The next morning, Vonetta, Fern—clutching Miss Patty Cake—and I left the green stucco house and went to the Center, where we stood on line until the doors opened for breakfast because Cecile wouldn’t cook for us in her kitchen. While we ate hot oatmeal and sliced bananas, a truck from a local store pulled up and dropped off loaves of bread and crates of orange juice. Within minutes the smell of toasted bread filled the Center and small cartons of orange juice were placed on our trays.
The young white guys who delivered the bread and orange juice knew the Panthers. They stayed awhile and chatted with them. I had my eyes on them the whole time, waiting for something to happen. I felt silly once I realized all I was watching was talking and laughing. When Sister Pat came around with a basketful of toast, I grabbed two pieces, one for me and one for Fern. Vonetta, who was buddying up to one of the three sisters, could get her own toast.
It wasn’t at all the way the television showed militants—that’s what they called the Black Panthers. Militants, who from the newspapers were angry fist wavers with their mouths wide-open and their rifles ready for shooting. They never showed anyone like Sister Mukumbu or Sister Pat, passing out toast and teaching in classrooms.
I started to think, This place is all right. I watched the white guys leave unharmed, laughing even. I couldn’t wait to tell Big Ma all about it. Then I heard Crazy Kelvin say, “That’s the least that the racist dogs can do,” and just like that, he spoiled what I thought I knew.
When we entered the classroom, we found the chairs and tables had been pushed to one side of the room. In the middle of the floor were white posters covered with outlines of wavy writing. We stood on the edges of the room surrounding the posters, like we were on dry land and the posters were floating out to sea.
Sister Mukumbu motioned us in. “Sisters and brothers, find a poster to color in. You can work alone or you can work with a partner.”
I looked out to sea. The letters outlined in black marker said things like:
JUSTICE FOR ALL
ALL POWER TO ALL OF THE PEOPLE
REMEMBER LI’L BOBBY
FREE HUEY
I had seen Huey Newton on the evening news, wearing his black beret and using his big words. Big Ma called him “the main trouble stirrer” because he was the leader of the Black Panthers. The only famous Bobby I knew was Bobby Kennedy. Even though Bobby Kennedy had been killed, I didn’t think the Black Panthers wanted us to remember Bobby Kennedy. They were talking about some other Bobby. A “little” Bobby. And I wondered if he had been killed like Bobby Kennedy. Why else would they want us to remember him if he were still alive?
Sister Mukumbu said, “Yesterday we learned revolution means ‘change’ and that we can all be revolutionaries.” As she spoke, we stepped carefully between the posters, choosing one and then plopping down next to it. Sister Pat passed around a bucket of Magic Markers and crayons.
Part of me felt like repeating Vonetta’s words: “We didn’t come for the revolution. We came for breakfast.” But part of me wanted to see what it was all about. That part reached into the bucket for a thick Magic Marker. Vonetta and Fern each took crayons. Fern took an extra crayon for Miss Patty Cake.
I decided on the FREE HUEY poster since I didn’t know who Li’l Bobby was. Fern and I squatted down by our poster. Next to Fern sat Miss Patty Cake with her arms reaching out. I chose the right poster. Fern colors small and snaillike. There was no need to grab the sign with a lot of letters, since it would be just the two of us coloring. Instead of sticking with us, Vonetta ran over to the middle Ankton girl—that was their last name, Ankton—and began coloring with her and her younger sister. I couldn’t say I was surprised.
Then I heard the middle Ankton girl say, “What’s wrong with your little sister?”
Vonetta tried to act like she hadn’t heard and kept coloring the P in Power.
“Why she run around with her dolly?”
Vonetta, who is loud and showy, showy and crowy, had to swallow her words. “She likes it. That’s all.” Vonetta now sounded low and small, and it served her right.
I watched Fern move her crayon in small black circles. I could hear her singing “La-la-la” to herself. I recognized the tune. It was the “la-la-la” part in a song that used to come on the radio. When Brenda and the Tabulations sang “Dry Your Eyes,” my sisters and I imagined they sang about a mother who had to leave her children. It was the only real indulgence we allowed ourselves in missing having a mother. Brenda and the Tabulations, Vonetta, Fern, and I sang “Dry Your Eyes” whenever the disc jockey played it on WWRL. So I sang the la-la-la part with Fern, making a nice wall around us, to keep that laughing Ankton girl on the outside.
We all have our la-la-la song. The thing we do when the world isn’t singing a nice tune to us. We sing our own nice tune to drown out ugly. Fern and I colored and sang, but the middle Ankton girl was determined to break through our la-la-la wall. She had her own song and made sure we heard it.
“Your sister is a baby. Your sister is a baby.”
I expected Vonetta to do what we always do. Fight back. Talk back. Pick up her crayon and scoot over near Fern and me.
Vonetta sat in a small heap of herself, looking smaller and smaller, letting that Ankton girl sing “Your sister is a baby” merrily, merrily, merrily.
I stopped filling in “Free Huey.” I turned and said, “Shut up,” to Vonetta’s friend.
She stopped singing. That was all it took. And that made me even angrier at Vonetta. She could have done that much for her own sister.
The oldest Ankton girl rose up from her JUSTICE FOR ALL sign. She said to me, “You can’t tell my sister to shut up.”
I gave her a full-out neck roll. “I just did.”
It didn’t matter that she was almost as tall as I was, and could have been a seventh grader. It was too late to take anything back even if I wanted to.
Sister Mukumbu was right there and ended it before it grew into anything to stop. She reminded us we had greater causes to fight for than to fight with each other.
“Sister Eunice, Sister Delphine. Shake hands.”
We begrudgingly shook hands, then returned to our posters. I felt some shame, but I wasn’t about to wear it. I was still too mad at Vonetta to be thoroughly ashamed.
On the way to Cecile’s green stucco house, I said, “You’re supposed to take up for Fern.”
“Yeah,” Fern said.
Vonetta said, “I’m tired of taking up for Fern.”
Fern said, just to have something to say back, “I’m tired of taking up for you.”
Vonetta said, “You don’t take up for me.”
“Do too.”
“Do not.”
“Too.”
“Not.”
“I do too.”
“Like when?”
“When you broke the little blue teacup. I could’ve told.”
“Big deal,” Vonetta said. Then she added the Ankton girl’s word to let us know who she sided with. “Big deal, baby.”
Fern banged her fists at her sides and was set to leap on Vonetta, but I grabbed her in midjump. “Y’all just stop it.”
Fern was near tears mad. “I’m gonna tell.”
“Who you gonna tell? Cecile? She don’t care about a blue teacup. Big Ma? Papa? They’re miles and miles away, and we don’t have enough dimes. Who you gonna tell?”
I said, “Shut up, Vonetta.”
And she shut up. That was all it took.
I had planned for us to kill time playing in the park until Cecile would let us in the house, but playing in the park meant playing together. Vonetta and Fern weren’t ready to play together. I had to keep my sisters apart, so instead we went to the library. Vonetta read her books at one table, and Fern and I read Henry and Ribsy at the next table.
When we got to Cecile’s, we put our things, including Miss Patty Cake, away in our room. I asked Cecile for some money for dinner, and Fern and I went out to pick up chop suey from Ming’s.
Vonetta didn’t want to go, she said. And that was fine with Fern and me.
We came back from Mean Lady Ming’s, who wasn’t really so mean but we’d gotten used to calling her that. I kept the two dimes from the change to save up for our phone call. I was sure we’d need at least a dollar in change. Cecile wouldn’t miss two dimes. If she asked for them, I’d give them to her, although I didn’t think she’d ask.
We spread out the tablecloth on the floor and loaded up our plates. I said the blessing and we ate. Vonetta suddenly became Chatty Cathy all through dinner. I figured she’d had enough of being apart from Fern and me and was now glad we were all together. But it was too much Chatty Cathy for Cecile, who told Vonetta to stop disturbing the silence and that quiet was a good thing. To that Vonetta started humming that song on the radio that goes “Silence is golden, but my eyes still see.” Cecile couldn’t figure out how Vonetta was hers. Before Cecile did something crazy, I gave Vonetta the look and she stopped humming.
After dinner we headed for our room while Cecile put everything away. For once I didn’t care that she wouldn’t let us in the kitchen where her papers hung like wings. I didn’t mind not having to wash dishes or mop the kitchen floor.
This was the order that we entered the room: Fern first, me next, and Vonetta last. I should have known something was amiss by the way Vonetta lagged behind. Fern and I soon learned why.
Chatty Cathy hadn’t missed the company of her sisters. Chatty Cathy had been up to dirty tricks. A black Magic Marker lay on the floor. The same kind I used to color in “Free Huey.”
Vonetta had gone over Miss Patty Cake with the black Magic Marker, leaving pink lips and pink rouge circles peeking out on a once-white face. To tell the truth, Miss Patty Cake was never as white as the day Fern got her. After enough biting, dragging around, and loving up, Miss Patty Cake was off-white, or “light skinned,” as Fern would say. As it was, Miss Patty Cake was a long way from her pinkish white self.
Fern screamed. Louder than she’d screamed on the Coney Island Ferris wheel. Louder and longer than she’d screamed when the dentist stuck her with the novocaine needle. Fern’s fists never made it to a ball. She screamed and threw her body into Vonetta like a missile flying into outer space. Vonetta and Fern fought all the time but not like this.
Cecile burst into the room and pulled them apart. That was the first time she’d touched either one of them.
She turned to me. “Why’d you let them fight like this?”
I didn’t say anything. I just wanted her to come in here and act like a mother. A real one.
“Answer me, Delphine.”
I raised my shoulders up and set them back down. That was my answer.
“And you, Vonetta! What do you call this?” She held up her black-scrawled grandbaby to Vonetta’s face. “No wonder you couldn’t stop lip flapping.” To Fern she said, “You’re too big for this anyway.”
But Cecile still didn’t offer Fern a hug. She didn’t bend down and wipe Fern’s tears. She still didn’t call Fern by her name.