Growing up isn’t always pretty . . . .
Thinking is one thing I’m good at. Just as well since, between these Coke-bottle spectacles and these chicken-legs of mine, ain’t nobody inviting me out to dance.
CeCe hates it when I denigrate myself out loud that way. She swears I’m beautiful, mainly because she’s my big sister and imagines that’s her job. I don’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.
A pair of contact lenses would help my cause. It’s the 1960’s, for God’s sake. Nearly everybody’s wearing them. I told CeCe this. Okay, so it’s a slight exaggeration, but I was trying to make a point. CeCe yawned and shook her head. “That’s my baby,” she said. “Always good for a laugh.”
Every once in a while I slip downstairs in a scoop-neck sweater and tight hip-hugger jeans, minus my specs, in hopes of drawing a bit of positive male attention. It works too. Of course, I’m blind as a bat, so Lord help me if I’m doing laundry that day. I have to dig around in my pocket, pry out coins for the washer and dryer, and choose the right ones by feel—either that or pull out a handful of coins, and squint, which kind of defeats the purpose.
I swear, I’m not planning on being this vain and shallow all my life. Just ‘til I get through high school.
* “There is nothing idyllic in this realistic story, no talk of Heaven, but there is hope. We share Jazmin’s laughter and tears as she writes about her struggle to find her community and her own space.”
—Booklist, starred review
OTHER PUFFIN TITLES YOU MAY ENJOY
Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff Walter Dean Myers
Growin Nikki Grimes
Let the Circle Be Unbroken Mildred Taylor
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Mildred Taylor
Won’t Know Till I Get There Walter Dean Myers
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto. Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Dial Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998
Published by Puffin Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000
Copyright © Nikki Grimes, 1998
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Grimes, Nikki.
Jazmin’s notebook / Nikki Grimes.
p. cm.
Summary: Jazmin, an African-American teenager who lives with her sister in a small Harlem apartment in the 1960’s, finds strength in writing poetry and keeping a record of the events in her sometimes difficult life.
1. Afro-Americans—Juvenile fiction. [1. Afro-Americans—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Fiction. 3. Poetry—Fiction. 4. Diaries—Fiction. 5. Sisters—Fiction. 6. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.G88429Jan 1998 [Fic]—dc21 97-5850 CIP AC
ISBN: 978-1-101-66736-1
Version_1
For my sister, Carol,
who helped me beat the odds
Contents
Other Puffin Titles You May Enjoy
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
AMSTERDAM AVENUE
42ND STREET LIBRARY
FOR SALE
CENTRAL PARK LESSON
NIGHT NOISE
AUGUST
DAYDREAMING
UNTITLED
YARDBIRD SUITE
LAUGHING IN THE DARK
IT’S JUST A QUESTION
MOVING DAY
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to my editor, Toby Sherry, for her wise guidance, enthusiastic support, and unflagging faith in this project.
Many thanks, as well, go to her former assistant, Victoria Wells, for her sharp-eyed observations and helpful notes.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to poet Rasul Murray, authors Ann Braybrook and Michelle Y. Green, and friend Toppin Martin. Their perceptive questions, comments, and suggestions helped me tremendously. Thanks, guys!
First, last, and always, I thank God for allowing me to do the work that I love.
APRIL 7
According to my sister, CeCe, the night before I was born, Mom and Dad sat in the living room, timing Mom’s early contractions and arguing about my name during the minutes in between. They both agreed on the name itself, but spent half the night fighting about the spelling.
CeCe was six years old at the time, and would have been fast asleep, except that the tenement our family lived in on Lenox & 133rd was the size of a Cracker Jack box, with walls twice as thin, and sound carried easily from room to room. CeCe, in bed at the other end of the apartment, remembers laying wide-awake that night, listening to every word. She couldn’t understand everything she heard, of course, but years later Mom filled in the details.
Apparently my father wanted my name to be a sort of homage to jazz. He sold insurance for a living, but he was a frustrated sax man, and he figured if he couldn’t spend his life playing jazz, he at least ought to be able to honor his love of “America’s only original art form” by making it part of his baby daughter’s name. He said this while Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” serenaded Mom from the stereo, mind you, so it’s no wonder she got the hint. “Fine,” she said. “We’re well into the 50’s, so why not really be modern and use a y in place of the i, while you’re at it.” But Dad said that was carrying uniqueness a bit too far. “Besides,” he argued, “with a y instead of an i, people would be confused about the right way to pronounce the name.” He won the argument, eventually, and so my birth certificate reads Jazmin Shelby. That’s Jazmin with a z.
Now, that phrase might sound cute, but sometimes I find it downright annoying because I know I’ll have to go through life repeating it over and over again. No one seems to get the spelling right on the first or second try.
I think it’s great that Mom and Dad went to the trouble of making my name unique. But I’ve often considered changing it to Sally, or Linda, or maybe Jane, as in “See Jane run.” That’s one spelling everyone can manage. Of course, that kind of name wouldn’t last me any longer than my straight perm did because I’m my own me, nappy hair and all, and truth is, Jazmin suits me best.
Folks will figure out how to spell my name sooner or later, I suppose, especially after they see it splashed across the jacket of my future best-seller (smile). Meanwhile, I’ve got my work cut out.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Day and night
the electric sizzle
of the neon sign
hisses its invitation:
“Come on in.
If you have the price,
we’ll sell you a pint
of paradise.”
APRIL 16
You can be right next door to paradise and not even know it. I think about that sometimes when I sit here warming up the stoop, surveying Amsterdam Avenue from my self-styled post, smack between the Laundromat and The Garden of Eden Bar & Grill.
The bar & grill blasts rhythm and blues on the jukebox all hours of the night, while cocaine changes hands in dark corner
s, and pool-sharks in the back room beat amateurs out of a week’s pay. The Garden of Eden has its share of snakes, so you might say it’s an angel or two shy of heaven. But the name sure gets you thinking, and thinking is one thing I’m good at. Just as well since, between these Coke-bottle spectacles and these chicken-legs of mine, ain’t nobody inviting me out to dance.
CeCe hates it when I denigrate myself out loud that way. She swears I’m beautiful, mainly because she’s my big sister and imagines that’s her job. I don’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.
A pair of contact lenses would help my cause. It’s the 1960’s, for God’s sake. Nearly everybody’s wearing them. I told CeCe this. Okay, so it’s a slight exaggeration, but I was trying to make a point. CeCe yawned and shook her head. “That’s my baby,” she said. “Always good for a laugh.”
Every once in a while I slip downstairs in a scoop-neck sweater and tight hip-hugger jeans, minus my specs, in hopes of drawing a bit of positive male attention. It works too. Of course, I’m blind as a bat, so Lord help me if I’m doing laundry that day. I have to dig around in my pocket, pry out coins for the washer and dryer, and choose the right ones by feel—either that or pull out a handful of coins, and squint, which kind of defeats the purpose.
I swear, I’m not planning on being this vain and shallow all my life. Just ‘til I get through high school.
AMSTERDAM AVENUE
Siren screams and car horns
clog the air.
Still, the sparrow’s song
survives the blare.
And, though six-storied buildings
crowd this sky,
The sun scissors through and shines—
and so will I.
APRIL 23
A spring rain threatened late this afternoon, and except for J.D., the numbers runner down at the newsstand, and four girls jumping double-dutch in front of the Laundromat, the street was pretty empty. I hope J.D. wasn’t trying to be inconspicuous, because the red, black, and green dashiki he was wearing didn’t do the trick. It was a gray day, and J.D.’s shirt stood out like bright paint splashes on a charcoal page. I found myself staring at him until I realized it wasn’t J.D. that caught my eye, but his shirt. Not that I needed a wild dashiki print to hold my attention. I wasn’t exactly itching to go inside, and there was no reason to rush since, by some miracle, I’d escaped from school without any homework. Hallelujah!
CeCe says I spend way too much time on this stoop, but I can’t help it. Living in rooming houses off and on, and sleeping three in a bed for most of the years that we were small, has made me a freak for space. I’ve got no say in the size of the place we live in. I’m lucky to have a place at all, with Mom back in the hospital. But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel cramped inside our tiny one-and-a-half bedroom apartment. At least down on the stoop I can stretch my arms out in either direction without making contact with a wall, or a chest of drawers, or another living soul. I take what I can get.
Amsterdam Avenue has a wideness that’ll fool you. You get the idea that there’s plenty of space—space for every kind of person, every kind of dream. Wrong. I’ve lived on or near Amsterdam Avenue in Sugar Hill and up here in Washington Heights, and I’m not buying it. I see Woolworth’s scraping shoulders with Safeway, and Sherman’s Bar-B-Q elbowing the record store for room. The beauty salons and barbershops, drugstores and candy shops, funeral parlors and storefront churches all seem to be jamming each other in the ribs to create an inch or two of breathing space. You need a magnifying glass to find a library, though, or a bookstore, and those are the places where my visions come alive. But the Avenue doesn’t seem to have much room for them.
Looks like my dreams and I will have to fight for space. But that’s okay. I was born with clenched fists.
42ND STREET LIBRARY
The library
is no place to kneel
but this cathedral of books
feels holy.
I observe
a moment of silence
at the entryway.
The librarians
like ushers
point me in
the right direction.
I’ve only been here
once before.
That first time
I was a human top
spinning dizzy
in the middle of the hall.
I thought all visitors
should bow
or fold their hands—
do something special.
But I was too
dazed myself
to do more than
gaze up, and up, and up
and sigh.
The “Quiet” signs
posted everywhere
warned me not to speak.
And why would I want to?
It looked to me like
all the good words
were already taken.
MAY 9
It must’ve been 6:15 when Aunt Sarah came home tonight. I’m convinced the sun sets itself by her timely comings and goings. She trudged up the Avenue from a long day of emptying bedpans and dispensing prescriptions at Columbia Presbyterian.
Her body sagged as if the stiffness of her starched white nurse’s uniform was all that held her up. “Hi, baby,” she said, her voice warm as a cuddle. “How you doin’ today?”
“Pretty good.”
“And how’s the writing coming along?”
I paused long enough to smile and answer. “Fine, Aunt Sarah.”
“That’s good. That’s good. You keep it up, hear?”
“I will,” I said.
“You oughta send some of that fine writing to your mama in the hospital. I bet she’d enjoy that.” Aunt Sarah means well, but Mom is in no shape to be reading poetry from me or anybody else at the moment. She’s so deep inside herself, CeCe says the doctors are thinking about giving her shock treatment. I didn’t tell any of this to Aunt Sarah, though. I just smiled.
By then she was at the top of the stairs. I held the door open for her, watched her disappear inside.
Too bad Aunt Sarah’s not my real aunt. She’s so nice, I wouldn’t mind having her as a relative. Maybe that’s why everyone around here calls her “Aunt.” She’s got her own family, of course. A daughter, and two grandkids. I’d be glad to substitute for them anytime. Lord knows Aunt Sarah’s had a hug with my name on it every day since CeCe and I moved into the apartment next to hers. And her caring also shows up on our table, steaming from a bowl heaped with collard greens and kale. Leftovers she calls them, but we all know better. They only appear when CeCe is low on cash.
I’ve called 2104 Amsterdam Avenue home going on a year now. I’ve been sent postage-paid to so many different relatives and foster homes over the last fourteen years that I’ve lived in every borough of New York City at least twice, so one year in the same place is close to being a record.
It’s hard to keep track of all the places I’ve known, all the faces, which is the real reason I’m keeping this notebook. I’m tired of losing people before I even have a chance to commit their names to memory.
Aunt Sarah is a name that spells kindness, and when I leave this place, hers is one name I plan on taking with me.
MAY 20
Every time a guy waltzes up the Avenue sporting a beret, I see Daddy, especially if the beret is black and worn the way his was, with a jazzy tilt to the side. Like that man who leapt, pantherlike, from the 101 bus today, and headed in my direction.
My heart somersaulted two, three times at least, then pushed the word “Daddy” to the tip of my tongue. But only for one split-second. Then logic gave the word a shove, and left me choking.
Stupid! I said to myself. What’s wrong with you? Daddy died in that car crash going on a year. You oughta be clear on that by now.
The closer the st
ranger got to the stoop, the sillier I felt, because, apart from the beret, he was dressed all wrong. His jacket matched his pants, which Daddy’s never did, he wore a tailored black wool coat, not a trench, and to top it off, he was a full six inches too short! But that beret had me going. I watched it until the hat and the man disappeared around the corner.
Come to think of it, the bus should have clued me in that I was dreaming. Daddy drove his own car, and was plenty proud of it. Mind you, he had no use for the pink Lincolns or the mile-long, fire-engine-red Cadillacs other men parade down the Avenue, but he sure wasn’t above cruising in his black MG to show it off. Shoot! He wouldn’t have been caught riding a city bus if his life depended on it.
CeCe says my sense of irony has developed quite a bit here lately. I suppose she’s got a point.
FOR SALE
I pass the used-goods store
peek at
the bronzed baby shoes
useless and dusty
in the window.
It’s legal
to sell such things,
I know.
But it feels wrong
to me,
someone selling
someone else’s
memory.
MAY 28
It must drive God crazy to see how much we take for granted. My friend Jabari is a great example. This afternoon his grandmother left Wilson’s Drugstore, grinning, and hurried across the Avenue clutching a large envelope. She stopped in front of The Garden to catch her breath, and waved me over while she rested. “Looka here,” she said, slipping an 8 × 10 glossy from the envelope. It was a photo from Jabari’s prom.