Brown Girl Dreaming

  how beautiful.

  When my sister sees us

  pretending to smoke, she shakes her head.

  That’s why Daddy died, she says.

  After that

  me and Maria peel the paper off,

  turn our cigarettes into regular bubble gum.

  After that

  the game is over.

  what’s left behind

  You’ve got your daddy’s easy way,

  my grandmother says to me, holding

  the picture of my grandfather

  in her hands. I watch you with

  your friends and see him all over again.

  Where will the wedding supper be?

  Way down yonder in a hollow tree . . .

  We look at the picture without talking.

  Sometimes, I don’t know the words for things,

  how to write down the feeling of knowing

  that every dying person leaves something behind.

  I got my grandfather’s easy way. Maybe

  I know this when I’m laughing. Maybe

  I know it when I think of Daddy

  and he feels close enough

  for me to lay my head against his shoulder.

  I remember how he laughed, I tell my grandmother

  and she smiles and says,

  Because you laugh just like him.

  Two peas in a pod, you were.

  Two peas in a pod we were.

  the stories i tell

  Every autumn, the teacher asks us to

  write about summer vacation

  and read it to the class.

  In Brooklyn, everybody goes south

  or to Puerto Rico

  or to their cousin’s house in Queens.

  But after my grandmother moves to New York,

  we only go down south once,

  for my aunt Lucinda’s funeral. After that,

  my grandmother says she’s done with the South

  says it makes her too sad.

  But now

  when summer comes

  our family gets on a plane, flies

  to

  Africa

  Hawaii

  Chicago.

  For summer vacation we went to Long Island,

  to the beach. Everybody went fishing and everybody

  caught a lot of fish.

  Even though no one in my family has ever been

  to Long Island

  or fished

  or likes the ocean—too deep, too scary. Still,

  each autumn, I write a story.

  In my writing, there is a stepfather now

  who lives in California but meets us wherever we go.

  There is a church, not a Kingdom Hall.

  There is a blue car, a new dress, loose unribboned hair.

  In my stories, our family is regular as air

  two boys, two girls, sometimes a dog.

  Did that really happen? the kids in class ask.

  Yeah, I say. If it didn’t, how would I know what to write?

  how to listen #8

  Do you remember . . . ?

  someone’s always asking and

  someone else, always does.

  fate & faith & reasons

  Everything happens for a reason, my mother

  says. Then tells me how Kay believed

  in fate and destiny—everything

  that ever happened or was going to happen

  couldn’t ever be avoided. The marchers

  down south didn’t just up and start

  their marching—it was part of a longer, bigger

  plan, that maybe belonged to God.

  My mother tells me this as we fold laundry, white towels

  separated from the colored ones. Each

  a threat to the other and I remember the time

  I spilled bleach on a blue towel, dotting it forever.

  The pale pink towel, a memory

  of when it was washed with a red one. Maybe

  there is something, after all, to the way

  some people want to remain—each to its own kind.

  But in time

  maybe

  everything will fade to gray.

  Even all of us coming to Brooklyn,

  my mother says, wasn’t some accident. And I can’t help

  thinking of the birds here—how they disappear

  in the wintertime,

  heading south for food and warmth and shelter.

  Heading south

  to stay alive . . . passing us on the way . . .

  No accidents, my mother says. Just fate and faith

  and reasons.

  When I ask my mother what she believes in,

  she stops, midfold, and looks out the back window.

  Autumn

  is full on here and the sky is bright blue.

  I guess I believe in right now, she says. And the resurrection.

  And Brooklyn. And the four of you.

  what if . . . ?

  Maria’s mother never left Bayamón, Puerto Rico,

  and my mother never left Greenville.

  What if no one had ever walked the grassy fields

  that are now Madison Street and said,

  Let’s put some houses here.

  What if the people in Maria’s building didn’t sell

  1279 Madison Street

  to Maria’s parents

  and our landlord told my mom that he couldn’t rent

  1283

  to someone who already had four children.

  What if the park with the swings wasn’t right across

  Knickerbocker Avenue?

  What if Maria hadn’t walked out of her building

  one day and said,

  My name is Maria but my mom calls me Googoo.

  What if I had laughed instead of saying,

  You’re lucky. I wish I had a nickname, too.

  You want to go to the park sometime?

  What if she didn’t have a sister and two brothers

  and I didn’t have a sister and two brothers

  and her dad didn’t teach us to box

  and her mother didn’t cook such good food?

  I can’t even imagine any of it, Maria says.

  Nope, I say. Neither can I.

  bushwick history lesson

  Before German mothers wrapped scarves around

  their heads,

  kissed their own mothers good-bye and headed across

  the world

  to Bushwick—

  Before the Italian fathers sailed across the ocean

  for the dream of America

  and found themselves in Bushwick—

  Before Dominican daughters donned quinceañera

  dresses and walked proudly down Bushwick Avenue—

  Before young brown boys in cutoff shorts spun their

  first tops and played their first games of skelly on

  Bushwick Streets—

  Before any of that, this place was called Boswijck,

  settled by the Dutch

  and Franciscus the Negro, a former slave

  who bought his freedom.

  And all of New York was called New Amsterdam,

  run by a man

  named Peter Stuyvesant. There were slaves here.

  Those who could afford to own

  their freedom

  lived on the other side of the wall.

  And now that place is called Wall Street.

  When my teacher says, So write down what all of this means

  to you, our heads bend over our notebooks, the whole class

  silent. The whole class belonging somewhere:

  Bushwick.

  I didn’t just
appear one day.

  I didn’t just wake up and know how to write my name.

  I keep writing, knowing now

  that I was a long time coming.

  how to listen #9

  Under the back porch

  there’s an alone place I go

  writing all I’ve heard.

  the promise land

  When my uncle gets out of jail

  he isn’t just my uncle anymore, he is

  Robert the Muslim and wears

  a small black kufi on his head.

  And even though we know

  we Witnesses are the chosen ones, we listen

  to the stories he tells about

  a man named Muhammad

  and a holy place called Mecca

  and the strength of all Black people.

  We sit in a circle around him, his hands

  moving slow through the air, his voice

  calmer and quieter than it was before

  he went away.

  When he pulls out a small rug to pray on

  I kneel beside him, wanting to see

  his Mecca

  wanting to know the place

  he calls the Promise Land.

  Look with your heart and your head, he tells me

  his own head bowed.

  It’s out there in front of you.

  You’ll know when you get there.

  power to the people

  On the TV screen a woman

  named Angela Davis is telling us

  there’s a revolution going on and that it’s time

  for Black people to defend themselves.

  So Maria and I walk through the streets,

  our fists raised in the air Angela Davis style.

  We read about her in the Daily News, run

  to the television each time she’s interviewed.

  She is beautiful and powerful and has

  my same gap-toothed smile. We dream

  of running away to California

  to join the Black Panthers

  the organization Angela is a part of.

  She is not afraid, she says,

  to die for what she believes in

  but doesn’t plan to die

  without a fight.

  The FBI says Angela Davis is one of America’s

  Most Wanted.

  Already, there are so many things I don’t understand, why

  someone would have to die

  or even fight for what they believe in.

  Why the cops would want someone who is trying

  to change the world

  in jail.

  We are not afraid to die, Maria and I shout, fists high,

  for what we believe in.

  But both of us know—we’d rather keep believing

  and live.

  say it loud

  My mother tells us the Black Panthers are doing

  all kinds of stuff

  to make the world a better place for Black children.

  In Oakland, they started a free breakfast program

  so that poor kids can have a meal

  before starting their school day. Pancakes,

  toast, eggs, fruit: we watch the kids eat happily,

  sing songs about how proud they are

  to be Black. We sing the song along with them

  stand on the bases of lampposts and scream,

  Say it loud: I’m Black and I’m proud until

  my mother hollers from the window,

  Get down before you break your neck.

  I don’t understand the revolution.

  In Bushwick, there’s a street we can’t cross called

  Wyckoff Avenue. White people live on the other side.

  Once a boy from my block got beat up for walking

  over there.

  Once there were four white families on our block

  but they all moved away except for the old lady

  who lives by the tree. Some days, she brings out cookies

  tells us stories of the old neighborhood when everyone

  was German or Irish and even some Italians

  down by Wilson Avenue.

  All kinds of people, she says. And the cookies

  are too good for me to say,

  Except us.

  Everyone knows where they belong here.

  It’s not Greenville

  but it’s not diamond sidewalks either.

  I still don’t know what it is

  that would make people want to get along.

  Maybe no one does.

  Angela Davis smiles, gap-toothed and beautiful,

  raises her fist in the air

  says, Power to the people, looks out from the television

  directly into my eyes.

  maybe mecca

  There is a teenager on our block with one arm missing,

  we call him Leftie and he tells us

  he lost his arm in Vietnam.

  That’s a war, he says. Y’all lucky to be too young to go.

  It doesn’t hurt anymore, he tells us when we gather

  around him.

  But his eyes are sad eyes and some days he walks

  around the block

  maybe a hundred times without saying anything

  to anyone.

  When we call, Hey Leftie! he doesn’t even look our way.

  Some evenings, I kneel toward Mecca with my uncle.

  Maybe Mecca

  is the place Leftie goes to in his mind, when

  the memory of losing

  his arm becomes too much. Maybe Mecca is

  good memories,

  presents and stories and poetry and arroz con pollo

  and family and friends . . .

  Maybe Mecca is the place everyone is looking for . . .

  It’s out there in front of you, my uncle says.

  I know I’ll know it

  when I get there.

  the revolution

  Don’t wait for your school to teach you, my uncle says,

  about the revolution. It’s happening in the streets.

  He’s been out of jail for more than a year now and his hair

  is an afro again, gently moving in the wind as we head

  to the park, him holding tight

  to my hand even when we’re not crossing

  Knickerbocker Avenue, even now when I’m too old

  for hand holding and the like.

  The revolution is when Shirley Chisholm ran for president

  and the rest of the world tried to imagine

  a Black woman in the White House.

  When I hear the word

  revolution

  I think of the carousel with

  all those beautiful horses

  going around as though they’ll never stop and me

  choosing the purple one each time, climbing up onto it

  and reaching for the golden ring, as soft music plays.

  The revolution is always going to be happening.

  I want to write this down, that the revolution is like

  a merry-go-round, history always being made

  somewhere. And maybe for a short time,

  we’re a part of that history. And then the ride stops

  and our turn is over.

  We walk slow toward the park where I can already see

  the big swings, empty and waiting for me.

  And after I write it down, maybe I’ll end it this way:

  My name is Jacqueline Woodson

  and I am ready for the ride.

  how to listen #10

  Write down what I think

  I know. The knowing will come.

  Just keep listening . . .


  a writer

  You’re a writer, Ms. Vivo says,

  her gray eyes bright behind

  thin wire frames. Her smile bigger than anything

  so I smile back, happy to hear these words

  from a teacher’s mouth. She is a feminist, she tells us

  and thirty fifth-grade hands bend into desks

  where our dictionaries wait to open yet another

  world to us. Ms. Vivo pauses, watches our fingers fly

  Webster’s has our answers.

  Equal rights, a boy named Andrew yells out.

  For women.

  My hands freeze on the thin white pages.

  Like Blacks, Ms. Vivo, too, is part of a revolution.

  But right now, that revolution is so far away from me.

  This moment, this here, this right now is my teacher

  saying,

  You’re a writer, as she holds the poem I am just beginning.

  The first four lines, stolen

  from my sister:

  Black brothers, Black sisters, all of them were great

  no fear no fright but a willingness to fight . . .

  You can have them, Dell said when she saw.

  I don’t want to be a poet.

  And then my own pencil moving late into the evening:

  In big fine houses lived the whites

  in little old shacks lived the blacks

  but the blacks were smart

  in fear they took no part.

  One of them was Martin

  with a heart of gold.

  You’re a writer, Ms. Vivo says, holding my poem out to me.

  And standing in front of the class

  taking my poem from her

  my voice shakes as I recite the first line:

  Black brothers, Black sisters, all of them were great. . . .

  But my voice grows stronger with each word because