Maizon at Blue Hill Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  The letter.

  I folded the letter again. But as I licked the envelope and pressed it closed, something inside me froze. What if this letter didn’t make any sense to Margaret? What if she thought I was losing my mind here or something? My stomach tightened. Was I the only one who’d ever understand this Blue Hill thing? What it’s like to be like this—outof my element is how somebody had described it once—away from everything and everybody that had always been familiar. I held the letter, staring at Margaret’s address. Then I added it to the others already piling up in my desk drawer. Maybe one day, I’d show them all to Margaret, and we could sit and read them together. But I wanted to be there with her when she opened each one—I wanted to show her I was okay, that I had survived. That even with all those crazy words on the paper, nothing had changed between us.

  “Woodson’s story frankly confronts issues of color, class, prejudice, and identity.” —Booklist

  “A provocative glimpse of the pain and beauty of a gifted girl’s adolescence.” —School Library Journal

  PUFFIN NOVELS BY JACQUELINE WOODSON

  Between Madison and Palmetto

  If You Come Softly

  Last Summer with Maizon

  Maizon at Blue Hill

  Miracle’s Boys

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Delacorte Press, 1992

  Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2002

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2002

  Copyright © Jacqueline Woodson, 1992 All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Woodson, Jacqueline.

  Maizon at Blue Hill / Jacqueline Woodson.—1st G. P. Putnam’s Sons ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel: Between Madison and Palmetto.

  Summary: After winning a scholarship to an academically challenging boarding school,

  Maizon finds herself one of only five blacks there and wonders if she will ever fit in.

  Sequel to “Last Summer with Maizon.”

  1. African Americans—Fiction. [1. African Americans—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction.

  3. Gifted children—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W868 Mai 2002 [Fic]-dc21 2001041743

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17511-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my friends

  1

  Would you look at this?“Grandma said. We were sitting on the couch in the living room. Mr. Parsons, from the Blue Hill School, sat across from us, smiling.

  “That’s the hill the school was named for,” he said, pointing toward the picture Grandma was looking at. I frowned at him and rolled my eyes. Did he think Grandma and me were bozos or something? The hill was blue—well, sort of. It looked like it was covered with moss and grass at the same time. Flowers, planted to spell out “Blue Hill School” grew around the edge of it.

  “Isn’t this beautiful, Maizon?” Grandma pushed the photograph toward me. There was a stack of them on her lap and we had been looking at them all morning. Mr. Parsons was full of pictures and pamphlets and information about Blue Hill. All I wanted was to stay right on Madison Street with my best friend, Margaret, to go to P.S. 102 instead of some school in Connecticut.

  I had plans for the fall. I was going to find out where our neighbor, Ms. Dell‘s, special powers came from and if there was a tiny, tiny chance that she might be planning on passing them on to me.

  “You’re going to love it, Maizon,” Grandma said. Mr. Parsons smiled and nodded. You don’t even know me, man, I wanted to say to him. How would you know what I’m going to like?

  “It looks nice, Grandma,” I said instead, because I knew all summer long Grandma had been bragging to people about me going away to Blue Hill.

  “Are there other black girls there, Mr. Parsons?”

  Mr. Parsons blinked. “Yes, Maizon. Of course there are other black girls.”

  “Then how come there aren’t any in any of these pictures? We must have looked at a hundred of them. And how come there aren’t any in this?” I waved the catalog at him.

  “The catalog needs to be updated, Maizon,” he said slowly. “We’re working on doing that this year. Blue Hill is actually somewhat behind other schools, in a way.” Mr. Parsons cleared his throat before continuing. “While we have small classes with caring teachers and some of the best athletic equipment, we’re still working on being more inclusive—bringing in more minorities and students who financially wouldn’t be able to have a boarding school experience if it weren’t for scholarship....”

  I listened to him drone on for a while. I hated the word minorities. I mean, who decides who becomes a minority? Personally, I don’t consider myself less than anyone. When Mr. Parsons got to the part in his speech about the great founders of Blue Hill, I tuned him out. It was a trick I had. I could make a person disappear just by not listening to him.

  “I wish I could take the whole trip up there....” Grandma was saying when I tuned back in.

  “You can‘t, Grandma. Your legs.” Grandma had been having trouble with her legs all summer. Even though the doctor said it was nothing to worry about, he had warned her that she shouldn’t walk far distances and shouldn’t take long rides. Blue Hill was three hours away by train. “And plus, you promised that if I went there, I could take the train up most of the way by myself. You promised.”

  Grandma sighed and put up her hand. “I know, I know, Maizon. You’re a big girl now. Don’t worry. I won’t go back on my word.”

  Mr. Parsons rose and Grandma handed him the stack of pictures. “The board was really impressed with your interview, Maizon,” he said. “They think you’ll be an asset to Blue Hill.”

  I nodded. It had been so long ago, I had nearly forgotten the day Grandma took me to Queens to meet with a group of teachers from Blue Hill. They seemed nice enough. Teachers were teachers. They were always asking you questions and then acting surprised because you knew the right answers. The Blue Hill people asked questions like all the others, opening their eyes wide when I answered them correctly, shaking their heads like they were disappointed in me when I didn’t.

  I got up and locked the door behind Mr. Parsons, then came back to sit beside Grandma. She was knitting me a red sweater. The collar would be black. Those were my favorite colors together—black and red. If Blue Hill had black-and-red uniforms, I’d
be there in a quick minute. But sixth graders—or lower school freshmen, as Mr. Parsons called them—had to wear blue plaid skirts with white blouses and blue blazers. I hated plaid anything.

  Grandma rested her knitting in her lap and pulled me closer to her. “Maizon,” she said softly, “I know you think I’m evil for sending you away ...”

  I swallowed. Evil is not the word I would have used.

  “But,” Grandma continued, “you have to understand that going away is going to make you a different person.”

  “I don’t want to be differ—”

  “Shush, Maizon,” Grandma said softly. “Let me explain. Everybody wants a safe place. For me it was Colorado on the reservation. But I knew if I wanted to grow I had to leave. Madison Street is your safe place. But if you stay here too long, you’ll begin to think that this is all there is to life. I want you to see that there is more, that there are other people who have lives that are different from lives you know here. I want you to experience difference, Maizon. You were the only girl in Brooklyn to pass the exam for Blue Hill. The only one. Don’t you understand what that means? It means this is a chance for you to learn beyond the boundaries of Brooklyn. Outside of New York City. There is more than this, Maizon. There’s a whole world. You need to see that. And the only way to do so is to leave. This is a beginning for you. I think you’re ready.”

  Beyond the boundaries of Brooklyn. Margaret and I had never stepped a foot outside of Brooklyn. We had made a promise to see Manhattan together when we saw it for the first time. Margaret and I had made lots of promises to each other. We wanted to be best friends ... always.

  “Anybody could have passed that stupid test, Grandma. They didn’t even let Margaret take it. She would’ve passed and then at least me and her could still be together....”

  “You’ll be together, Maizon. You and Margaret will always be together. Right here.” She pressed her finger to my chest. “That’s what makes best friends. It’s not whether or not you live on the same block or go to the same school, but how you feel about each other in your hearts.”

  I felt a lump rising in the back of my throat and swallowed. “What if we change, Grandma? What if I come home and Margaret’s not my best friend anymore? Then I won’t have anybody.”

  Grandma shook my shoulders and grinned. “What about this old lady, Maizon?”

  I looked up at Grandma. We had been together since I was a baby. Leaving her was too hard even to think about. “You’re in my heart, Grandma.”

  Grandma smiled, picking up her needles again and snapping them together so quickly they nearly blurred. “Maizon, Maizon, Maizon ...” she said softly. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Well, you could not send me to Blue Hill. That would be a start.”

  “And then what? You’re too smart for the schools here in Brooklyn.”

  “What if I just skipped a grade, Grandma? Then I’d be okay.”

  Grandma frowned. “I want you to learn with children your own age, Maizon. I don’t want you to grow up before you need to.”

  “I won’t grow up before I need to, Grandma. Promise! I’ll just go to class and do my work. Then I’ll come home and be with Margaret and Ms. Dell and Hattie and Li‘l Jay. That’s all.”

  “You’ll start wanting to do the things your classmates will be doing. Maybe they’ll be able to stay up an hour later than you do. Then you’ll want to stay up late because they’ll make fun of you if they know your bedtime. Then you’ll want to go out with them and stay out late. It won’t be good.”

  “But if I’m smart like the older kids then why can’t I go to school with them and do the things they do?” I pressed my hands together in my lap to keep from getting mad. Grandma was stubborn. She said that’s where I got it from.

  “You grow up faster than you need to, Maizon, and trust me, you’ll be dragging your feet to slow your growing up down.”

  I got up and walked over to the window. Outside, the sun was yellow-orange against Grandma’s shrubs. I leaned against the sill and pressed my hand to the glass.

  Grandma had made me the shorts set I was wearing. The top was blue-and-red striped and the shorts were all blue with only a little bit of red around the pockets. At Blue Hill I wouldn’t be able to wear shorts sets Grandma made me. I wouldn’t be able to sit beside her on the couch and argue with her while she knitted. At Blue Hill, I knew, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.

  The lump was back in my throat again. I didn’t swallow this time, and soon tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.

  It had been decided.

  2

  Yo! Margaret!“

  Margaret raised her window and stared down at me through the metal slats of her fire escape. “Shhh, Maizon. Li‘l Jay’s sleeping.”

  “Come outside,” I whispered as loud as I could, because she lived on the sixth floor. That’s why I had screamed in the first place.

  “Come up,” she whispered back. “Mama’s still working. I gotta watch Li‘l Jay until she gets home.”

  I pushed open the first door and waited for Margaret to buzz me through the second one, then raced up the five flights of stairs to her apartment.

  “That’s nice,” Margaret said, pointing her chin toward my outfit.

  I rolled my eyes and plopped down on the couch. “Three more days in civilian clothes,” I mumbled. “Three stupid days. Seventy-two hours. Four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes.”

  “Two hundred and fifty-nine thousand two hundred seconds,” Margaret finished, sitting down beside me.

  “Cheese and crackers, Margaret,” I said, because that’s what Grandma wanted me to say instead of saying “Jesus Christ.” “That’s not any time at all. Even God got seven days.”

  Margaret nodded. “And God wasn’t even going away.” She handed me a stick of gum and took one out of the pack for herself. “You learned how to make sounds yet, Maizon?”

  I pressed the gum into my mouth and shook my head. “I haven’t practiced.”

  “I heard this girl down the block. She was clicking her gum a mile a minute. Click, click, click. It was something.”

  “Somebody told me you had to have a cavity to click it.”

  “I heard you had to have a filling, but I have a filling on my left side,” Margaret said, pointing to her left cheek. “I’ve been trying for a long time and still, nothing.”

  “Anyway, Grandma says that’s impolite, Margaret.”

  “Hattie can do it. She does it with any kind of gum.”

  Hattie, Ms. Dell’s nineteen-year-old daughter, wasn’t exactly my favorite person in the world.

  “Hattie’s impolite.”

  “She’s nice, Maizon.”

  “You think everybody’s nice.”

  A pitiful look moved across Margaret’s face. I glared at her, mad that she always broke so easily. But when the look settled in her eyes, I was sorry. Her father had died this summer. I didn’t want to make her hurt any more than she was already hurting. After all, we were best friends.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, putting my arm around her shoulder. “I’m just all mixed-up inside.”

  Margaret looked down at her fingernails. After a moment, she started picking at the skin around her cuti cle. I smacked her hand away gently. “Don‘t, Margaret. You’ll get yourself all scarred up.”

  Margaret shrugged. “Everything’s all settled now, isn’t it, Maizon? You’re truly, surely going away, right?”

  “We sent my trunk today. Mr. Parsons was just at my house. He had more pictures to show Grandma.”

  “But you and her already looked at all those slides. And she met some of the teachers and everything. Why do they have to keep coming back with more stuff and more stuff and more stuff?”

  “Because Grandma can’t go up to Blue Hill. They want to make sure she understands about the school and everything. I guess they want her to feel like she’s been there.”

  “Oh,” Margaret said, staring down at her hands again.
/>   “Plus, they want me to get kind of used to the idea of being away at a place like that.”

  “Schools are schools. It’s still teaching and learning and doing a ton and a half of homework instead of being able to watch a good movie.”

  Margaret looked at me and crossed her eyes. I laughed. Then Margaret started laughing too. After a moment, we weren’t even sure what we were laughing about. Sometimes it felt so good just to be together that we couldn’t help but giggle and act silly. Even if people stared at us and frowned. We didn’t care.

  I stopped laughing and leaned back against the couch.

  “Here,” Margaret said, handing me a small throw pillow, which I stuffed behind my head.

  “I’m all crazy mixed-up inside,” I said again, only whispering this time.

  Margaret moved toward me, bringing her knees up and leaning her chin on them. “Because you’re going away?”

  I shrugged, pressing my palm against my mouth the way I do when I’m thinking. “It’s more, though. It’s going away, but it’s more too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, you remember how we used to sit under the tree when we were little and talk about the things we wanted to be?”

  Margaret nodded. “Little, Maizon? We did that a month ago.”

  “It seems longer than that to me.”

  “I wanted to be a lawyer and a doctor and a writer.”

  “And I wanted to be a lawyer and a movie director and a writer.”

  “We could still be all those things. That’s not going to change any.”

  “But those are the things I wanted to be here, on Madison Street. I might want to be somebody a whole lot different when I go away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there won’t be a Ms. Dell at Blue Hill or you or Grandma or Junior—I mean, Li‘l Jay—or Hattie. There won’t be any of the people from this block. And those are all the people who have always been around me, saying Do it, Maizon! Do it! Now they’re all singing a different song. They’re all saying Go to Blue Hill, Maizon!”