“Yes?”
I stood up and lifted my palm to Uncle Kenneth, in a sign of high respect, then turned to my dozens of cousins. “Our dear and wise Uncle Kenneth has told us a tale full of meaning. The Chukma family can do many things Naloosha Chitto cannot, but the greatest of these, my dozens of cousins, the greatest of these things is that they can—each and every one of them—tie their own shoelaces.”
Jaws dropped and no one said a word.
“If they couldn’t tie their shoelaces they would have tripped on the path, and who knows what would have happened?”
“Is there anything else they could do that Naloosha Chitto could not?” asked Uncle Kenneth. “Anything?”
“Well, hoke. They could read. Mary Chukma could read and so could her brother Ricky. They could read in the dark with flashlights. They could read even while they ate hamburgers.”
“And French fries!” shouted Cindy. “With lots of ketchup!”
“But they were always careful never to drip ketchup on the pages of the book,” Keith said. “Nobody wants to read a book with ketchup between the pages.”
“I told you never to listen to your uncle Kenneth!” my mother shouted, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “Is he telling you to pour ketchup on your books?”
“No!” we all shouted, protecting our new and funniest favorite teacher, Uncle Kenneth. Mother closed the door and stepped inside, and I thought—for just a moment—that I saw her smiling.
“Hoke, Uncle Kenneth,” I asked, “how do you know so much about Naloosha Chitto?”
“Naloosha Chitto, the Choctaw Trail of Tears, the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War One, I know all about Choctaws, today and long ago. And other Indian nations, too. Anybody want to guess how?”
“Turtle Kid knows,” I said.
“I’m sure you do,” said Uncle Kenneth. “I’m sure you do.”
“You know all about Choctaws because my mother read to you when you were a little kid.”
Uncle Kenneth gave me a quiet Are you crazy? Choctaw stare, then his lips crawled into a grin. “Or maybe,” he said, “I learned to read before I learned to tie my own shoelaces!”
“No way!” shouted my dozens of cousins, and we circled my Uncle Kenneth for one big Choctaw hug.
Main Street
JACQUELINE WOODSON
Autumn now. The leaves here in New Hampshire are the ones on postcards—bright red and heartbreaking gold, color so deep and intense it seems it doesn’t belong in nature. They sell the postcards at the pharmacy on Main Street and tourists buy tons of them, scribbling things like Gorgeous here and Right out of Our Town and Bringing you home some maple syrup and I can imagine living here one day. Celeste said that’s how her mother found Peterborough. She had come up with a busload of people wanting to see the leaves turn colors. And she said to herself, Maybe one day I’ll live here. Celeste said, Maybe she was so busy looking at the colored leaves, she didn’t look around to see that the leaves were the ONLY color in this town!
—
There’s a coffee shop on Main—right next to the pharmacy. Even though egg creams weren’t always on the menu, the people coming here to look at the leaves kept asking for them so the owner finally added them and people coming from the city drink them by the gallon and write their postcards. I haven’t learned to like the egg creams, but I sit at the coffee shop some days, drinking Cokes and looking over people’s shoulders to watch them write the same things—over and over and over. Sometimes I think I’ll see Celeste getting out of a car and running into the drugstore with her mother. But Celeste is gone now. This town is both completely different—and absolutely the same—without her.
—
Last winter the snow fell so long and rose so high, my father hired a man from Keene to plow it. When the man arrived, his huge plow moved silently through the mass of snow. The silence surprised me. How could so much power exist inside such quiet? As I watched, pressing my head against the window, I said to my father, I want to move through the world that quietly. That powerfully.
—
Where did you come from? my father said, his eyes at once laughing and worried.
—
I had a mother once, I said into the pane. She used to say things.
—
Don’t say that, my father said. You still do. Don’t ever say that.
—
But he is wrong. I don’t have a mother anymore. It’s just my father now. And the leaves. And the snow.
—
And the memory.