Brown Girl Dreaming Read Free Page B

beans,
    warm in my hands, ready for the first taste
    of Maria’s mother’s garlicky rice and beans,
    crushed green bananas
    fried and salted and warm . . .
    Maria will be waiting, her own plate covered in foil.
Sometimes
    we sit side by side on her stoop, our traded plates
    in our laps.
    What are you guys eating?
the neighborhood kids ask
    but we never answer, too busy shoveling the food we love
    into our mouths.
    Your mother makes the best chicken,
Maria says.
The best
    corn bread. The best everything!
    Yeah,
I say.
    I guess my grandma taught her something after all.

writing #1
    It’s easier to make up stories
    than it is to write them down. When I speak,
    the words come pouring out of me. The story
    wakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair,
    crosses one leg over the other, says,
    Let me introduce myself.
Then just starts going on and on.
    But as I bend over my composition notebook,
    only my name
    comes quickly. Each letter, neatly printed
    between the pale blue lines. Then white
    space and air and me wondering,
How do I
    spell introduce?
Trying again and again
    until there is nothing but pink
    bits of eraser and a hole now
    where a story should be.

late autumn
    Ms. Moskowitz calls us one by one and says,
    Come up to the board and write your name.
    When it’s my turn, I walk down the aisle from
    my seat in the back, write
Jacqueline Woodson
—
    the way I’ve done a hundred times, turn back
    toward my seat, proud as anything
    of my name in white letters on the dusty blackboard.
    But Ms. Moskowitz stops me, says,
    In cursive too, please.
But the
q
in Jacqueline is too hard
    so I write
Jackie Woodson
for the first time. Struggle
    only a little bit with the
k.
    Is that what you want us to call you?
    I want to say,
No, my name is Jacqueline
    but I am scared of that cursive
q,
know
    I may never be able to connect it to
c
and
u
    so I nod even though
    I am lying.

the other woodson
    Even though so many people think my sister and I
    are twins,
    I am the other Woodson, following behind her each year
    into the same classroom she had the year before. Each
    teacher smiles when they call my name.
Woodson,
they
    say.
You must be Odella’s sister.
Then they nod
    slowly, over and over again, call me Odella. Say,
    I’m sorry! You look so much like her and she is SO brilliant!
    then wait for my brilliance to light up
    the classroom. Wait for my arm to fly into
    the air with every answer. Wait for my pencil
    to move quickly through the too-easy math problems
    on the mimeographed sheet. Wait for me to stand
    before class, easily reading words even high school
    students stumble over. And they keep waiting.
    And waiting
    and waiting
    and waiting
    until one day, they walk into the classroom,
    almost call me Odel—then stop
    remember that I am the other Woodson
    and begin searching for brilliance
    at another desk.

writing #2
    On the radio, Sly and the Family Stone are singing
    “Family Affair,” the song turned up because it’s
    my mother’s favorite, the one she plays again and again.
    You can’t leave ’cause your heart is there,
Sly sings.
    But you can’t stay ’cause you been somewhere else.
    The song makes me think of Greenville and Brooklyn
    the two worlds my heart lives in now. I am writing
    the lyrics down, trying to catch each word before it’s gone
    then reading them back, out loud to my mother. This
    is how I’m learning. Words come slow to me
    on the page until
    I memorize them, reading the same books over
    and over, copying
    lyrics to songs from records and TV commercials,
    the words
    settling into my brain, into my memory.
    Not everyone learns
    to read this way—memory taking over when the rest
    of the brain stops working,
    but I do.
    Sly is singing the words
    over and over as though
    he is trying
    to convince me that this whole world
    is just a bunch of families
    like ours
    going about their own family affairs.
    Stop daydreaming,
my mother says.
    So I go back to writing down words
    that are songs