Brown Girl Dreaming Read Free Page A

is four now, curls long gone, his dark brown hair
    straight as a bone, strange to us but
    our little brother, the four of us again
    in one place.

maria
    Late August now
    home from Greenville and ready
    for what the last of the summer brings me.
    All the dreams this city holds
    right outside—just step through the door and walk
    two doors down to where
    my new best friend, Maria, lives. Every morning,
    I call up to her window,
Come outside
    or she rings our bell,
Come outside.
    Her hair is crazily curling down past her back,
    the Spanish she speaks like a song
    I am learning to sing.
    Mi amiga, Maria.
    Maria, my friend.

how to listen #5
    What is your one dream,
    my friend Maria asks me.
    Your one wish come true?

tomboy
    My sister, Dell, reads and reads
    and never learns
    to jump rope or
    play handball against the factory wall on the corner.
    Never learns to sprint
    barefoot down the block
    to become
    the fastest girl
    on Madison Street.
    Doesn’t learn
    to hide the belt or steal the bacon
    or kick the can . . .
    But I do and because of this
    Tomboy
becomes my new name.
    My walk, my mother says,
    reminds her of my father.
    When I move long-legged and fast away from her
    she remembers him.

game over
    When my mother calls,
    Hope Dell Jackie—inside!
    the game is over.
    No more reading beneath the streetlight
    for Dell. But for my brother and me
    it’s no more
anything!
No more
    steal the bacon
    coco levio 1-2-3
    Miss Lucy had a baby
    spinning tops
    double Dutch.
    No more
    freeze tag
    hide the belt
    hot peas and butter.
    No more
    singing contests on the stoop.
    No more
    ice cream truck chasing:
    Wait! Wait, ice cream man! My mother’s gonna
give me money!
    No more getting wet in the johnny pump
    or standing with two fisted hands out in front of me,
    a dime hidden in one, chanting,
    Dumb school, dumb school, which hand’s it in?
    When my mother calls,
    Hope Dell Jackie—inside!
    we complain as we walk up the block in the twilight:
    Everyone else is allowed to stay outside till dark.
    Our friends standing in the moment—
    string halfway wrapped around a top,
    waiting to be tagged and unfrozen,
    searching for words to a song,
    dripping from the johnny pump,
    silent in the middle of
Miss Lucy had a . . .
    The game is over for the evening and all we can hear
    is our friends’
    Aw . . . man!!
    Bummer!
    For real?! This early?!
    Dang it!
    Shoot. Your mama’s mean!
    Early birds!
    Why she gotta mess up our playing like that?
    Jeez. Now
    the game’s over!

lessons
    My mother says:
    When Mama tried to teach me
    to make collards and potato salad
    I didn’t want to learn.
    She opens the box of pancake mix, adds milk
    and egg, stirs. I watch
    grateful for the food we have now—syrup waiting
    in the cabinet, bananas to slice on top.
    It’s Saturday morning.
    Five days a week, she leaves us
    to work at an office back in Brownsville.
    Saturday we have her to ourselves, all day long.
    Me and Kay didn’t want to be inside cooking.
    She stirs the lumps from the batter, pours it
    into the buttered, hissing pan.
    Wanted to be with our friends
    running wild through Greenville.
    There was a man with a peach tree down the road.
    One day Robert climbed over that fence, filled a bucket
    with peaches. Wouldn’t share them with any of us but
    told us where the peach tree was. And that’s where we
    wanted to be
    sneaking peaches from that man’s tree, throwing
    the rotten ones
    at your uncle!
    Mama wanted us to learn to cook.
    Ask the boys, we said. And Mama knew that wasn’t fair
    girls inside and boys going off to steal peaches!
    So she let all of us
    stay outside until suppertime.
    And by then,
she says, putting our breakfast on the table,
    it was too late.

trading places
    When Maria’s mother makes
    arroz con habichuelas y tostones,
    we trade dinners. If it’s a school night,
    I’ll run to Maria’s house, a plate of my mother’s
    baked chicken with Kraft mac and cheese,
    sometimes box corn bread,
    sometimes canned string