One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia Page B

even darker back roads, I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I told myself, “Delphine, we are no longer in Brooklyn.”
    Papa had pulled the car off the road so we could catch a few hours of sleep. I remember Vonetta snoring on one side of me, Fern with Miss Patty Cake burrowed into my side. Somehow I managed to find myself snoring with my sisters and Papa. Then there had been a loud rap against the window. Balls of flashlight ghosts had flown all around the back-and front seats, all over our faces. It had been a state policeman. Papa had rolled down his window and shown the state policeman his license and said he was driving his girls down to see their grandma in Alabama. The state policeman hadn’t offered directions. He hadn’t called Papa “Mr. Gaither, sir,” or “citizen” like the helpful police officer in our civic-pride film. I heard what that state policeman called Papa. I heard it all right. I held onto Fern tight, afraid for Papa. Afraid Papa might talk back or fight back.
    When we had arrived at Big Ma’s, I’d expected that Pa would have told Big Ma all about it. How we couldn’t stop and pee anywhere we wanted to. How the state police had rapped on the window. What he’d called Papa. How Papa hadn’t hauled back like Cassius Clay and socked the policeman’s jaw into the next county. Papa could tell some stories. He speaks them so plain, you believe every word. I knew Papa would have entertained Big Ma.
    When Big Ma asked, “How’d the trip go?” Pa had said, “We made it down sure ’nuf. You know, Ma. Same old same old.”

Rally for Bobby
    When Sister Pat pinned the picture of Bobby Hutton to the wall next to the other revolutionaries I learned who he was. I finally read about him in the Black Panther newspaper. The article reported how the people wanted to name the park after Bobby. The article also retold what had happened to him. I kind of remembered having watched the news with Big Ma a few months ago and hearing about the shooting in Oakland. Now the shooting seemed closer. More real.
    Bobby Hutton was the first member of the Black Panthers, other than the leaders. He was so young, the Black Panther leaders—Huey Newton and Bobby Seale—made him get his mother’s permission to join. He was also theyoungest Black Panther to die for the cause. He was only six years older than I was.
    The newspaper had said how the police ambushed the Black Panthers while they were in a car and how the Panthers fled inside a house for shelter. That there was a shoot-out. That the police fired at the Panthers and the Panthers fired at the police. That when Little Bobby came outside to surrender, and took off all his clothes except for his underwear to show he had no gun, they shot him anyway. Over and over and over. That was this past April. Two days after Reverend King was killed.
    After reading about Bobby Hutton, I had begun to look around at the Panthers who helped out at the Center. And the young ones on the streets, patrolling or passing by. I had looked real hard at them and had seen that they were teenagers or were a little older, like Sister Pat and Crazy Kelvin. I couldn’t stand Crazy Kelvin, never called him Brother Kelvin or went out of my way to speak to him. But I didn’t want to see him get shot because he was wearing his OFF THE PIG T-shirt.
    Reading that article had made me both angry and afraid. Angry someone as young as Bobby had been killed and afraid that if he could get shot for being with the Panthers, maybe it was too dangerous for us to be at the Black Panthers’ summer camp. After all, they weren’t teaching us how to deal with the police for nothing. And I was tall for my age. No one would think I was just a girl goingon twelve. The police who patrolled the Center could be chasing someone, burst in, shoot first, and ask questions later.
    Maybe we didn’t have to come to the Center to learn our rights and to have breakfast. If Cecile let me cook dinner in her kitchen,