel all hard and crazy
I close my eyes and cover my ears
And think real hard
About the little things.
Dear Lili,
It’s Monday night. Today Alina gave my poem back to me and this is what she wrote.
Lonnie,
Your poem made me think about the good
things in my own life. On my list, I’d include
having an amazing poet in my sixth-grade
classroom. Thanks so much for sharing this
with me. Alina
Lonnie
Dear Lili,
Yesterday was Miss Jamison’s Check In With Lonnie At The House Day. But when she got here, I was just in my room and didn’t feel like coming out. She asked if she could come in and I said no because I’d been kind of crying for a long time and I didn’t want her to see that my face was all puffy. I heard her walk back down the hall, then I heard her and Miss Edna talking in the kitchen. Miss Edna said, I do all I can to help that poor boy be a little bit less sad. I heard Miss Jamison ask her why I was feeling so sad and Miss Edna said, Well, it is December. And then Miss Jamison said, Good Lord, it is now, isn’t it? Then I didn’t listen to them anymore because I don’t ever want to hear anything about the month of December. I don’t want to hear about Christmas or New Year’s or Kwanzaa. Nothing. I hate December, Lili. If it wasn’t for December, Mama and Daddy would still be alive and you and me would still be living together.
But if it wasn’t for December, I would never have got to meet Miss Edna and Rodney. And you wouldn’t know your foster mama. Man! I hate all this stuff in my head!
I’m gonna turn my brain off for a while now because Miss Edna said it was okay if I wanted to watch some TV. I’m gonna watch a whole bunch of cartoons and try to forget every single other thing.
Peace, Lili.
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
Today we had a holiday party and Miss Alina made red and green wreath cookies and we each got to eat two. But I couldn’t eat mine because Mama used to make cookies like that. Miss Alina saw those cookies just sitting on my desk, so she came over and put her hand on my shoulder. She said real soft, Lonnie, I’m worried about you. I told her I’m all right, but she looked like she didn’t believe me and the whole rest of the afternoon she kept watching me. I wanted to tell her not to look too close because she might see all the fire inside of me that feels just like the fire that burned down our house. But I just looked down at my desk and played with my pencil. Clyde asked if he could have my cookies and I said yeah. He asked what I was doing for Christmas vacation and I told him I didn’t really feel like talking so he said, That’s cool. Then he put both cookies in his mouth at the same time, gave me the chest pound-peace sign and walked back over to his own desk. I sat at my desk and all I could think about was how excited Mama would get around holiday time. How she’d be cooking and baking and playing Christmas music and decorating the windows. In my head I just kept seeing all that Before Time stuff and kept thinking about how the stuff that you think is going to be there always can just leave you real quick like that. Go up in flames. Be gone forever.
Lili, I don’t want to write a lot about this because I don’t want to pass it down to you. I don’t want you worrying and remembering this stuff. I just want you to remember all the good stuff, like how Daddy used to swing us up into the air and throw us on the couch. And on the last day of school before Christmas vacation, we’d all walk down to Fulton Street where this old man used to sell real Christmas trees and Mama and Daddy would stand there while me and you walked all slow around the trees, sniffing them and feeling them and looking at each other until we decided exactly which one was perfect. And we always agreed. Then we’d go home and put our tree up and Mama would put on that song that went Come on, baby, do the Locomotion. And we’d all dance around the tree doing the Locomotion. Mama always used to tell us that she loved that song so much, that’s why I got my name. Then she’d go on and on about how much rhythm me and you had. You loved to do that dance, Lili. I hope you haven’t forgotten it.
Your brother forever,
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
Jenkins is back home. That’s all I can write about it right now. I’m sorry. I’ll write more real soon.
Peace,
Locomotion
Dear Lili,
Today some men came and they worked all day making all the doorways bigger. Like the doorway from the kitchen
to the living room and the one from the bathroom into the hall. And Jenkins’s door. Lili, Jenkins is in a wheelchair. Everybody’s talking about his missing leg but I don’t know what it looks like because Jenkins hasn’t come out of his room and I wasn’t even here when he got here. It’s been almost a week and I’ve only seen little parts of him when I walk real fast by his room. He keeps it real dark in there and just sits in that chair staring out the window. I don’t even know what his face looks like. Miss Edna and Rodney go in and out bringing him food and stuff. He has a special sick person’s bathroom thing in there, so he doesn’t even come out of his room to go to the bathroom. Last night I asked Miss Edna if there was something I could do to help and she said, Just be thankful he’s alive and pray that my baby smiles again one day. Miss Edna looks real tired but she also looks real relieved and it’s like she got a part of her life back or something, because she goes to the store and does laundry and cooks—stuff she wasn’t doing for a long time. Miss Edna said no matter what, I need to go see you on Saturday. She says she knows you miss me like crazy. Well, I miss you too, Lili. So I’ll be there.
Peace, Locomotion Page 5