One Crazy Summer

After receiving the takeout order, Delphine places a collect call home. The girls’ father is not at home, but Big Ma is there to answer the call. She is not pleased that the girls are out so late or that Delphine has placed such an expensive collect call. Despite all of Big Ma’s fussing, Delphine feels satisfied that she did as she was told by calling home.

Back at Cecile’s house, Cecile prevents the girls from eating in the kitchen. Instead, she spreads a tablecloth on the floor in the living room, and they eat their dinner on top of it. When they finish eating, Cecile gathers everything Lady Ming put in the takeout bag and puts it away. Delphine interprets her odd behavior as further proof that Cecile is a bad mother. When someone knocks on the door, Cecile tells the girls to go into their room, which they do. Delphine still manages to spot three people through the front window.

The girls are expert eavesdroppers, so they listen through the door of their room. Through a crack in the door, Delphine sees that the three visitors are members of the Black Panthers. It is clear that they are pressuring an unwilling Cecile to use her printing press for a job. Cecile finally agrees to do the job, provided that the Black Panthers "take" her daughters, which they agree to. The girls are unable to understand most of the conversation.

At 9:35 p.m., Delphine bathes the girls and reads them a story before they fall asleep. In the middle of the night, Delphine is woken up by Fern, who is heading to the kitchen. Cecile is at the entrance of the kitchen and brusquely stops Fern from entering. Delphine asks Cecile to bring Fern a glass of water, and she sees what looks like white wings hanging in the kitchen when Cecile enters it.

Fern is too afraid to take the water from the angry Cecile, who calls her “Little Girl” instead of “Fern.” Fern finally drinks the water, but Cecile’s refusal to call her daughter by her name is just one more instance that convinces Delphine that Cecile is a terrible mother.

In the morning, Cecile tells the girls to go to the Black Panthers’ community center for breakfast. All three girls are shocked. Cecile also gives Delphine a box of printed materials to give to the Black Panthers, and she tells Delphine, “Make sure you tell them I gave to the cause. You tell them, ‘Don’t come knocking on my door asking for my materials’” (57). Fern brings Miss Patty Cake, her white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired doll, despite Vonetta’s groans and Cecile’s worries about a 7-year-old walking around with a doll. On the way to the center, Vonetta and Fern complain about Cecile’s meanness, and they ask Delphine to call home and tell Big Ma and their father what’s happening. Delphine tells them that they need to save up more dimes for a long-distance call since another collect call is out of the question.

When the girls arrive at the center, Delphine is shocked to see that some of the children who are being served breakfast are not African American. One boy, Hirohito (the boy on the go-kart), is clearly both African American and Asian. The Black Panthers at the center immediately realize that the three girls are Cecile’s daughters. While the girls are waiting in line, Crazy Kelvin, the man who made the long call at the phone booth the night before, confronts Fern about carrying a white doll, even though she is African American. Sister Mukumbu, the center's lead teacher, intervenes to tell Kelvin to leave Fern alone. The girls eat breakfast, but Fern has to contend with the other children calling her “White Baby Lover and Big Baby” (66).

After breakfast, Sister Mukumbu uses a demonstration of the rotation of the Earth to make the point that change and revolution are a part of the natural order of things. She invites the children to name important revolutionaries. Delphine is embarrassed when Vonetta and Fern claim that they only came to Oakland to meet their mother and to the center to eat breakfast—statements that cause everyone to laugh. Delphine is especially disappointed because she feels she can no longer ask Sister Mukumbu about Cecile’s nickname.