Vonetta couldn’t stop practicing her poem. Well, it wasn’t hers. She got it from a book of Negro poets at the Center. If she couldn’t sing her song, she would recite a poem all by herself.
It wasn’t enough for Vonetta to say her poem, which was actually Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem titled “We Real Cool.” Vonetta tried to be her poem. Since there was no applause from Fern and me the first time around, she started up again, as zombielike as she could, to imitate the toughs standing around outside the pool hall. If Big Ma heard Vonetta and saw her standing like a shiftless bum on the corner, we’d be on the next plane back to New York City. Vonetta was into a groove and couldn’t be stopped. She started up yet again, saying
“We real cool.
We left school.”
as loud as she could, in case Cecile hadn’t heard her. I would have done both Vonetta and Cecile a favor by giving her a swift kick, but I didn’t care if Cecile yelled at her. I didn’t care if Vonetta disturbed Cecile’s peace of mind. So I let Vonetta recite on and on
“We real cool.
We left school.”
Vonetta was a perfectionist, but only about certain things. Things that would get her noticed or earn her applause. Big Ma said Vonetta wouldn’t be such a show-off if Cecile had picked Vonetta up more when she was a baby hollering in her crib. I didn’t need a flash of memory to recall Vonetta’s crying. She cried loudly and a lot.
Our door was open and Cecile was in the living room, lying on her beat-up sofa. Cecile could hear Vonetta perfectly well. Vonetta had said this poem seven times so far. I was certain her aim was to say it ten times each night, but Cecile didn’t let her get that far. It took only six angry foot stomps for Cecile to make it back to our room.
“Cut that crap out. That’s not even a poem. I coulda knocked that out in my sleep. You’d think Gwen Brooks was some sort of genius.” Then she stomped away, this time into the kitchen. I heard her hands smack the swinging door hard.
Back in the fourth grade, my teacher would have us lay our heads on our desks after we came in from recess. She would recite poetry to calm us down and get us ready to learn more science or history. Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Countee Cullen, and William Blake—all fine poets whom we should know, she’d say. Well, I knew a real, live poet. I didn’t know how fine Cecile’s poetry was, but I had seen her writing poems in the kitchen and sometimes on the walls or on cereal boxes. Who else in my classroom could claim they knew a poet and that she was their mother? So, on the afternoon that Robert Frost’s horse had clip-clopped through the snow, I’d raised my hand and told the class my mother was a poet. “Now, now, Delphine,” Mrs. Peterson said, “nice girls don’t tell their classmates lies.” She’d kept me after school and told me she knew the truth about how my mother had left home and that wanting a mother was no excuse for dreaming one up. I couldn’t leave the classroom until I’d written “I will not tell lies in class” twenty-five times on the blackboard. And then I’d had to erase the board clean.
Vonetta sulked something pitiful when Cecile told her to cut it out. Vonetta only heard that her recitation stunk. She wasn’t thinking about how Gwendolyn Brooks was a great Negro poet and that Cecile, also called Nzila, was printing her own poems in her kitchen.
Last year, Vonetta practiced her curtsying more than she practiced her wings and time steps for the Tip Top Tap recital. She fell on her fanny in the middle of her solo and was miserable for days. Usually I’d pick up Vonetta’s broken spirits until she was once again crowy and showy, but now I let her sulk after she received no praise from Cecile. Serves you right, I thought. Just to be evil, I rubbed it in with an insult.
“I don’t know why your lip is hanging,” I said. “You’re just like her.”
We both knew which her I meant. I said that to make her feel mad on top of being hurt. Just like I know how to lift my sisters up, I also know how to needle them just right.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
We did a few rounds of that, then a final “Not” and “Too.”
“Okay, Vonetta. Suppose you were going to be on TV.”
She perked up on that one.
“Playing Tinker Bell on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. But it was PTA Night. Or School Talent Night. And your little girl—”
“Lootie Belle,” Fern added in.
“Lootie Belle,” I picked up, glad to have Fern’s support, “had a part in The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
“In her Itsy Bitsy Spider costume.”
“And she’d been practicing her Itsy Bitsy Spider song and dance for days.”
“Weeks.”
“A whole two months. The Itsy Bitsy Spider—”
“Went up the waterspout.” I knew I could count on Fern to climb high with her tiny, sweet voice.
Vonetta sat there defiant, unmoved, proving my point. It was like looking dead at Cecile.
“A shiny white Cadillac comes to carry you off to be Tinker Bell on TV. But your precious little girl—”
“Lootie Belle!”
“Lootie Belle is standing at the door in her costume, waiting for you to take her to School Talent Night. What would you do?”
“That’s easy,” Vonetta said. “I’d get in the shiny white Cadillac with my matching vanity bag and luggage.”
“And what about your little girl in her costume?” I asked.
“Yeah. What about Lootie Bell in her costume, wanting to dance for her mama?”
Each and every one of us knew the feeling of having no mother clapping for us in the audience. Only Big Ma and sometimes Papa when he came home from work in time.
Crowy and showy Vonetta said, “First of all, I wouldn’t dare name her anything as silly as Lootie Belle. And my little girl would be happy I was a Disneyland movie star. She would tell her jealous friends at school, ‘There goes my mother on TV. I’ll bet your mother just fries pork chops and wrings wet clothes. My mother is on TV flying around in blue fairy dust, waving a magical wand in a cute sparkly outfit.’”
The magic of Disneyland had won Fern over to Vonetta’s side. It was all of that blue fairy dust and magical-wand stuff. Fern’s eyes twinkled as she imagined having a colored fairy mother. I was looking to get Vonetta’s goat, but I only ended up losing Fern. And Vonetta was her old self.
“And that’s why you’re like Cecile. You want to be a fairy on TV more than you care how your kids will feel and if they miss you.”
“Do not” and “Do too” went on between us until Cecile stomped back to the room and said, “Cut that crap out!”