One Crazy Summer

“Mom invites your friends inside when it’s raining. Mama burns your ears with the hot comb to make your hair look pretty for class picture day. Ma is sore and worn out from wringing your wet clothes and hanging them to dry; Ma needs peace and quiet at the end of the day. We don’t have one of those. We have a statement of fact.”

Here, Delphine highlights the difference between a biological mother and a mom. When Cecile abandoned her daughters, Delphine started to see her as a biological mother with whom she has no emotional connection.

“She was like a colored movie star. Tall, mysterious, and on the run. Mata Hari in the airport. Except there weren’t any cameras or spies following the colored, broad-shouldered Mata Hari. Only three girls trailing her from a slight distance.”

This image—Cecile engaged in her own activities while her daughters trail behind her—perfectly captures how Delphine sees Cecile's relationship with her daughters. In the absence of concrete information about her mother, Delphine uses fantasy to fill in the gaps of her knowledge of Cecile, while she still feels abandoned by her mother.

“But the walls in Cecile’s house were clean, painted a yellow beige, and had no writing. Still, flashes of memory popped before me. Flashes of Cecile writing on the walls, and on boxes…Flashes of paint smells…Papa painting over her pencil marks…Flashes of loud…Papa and Cecile. Angry talking. When I’d asked about it, Uncle Darnell had said they’d fought over Cecile writing on the walls all the time.”

This quote offers some of Delphine’s earliest memories of Cecile. The incomplete nature of these memories is captured through the repeated use of ellipses. We see here, too, both Cecile’s need and desire to create and how part of Cecile, when she was a young mother, remained a child herself, exemplified through her writing on places she should not.

“Our mother wore pencils in her hair, dressed like a secret agent, had a stickly, prickly house, a palm tree when no one else had one, and clean, painted walls instead of the writing I remembered. Now I got why our mother ran away. Our mother was crazy.”

One of the major questions that Delphine tries to answer throughout the novel is why her mother abandoned her  and her sisters. In this quote, Delphine understands that her mother is odd and eccentric, and she interprets these characteristics as signs that her mother is mentally unwell.

“In the animal kingdom the mother bird brings back all she’s gathered for the day and drops it into the open mouths of each bird squawking to be fed. Cecile looked at us like it didn’t occur to her that we would be hungry and she’d have to do what mothers do: feed their young.”

According to Delphine, Cecile constantly fails to fulfill her responsibilities as a mother. In this quote, Delphine believes that her mother doesn't even belong to the animal kingdom because Cecile refuses to cook dinner for the girls.

“Cecile said, ‘Paper isn’t free. Ink isn’t free. My printing press isn’t free. I’m not free.’ One of them answered, ‘None of us is free, Sister Inzilla. Eldridge Cleaver isn’t free. Huey Newton isn’t free. H. Rap Brown isn’t free. Muhammad Ali isn’t free.’”

“Cecile said, ‘Paper isn’t free. Ink isn’t free. My printing press isn’t free. I’m not free.’ One of them answered, ‘None of us is free, Sister Inzilla. Eldridge Cleaver isn’t free. Huey Newton isn’t free. H. Rap Brown isn’t free. Muhammad Ali isn’t free.’”

“Only when I sat in the tub did I wish my Timex wasn’t so reliable or the ticking so steady. Oh, how I wished the minute hand would slow down and give me time for a nice, long soak. Wish all I wanted, I couldn’t leave Vonetta and Fern alone to sort out who’d sleep at what end of the daybed. Three extra minutes in the tub and I’d be sorry. I stuck to the schedule.”

In this quote, Delphine articulates that she feels weighed down by her responsibility toward her sisters. The watch is an important symbol of that responsibility. For Delphine, the temporal is too-sided: it helps her in duties while also consistently reminding her of them.

“‘Are your eyes blue like hers? Is your hair blond like hers? Is your skin white like hers?’”

In this quote, Crazy Kelvin challenges 7-year-old Fern for carrying around a white doll called Miss Patty Cake. While efforts to re-educate African-American children about American beauty standards were common during this period, Kelvin's gracelessness and cruelty reveal that he is more interested in making himself look good than re-educating children. This early characterization of him primes the reader for the poem Fern recites at a rally that reveals that Kelvin is a police informant.

“Cecile said, ‘It’s my name. My self. I can name my self. And if I’m not the one I was but am now a new self, why would I call my self by an old name?’”

Names are an important part of identity. In this quote, Cecile espouses the importance of claiming her new identity as an artist, a black woman, and a person who is free from the restrictions of society by giving herself the name Nzila.

“A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb. Cecile had no trouble dreaming up names for us.”

This quote captures Delphine’s beliefs about naming. She sees her mother's decision to give herself a new name as a betrayal of her identity, especially her identity as a mother. It also shows how Cecile’s creativity is a part of her parenting.

“It wasn’t at all the way the television showed militants—that’s what they called the Black Panthers. Militants, who from the newspapers were angry fist wavers with their mouths wide-open and their rifles ready for shooting. They never showed anyone like Sister Mukumbu or Sister Pat, passing out toast and teaching in classrooms.”

An important aspect of the novel is how it reveals another side of the Black Panthers through their social projects. The free breakfast program and classes in which the Gaither sisters participate are examples of these social projects. The surplus of media depictions of the Black Panthers show members of the group angry and armed; One Crazy Summer shows audiences a more rounded and accurate version of the group.

“From where I stood, stealing glances, it seemed like she was laying down puzzle pieces. Picking up one piece of something and laying it carefully down on her equipment. Picking up another piece and laying it down. Then she’d study the pieces. Just the piece she had completed. She had pulled herself into her puzzle laying and had forgotten I was there. I could see why Vonetta and Fern were not allowed inside Cecile’s kitchen. Cecile was fixed in prayer.”

This quote captures the moment when Delphine finally recognizes that her mother is an artist. This is the first time that she sees her mother at work and understands the importance of that work to her mother.

“‘We’re trying to break yokes. You’re trying to make one for yourself. If you knew what I know, seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t be so quick to pull the plow.’ I sort of knew what she meant, but someone had to look out for Vonetta and Fern while we were here.”

This quote captures how Delphine feels torn between wanting to be a child and needing to assume responsibility for her sisters. Her resentment of her mother for not assuming a greater role in parenting her daughters is also clearly communicated in this quote.

“We’d been learning about civics since the first grade. There was always a field trip to the fire station on Henry Street. We watched the same film about the firemen, policemen, and mayor, who kept our community safe and orderly. The film’s narrator reminded every boy—from Ellis Carter to the Jameses, the Anthonys, and every other pants wearer—that they too could grow up to be guardians of our community. We girls were reminded that we could look forward to becoming teachers, nurses, wives, and mothers. Poets were never mentioned.”

As she learns more about what good citizenship means for an African American in a racist society, Delphine begins to re-examine what she was previously taught in a traditional public school. Part of Delphine's growing consciousness is that inequality is not just limited to race. She learns that gender discrimination is also possible.

“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 on to Fern tight, afraid for Papa. Afraid Papa might talk back or fight back.”

In this quote, Delphine makes the connection between the racism her father experiences from a policeman and the police brutality that the Black Panthers talk about in her classes. This connection makes Delphine so scared that she decides to keep her sisters from attending the People's Center and to prevent them from participating in a rally.

“I was thinking, Alive. We have to be alive. Wouldn’t Little Bobby rather be alive than be remembered? Wouldn’t he rather be sitting out in the park than have the park named after him? I wanted to watch the news. Not be in it. The more I thought about it, the more I had my answer. We were staying home tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. We certainly weren’t going to be in no rally.”

Delphine shows in this quote that she values her sisters' safety more than their civil rights activism. She has learned to prioritize safety from Big Ma and her father, who have a much more conservative approach to dealing with violations of their rights. Ultimately, however, Delphine returns to the center, along with her sisters.

“Who else in my classroom could claim they knew a poet and that she was their mother? So, on the afternoon that Robert Frost’s horse had clip-clopped through the snow, I’d raised my hand and told the class my mother was a poet. ‘Now, now, Delphine,’ Mrs. Peterson said, ‘nice girls don’t tell their classmates lies.’”

One of the earliest lessons Delphine learns is that it is impossible to be a poet and a mother and a black woman. The idea is so inconceivable to Delphine's teacher that she accuses Delphine of lying about her own mother being a poet. This incident is one of many that shows how educational systems can reinforce inequality, which is why the Black Panthers created their own educational institutions.

“I could talk, but I’d learned that, as long as I was quiet, I was allowed to stay with her while she tapped against the wall with her pencil, wrote and wrote and said her rhymes over and over. Don’t cry. Stay quiet. Want nothing.”

Although she is still unable to fully articulate it at this moment, Delphine is beginning to understand that her mother was always emotionally unavailable to her, even when she was physically present—her art was simply too important to her to properly parent.

“Gazing out to the bridge, I felt what I almost felt on the airplane. It was the pure excitement of seeing the world […] For a minute I forgot I was with my sisters. Then I remembered what Papa had said, and I stopped myself from falling into the whiff of salt air and flying off with the seagulls like some dreamy flower girl. I was happy to be there, and that had to be good enough.”

The moment when Delphine stares at the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the few moments when she allows herself to put down the burden of being responsible for her sisters and to act like a child. As always, the moment ends quickly for her.

“I had that Black Panther stuff in me, and it was pouring out at every turn. I figured it was all right. Papa wouldn’t have wanted me to spend our money where we weren’t treated with respect. But I was sure Big Ma would have wanted us to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘Please, sir’ to show him we were just as civilized as everyone else.”

Delphine's growing racial consciousness and her willingness to engage in activism despite her young age are on full display here after she criticizes a store owner for his racism. This new outspokenness is sign of how much she has evolved since the start of her visit to Oakland.

“We decided Cecile’s poem was in a way like ‘Dry Your Eyes.’ We decided that it was about Mother Africa losing her children like Cecile had lost us. I didn’t remind my sisters that Cecile had left us.”

In this moment, the girls bond with each other and with their mother by reading her poetry. Reciting the poem gives the two younger girls a chance to feel closer to their mother. Delphine's decision not to remind her younger sisters that there is a difference between loss and abandonment demonstrates how responsible she feels for their well-being.

“Who would have thought twenty flyers could have brought more than a thousand people to the park. Talk about a grand Negro, well, a grand black spectacle.”

Delphine’s shift from being afraid of creating a “Negro spectacle” (2) at the start of the novel to feeling proud of supporting a rally shows just how far she has come in terms of her racial consciousness. When Delphine corrects her use of the word “Negro,” the correction shows that Delphine's racial consciousness more closely aligns with the beliefs of the Black Panthers than with those of Big Ma.

“‘Be eleven, Delphine. Be eleven while you can.’”

Cecile's advice to "[b]e eleven" while Delphine still can is not something that Delphine is fully ready to hear. Nevertheless, it does seem to give her permission to be a child and to have more trust in the adults around her.