Free One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

PEOPLE
    REMEMBER LI’L BOBBY
    FREE HUEY
    I had seen Huey Newton on the evening news, wearing his black beret and using his big words. Big Ma called him “the main trouble stirrer” because he was the leader of the Black Panthers. The only famous Bobby I knew was Bobby Kennedy. Even though Bobby Kennedy had been killed, I didn’t think the Black Panthers wanted us to remember Bobby Kennedy. They were talking about some other Bobby. A “little” Bobby. And I wondered if he had been killed like Bobby Kennedy. Why else would they want us to remember him if he were still alive?
    Sister Mukumbu said, “Yesterday we learned revolution means ‘change’ and that we can all be revolutionaries.” As she spoke, we stepped carefully between the posters, choosing one and then plopping down next to it. Sister Pat passed around a bucket of Magic Markers and crayons.
    Part of me felt like repeating Vonetta’s words: “We didn’t come for the revolution. We came for breakfast.” But part of me wanted to see what it was all about. That part reached into the bucket for a thick Magic Marker. Vonetta and Fern each took crayons. Fern took an extra crayon for Miss Patty Cake.
    I decided on the FREE HUEY poster since I didn’t knowwho Li’l Bobby was. Fern and I squatted down by our poster. Next to Fern sat Miss Patty Cake with her arms reaching out. I chose the right poster. Fern colors small and snaillike. There was no need to grab the sign with a lot of letters, since it would be just the two of us coloring. Instead of sticking with us, Vonetta ran over to the middle Ankton girl—that was their last name, Ankton—and began coloring with her and her younger sister. I couldn’t say I was surprised.
    Then I heard the middle Ankton girl say, “What’s wrong with your little sister?”
    Vonetta tried to act like she hadn’t heard and kept coloring the P in Power .
    “Why she run around with her dolly?”
    Vonetta, who is loud and showy, showy and crowy, had to swallow her words. “She likes it. That’s all.” Vonetta now sounded low and small, and it served her right.
    I watched Fern move her crayon in small black circles. I could hear her singing “La-la-la” to herself. I recognized the tune. It was the “la-la-la” part in a song that used to come on the radio. When Brenda and the Tabulations sang “Dry Your Eyes,” my sisters and I imagined they sang about a mother who had to leave her children. It was the only real indulgence we allowed ourselves in missing having a mother. Brenda and the Tabulations, Vonetta, Fern, and I sang “Dry Your Eyes” whenever the disc jockey played it on WWRL. So I sang the la-la-la part with Fern, making anice wall around us, to keep that laughing Ankton girl on the outside.
    We all have our la-la-la song. The thing we do when the world isn’t singing a nice tune to us. We sing our own nice tune to drown out ugly. Fern and I colored and sang, but the middle Ankton girl was determined to break through our la-la-la wall. She had her own song and made sure we heard it.
    “Your sister is a baby. Your sister is a baby.”
    I expected Vonetta to do what we always do. Fight back. Talk back. Pick up her crayon and scoot over near Fern and me.
    Vonetta sat in a small heap of herself, looking smaller and smaller, letting that Ankton girl sing “Your sister is a baby” merrily, merrily, merrily.
    I stopped filling in “Free Huey.” I turned and said, “Shut up,” to Vonetta’s friend.
    She stopped singing. That was all it took. And that made me even angrier at Vonetta. She could have done that much for her own sister.
    The oldest Ankton girl rose up from her JUSTICE FOR ALL sign. She said to me, “You can’t tell my sister to shut up.”
    I gave her a full-out neck roll. “I just did.”
    It didn’t matter that she was almost as tall as I was, and could have been a seventh grader. It was too late to take anything back even if I wanted to.
    Sister Mukumbu was right there and ended it