Free Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

uncle robert
    Uncle Robert has moved to New York City!
    I hear him taking the stairs
    two at a time and then
    he is at our door, knocking loud until our mother
opens it,
    curlers in her hair, robe pulled closed, whispering,
    It’s almost midnight, don’t you wake my children!
    But we are already awake, all four of us, smiling
and jumping around
    my uncle:
What’d you bring me?
    Our mama shushes us, says,
    It’s too late for presents and the like.
    But we want presents and the like.
    And she, too, is smiling now, happy to see her
baby brother who lives all the way over
    in Far Rockaway where the ocean is right there
    if you look out your window.
    Robert opens his hand to reveal a pair of silver earrings,
    says to my sister,
This is a gift for how smart you are.
    I want
    to be smart like Dell, I want
    someone to hand me silver and gold
    just because my brain clicks into thinking whenever
    it needs to but
    I am not smart like Dell so I watch her press
the silver moons into her ears
    I say,
I know a girl ten times smarter than her. She gets
diamonds every time she gets a hundred on a test.
    And Robert looks at me, his dark eyes smiling, asks,
    Is that something you made up? Or something real?
    In my own head,
    it’s real as anything.
    In my head
    all kinds of people are doing all kinds of things.
    I want to tell him this, that
    the world we’re living in right here in Bushwick isn’t
    the only place. But now my brothers are asking,
    What’d you bring me,
and my uncle is pulling gifts
from his pockets,
    from his leather briefcase, from inside his socks.
He hands
    my mother a record, a small 45—James Brown,
who none of us
    like because he screams when he sings. But my mother
puts it on the record player, turned way down low
and then even us kids are dancing around—
    Robert showing us the steps he learned
at the Far Rockaway parties. His feet are magic
    and we all try to slide across the floor like he does,
    our own feet, again and again,
    betraying us.
    Teach us, Robert!
we keep saying.
Teach us!

wishes
    When he takes us to the park, Uncle Robert tells us,
    If you catch a dandelion puff, you can make a wish.
    Anything you want will come true,
he says as
    we chase the feathery wishes around swings,
    beneath sliding boards,
    until we can hold them in our hands,
    close our eyes tight, whisper our dream
    then set it floating out into the universe hoping
    our uncle is telling the truth,
    hoping each thing we wish for
    will one day come true.

believing
    The stories start like this—
    Jack and Jill went up a hill,
my uncle sings.
    I went up a hill yesterday,
I say.
    What hill?
    In the park.
    What park?
    Halsey Park.
    Who was with you?
    Nobody.
    But you’re not allowed to go to the park without anyone.
    I just did.
    Maybe you dreamed it,
my uncle says.
    No, I really went.
    And my uncle likes the stories I’m making up.
    . . .
Along came a spider and sat down beside her.
    I got bit by a spider,
I say.
    When?
    The other day.
    Where?
    Right on my foot.
    Show us.
    It’s gone now.
    But my mother accuses me of lying.
    If you lie,
she says,
one day you’ll steal.
    I won’t steal.
    It’s hard to understand how one leads to the other,
    how stories could ever
    make us criminals.
    It’s hard to understand
    the way my brain works—so different
    from everybody around me.
    How each new story
    I’m told becomes a thing
    that happens,
    in some other way
    to me . . . !
    Keep making up stories,
my uncle says.
    You’re lying,
my mother says.
    Maybe the truth is somewhere in between
    all that I’m told
    and memory.

off-key
    We start each meeting at Kingdom Hall with a song
    and a prayer
    but we’re always late,
    walking in when the pink songbooks are already open,
    looking over shoulders, asking Brothers and Sisters
    to help us find our place.
    If it’s a song I like, I sing loud until my sister shushes me
    with a finger to her mouth.
    My whole family knows I can’t sing. My voice,
    my sister says, is just left of the key.