When my mother's older cousin
and best friend, Dorothy,
comes with her children, they run off
saying they can't understand
the way Hope, Dell and I speak.
Y'all go too fast, they say.
And the words get all pushed together.
They say they don't feel like playing
with us little kids. So they leave us to walk the streets of Nicholtown when we can't
leave the porch.
We watch them go, hear
Cousin Dorothy say, Don't you knuckleheads
get into trouble out there.
Then we stay close to Cousin Dorothy, make believe we're not listening when she knows we are.
Laughing when she laughs, shaking our own heads
when she shakes
her. You know how you have to get those trainings, she says, an duo mother nods. They won't let you sit at the counters without them. Have to know what to do
when those people come at you.
She has a small space between her teeth
like my mother's space, and Hope's and Dell's, too.
She is tall and dark-skinned,
beautiful and broad shouldered.
She wears gloves and dark-colored dresses made for her
by a seamstress in Charleston.
The trainings take place in the basements of churches
and the back rooms of stores,
on long car trips and anywhere else where people can
gather. They learn
how to change the south without violence,
how to not be moved
by the evil actions of others, how to walk slowly but
with deliberate steps.
How to sit at counters and be cursed at
without cursing back, have food and drinks poured
over them without standing up and hurting someone.
Even the teenagers
get trained to sit tall, not cry, swallow back fear.
But Lord, Cousin Dorothy says. Everybody has a line.
When I'm walking
up to that lunch counter and taking my seat,
I pray to God, don't let
anybody spit on me. I can be Sweet Dorothy
seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day
as long as nobody crosses that line. Because if they do,
this nonviolent movement
is over!