One Crazy Summer

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.

It was a strange, wonderful feeling. To discover eyes upon you when you expected no one to notice you at all.

A name is important. It isn't something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is now people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it's a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can't be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you're known even when you do something great or something dumb.

Saying "please" without saying it to someone you don't want to say "please" to in the first place tops the list of hard.

I just took the box and nodded, because that's how you treat crazy people. You nod and count down twenty-seven days for crazy to come to an end.

Cecile made it sound like it was no big deal. "I've been fighting for freedom all my life." But she wasn't talking about protest signs, standing up to the Man, and knowing your rights. She was talking about her life. Just her. Not the people.

If you knew what I knew, seen what I've seen, you wouldn't be so quick to pull the plow.

That was how I knew Sister Mukumbo was a real teacher, aside from her welcoming smile and her blackboard penmanship. She asked a teacher's type of question. The kind that says: Join in.

I had a lot of those memories clicking before me like projector slides in the dark. Lots of pictures, smells and sounds flashing in and out.

The last thing Pa and Big Ma wanted to hear was how we made a grand Negro spectacle of ourselves thirty thousand feet up in the air around all these white people.

Cecile carried on a full conversation, on and on

We're trying to break yokes. You're trying to make one for yourself.

There was also one Anthony, whose mama could spell, and one Antnee, whose mama couldn’t. It

Although I didn’t hear the door swing

I didn’t want to say Big Ma was right. Cecile was no kind of mother. Cecile didn’t want us. Cecile was crazy. I didn’t have to.