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
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