Read Online With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Andrea Davis Pinkney
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that’s nothing like a muffin.
By the way, in this year’s classroom it’s 11:20 all day long at Mary McLeod Bethune School. The books have yellow pages and are dog-eared. Today I stared and stared at my classroom’s broken clock, and as yucky as chewed gum feels, I pressed both thumbs hard under my desk.
More than ever, I knew that Bethune doesn’t have whatever it is I need to learn to go to college and doctor school.
It’s like I wrote before. I have no idea
what
I need, but I know Bethune doesn’t have it. That’s why I want to go to Prettyman so badly. Even thoughI have never set foot in that building, I have a hunch the kids inside are getting everything a girl needs to go to doctor school.
Wednesday, September 22, 1954
Diary Book,
Seems the only person happy to have me back at Bethune is Goober. “Dawnie’s here,” he said to everyone who would listen. I’m now in the middle school “division” at Bethune, and, boy, is it bad. It had rained all night, so the streets and sidewalks were red from the leaky bricks. A silt smell rose from the wet pavement. Double ugh!
There’s something I hadn’t noticed about Bethune before. It droops. Even when it’s not raining, the building’s shoulders slouch.
Kids who had been my friends in sixth grade were calling me uppity for wanting to attend Prettyman. Yolanda didn’t even stick up for me.
When I asked to share her umbrella on the walk home, she said, “There’s not enough room under here.”
“Be that way,” I said. “Rain suits me fine.”
But not walking with my friend made something in me droop, too.
When I got home, my thumbs were red from pressing so hard under my desk.
Friday, September 24, 1954
Dear Mr. Jackie Robinson,
This whole thing feels like being stuck in the wrong dugout, waiting to bat. Wanting to run. Can we please just get this game started? I want to show Prettyman how Dawnie Rae can play.
From,
You-know-who
Saturday, September 25, 1954
Diary Book,
Mama does laundry for a living. She cleans, dries, irons, folds, and mends for families in Ivoryton. She’s home most days, except on Saturday mornings when she delivers the clean linens and shirts to her customers.
Folks call Mama “Loretta the Laundress,” mostly because she can remove stains better than anybody else, and could press the wrinkles from a raisin if she had to. Mama’s iron works harder than a farm mule, and she’s got her own special starch she’s invented using potato water and lavender.
This afternoon when I helped Mama hang the wash, I asked, “Are we uppity?”
Mama had clothespins pressed between her lips, holding them while she secured a sheet onto the clothesline. She released the clothespins, one at a time, clipped each to a corner of the sheet, and stood back as the breeze billowed the sheet toward her. She said, “What kind of cockamamy question is that?”
I told her what the kids at Bethune were saying.
It’s not often that Mama sucks her teeth, but today she did. “Dawnie,” she said, “let me remind you of a simple truth my own mother taught me, and that I have repeated to you and Goober a thousand times — sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”
I’ve known that ditty ever since first grade, when Mama taught me the words to sing to that wisecracking Freddy Melvin, who once said I had beaver-tail feet.
“Sticks and stones” works most times, but today it didn’t answer my question. If going to Prettyman Coburn will make me uppity, I need to know.
I definitely want good books and the secret forgoing to doctor school, but I sure don’t want to be uppity.
Sunday, September 26, 1954
Diary Book,
Daddy explained that the judges working in the federal courts have issued an order. Hadley has to give Negro students the option to attend the white school if we want to. Prettyman Coburn’s got no choice — they
have
to let me enroll, or else they’re gonna be in trouble with the law.
“They’re
By the way, in this year’s classroom it’s 11:20 all day long at Mary McLeod Bethune School. The books have yellow pages and are dog-eared. Today I stared and stared at my classroom’s broken clock, and as yucky as chewed gum feels, I pressed both thumbs hard under my desk.
More than ever, I knew that Bethune doesn’t have whatever it is I need to learn to go to college and doctor school.
It’s like I wrote before. I have no idea
what
I need, but I know Bethune doesn’t have it. That’s why I want to go to Prettyman so badly. Even thoughI have never set foot in that building, I have a hunch the kids inside are getting everything a girl needs to go to doctor school.
Wednesday, September 22, 1954
Diary Book,
Seems the only person happy to have me back at Bethune is Goober. “Dawnie’s here,” he said to everyone who would listen. I’m now in the middle school “division” at Bethune, and, boy, is it bad. It had rained all night, so the streets and sidewalks were red from the leaky bricks. A silt smell rose from the wet pavement. Double ugh!
There’s something I hadn’t noticed about Bethune before. It droops. Even when it’s not raining, the building’s shoulders slouch.
Kids who had been my friends in sixth grade were calling me uppity for wanting to attend Prettyman. Yolanda didn’t even stick up for me.
When I asked to share her umbrella on the walk home, she said, “There’s not enough room under here.”
“Be that way,” I said. “Rain suits me fine.”
But not walking with my friend made something in me droop, too.
When I got home, my thumbs were red from pressing so hard under my desk.
Friday, September 24, 1954
Dear Mr. Jackie Robinson,
This whole thing feels like being stuck in the wrong dugout, waiting to bat. Wanting to run. Can we please just get this game started? I want to show Prettyman how Dawnie Rae can play.
From,
You-know-who
Saturday, September 25, 1954
Diary Book,
Mama does laundry for a living. She cleans, dries, irons, folds, and mends for families in Ivoryton. She’s home most days, except on Saturday mornings when she delivers the clean linens and shirts to her customers.
Folks call Mama “Loretta the Laundress,” mostly because she can remove stains better than anybody else, and could press the wrinkles from a raisin if she had to. Mama’s iron works harder than a farm mule, and she’s got her own special starch she’s invented using potato water and lavender.
This afternoon when I helped Mama hang the wash, I asked, “Are we uppity?”
Mama had clothespins pressed between her lips, holding them while she secured a sheet onto the clothesline. She released the clothespins, one at a time, clipped each to a corner of the sheet, and stood back as the breeze billowed the sheet toward her. She said, “What kind of cockamamy question is that?”
I told her what the kids at Bethune were saying.
It’s not often that Mama sucks her teeth, but today she did. “Dawnie,” she said, “let me remind you of a simple truth my own mother taught me, and that I have repeated to you and Goober a thousand times — sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.”
I’ve known that ditty ever since first grade, when Mama taught me the words to sing to that wisecracking Freddy Melvin, who once said I had beaver-tail feet.
“Sticks and stones” works most times, but today it didn’t answer my question. If going to Prettyman Coburn will make me uppity, I need to know.
I definitely want good books and the secret forgoing to doctor school, but I sure don’t want to be uppity.
Sunday, September 26, 1954
Diary Book,
Daddy explained that the judges working in the federal courts have issued an order. Hadley has to give Negro students the option to attend the white school if we want to. Prettyman Coburn’s got no choice — they
have
to let me enroll, or else they’re gonna be in trouble with the law.
“They’re
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