P.S. Be Eleven Read Free Page A

oldest son.
    My tears had long dried but I wiped my face anyway. Pa swung open the door and stepped out of the car. My heart leapt toward him. No one was as handsome as my father was, even when his face was long, plain, and sad, which was always. Today, he looked chipper, I supposed from being glad to see us after all this time.
    Although I didn’t jump all over him like Vonetta and Fern did, no one had missed him more than I. In Oakland I saw pieces of Cecile in me, but I knew Pa had his stamp all over me, and I was happy to grow in his shade.
    I was first. He leaned down and kissed my cheek twice. If he tasted any salt on my face he didn’t say a word. I missed him so much that everything about him seemed new. The freshly cut growth that made the side of his face rough. His cool, shaving-cream smell, with something extra. Not perfume. Men didn’t wear perfume. It was woodsier, like standing among Christmas trees. And his shirt was new. Robin’s-egg blue. Short-sleeved. Not worn and familiar like all the shirts I’d starched and ironed for him.
    Vonetta and Fern were busy jumping and squealing from being tickled by Pa, who usually left the playing around to Uncle Darnell. They didn’t notice how new Pa looked.
    Big Ma noticed. “Junior! Junior!” She rarely called him that. “Stop all this carrying on in public!” She looked around expecting others to gawk and point at us Negroes, carrying on. Folks cared more about their luggage, taxis, and hugging their own families. That didn’t stop Big Ma from being embarrassed.
    Pa planted a kiss on Big Ma’s cheek like he hadn’t driven all the way from Brooklyn with her earlier. She bristled from both not liking it and liking it in spite of pushing him away.
    The bell captain blew his whistle for us to get a move on. Pa gave the three of us one more squeeze and loaded our suitcases in the trunk.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Delphine?”
    â€œNothing, Papa.”
    Big Ma chomped at the bit and couldn’t be stopped. She was only too happy to report on me. “I’ll tell you what the matter is,” she began. “You sent them out in that piss-pot of trouble and now she’s too big for her britches. As that one goes”—she meant to point at me, but aimed out of the back side-window—“the other two’ll follow.”
    Pa looked in the rearview mirror. My eyes caught his before falling to my lap.
    Our lessons on solidarity with Sister Mukumbu at the People’s Center hadn’t gone for nothing. Vonetta came to my defense. “It’s not Delphine’s fault she knocked thewhite man’s newspaper down.”
    Then Fern added, “It’s not Delphine’s fault I had to you know and the line was too long.”
    Then Vonetta: “And that’s why she had to jump Fern ahead.”
    â€œOf all those people waiting.”
    â€œAll those mad people with Mickey Mouse ears.”
    â€œAnd the bathroom lady came.”
    â€œTalking about, ‘Look at all this mess!’”
    â€œAnd you told her she had the mop.”
    â€œBecause you peed on the floor.”
    Then Fern lurched across my lap and punched Vonetta in the arm. Vonetta socked Fern, and I pulled Vonetta off Fern but Vonetta’s fists were still going like spinning bicycle spokes, and Big Ma yelled, “Stop it. Stop it, you wild heathens!” Then to Pa she said, “That’s that Cecile in them,” like our mother was typhoid. “I tried to tell you.” Then back to Vonetta and Fern, “Wait until I get you in the house. Just wait and see what I got for y’all.”
    And since they had already witnessed how Big Ma hadn’t spared me from a small taste of what was waiting for us, Vonetta and Fern pulled apart and settled down on both sides of me.
    â€œAnd you!” Big Ma’s hat and wig turned sideways because she couldn’t turn her head all the way around