Free Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Page B

it to us
    in paper cones.
    We’ll be coming home soon, Grandma
    each of us promises.
    We love you.
    And when she says,
I love you, too
    the South is so heavy in her mouth
    my eyes fill up with the missing of
    everything and everyone
    I’ve ever known.

the paint eater
    In the night in the corner of the bedroom
    the four of us share,
    comes a pick, pick, picking of plaster
    paint gone come morning.
    My younger brother, Roman,
    can’t explain why paint melting
    on his tongue feels good.
    Still, he eats the paint
    and plaster until a white hole
    grows where pale green paint used to be.
    And too late we catch him,
    his fingers in his mouth,
    his lips covered with dust.

chemistry
    When Hope speaks, it’s always about comic books
    and superheroes
    until my mother tells him he has to talk
    about something else.
    And then it’s science. He wants to know
    everything
    about rockets and medicine and the galaxy.
    He wants to know where the sky ends and how,
    what does it feel like when gravity’s gone
    and what is the food men eat
    on the moon. His questions come so fast
    and so often that we forget how quiet
    he once was until my mother
    buys him a chemistry set.
    And then for hours after school each day
    he makes potions, mixing chemicals that stink up
    the house, causing sparks to fly
    from shaved bits of iron,
    puffs of smoke to pop from strange-colored liquids.
    We are fascinated by him, goggled and bent
over the stove
    a clamped test tube protruding
    from his gloved hand.
    On the days when our mother says
    she doesn’t want him smelling up the house
    with his potions, he takes his trains apart, studies
    each tiny piece, then slowly puts them together again.
    We don’t know what it is he’s looking for
    as he searches the insides of things, studies
    the way things change. Each whispered
Wow
    from him makes me think that he
    with his searching—and Dell with her reading
    and even Roman with his trying to eat
    to the other side of our walls—is looking
    for something. Something way past Brooklyn.
    Something
    out
    there.

baby in the house
    And then one day, Roman won’t get up,
    sun coming in bright
    through the bedroom window, the rest of us
    dressed and ready to go outside.
    No laughter—just tears when we hold him.
    More crying when we put him down.
    Won’t eat and even my mother
    can’t help him.
    When she takes him to the hospital, she comes back
    alone.
    And for many days after that, there is no baby
    in our house and I am finally
    the baby girl again, wishing
    I wasn’t. Wishing there wasn’t so much quiet
    where my brother’s laugh used to be, wishing
    the true baby in our house
    was home.

going home again
    July comes and Robert takes us on the night train
    back to South Carolina. We kiss
    our baby brother good-bye in his hospital bed where
    he reaches out, cries to come with us.
    His words are weak as water, no more
    than a whisper with so much air around them.
    I’m coming too,
he says.
    But he isn’t coming.
    Not this time.
    My mother says there is lead in his blood
    from the paint he finds a way to pick
    and eat off our bedroom wall
    every time our backs are turned.
    Small holes grow, like white stars against
    the green paint, covered again and again
    by our mother. But still, he finds a way.
    Each of us hugs him, promises
    to bring him candy and toys.
    Promises we won’t have fun down south
    without him.
    Each of us leans in
    for our mother’s kiss on our forehead,
    her warm lips, already a memory
    that each of us carries home.

home again to hall street
    My grandmother’s kitchen is the same
    big and yellow and smelling of the pound cake
    she’s made to welcome us back.
    And now in the late afternoon, she is standing
    at the sink, tearing collards beneath
    cool running water, while the crows caw outside,
    and the sun sinks slow into red and gold
    When Hope lets the screen door slam,
    she fusses,
    Boy, don’t you slam my door again!
and my brother says,
    I’m sorry.
    Just like always.
    Soon,