We found the Center like Cecile said we would. A line of hungry kids waited for breakfast, except they weren’t all black. There were older teens in mostly black clothes and Afros posted like soldiers guarding the outside. That hardly seemed necessary when a white-and-black police car circled around the block.
Vonetta was already smiling and showing anyone who’d look her way that she was worth a smile back. She had picked out three girls who looked alike enough to be sisters, each one as thick as my sisters and I were lanky. They wore white boots and daisy dresses with flared sleeves. They might as well have been going to a go-go, not to a free breakfast.
I kept Fern near, my arms crossed before me. I was here to make sure my sisters and I ate breakfast, and to stay out of Cecile’s hair. If Vonetta wanted to get her feelings hurt chasing after smiles and go-go boots, that was on her.
The Panthers opened the doors and we trailed inside, the three of us sticking close together. As we entered, I did what Cecile said. I handed the box to the first Black Panther I saw and said, “This is from Cecile.” I wasn’t about to call her some name I didn’t know or tell them she said to leave her alone. The Black Panther guy opened the box. He took out a sheet from a stack of paper—a flyer with a crouching black panther and some writing on it—and held it up to examine it. He nodded, said, “Thank you, Sister,” and took the box with him.
The three girls in the flower dresses were standing on line looking at us. Vonetta tried to steer me over to them, but I didn’t want to go chasing after them. Their dresses looked so nice and new. We wore shorts and sun tops, although Oakland wasn’t as sunny as we’d imagined California would be. I found us a place on line behind Puerto Ricans who didn’t look Puerto Rican but who spoke Spanish. Then I remembered our study of the fifty states. They were probably Mexicans.
I thought Black Panthers would only look out for black people, but there were the two Mexicans, a little white boy, and a boy who looked both black and Chinese. Everyone else was black. I’d never seen the Black Panthers making breakfast on the news. But then, beating eggs never makes the evening news.
As we stood on line, a guy who should have kept walking stopped right in front of us. He crossed his arms and looked down at Fern.
I recognized the beakish nose on that narrow face. He was the one in the telephone booth who had turned his back to us, like he didn’t want to be seen. For all I knew, he was one of those in the black berets and Afros who’d come knocking on Cecile’s door last night. Now he stood across from Fern, his legs apart and his arms folded.
“What is wrong with this picture,” he stated instead of asked. He knew the answer, all right. I was pretty good at reading faces.
He didn’t have a leather jacket, but he was one of them. On his black T-shirt was a dead white pig with flies buzzing around it and the words OFF THE PIG in white letters. His hair was a big loose Afro because it was a little stringy. Stringy like Lucy Raleigh’s, who bragged about being part Chickasaw in the fourth grade but by fifth grade was singing “I’m Black and I’m Proud” louder than loud because James Brown’s song had made it the thing to do.
The stringy-Afro-wearing beak man wasn’t Papa-grown or Cecile-grown. Probably all of nineteen or twenty, but he thought he was something. He was putting on a show for all the other black beret wearers.
When none of us spoke, he pointed and asked again the question whose answer he already knew. “What is wrong with this picture?”
Fern pointed back at him and said, “I don’t know. What’s wrong with this picture?”
The other Black Panthers laughed and told Fern, “That’s right, Li’l Sis. Don’t take nothing from no one.” And they slapped palms and said stuff like “These are Sister Inzilla’s, all right. Look at them.”
Beak Man tried to stand up to his humiliation. Shake it off.
“Li’l Sis, are you a white girl or a black girl?”
Fern said, “I’m a colored girl.”
He didn’t like the sound of “colored girl.” He said, “Black girl.”
Fern said, “Colored.”
“Black girl.”
Vonetta and I threw our “colored” on top of Fern’s like we were ringtossing at Coney Island. This was bigger than Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud. If one of us said “colored,” we all said “colored.” Unless we were fighting among ourselves.
“All right, then. ‘Cullid’ girls,” Big Beak said, “why are you carrying that self-hatred around in your arms?”
An older teenage girl in a Cal State T-shirt said, “Kelvin, you’re crazy. Leave those colored girls alone.”
Big-beaked, stringy-haired Kelvin looked pleased with himself.
I said, “That’s not self-hatred. That’s her doll.”
“Yeah. A doll baby.”
“Miss Patty Cake.”
In spite of the Cal State girl and the other Black Panthers saying leave those girls alone, he went on.
“Are your eyes blue like hers? Is your hair blond like hers? Is your skin white like hers?”
The girl said again, “Crazy Kelvin, stop it. Just stop it.”
Crazy Kelvin turned to a lady who wore an African-print dress and a matching cloth wrapped around her head. “Sister Mukumbu. Our ‘colored’ girls here need some reeducation.” And he walked away, one of those pimp walks, like How you like me now?
Sister Mukumbu just smiled at him like she didn’t take Crazy Kelvin seriously. She and the Cal State girl exchanged a look.
The Cal State girl turned toward me and said, “Don’t mind Crazy Kelvin. That’s what we call him. He’s a little wild.”
For all of that, the eggs were cold, but we ate them, along with the buttered toast and orange slices. It was better than eating air sandwiches at Cecile’s.
Fern hugged Miss Patty Cake but refrained from putting a piece of toast to her doll’s lips like she would have done at home. Still, the other kids laughed at her and called her White Baby Lover and Big Baby, except for the boy who looked both colored and Chinese. I told them to shut up. And that went for the three sisters in flower dresses. Even the tallest sister. No one could call Fern White Baby Lover even though Miss Patty Cake was a white baby and Fern loved her. No one could call Fern a Big Baby but Vonetta and me. Vonetta ate her toast silently. We had cost Vonetta her summer friends with the white go-go boots and happening dresses. But I didn’t care. Fern could love Miss Patty Cake all she wanted. We could call ourselves Vanilla Wafers, Chocolate Chips, or Oreo Cookies for all I cared about black girls and colored girls.
And even though Cecile didn’t bother to bring us here or stick up for Fern, the Black Panthers had slapped palms and said, “Those are Sister Inzilla’s, all right.”