back to South Carolina. We kiss
our baby brother good-bye in his hospital bed where
he reaches out, cries to come with us.
His words are weak as water, no more
than a whisper with so much air around them.
I’m coming too, he says.
But he isn’t coming.
Not this time.
My mother says there is lead in his blood
from the paint he finds a way to pick
and eat off our bedroom wall
every time our backs are turned.
Small holes grow, like white stars against
the green paint, covered again and again
by our mother. But still, he finds a way.
Each of us hugs him, promises
to bring him candy and toys.
Promises we won’t have fun down south
without him.
Each of us leans in
for our mother’s kiss on our forehead,
her warm lips, already a memory
that each of us carries home.
home again to hall street
My grandmother’s kitchen is the same
big and yellow and smelling of the pound cake
she’s made to welcome us back.
And now in the late afternoon, she is standing
at the sink, tearing collards beneath
cool running water, while the crows caw outside,
and the sun sinks slow into red and gold
When Hope lets the screen door slam,
she fusses,
Boy, don’t you slam my door again! and my brother says,
I’m sorry.
Just like always.
Soon, there’ll be lemonade on the porch,
the swing whining the same early evening song
it always sings
my brother and sister with the checker set between them
me next to my grandfather, falling asleep against
his thin shoulder.
And it’s not even strange that it feels the way
it’s always felt
like the place we belong to.
Like home.
mrs. hughes’s house
In Greenville, my grandfather is too sick
to work anymore, so my grandmother has a full-time job.
Now we spend every day from July
until the middle of August
at Mrs. Hughes’s Nursery and Day School.
Each morning, we walk the long dusty road
to Mrs. Hughes’s house—large, white stone,
with a yard circling and chickens pecking at our feet.
Beyond the yard there’s collards and corn growing
a scarecrow, black snakes, and whip-poor-wills.
She is a big woman, tall, yellow-skinned and thick
as a wall.
I hold tight to my grandmother’s hand. Maybe
I am crying.
My grandmother drops us off and
the other kids circle around us. Laughing at
our hair, our clothes, the names our parents
have given us,
our city way of talking—too fast, too many words
to hear at once
too many big words coming out of
my sister’s mouth.
I am always the first to cry. A gentle slap on the side
of my head, a secret pinch,
girls circling around me singing, Who stole the cookie
from the cookie jar and
pointing, as though the song is true, at me.
My sister’s tears are slow to come. But when they do,
it isn’t sadness.
It’s something different that sends her swinging
her fists when
the others yank her braids until the satin,
newly ironed ribbons belong to them,
hidden away in the deep pockets of their dresses,
tucked into
their sagging stockings, buried inside their
silver lunch pails.
Hope is silent—his name, they say, belongs to a girl,
his ears, they laugh
stick out too far from his head.
Our feet are beginning to belong
in two different worlds—Greenville
and New York. We don’t know how to come
home
and leave
home
how to listen #4
Kids are mean, Dell says.
Just turn away. Pretend we
know better than that.
field service
Saturday morning’s the hardest day for us now.
For three hours we move through
the streets of Nicholtown,
knocking on strangers’ doors, hoping to convert
them into Sisters and Brothers and children of God.
This summer I am allowed to knock on my first door
alone. An old woman answers, smiles kindly at me.
What a special child you are, she says.
Sky-blue ribbons in my hair, my Watchtower held tight
in my white-gloved hand,
the blue linen dress a friend of my grandmother’s
has made for me stopping just above my knees.
My name is Jacqueline Woodson, I nearly whisper,
my throat suddenly dry
voice near gone.
I’m here to bring you some good news today . . .
Well how much does your good news cost, the woman
wants to know.
A dime.
She shakes her head sadly, closes her door a moment
to search beneath a trunk where she hopes
she’s dropped a coin or two.
But when she comes back, there are no coins
in her hand.
Oh I’d love to read that magazine, she says.
I just don’t have money.
And for many days my heart hurts with the sadness
that such a nice woman will not be a part of God’s
new world.
It isn’t fair, I say to my grandmother when
so many days have passed.
I want to go back. I want to give her something
for free.
But we’re done now with that strip of Nicholtown.
Next Saturday, we’ll be somewhere else.
Another Witness will go there, my grandmother promises.
By and by, she says, that woman will find her way.
sunday afternoon on the front porch
Across the road,
Miss Bell has tied a blue-checked sunbonnet
beneath her chin, lifts her head from her bed
of azaleas and waves to my grandmother.
I am sitting beside her on the front porch swing, Hope
and Dell leaning back against the wood beam
at the top of the front porch stairs. It is as
though we have always been in this position,
the front porch swing moving gently back and forth,
the sun warm on our faces, the day only halfway over.
I see your grands are back for the summer,
Miss Bell says. Getting big, too.
It is Sunday afternoon.
Out back, my grandfather pulls weeds from his garden,
digs softly into the rich earth to add new melon seeds.
Wondering
if this time, they’ll grow. All this he does from
a small chair, a cane beside him.
He moves as if underwater, coughs
hard and long into a handkerchief, calls out for Hope
; when he needs the chair moved, sees me watching,
and shakes his head. I’m catching you worrying, he says.
Too young for that. So just cut it out now, you hear?
His voice
so strong and clear today, I can’t help smiling.
Soon I’ll rise from the porch,
change out of my Kingdom Hall clothes into
a pair of shorts and a cotton blouse
trade my patent-leather Mary Janes for bare feet
and join my grandfather in the garden.
What took you so long, he’ll say. I was about to turn
this earth around without you.
Soon, it’ll be near evening and Daddy and I
will walk slow
back into the house where I’ll pull the Epsom salt
from the shelf
fill the dishpan with warm water, massage
his swelling hands.
But for now, I sit listening to Nicholtown settle
around me,
pray that one day Roman will be well enough
to know this moment.
Pray that we will always have this—the front porch,
my grandfather in the garden,
a woman in a blue-checked sunbonnet
moving through azaleas . . .
Pretty children, Miss Bell says.
But God don’t make them no other kinda way.
home then home again
Too fast, our summer in Greenville
is ending.
Already, the phone calls from my mother
are filled with plans for coming home.
We miss
our little’s brother’s laughter, the way
he runs to us at the end of the school day as if
we’ve been gone forever. The way his small hands
curl around ours when we watch TV. Holding
tight through the scary parts, until we tell him
Scooby-Doo will save the day,
Bugs Bunny will get away,
Underdog will arrive before the train hits
Sweet Polly Purebred.
We drag our feet below our swings,
our arms wrapped lazily around the metal links
no longer fascinated by the newness
of the set, the way we climbed all over the slide,
pumped our legs hard—toward heaven until
the swing set shook with the weight of us lifting it
from the ground.
Next summer, my grandfather said, I’ll cement it down.
But in the meantime
you all swing low.
Our suitcases sit at the foot of our bed, open
slowly filling with freshly washed summer clothes,
each blouse, each pair of shorts, each faded cotton dress
holding a story that we’ll tell again and again
all winter long.
family
In the books, there’s always a happily ever after.
The ugly duckling grows into a swan, Pinocchio
becomes a boy.
The witch gets chucked into the oven by Gretel,
the Selfish Giant goes to heaven.
Even Winnie the Pooh seems to always get his honey.
Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is freed
from the belly of the wolf.
When my sister reads to me, I wait for the moment
when the story moves faster—toward the happy ending
that I know is coming.
On the bus home from Greenville, I wake to the almost
happy ending, my mother standing at the station, Roman
in his stroller, his smile bright, his arms reaching for us
but we see the white hospital band like a bracelet
on his wrist. Tomorrow he will return there.
We are not all finally and safely
home.
one place
For a long time, our little brother
goes back and forth to the hospital, his body
weak from the lead, his brain
not doing what a brain is supposed to do. We don’t
understand why he’s so small, has tubes
coming from his arms, sleeps and sleeps . . .
when we visit him.
But one day,
he comes home. The holes in the wall
are covered over and left
unpainted, his bed pulled away from temptation,
nothing for him to peel away.
He is four now, curls long gone, his dark brown hair
straight as a bone, strange to us but
our little brother, the four of us again
in one place.
maria
Late August now
home from Greenville and ready
for what the last of the summer brings me.
All the dreams this city holds
right outside—just step through the door and walk
two doors down to where
my new best friend, Maria, lives. Every morning,
I call up to her window, Come outside
or she rings our bell, Come outside.
Her hair is crazily curling down past her back,
the Spanish she speaks like a song
I am learning to sing.
Mi amiga, Maria.
Maria, my friend.
how to listen #5
What is your one dream,
my friend Maria asks me.
Your one wish come true?
tomboy
My sister, Dell, reads and reads
and never learns
to jump rope or
play handball against the factory wall on the corner.
Never learns to sprint
barefoot down the block
to become
the fastest girl
on Madison Street.
Doesn’t learn
to hide the belt or steal the bacon
or kick the can . . .
But I do and because of this
Tomboy becomes my new name.
My walk, my mother says,
reminds her of my father.
When I move long-legged and fast away from her
she remembers him.
game over
When my mother calls,
Hope Dell Jackie—inside!
the game is over.
No more reading beneath the streetlight
for Dell. But for my brother and me
it’s no more anything! No more
steal the bacon
coco levio 1-2-3
Miss Lucy had a baby
spinning tops
double Dutch.
No more
freeze tag
hide the belt
hot peas and butter.
No more
singing contests on the stoop.
No more
ice cream truck chasing:
Wait! Wait, ice cream man! My mother’s gonna
give me money!
No more getting wet in the johnny pump
or standing with two fisted hands out in front of me,
a dime hidden in one, chanting,
Dumb school, dumb school, which hand’s it in?
When my mother calls,
Hope Dell Jackie—inside!
we complain as we walk up the block in the twilight:
Everyone else is allowed to stay outside till dark.
Our friends standing in the moment—
string halfway wrapped around a top,
waiting to be tagged and unfrozen,
searching for words to a song,
dripping from the johnny pump,
silent in the middle of Miss Lucy had a . . .
The game is over for the evening and all we can hear
is our friends’
Aw . . . man!!
Bummer!
For real?! This early?!
Dang it!
Shoot. Your mama’s mean!
Early birds!
Why she gotta mess up our playing like that?
Jeez. Now
the game’s over!
lessons
My mother says:
When Mama tried to teach me
to make collards and potato salad
I didn’t want to learn.
She opens the box of pancake mix, adds milk
and egg, stirs. I watch
grateful for the food we have now—syrup waiting
in the cabinet, bananas to slice on top.
It’s Saturday morning.
Five days a week, she leaves us
to work at an office back in Brownsville.
Saturday we have her to ourselves, all day long.
Me and Kay didn’t want to be inside cooking.
She stirs the lumps from the batter, pours it
into the buttered, hissing pan.
Wanted to be with our friends
running wild through Greenville.
There was a man with a peach tree down the road.
One day Robert climbed over that fence, filled a bucket
with peaches. Wouldn’t share them with any of us but
told us where the peach tree was. And that’s where we
wanted to be
sneaking peaches from that man’s tree, throwing
the rotten ones
at your uncle!
Mama wanted us to learn to cook.
Ask the boys, we said. And Mama knew that wasn’t fair
girls inside and boys going off to steal peaches!
So she let all of us
stay outside until suppertime.
And by then, she says, putting our breakfast on the table,
it was too late.