I don’t have much work to do around the
house like some girls. My mother does that. And I don’t have to earn my pocket
money by hustling; George runs errands for the big boys and sells Christmas
cards. And anything else that’s got to get done, my father does. All I have to
do in life is mind my brother Raymond, which is enough.
Sometimes I slip and say my little brother Raymond. But as any fool can see
he’s much bigger and he’s older too. But a lot of people call him my little
brother cause he needs looking after cause he’s not quite right. And a lot of
smart mouths got lots to say about that too, especially when George was minding
him. But now, if anybody has anything to say to Raymond, anything to say about
his big head, they have to come by me. And I don’t play the dozens or believe
in standing around with somebody in my face doing a lot of talking. I much
rather just knock you down and take my chances even if I am a little girl with
skinny arms and a squeaky voice, which is how I got the name Squeaky. And if
things get too rough, I run. And as anybody can tell you, I’m the fastest thing
on two feet.
There is no track meet that I don’t win the first-place medal. I used to win
the twenty-yard dash when I was a little kid in kindergarten. Nowadays, it’s
the fifty-yard dash. And tomorrow I’m subject to run the quarter-meter relay
all by myself and come in first, second, and third. The big kids call me
Mercury cause I’m the swiftest thing in the neighborhood. Everybody knows
that—except two people who know better, my father and me. He can beat me to
Amsterdam Avenue with me having a two-fire-hydrant headstart and him running
with his hands in his pockets and whistling. But that’s private information.
Cause can you imagine some thirty-five-year-old man stuffing himself into PAL
shorts to race little kids? So as far as everyone’s concerned, I’m the fastest
and that goes for Gretchen, too, who has put out the tale that she is going to
win the first-place medal this year. Ridiculous. In the second place, she’s got
short legs. In the third place, she’s got freckles. In the first place, no one
can beat me and that’s all there is to it.
I’m standing on the corner admiring the weather and about to take a stroll down
Broadway so I can practice my breathing exercises, and I’ve got Raymond walking
on the inside close to the buildings, cause he’s subject to fits of fantasy and
starts thinking he’s a circus performer and that the curb is a tightrope strung
high in the air. And sometimes after a rain he likes to step down off his
tightrope right into the gutter and slosh around getting his shoes and cuffs
wet. Then I get hit when I get home. Or sometimes if you don’t watch him he’ll
dash across traffic to the island in the middle of Broadway and give the pigeons
a fit. Then I have to go behind him apologizing to all the old people sitting
around trying to get some sun and getting all upset with the pigeons fluttering
around them, scattering their newspapers and upsetting the waxpaper lunches in
their laps. So I keep Raymond on the inside of me, and he plays like he’s
driving a stage coach which is OK by me so long as he doesn’t run me over or
interrupt my breathing exercises, which I have to do on account of I’m serious
about my running, and I don’t care who knows it.
Now some people like to act like things
come easy to them, won’t let on that they practice. Not me. I’ll high-prance
down 34th Street like a rodeo pony to keep my knees strong even if it does get
my mother uptight so that she walks ahead like she’s not with me, don’t know
me, is all by herself on a shopping trip, and I am somebody else’s crazy child.
Now you take Cynthia Procter for instance. She’s just the opposite. If there’s
a test tomorrow, she’ll say something like, “Oh, I guess I’ll play handball
this afternoon and watch television tonight,” just to let you know she ain’t
thinking about the test. Or like last week when she won the spelling bee for
the millionth time, “A good thing you got ‘receive,’ Squeaky, cause I would
have got it wrong. I completely forgot about the spelling bee.” And she’ll
clutch the lace on her blouse like it was a narrow escape. Oh, brother. But of
course when I pass her house on my early morning trots around the block, she is
practicing the scales on the piano over and over and over and over. Then in
music class she always lets herself get bumped around so she falls accidentally
on purpose onto the piano stool and is so surprised to find herself sitting
there that she decides just for fun to try out the ole keys. And what do you
know—Chopin’s waltzes just spring out of her fingertips and she’s the most
surprised thing in the world. A regular prodigy. I could kill people like that.
I stay up all night studying the words for the spelling bee. And you can see me
any time of day practicing running. I never walk if I can trot, and shame on
Raymond if he can’t keep up. But of course he does, cause if he hangs back
someone’s liable to walk up to him and get smart, or take his allowance from
him, or ask him where he got that great big pumpkin head. People are so stupid
sometimes.
So I’m strolling down Broadway breathing out and breathing in on counts of
seven, which is my lucky number, and here comes Gretchen and her sidekicks:
Mary Louise, who used to be a friend of mine when she first moved to Harlem
from Baltimore and got beat up by everybody till I took up for her on account
of her mother and my mother used to sing in the same choir when they were young
girls, but people ain’t grateful, so now she hangs out with the new girl Gretchen
and talks about me like a dog; and Rosie, who is as fat as I am skinny and has
a big mouth where Raymond is concerned and is too stupid to know that there is
not a big deal of difference between herself and Raymond and that she can’t
afford to throw stones. So they are steady coming up Broadway and I see right
away that it’s going to be one of those Dodge City scenes cause the street
ain’t that big and they’re close to the buildings just as we are. First I think
I’ll step into the candy store and look over the new comics and let them pass.
But that’s chicken and I’ve got a reputation to consider. So then I think I’ll
just walk straight on through them or even over them if necessary. But as they
get to me, they slow down. I’m ready to fight, cause like I said I don’t
feature a whole lot of chit-chat, I much prefer to just knock you down right
from the jump and save everybody a lotta precious time.
“You signing up for the May Day races?” smiles Mary Louise, only it’s not a
smile at all. A dumb question like that doesn’t deserve an answer. Besides,
there’s just me and Gretchen standing there really, so no use wasting my breath
talking to shadows.
“I don’t think you’re going to win this time,” says Rosie, trying to signify
with her hands on her hips all salty, completely forgetting that I have whupped
her behind many times for less salt than that.
“I always win cause I’m the best,” I say
straight at Gretchen who is, as far as I’m concerned, the only one talking in
this ventrilo-quist-dummy routine. Gretchen smiles, but it’s not a smile, and
I’m thinking that girls never really smile at each other because they don’t
know how and don’t want to know how and there’s probably no one to teach us
how, cause grown-up girls don’t know either. Then they all look at Raymond who
has just brought his mule team to a standstill. And they’re about to see what
trouble they can get into through him.
“What grade you in now, Raymond?”
“You got anything to say to my brother, you say it to me, Mary Louise Williams
of Raggedy Town, Baltimore.”
“What are you, his mother?” sasses Rosie.
“That’s right, Fatso. And the next word out of anybody and I’ll be their mother
too.” So they just stand there and Gretchen shifts from one leg to the other
and so do they. Then Gretchen puts her hands on her hips and is about to say
something with her freckle-face self but doesn’t. Then she walks around me
looking me up and down but keeps walking up Broadway, and her sidekicks follow
her. So me and Raymond smile at each other and he says, “Gidyap” to his team
and I continue with my breathing exercises, strolling down Broadway toward the
ice man on 145th with not a care in the world cause I am Miss Quicksilver
herself.
I take my time getting to the park on May Day because the track meet is the last
thing on the program. The biggest thing on the program is the May Pole dancing,
which I can do without, thank you, even if my mother thinks it’s a shame I
don’t take part and act like a girl for a change. You’d think my mother’d be
grateful not to have to make me a white organdy dress with a big satin sash and
buy me new white baby-doll shoes that can’t be taken out of the box till the
big day. You’d think she’d be glad her daughter ain’t out there prancing around
a May Pole getting the new clothes all dirty and sweaty and trying to act like
a fairy or a flower or whatever you’re supposed to be when you should be trying
to be yourself, whatever that is, which is, as far as I am concerned, a poor
black girl who really can’t afford to buy shoes and a new dress you only wear
once a lifetime cause it won’t fit next year.
I was once a strawberry in a Hansel and Gretel pageant when I was in nursery
school and didn’t have no better sense than to dance on tiptoe with my arms in
a circle over my head doing umbrella steps and being a perfect fool just so my
mother and father could come dressed up and clap. You’d think they’d know
better than to encourage that kind of nonsense. I am not a strawberry. I do not
dance on my toes. I run. That is what I am all about. So I always come late to
the May Day program, just in time to get my number pinned on and lay in the
grass till they announce the fifty-yard dash.
I put Raymond in the little swings, which is a tight squeeze this year and will
be impossible next year. Then I look around for Mr. Pearson, who pins the
numbers on. I’m really looking for Gretchen if you want to know the truth, but
she’s not around. The park is jam-packed. Parents in hats and corsages and
breast-pocket handkerchiefs peeking up. Kids in white dresses and light-blue
suits. The parkees unfolding chairs and chasing the rowdy kids from Lenox as if
they had no right to be there. The big guys with their caps on backwards,
leaning against the fence swirling the basketballs on the tips of their
fingers, waiting for all these crazy people to clear out the park so they can
play. Most of the kids in my class are carrying bass drums and glockenspiels
and flutes. You’d think they’d put in a few bongos or something for real like
that.
Then here comes Mr. Pearson with his clipboard and his cards and pencils and
whistles and safety pins and fifty million other things he’s always dropping
all over the place with his clumsy self. He sticks out in a crowd because he’s
on stilts. We used to call him Jack and the Beanstalk to get him mad. But I’m
the only one that can outrun him and get away, and I’m too grown for that
silliness now.
“Well, Squeaky,” he says, checking my name off the list and handing me number
seven and two pins. And I’m thinking he’s got no right to call me Squeaky, if I
can’t call him Beanstalk.
“Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker,” I correct him and tell him to write it down
on his board.
“Well, Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker, going to give someone else a break this
year?” I squint at him real hard to see if he is seriously thinking I should
lose the race on purpose just to give someone else a break. “Only six girls
running this time,” he continues, shaking his head sadly like it’s my fault all
of New York didn’t turn out in sneakers. “That new girl should give you a run
for your money.” He looks around the park for Gretchen like a periscope in a
submarine movie. “Wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if you were . . . to ahhh . .
.”
I give him such a look he couldn’t finish putting that idea into words.
Grown-ups got a lot of nerve sometimes. I pin number seven to myself and stomp
away, I’m so burnt. And I go straight for the track and stretch out on the
grass while the band winds up with “Oh, the Monkey Wrapped His Tail Around the
Flag Pole,” which my teacher calls by some other name. The man on the
loudspeaker is calling everyone over to the track and I’m on my back looking at
the sky, trying to pretend I’m in the country, but I can’t, because even grass
in the city feels hard as sidewalk, and there’s just no pretending you are
anywhere but in a “concrete jungle” as my grandfather says.
The twenty-yard dash takes all of two minutes cause most of the little kids
don’t know no better than to run off the track or run the wrong way or run
smack into the fence and fall down and cry. One little kid, though, has got the
good sense to run straight for the white ribbon up ahead so he wins. Then the
second-graders line up for the thirty-yard dash and I don’t even bother to turn
my head to watch cause Raphael Perez always wins. He wins before he even begins
by psyching the runners, telling them they’re going to trip on their shoelaces
and fall on their faces or lose their shorts or something, which he doesn’t
really have to do since he is very fast, almost as fast as I am. After that is
the forty-yard dash which I used to run when I was in first grade. Raymond is
hollering from the swings cause he knows I’m about to do my thing cause the man
on the loudspeaker has just announced the fifty-yard dash, although he might
just as well be giving a recipe for angel food cake cause you can hardly make
out what he’s sayin for the static. I get up and slip off my sweat pants and
then I see Gretchen standing at the starting line, kicking her legs out like a
pro. Then as I get into place I see that ole Raymond is on line on the other
side of the fence, bending down with his fingers on the ground just like he
knew what he was doing. I was going to yell at him but then I didn’t. It burns
up your energy to holler.
Every time, just before I take off in a
race, I always feel like I’m in a dream, the kind of dream you have when you’re
sick with fever and feel all hot and weightless. I dream I’m flying over a
sandy beach in the early morning sun, kissing the leaves of the trees as I fly
by. And there’s always the smell of apples, just like in the country when I was
little and used to think I was a choo-choo train, running through the fields of
corn and chugging up the hill to the orchard. And all the time I’m dreaming
this, I get lighter and lighter until I’m flying over the beach again, getting
blown through the sky like a feather that weighs nothing at all. But once I
spread my fingers in the dirt and crouch over the Get on Your Mark, the dream
goes and I am solid again and am telling myself, Squeaky you must win, you must
win, you are the fastest thing in the world, you can even beat your father up
Amsterdam if you really try. And then I feel my weight coming back just behind
my knees then down to my feet then into the earth and the pistol shot explodes
in my blood and I am off and weightless again, flying past the other runners,
my arms pumping up and down and the whole world is quiet except for the crunch
as I zoom over the gravel in the track. I glance to my left and there is no
one. To the right, a blurred Gretchen, who’s got her chin jutting out as if it
would win the race all by itself. And on the other side of the fence is Raymond
with his arms down to his side and the palms tucked up behind him, running in
his very own style, and it’s the first time I ever saw that and I almost stop
to watch my brother Raymond on his first run. But the white ribbon is bouncing
toward me and I tear past it, racing into the distance till my feet with a mind
of their own start digging up footfuls of dirt and brake me short. Then all the
kids standing on the side pile on me, banging me on the back and slapping my
head with their May Day programs, for I have won again and everybody on 151st
Street can walk tall for another year.
“In first place . . .” the man on the loudspeaker is clear as a bell now. But
then he pauses and the loudspeaker starts to whine. Then static. And I lean
down to catch my breath and here comes Gretchen walking back, for she’s
overshot the finish line too, huffing and puffing with her hands on her hips
taking it slow, breathing in steady time like a real pro and I sort of like her
a little for the first time. “In first place . . .” and then three or four
voices get all mixed up on the loudspeaker and I dig my sneaker into the grass
and stare at Gretchen who’s staring back, we both wondering just who did win. I
can hear old Beanstalk arguing with the man on the loudspeaker and then a few
others running their mouths about what the stopwatches say. Then I hear Raymond
yanking at the fence to call me and I wave to shush him, but he keeps rattling
the fence like a gorilla in a cage like in them gorilla movies, but then like a
dancer or something he starts climbing up nice and easy but very fast. And it
occurs to me, watching how smoothly he climbs hand over hand and remembering
how he looked running with his arms down to his side and with the wind pulling
his mouth back and his teeth showing and all, it occurred to me that Raymond
would make a very fine runner. Doesn’t he always keep up with me on my trots?
And he surely knows how to breathe in counts of seven cause he’s always doing
it at the dinner table, which drives my brother George up the wall. And I’m
smiling to beat the band cause if I’ve lost this race, or if me and Gretchen
tied, or even if I’ve won, I can always retire as a runner and begin a whole
new career as a coach with Raymond as my champion. After all, with a little
more study I can beat Cynthia and her phony self at the spelling bee. And if I
bugged my mother, I could get piano lessons and become a star. And I have a big
rep as the baddest thing around. And I’ve got a roomful of ribbons and medals
and awards. But what has Raymond got to call his own?
So I stand there with my new plans, laughing out loud by this time as Raymond
jumps down from the fence and runs over with his teeth showing and his arms
down to the side, which no one before him has quite mastered as a running
style. And by the time he comes over I’m jumping up and down so glad to see
him—my brother Raymond, a great runner in the family tradition. But of course
everyone thinks I’m jumping up and down because the men on the loudspeaker have
finally gotten themselves together and compared notes and are announcing “In
first place—Miss Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker.” (Dig that.) “In second
place—Miss Gretchen P. Lewis.” And I look over at Gretchen wondering what the
“P” stands for. And I smile. Cause she’s good, no doubt about it. Maybe she’d
like to help me coach Raymond; she obviously is serious about running, as any
fool can see. And she nods to congratulate me and then she smiles. And I smile.
We stand there with this big smile of respect between us. It’s about as real a
smile as girls can do for each other, considering we don’t practice real
smiling every day, you know, cause maybe we too busy being flowers or fairies
or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect . . . you
know . . . like being people.
THE END