Brown Girl Dreaming Read Online Free Page B

quietly
    long past her turn.

end of summer
    Too fast the summer leaves us, we kiss
    our grandparents good-bye and my uncle Robert
    is there waiting
    to take us home again.
    When we hug our grandfather, his body
    is all bones and skin. But he is up now,
    sitting at the window, a blanket covering
    his thin shoulders.
    Soon, I’ll get back to that garden,
he says.
    But most days, all I want to do
    is lay down and rest.
    We wave again from the taxi that pulls out
    slow down the drive—watch our grandmother,
    still waving,
    grow small behind us and our grandfather,
    in the window,
    fade from sight.

far rockaway
    Robert only stays long enough
    for my mother to thank him
    for buying our tickets
    for getting us home.
    He does a fancy turn on his heel, aims
    two pointer fingers at us
    says,
I’ll catch up with all of you later.
    We tell him that he has to come back soon,
    remind him of all the stuff he’s promised us
    trips to Coney Island and Palisades Amusement Park,
a Crissy doll
    with hair that grows, a Tonka toy,
Gulliver’s Travels
,
candy.
    He says he won’t forget,
    asks us if he’s a man of his word and
    everyone except my mother
    nods.
    Hard not to miss my mother’s eyebrows,
    giving her baby brother a look,
    pressing her lips together. Once,
    in the middle of the night, two policemen
    knocked on our door, asking for Robert Leon Irby.
    But my uncle wasn’t here.
    So now my mother takes a breath, says,
    Stay safe.
    Says,
    Don’t get into trouble out there, Robert.
    He gives her a hug, promises he won’t
    and then he is gone.

fresh air
    When I get back to Brooklyn, Maria isn’t there.
    She’s gone upstate, staying with a family,
    her mother tells me, that has a pool. Then her mother
    puts a plate of food in front of me, tells me
    how much she knows I love her rice and chicken.
    When Maria returns she is tanned and wearing
    a new short set. Everything about her seems different.
    I stayed with white people,
she tells me.
Rich white people.
    The air upstate is different. It doesn’t smell like anything!
    She hands me a piece of bubble gum with BUBBLE YUM
    in bright letters.
    This is what they chew up there.
    The town was called Schenectady.
    All the rest of the summer Maria and I buy only
Bubble Yum, blow
    huge bubbles while I make her tell me story after
    story about the white family in Schenectady.
    They kept saying I was poor and trying to give me stuff,
    Maria says.
I had to keep telling them it’s not poor
    where we live.
    Next summer,
I say.
You should just come down south.
    It’s different there.
    And Maria promises she will.
    On the sidewalk we draw hopscotch games that we
    play using chipped pieces of slate, chalk
    Maria & Jackie Best Friends Forever
wherever
    there is smooth stone.
    Write it so many times that it’s hard to walk
    on our side
    of the street without looking down
    and seeing us there.

p.s. 106 haiku
    Jacqueline Woodson.
    I’m finally in fourth grade.
    It’s raining outside.

learning from langston
    I loved my friend.
    He went away from me.
    There’s nothing more to say.
    The poem ends,
    Soft as it began—
    I loved my friend.
    —Langston Hughes
    I love my friend
    and still do
    when we play games
    we laugh. I hope she never goes away from me
    because I love my friend.
    —Jackie Woodson

the selfish giant
    In the story of the Selfish Giant, a little boy hugs
    a giant who has never been hugged before.
    The giant falls
    in love with the boy but then one day,
    the boy disappears.
    When he returns, he has scars on his hands and
    his feet, just like Jesus.
    The giant dies and goes to Paradise.
    The first time my teacher reads the story to the class
    I cry all afternoon, and am still crying
    when my mother gets home from work that evening.
    She doesn’t understand why
    I want to hear such a sad story again and again
    but takes me to the library around the corner
    when I beg
    and helps me find the book to borrow.
    The Selfish Giant,
by Oscar Wilde.
    I read the story again and again.
    Like