I didn’t care what Cecile called her new self or how much dust she blew off paths with her poems. She was Cecile Johnson to me, and I didn’t appreciate her so-called new self or her new name.
A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.
Cecile had no trouble dreaming up names for us. I’ll bet ours were names she meant for us to keep and not throw away when we decided we had had enough of our old selves. According to Uncle Darnell and Big Ma, she had had a name ready for Fern, but Papa said, “No more of those made-up, different names.” So Cecile gave Fern some of her milk, put her in her crib, stood over her for a while, and was gone.
Although no one thinks I can, I remember a time when smoke filled the house. Not coughing smoke but smoke from a woman’s smooth-voiced singing, with piano, bass, and drums. All together these sounds made smoke. Uncle Darnell would say, “You can’t remember that. You were two. Three, maybe.” But I do. I still see, hear, and feel bits and flashes. The sounds of musical smoke. My head on Cecile’s big belly. Uncle Darnell said the “Von” in “Vonetta” came from the “Vaughan” in the singer Sarah Vaughan’s name. And when Uncle played the albums Cecile had left behind—the ones with piano, bass, drums, and smooth-voiced Sarah Vaughan—in my mind, smoke still filled the house.
Cecile could go changing her name at the sight of rain, but I was going to stay Delphine. Even after I learned the truth about my name. Even that wasn’t enough to make me drop my name. My name was the one thing I didn’t have to share with another soul in my school. In my last class, three Debras, two Lindas, two Jameses, three Michaels, and two Moniques shared their names. There was also one Anthony, whose mama could spell, and one Antnee, whose mama couldn’t. It was no secret they, too, shared a name. If you hollered “Anthony,” “Antnee,” or “Ant,” both boys’ heads turned.
My name was my own, and I couldn’t imagine that anyone else had it in all of Brooklyn. No matter where we went: Coney Island, Prospect Park, or Shiloh Baptist Church. There was only one Delphine.
I never thought about what Delphine meant or if it had a meaning at all. It was just my name. Delphine had a grown sound like it was waiting for me to slide into it, like a grown woman slides into a mink coat and clips on ruby earrings. I figured since Cecile didn’t have a mink coat or ruby earrings to give me when I grew up, she had dreamed up a name that I would grow into. It was one thing Cecile got right. There was no slice or drop of it that I had to share with my sisters.
Then that stupid show had come on television. The one about the dolphin that saves everyone’s lives and corrals the bad guys until the sheriff arrives. At recess or on the school bus, especially on Wednesdays, the day after the TV show came on, the boys would all sing, “They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,” or something like that. Then they’d start pushing at me to speak in dolphin.
Ellis Carter had been the chief Flipper singer and whistler on one particular Wednesday. I’d beaten him up real good. I’d made sure it was as unforgettable a beating as I could give him so it would burn in the minds of all the other Flipper singers and whistlers.
When I got home from school, my knuckles still sore from Ellis Carter’s jaw, I’d told Vonetta and Fern to change their clothes. Hang them up neatly. That would save me from ironing them that night. I’d told them to start their homework and I’d be back in exactly twenty minutes to help them if they needed it. I’d told Big Ma I had to get a book from the library and I would be right back. Then I’d marched to that library to find out for myself. I’d gone straight to the biggest dictionary in the reference section. This was a dictionary so huge you needed both hands to manage turning the pages and making the book stay put.
Good old Merriam Webster. I trusted Merriam because I thought, instead of having children she didn’t want, she wrote the dictionary. She didn’t have anything else better to do, probably didn’t have sisters and brothers to see after, which was why she knew every word in the world. Big Ma would have said Merriam might as well be useful.
I’d turned to the back section, turned past the Z words, past the phases of the moon and the metric system, and finally to the Given Names. I flipped a few pages to get to the female D names. Then I turned and thumbed past “Daisy.” “Daphne.” “Deanna.” “Deborah.” “Della.” “Delores.”
And there it was. The name I had been sure Cecile had dreamed up while she stared out the window as musical smoke blew through the house. There it was. In a book. Broken down into two syllables. Spelled exactly the same. There it was. My name. Delphine.
My nostrils had flared. My breathing raced. My heart pounded not only in my chest but throughout my body.
This changed everything. My mother hadn’t reached into her poetic soul and dreamt me up a name. My mother had given me a name that already was, which meant she hadn’t given me a thing. Not one thing.
How could this be, when a woman’s deep, smoky voice planted Vonetta’s name in Cecile’s mind? How could this be, when Cecile dreamed up a name for Fern so marvelous that the idea of not being able to give it caused her to up and leave us?
I didn’t need to ask any further. The proof was right there. I shared my name with some other Delphine. And she, just like I, according to Miss Merriam Webster, had been named for a dolphin under the sea.
All this time I’d been holding my head up, feeling superior to Ellis, Willy, Robert, James, James, the Michaels, Anthony, and Antnee because they were stupid boys. My knuckle still smarted from socking Ellis Carter in the jaw while he had been telling the truth. I had been named for a dolphin. A big fishy mammal with a wide grin.
Learning the full truth about my name had been more than I could bear. The librarian got up from her desk and put a Kleenex in my hand. I hadn’t even known I’d been making a grand Negro spectacle out of myself, bawling over a word in the dictionary.
The following week when Flipper came on, I’d gotten up and turned the television set off. Vonetta and Fern bleated like billy goats, but I’d done what I always did and distracted them. I’d said, “Tonight is game and cookie night.” I brought out the Candy Land game, poured the milk, and piled a nice stack of Oreos on a plate. I hadn’t cared if I never saw that grinning mammal again.