Gone Crazy in Alabama

by Rita Williams-Garcia

  Dedication

  For the memories of Mary Edwards Coston

  and Edith King Lloyd Williams, my grandmothers

  Contents

  Dedication

  It Takes a Licking

  Things Fell Apart

  On the Road

  Everything Is Everything

  Moon House

  JimmyTrotter, No Space in Between

  Straight from Sophie

  Far from Net-Net and Unc

  Chicken Run

  Ruination of Things

  Great Miss Trotter

  Sophie’s On

  That’s Entertainment

  Part-time Indian

  How I Met My Sister

  Little Miss Ethel Waters

  Every Sprig

  Chickweed

  Going to Town

  Aunt Jemima, Who?

  Bambi’s Mother

  Short for Onchetty

  Like a Bird in the Sky

  Klan

  Keeping Up with the Kennedys

  The Spider Has Landed

  Got Milk?

  Pure T Spite

  Gone

  Blue Sky

  The Call

  Taranada

  Sister

  Three Dog Night

  You Are the Hill

  Mississippi

  Gone Crazy in Alabama

  Sad Irons

  Sign of Love

  Kind of Truth

  Act of God

  Maypop and Dandelion

  Southern Good-bye

  Keeps on Ticking

  Author’s Note

  Augustus Trotter Descendants

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Rita Williams-Garcia

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  It Takes a Licking

  Vonetta, Fern, and I didn’t sleep well last night or the night before. There’s something about preparing for a trip that draws my sisters and me closer together than we already are. Maybe it’s the planning and excitement of going places or seeing who we’re going to see.

  As soon as we dragged our suitcases out of the attic, my sisters and I race-walked along Herkimer Street and headed to Mr. Mack’s store on Fulton to buy a bag of candy that would last the whole trip down south. We planned to fill our hands with different-flavored Jolly Rancher sucking candy, wax lips, and Pixy Stix, plus Bazooka bubble gum to last the whole trip, starting from Brooklyn, New York, then to New Jersey, all the way down to Georgia and lastly to Alabama. Vonetta was good at keeping track of things and divvying them up between us, so I let her be in charge of handing out the “new state” candy. Candy was enough to send Vonetta and Fern over the moon, but it didn’t mean the same thing to me. It was too hot for Mr. Goodbar, and a box of Good & Plenty only reminded me of watching movies at the RKO with my pa. All of that was different now that I shared him with Mrs., but as long as Pa’s wife stayed with us in our house on Herkimer Street, even after their fights, I gladly shared my father.

  We were about to go inside Mr. Mack’s when three girls who had been in Vonetta’s third-grade class two years ago came out laughing and chewing on long red licorice. “Hi, Vonetta!” they all sang at her.

  “Hi,” Vonetta returned weakly.

  “Hi!” Fern echoed, but louder.

  Then they sashayed past us, the one wearing Vonetta’s watch snaking her wrist around and around like a baton twirler, except there was no baton. Just Vonetta’s watch. The watch Vonetta had let her “hold” and never got back. She sashayed and twirled her wrist and arm purposely so Vonetta could see her watch, and when Vonetta did nothing and said nothing, I got angry. At her.

  I said, “Vonetta, go get your watch.”

  Vonetta tried to act like she didn’t hear me but I knew she did.

  “Don’t think I’m going to get it for you.”

  “No one asked you to.” She tried to sound tough, like she wasn’t afraid of me. “Besides, I didn’t want that old watch in the first place.”

  “Yeah,” Fern said. “She wanted a charm bracelet. With ballet slippers, a heart, and a shamrock for luck.”

  “Not a stupid watch,” Vonetta said. “All it can do is tell time.”

  “Tell time, take a licking, and keep on ticking,” Fern sang.

  Vonetta sucked her teeth. “Licking and ticking. What’s so special about that?”

  I said, “Pa gave it to you. That’s what’s special about your watch.”

  “So.” She rolled huge cow eyes at me. I didn’t care what our mother, Cecile, had told me about looking after Vonetta. I wanted to knock her out.

  Then Fern said, “Yeah. So. If it’s so special, and she should have it, where’s my watch?”

  Fern planted both hands on her nothing hips and tapped her toe, doing her best Vonetta impression. Turning eight hadn’t grown Fern any taller. It had just made her mouthy.

  “Where’s my watch?” she repeated.

  “Safe in my drawer, where you won’t lose it.”

  “Well, I want it,” Fern said. “And you can’t keep it from me. If you don’t cough it up, I’ll tell Mrs.”

  I shrugged. “Tell Mrs.”

  “I’ll tell her and she’ll tell you—”

  Then Vonetta, her ally, cleared her throat, fluttered her eyelashes, and finished in a voice as close to our stepmother’s as she could mimic, “Delphine. Your sister is capable of wearing a watch.” Capable was one of Mrs.’s words. She used it against me to make me stop helping my sisters. Vonetta is capable of doing her own hair. Then Vonetta burned her ears with the hot comb, and who had to rub Vaseline on burned ears and finish pulling the hot comb through Vonetta’s thick, thick head? Not Mrs.

  “Fine,” I told them both. “And when you lose your watch, don’t come crying to me.”

  “Boo, hoo, hoo,” Fern said. “Delphine, you better gimme my watch when we get home.”

  We left the house giddy and returned crabby. A giant sack of candy made no difference.

  I had chicken to wash, flour, and fry and a lemon cake to bake and frost. It all had to be done before I went to bed that night. Pa said we had to be up before the sun to get the first Greyhound down to Atlanta. From there, Big Ma and her neighbor, Mr. Lucas, would be waiting to drive us over the state line to Alabama to our great-grandmother’s little yellow house that sat just on the edge of Prattville on twenty acres that ended at a creek.

  Mrs. poked her Afro into the kitchen to offer her help but she looked as green as she had earlier that morning. Pa said it was the summertime flu but I knew better. There’s no monthlong flu, summer, winter, or otherwise. I said, “No, thank you. I’m almost done.” Mrs. seemed grateful and went back to the sofa to lie down.

  I preferred my sisters’ company in the kitchen but we weren’t exactly on speaking terms, which was hard to maintain because our voices either followed or lay on top of one another’s for as long as I could remember. We spoke almost like one person, one voice, but each of us saying our own part, kind of like those records Cecile used to play with a singer’s voice catting and scatting like a horn, piano, and bass. Or like Pa’s old doo-wop records with duos and trios that went high, higher, then low. We’ve been laying our voices down, catting and scatting, and following variations of the same notes for so long we didn’t always know we were doing it. But others noticed. The way we flowed in and out of our words drove Mrs. crazy, and she’d give us the eye like, Cut it out. “You’re individuals,” she’d say. “One complete thought for each complete person.” But when you’re used to speaking as one, it’s hard to stop just because someone is under your roof and says stop.

  As I whipped, beat, and stirred the lemon cake batter
, I missed hearing my sisters’ voices and having them around me.

  Vonetta, Fern, and I could afford to have our little scraps. Closing a door behind us and stomping away didn’t mean a thing. Sooner or later Vonetta or Fern would open the door to my room or I’d open the door to theirs. My sisters and I might quarrel but we didn’t stay mad or gone too long a period from one another’s sight.

  Heaven knows we’ve had our share of long gone. Like our uncle Darnell, who’d left us after he had stolen from my sisters and me. I knew it was his fighting in Vietnam that made him turn to drugs, and I knew it was the drugs that made him steal from us. I didn’t know how much I’d miss him when he left.

  It seems every time the door to our house on Herkimer Street is slammed shut too hard, pictures flash before me. Pictures of Cecile, our mother, leaving back when my sisters were barely walking and I was four years old.

  I’ve been dreaming a lot lately, kicking the covers every which way. I’ve been dreaming . . . running to the door to keep it from closing hard . . . to keep footsteps from walking out . . . walking away . . . away . . . But as long as my legs are, I never get to the front door fast enough. As strong as my arms are, I can’t keep Cecile from leaving. Uncle Darnell from leaving. Big Ma from leaving. Or Mrs., when she’s mad . . .

  I can’t stop the dreams. I can’t stop seeing the opened door and the footsteps.

  Things Fell Apart

  The next morning Pa gathered us around for what was usually a Pa and Delphine talk. The talk where he told me everything I needed to know to get my sisters and me safely to our destination. This time Vonetta and Fern were also under his chin as he spoke.

  “I don’t want to hear about you two acting up on the ride down.” Vonetta and Fern gave him cow-eyed innocence but Pa smiled, knowing better. “Delphine, I don’t like putting this on you, but if anyone asks, you’re thirteen.”

  “But twelve rides cheaper, Pa,” I said. I only had a few months before I became an official teenager. I could wait, but I didn’t want to admit that to my father.

  “Can I be eleven?” Vonetta asked.

  Pa said, “Ten’s good enough for you.”

  “And eight’s great.” Fern found her spot and jumped in. She rhymed and played with her words like she played with peas, butterbeans, and mashed potatoes at the table. It was those poetry letters to and from Cecile that got her playing with words at every opportunity.

  I sang, “I’ll bet we’ll save a few dollars if I ride as my real age.”

  Mrs. picked up the tune. “Did someone say save a few dollars?” It was good to hear Mrs. joke for a change. She smiled but her skin looked dull and greenish.

  “Good one, Marva,” Pa said. “But we don’t need the whole world worrying about kids riding on a bus without an adult.”

  Mrs. had been lying on the couch and propped herself up. “Louis, honey. Maybe we should—”

  But Pa put his hand up, and to my surprise, Mrs., an out-and-out women’s libber, closed her mouth and lay her head back down on the sofa pillow. Mrs. smiled, but I could see how tired she was and that her eyes were losing their sassy spark. I hated to see Mrs. change. It had taken a while, but I had gotten used to her beaming and grinning at Pa, calling him “old-fashioned” and “country.” I had gotten used to Mrs. talking her women’s-lib talk. It was funny how Big Ma had always warned Pa that Mrs. would upset the household. As I watched her grow quiet, tired, and nauseous, I knew it was the other way around: Pa was changing Mrs. before Mrs. could upset the house.

  “There’ll be a bunch of kids going down south to spend the summer with folks. A few parents on the bus to keep an eye on things. They’ll be fine,” Pa said.

  “Honey, don’t you think—”

  “Sweetie, you worry too much, and you know that’s not good for you,” Pa said. He pointed his finger at Vonetta and Fern. “I mean what I say: I don’t want to hear about you two causing a stir, having the world looking at three colored girls, wondering where their father and mother are.”

  “They won’t,” I said.

  Then Vonetta said, “We won’t,” raising her voice over mine. “We know how to act on a bus trip.”

  “And we act splendidly on a plane,” Fern said. “Splendidly and perfectly.”

  They both said together, “Or on a train.”

  Vonetta punched Fern in the shoulder first. “Jinx!”

  Pa shook his head. “That’s what I mean. None of that bickering and hitting. One minute you’re play-fighting. The next minute you’re cats in the alley. You can’t have any of that on the bus.”

  “We won’t,” they chimed. Chimed and lied.

  “Well, I better not hear about it,” Pa said. “I better not get a call from the state police.”

  “You won’t, Papa.” More chiming and lying.

  “I mean it. You two, mind your sister. You hear?”

  “We will.” Their notes were high, sweet, and fake.

  Even Pa shook his head.

  Instead of driving the Buick Wildcat from Brooklyn to the Port Authority in Manhattan, Pa drove us down to Newark, New Jersey, to catch the Greyhound. He said it was to save a few dollars but I knew better. If Pa wanted to save money, I wouldn’t be traveling down south as a thirteen-year-old adult. I’d pay the children’s fare like my sisters, and Pa would have told one of the bus-riding mothers to keep an eye on his little girls. Pa’s first thought wasn’t to save money. He drove us to Newark because he wanted to spend time with us. Just us.

  “Mind yourselves down there,” Pa said. Even though we’d been south visiting Big Ma and her mother, Ma Charles, when we were younger, Pa felt the need to remind us, “The South’s not like Bed-Stuyvesant and you can’t get more southern than Alabama.” To Vonetta, he said, “Don’t go grinning at every white kid trying to make friends. Stick to your own and you won’t have any problems. If they call you a name, keep your mouth shut and walk away.” Then to Fern, he said, “Don’t ball up your fists at everyone who says something you don’t like.”

  “We can handle white kids,” I said. “We can handle racist names.”

  “And racist oppressors.”

  “Trying to keep the black man down.”

  Pa shook his head. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He looked to the sky. “Why did I send you girls to Oakland?”

  “So we could be strong black girls,” I answered, although the real answer was so we could see our mother.

  “Black and proud.”

  “Black and loud.”

  “Power to the people.”

  “None of that while you’re down there. Delphine, this is no joke. None of that black power stuff in Alabama. Black Panthers strut about in Brooklyn and in Oakland, but they’re not so loud and proud in Alabama and Mississippi. Once you cross the line from North to South all of that black power stuff is over.”

  “So we better get it all out now!” I said. My sisters and I started chanting, “Ungawa, Ungawa. Soul is black power.” Then, “Free Huey, seize the time!” and every other Black Panther slogan we learned last summer in Oakland with Cecile and the Black Panthers.

  Pa let us get it all out of our systems and then he said, “You had your fun. I need you to listen. Really listen.”

  “Yes, Papa,” I said, taking the silliness out of my voice.

  “The South isn’t like Brooklyn. You’re not freedom riders going down south to kick up some dust. You girls have some mouths on you; I don’t know who to blame for that—your mother, Marva, or those Panthers. I want you to stay together. Don’t let one separate from the other. I’m counting on you, Delphine. Keep your sisters in line and together.”

  Pa sounded like his mother, Big Ma, worrying about white people. But Pa’s voice was steady and firm and his eyebrows pinched together. He meant for us to hear his every word. Our grandmother used to fuss with us so much that all we heard was the fussing and not the words. That was when Big Ma lived with us in Brooklyn on Herkimer Street. But then Pa married Miss Marva Hendrix and Uncle Darn
ell left us and Big Ma got on a Greyhound and returned to her house in Alabama. Like the title of my sixth-grade teacher’s favorite book, things at our house in Herkimer Street fell apart.

  On the Road

  The bus was like Pa said it would be. More kids traveling down south than adults. Half of the travelers wore blue and white T-shirts that declared them Young Saints of Shiloh Baptist from Queens. Ours was a double-decker bus, which was exciting in itself. We had never been on a double-decker bus and we all said, “I want to go up there!” The bus driver, a man older than our father but not as old as Big Ma, stopped us. “Bunch of teenagers up there. Young ones stay where I can see you. Plenty of seats down here.”

  I started to tell the driver I was thirteen and could watch my sisters, but Vonetta told him, “You can’t drive the bus and keep an eye on us,” and then I said, “Shut your mouth, Vonetta,” and as if Big Ma had been poking me in the back telling me what to say, I added, “Sorry, sir,” and we moved down the narrow aisle to join the Young Saints.

  My sisters sat together on one side of the aisle and I sat across from them in the aisle seat, next to a boy about my age. I geared myself up for some conversation, mainly to practice talking to a real teenage boy, but he closed his eyes almost as soon as I slid into the seat next to him. That was fine with me, although some conversation would have been nice. Besides, I would get in all the practice I wanted in talking to teenage boys when we got to my great-grandmother Ma Charles’s house. My cousin JimmyTrotter would do. And I hoped he felt like talking. I hoped he wasn’t sad and quiet like he was when we left Alabama three years ago. But I’d understand if he was.

  The plan to dole out one piece of bubble gum, one Jolly Rancher sucking candy, and a Pixy Stix for every state we entered fell apart long before we reached the middle of Virginia, but that was all right. I glanced over at my sisters. Vonetta erased and filled in her crossword puzzle. Fern read Charlotte’s Web. I didn’t know how much longer they’d remain fuss-free but I was grateful for their good behavior and plowed onward with Things Fall Apart.

  I’d been saving my book since Christmas, waiting for a long stretch of time that didn’t include bickering sisters, a heap of chores, and homework. When Pa announced our bus trip I knew I’d have hours and hours on the road with the perfect companion if my sisters let me read in peace. I felt a surge of pride as I read my first adult book—and a book about Africa written by an African. With everyone in the neighborhood taking on African names and trying to go back to Africa, I was anxious to learn more about the place of our ancestors.