Odella Quotes in Brown Girl Dreaming
We’re as good as anybody.
Retelling each story.
Making up what I didn’t understand
or missed when voices dropped too low, I talk
until my sister and brother’s soft breaths tell me
they’ve fallen
asleep.
Then I let the stories live
inside my head, again and again
until the real world fades back
into cricket lullabies
and my own dreams.
Sometimes, I lie about my father.
He died, I say, in a car wreck or…
He’s coming soon…
if my sister’s nearby she shakes her head. Says,
She’s making up stories again. Says,
We don’t have a father anymore.
Says,
Our grandfather’s our father now.
Says,
Sometimes, that’s the way things happen.
Our feet are beginning to belong in two different worlds— Greenville
and New York. We don’t know how to come
home and leave
home
behind us.
Odella Quotes in Brown Girl Dreaming
We’re as good as anybody.
Retelling each story.
Making up what I didn’t understand
or missed when voices dropped too low, I talk
until my sister and brother’s soft breaths tell me
they’ve fallen
asleep.
Then I let the stories live
inside my head, again and again
until the real world fades back
into cricket lullabies
and my own dreams.
Sometimes, I lie about my father.
He died, I say, in a car wreck or…
He’s coming soon…
if my sister’s nearby she shakes her head. Says,
She’s making up stories again. Says,
We don’t have a father anymore.
Says,
Our grandfather’s our father now.
Says,
Sometimes, that’s the way things happen.
Our feet are beginning to belong in two different worlds— Greenville
and New York. We don’t know how to come
home and leave
home
behind us.
