Dirt, p.1
Dirt, page 1
Dirt
Teffanie Thompson
Contents
Front Matter
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Author Note
Discussion Questions
Extension Activities
Discussion Question Contributors
DIRT
By Teffanie Thompson
Houston, Texas * Washington, D.C. * Raleigh/Durham, NC
Dirt © 2016 by Teffanie Thompson
Brown Girls Publishing, LLC
www.browngirlspublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-944359-22-5 (digital)
* * *
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical or photocopying or stored in a retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages to be included in a review.
First Brown Girls Publishing LLC trade printing
Manufactured and Printed in the United States of America
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It is reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped” book.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Square, my great-great grand- father.
Thank you, Imhotep, my great-great son. Thank you for reading and rereading and rereading the latest newest version of the many edits of this project.
Thank you, Rose Thompson and George Thompson, my parents, for their love and support.
I would like to thank Dianne Hess for planting the seeds of contemporary historical middle grade fiction in my mind garden.
Thank you. Loving appreciation goes to Dr. Tonea Stewart for sharing her family’s story with the world in which Dirt’s scene, the burning of Square Thompson's eyes, was based, in part, on the character account inspired by Tonea Stewart.
Thank you, Seton. My Seton Family Rocks! I would like to thank Karen Williams for requiring me to expand Dirt from a picture book to a novel.
Thank you – Danielle, Lisa, Susan, Ellen! Thank you for being the best and most loving critique partners eva.
Thank you Leslie Davis Guccione for your belief and your DMisms.
Thank you, Heidi.
Thank you, story coach, Adrea. Thank you, author coach, Anjanette.
Thank you, Travis White for traveling with me to Henderson, Texas to visit the land.
Thank you, Brown Girls Publishing – ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Malachi Bailey (Brown Boy), and Jacquelin Thomas.
Thank you. I would like to thank my beautiful great-great daughters, Abby and Halima.
Thank you. Thank you to my great-great-great husband, Farmer Guy/Matt Hanson, for providing a container in which Dirt could finally manifest.
You are l o v e.
To my Brother: Anthony 'Wali / Zin' Mills
1973-2016
“Always give obedience and respect to your Mother and Father, for obedience and respect will come to be two major keys of survival; which will bring about an infinite love and respect from others...”
Shem Em Hotep - Uncle Ant (10/13/1996)
Dirt cradles the seed.
She carves paths to destiny,
And houses our roots.
— Teffanie Thompson
1
I walked in from school and Mom immediately turned off her DVR’d How to Get Away with Murder. This was major. Mom never turned off Shonda. My stomach felt funny because I had a feeling that this had something to do with me.
“Ms. Peake phoned today,” she said.
Mom faked a calm voice and rose from the chocolate leather sofa. Her hips pushed a stack of mail from the credenza and sent it fluttering to the floor. A shiny family reunion reminder postcard winked up at me. She stopped dangerously close to me. Except for the Old Navy flip-flops and the scowl, Mom looked exactly like she did when I left this morning. Her flawless Halle Berry haircut didn’t move an inch, but her animal print maroon, orange, and yellow long African dress swayed with each of her movements.
“Hello, beautiful mother. Did she find my phone?” I asked. I was hoping the hopeful tone of my voice would soften whatever she seemed worked up about.
“No, something more serious. You lost your phone again? We can talk about that later,” Mom replied.
What had I done wrong? I passed my finals. I paid my fines. This year I actually found all of my textbooks to turn in before the last day of school. No trouble this week. I didn’t leave wet towels on the floor in the bathroom. I don’t think. Wait, Ms. Peake wouldn’t call about wet towels. I didn’t know what I had done. These days anything could upset Mom.
“Actually, your teacher informed me that once again you barely passed reading.”
I looked up and rolled my head back to rest on top of my backpack to prepare for the speech. The brown and white mural on our front entry ceiling pulled at my vision – colored like root beer floats.
Art fanatics visited our house just to see our ceiling. John Biggers composed one of his last murals, a replica of “Family Unity,” in our house.
I think Mom asked Mr. Biggers to paint his masterpiece in the entryway so random strangers wouldn’t ramble too far into our house to see his work.
Right now, I wished I could sit backward in the spiral tree trunks with the kids in the painting. The magical colors of the mural blended night with day, and earth with sky. Four kids sat motionless while red dirt from the ground danced with the night stars and sun rays surrounding them.
Next, Mom would tell me about how much money she and Dad paid for the Alain Locke Academy. She’d remind me how many Black people died so that I could live free and read. Why couldn’t I live free, and not read? “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
I nodded from the kids in the trance back to her.
She inched closer to me, and then stopped. She couldn’t get any closer. “Washington, I taught you how to read and I know that you read well. So, if at twelve years old, you don’t want to take school seriously, we won’t take anything seriously. I’ve cancelled your enrollment in summer league basketball.”
Mom had my full attention now. I slapped my hands over my face to stop the stinging under my eyelids. “No, basketball?” I dropped my arms to my sides. That escalated super fast. Cancelled? My team would never understand. My coach would never understand. I couldn’t let them down. This summer we planned to go all the way—Nationals in Las Vegas.
“Don’t cry now. You can’t just be able to shoot a ball through a net and wind up playing professional basketball. You have to go to college. And in college, you have to do what? Read. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James all went to college. Why are you looking at me like that?” She took in a deep breath and let out an irritated sigh.
I rocked back and forth on my heels. Should I answer? “Mom, two of them didn’t even go to college. And I’m not crying.” Everyone knew that Kobe and LeBron went into the NBA straight out of high school. Everyone except Mom.
Her glare signaled I shouldn’t have corrected her. The calm voice vanished. “You know what? All those Globetrotters did, I think? That’s not the doggoned point, Washington.” She balled her fists on her hips. “The point is your teacher feels you need summer reinforcement and wants to enroll you in summer academy. I love you, Washington, and I know how much you enjoy basketball, but I have to say that I agree with her. This year you are going to summer school…”
Mom kept talking, but I could only hear four words repeating in my head. Summer school… no basketball. Summer school… no basketball. Summer school… no basketball?
No basketball.
2
I couldn’t listen to the speech anymore. A wave of relief swept over me when Mom strolled over to the couch, sat down, and clicked the remote. Mom was back in hashtag H-T-G-A-W-M mode. I rushed toward the steep stairs, taking them one at a time to the second level.
A real picture, which looked fake, of President Barack Obama and Mom began the line-up of photos on the stair wall. A photograph of my father’s father, George Square Thompson hung next to Mom’s photo. Grandpa George sat in a blue armchair with his legs crossed at the knee. He wore a stiff, white buttoned down shirt and starched boot cut jeans with real Western boots underneath. He was pressed and perfect from head to toe.
He’d been missing for eight years. The last time anyone ever saw him was at one of our family reunions. Everyone who knew him said that I acted a lot like him. I wished I could have met him again to know if that were true.
Next came the photos of ancient people in fancy frames. They were Black; their pictures were black and white. Light flickered over framed glasses and made the smiling people laugh.
I never ma
I mirrored him. He mirrored me.
We had the same golden brown oval shaped face, the same forehead above the same two thin, perfectly arched, black eye- brows. Our same wide Thompson noses stuck out at the spot under the space between our eyes. I guessed he didn’t want to cut his hair either. He pulled his shiny, black hair into a ponytail. I sported an Afro. Square, my great, great, great grandfather tightened his lips into a straight line. He didn’t laugh.
“What’s up, Square?” I mouthed.
I finished climbing the stairs and stomped into my room.
Why did college have to mean everything to my parents? Layered pennants from Black universities wallpapered three of my four bedroom walls. They covered the fourth wall, the purple and gold one, with streamers and newspaper clippings from Prairie View A & M, both of my parents’ first college. They met there.
I slid off my backpack, and let it plunk to the floor next to my state-of-the-art gaming center. I glanced at the glowing basketball rim above my closet door, a lit neon hoop without a net. Dad mounted it, but Mom said the net looked tacky. The only decoration in the entire room posted for me. My lucky hoop, I could score from any angle in my room.
No ball. I scanned my bed. Where was it? Again and again I’d asked Mom to leave my ball on my bed. I hated having to search for it. Last Friday, she moved it all the way downstairs and to the garage. I couldn’t go back down there yet. Not today.
From the middle of the room, standing on the circular Prairie View rug, I dove onto my bed. Ooww, I could have broken my neck. Who put a basketball under a stack of pillows? Really?
I grabbed the ball and practiced finger spinning. What a sucky last day of sixth grade this had been.
I lost my phone, and after an entire school year, I finally asked Imani to be my girlfriend. I loved that she played on the boys’ ‘A’ team, the only girl. Imani even shoots threes. I could never tell what she would do or say, even during a game. She had a game face, a pretty game face. When I asked, she just said, ‘You know I can’t do that,’ then turned and walked away.
Now this. I just don’t get grown-ups. They’re crazy. Basketball, the one thing that got me to do anything right and Mom takes that from me. I thought the rule was no pass, no play. Not… you passed, you couldn’t play. If that were really the rule, Mom’s art gallery would be closed by now. She surely wasn’t passing there. She was barely even working there.
Basketball greats mastered spinning of a basketball on their fingertips. The ball got going; the whirling black lines disappeared into the dark orange.
Some players, the crazy ones, did anything to save a traveling ball that’s about to go outside the lines. On my team, we called that teammate flying out of bounds, a F.O.O.B, kind of like a fool. Boys leapt out of bounds, slammed into a brick wall, and still saved the ball. That’s a F. O. O. B. or M.V.F, the Most Valuable F.O.O.B. Sometimes the F.O.O.B. was me.
After practice once, a group of older boys began bugging Imani next to the James Meredith Gym about how she needed to play with girls instead of men. There were three of them following behind her.
I flew out of bounds. I thrust my basketball with all my strength and hit the tallest in the head.
All three spun toward me. One of them recognized me from a basketball tournament as ‘the boy who couldn’t miss a three,’ Mini - Curry. They asked me about what high school I would attend and my favorite NBA players. They seemed to forget about Imani and the slam to the head. I’m glad they did.
Before I threw that ball, I didn’t know what would happen next, and I didn’t care. That’s what flying out of bounds was—when you just didn’t care. I felt like that now. I should just run away.
“Washington, come down. Your dad’s home,” Mom called up the stairs.
I liked Dad’s lectures better than Mom’s, except for the trivia near the end. Maybe he’d take my side this time. With my ball in hand, I raced downstairs.
Dad was seated in his chair with a crisp Houston Informer folded on his lap.
“Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
“I think you know what’s up,” he responded. “Your mother tells me that you barely pulled up that reading grade. You struggled in that class all year. What’s the problem?” Dad’s quiet voice normally made me feel safe, but the way he twisted the newspaper as he spoke caused me to cringe.
“Ms. Peake makes us read out loud,” I answered. “And I hate it. I ask her if I can do something else, anything else.”
“What does she say?” Dad inquired. Bobbling my head from side to side, I replied, “She always says, ‘This is a reading class, you can read something else, but you can’t do anything else.’”
“Sounds like a good answer to me,” he said. “Look, Son, there is no way around reading. To excel in an area, you have to practice. I have had to hone many skills that I didn’t particularly enjoy. And trust me, it’s hard, but the rewards are great.” He paused. “You understand practicing your sport—right or wrong? When Coach B. Russell asks you to shoot twenty shots from the free throw line in front of the team, you don’t ask him, ‘Can I do something else?’”
“Dad, that’s different, I already know how to read.”
“You already know how to shoot a basket from the free throw line? Why do you keep doing it? Can you perhaps do it better? Can you score every time?”
His words made sense. Dad peered over the top of his glasses in his standard checkmate look. Except all the sense in the world would not change that I loved basketball and did not love reading.
“Okay, I get it,” I told him. “I’ll try harder. Can you talk to Mom about this summer academy thing? I’ve gotta play basketball this summer. Everyone’s expecting me to. The more I play, the better I’ll get. I’m gonna play for the NBA one day.”
Concerned, Dad sat up straighter in his chair. He rolled his newspaper into a tube. “You are aware of the odds, aren’t you? Only three high school players – three players make it to the NBA out of every 10,000. That’s point-zero-three percent. Son, tell me something…”
“Please, please, Dad.” I knew my whining would be interrupted, but I was going to give it a shot anyway.
“I’m sorry, Washington. What is your definition of reality?”
“It’s what’s real.” Trivia question—I knew my answer wouldn’t be enough.
“Exactly, and what is real?” Dad asked. “Uhh…” I mentally searched for a better answer.
“Repeat after me. Reality is the state of being true.”
“Reality is the state of being true,” I repeated.
“Only driveway and PlayStation basketball this summer. In fact, don’t let me catch you without a book nearby or those will go, too. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.” I backed away from the den. Had he finished? I bounced the ball twice onto the glossy, brown, wooden floors. I kept waiting for him to change teams, make a new call, be the referee. Summer vacation couldn’t get any worse.
“Hey, Son, I was thinking…” That was close.
For a moment I thought I would really have to run away from crazy town. I knew Dad would be more understanding.
I slowed my steps, holding my breath, and my ball tightly. I walked back into the room.
Dad was smiling now. “There’s always a bright side,” he said, “With no summer league ball, we won’t have any conflicts for the family reunion next weekend. We can all go.” He flicked out his newspaper and went back to reading.
Really? A bright side? Summer just got worse.
3
I sat up in bed, hoping that this last week had just been a bad dream. My eyes landed on the neatly folded clothes stacked on top of my dresser.
My nightmare was just beginning.
Mom knocked once and peeked into the room. “Time to get up. We want to be on the road within the hour.”
