Vonetta wrote:
Dear Cecile,
How are you? I am fine. Delphine made us write “Dear Cecile” but this is my letter and I can write what I want. Which do you like best? Mother? Mommy? How about Little Ma, since we already have Big Ma? Since you are bigger than Big Ma, I’ll just write Cecile.
Remember I said I’m going into the fourth grade? In two weeks I’ll be in my fourth-grade classroom. My new teacher’s name is Mrs. Dixon. I’ll tell her you’re my mother and Big Ma is my grandmother because she’ll see Big Ma at the parent-teacher confrens and she won’t see you.
Pa is getting married to a nice lady with groovy makeup and clothes. I’m going to be the flower girl. I will look pretty in my flower girl dress. I want my dress to be yellow, pink, or violet.
Delphine is a giant crab.
Yours truly,
Vonetta Gaither
Fern wrote:
To Nzila
I like leaves in the summer.
I like leaves in the fall.
There’s no leaves in the winter.
So don’t leave
Afua.
She made the first A in Afua extra large and the small a with a curly tail to match the way Cecile signs her poems in movable-type printing blocks. A large and fancy N and a fancy z with a tail.
I said, “Fern, you forgot the period.”
She pointed to the one after her name and said, “There it is.”
I pointed to the word leave. “It goes there. After ‘don’t leave.’”
She said, “No, it doesn’t.”
I said, “It’s wrong, Fern.”
She bobbed her little turtle head and snapped, “It’s right so don’t touch it.”
“Fine,” I said. “Send it that way.”
“I’m sending it that way, and you better not touch it.” She folded her arms, happy to be wrong.
I checked Vonetta’s letter and rolled my eyes about the “giant crab” part.
“You shouldn’t write all of this stuff about Cecile being big and how that lady Pa’s marrying is nice.”
“Cecile is big. Bigger than Big Ma. Bigger than you,” Vonetta said. “And Pa’s fiancée is nice and wears nice clothes.”
“Surely is. Surely does.”
“That still doesn’t mean you should write it,” I said. How could she use that word? Fiancée. Pa’s fiancée.
“You can’t tell us what to write. We have the freedom to write what we want.”
“And to put a period where we want to.”
“And to say Miss Hendrix is nice.”
“Power to the people.”
“Power to the people, right on.”
I wanted to write a letter to Hirohito but I didn’t know his house number. If I took a guess and sent it, and the post office returned it, Big Ma would get my letter first. She’d probably open it and read it and tell me I was too young to be writing to a boy.
I decided to write to my mother instead. Cecile had already told me to mind my business about her feelings and about Pa, but I still wanted to know why my parents didn’t get married. Why my father bought Miss Marva Hendrix a ring but he didn’t buy one for my mother.
Instead, I told Cecile how I tried to help Vonetta and Fern with their letters but they didn’t want my help. I said Vonetta and Fern were driving me crazy and that I couldn’t wait for school to start so I could officially be in the sixth grade.
I didn’t ask her for Hirohito’s address like I wanted to. She’d make a big federal case out of it like Big Ma had and write back and say things that made me feel bad or want to scratch my head. I just closed my letter with “Yours truly” and my name.
If Cecile cared where Fern put her period and if Papa’s lady friend was nice, or if Vonetta planned on being a flower girl, she didn’t mention it in her letter to me. When the envelope with an Oakland, California, postmark arrived, I opened it and gave Vonetta her letter and Fern hers. I thought they would read their letters out loud, but they took them and ran back to their room.
To me she wrote:
Dear Delphine,
You all have something. I saw it at the rally. Vonetta is a natural-born performer. She can open her mouth and holler when she wants to.
That Little Girl is a natural-born poet. You saw her being born on the kitchen floor, and I saw a poet being born up on that stage. Her rally poem isn’t exactly Longfellow but it is a running start. She might run far. Let her go. Let her run.
Don’t concern yourself with old things. Concern yourself with finding your own thing. But don’t rush. Listen to Billie sing, “God bless the child who has her own.” Enjoy the time it takes to find your own.
Study hard.
Your Mother.
Cecile
P.S. Be eleven.
She’d written it again. “P.S. Be eleven.”
I stared at it like it was the wrong grade marked on the bottom of my paper. My mother was a touch crazy, not dumb. But now I felt dumb because I didn’t know Billie or why Cecile had written that twice. “P.S. Be eleven.”
I was eleven. How could you become what you already were?