Dream Freedom by Sonia Levitin; Harcourt, Inc.: New York, 2000; $17 Dream Freedom is a beautiful book. As early as the foreword you can feel the anguish, the hope, and the love in every sentence: This book was born from emotion. First came the shock that slavery still exists, in our own time, and that most people are oblivious to its existence. And those two opening sentences are true. They really are. Slavery does exist. It’s happening right now, in Africa. While you’re playing kickball at recess a child might be taken away from his mother, a brother might be killed while trying to keep his sister from being taken. While you are at a theme park with your parents somebody else’s mother might be made to become pregnant with her master’s child, when she is already married and has another little one at home. While you’re slurping up Pepsi and snacking on Cheetos someone’s brother, uncle, daughter, mother, might be lucky to get a taste of the food the hogs eat. What the pigs eat is probably better than what some people are thrown. One reason this book is so beautiful is that Sonia Levitin, the author, is not African herself. She is white. But she cares. Cares like it is her sister being torn away from her. Cares like we all should care. What happens to one person, or one family, or one country, affects us all. And Sonia Levitin is trying to get us all to see that, or at least want to see that. Besides the parts about the fact that slavery does exist, there are chapters of the book about Marcus, a boy just like some of the children you might know. Marcus lives in America and his teacher is teaching his class about the slavery that’s happening, and they are trying to help. You may not believe this, but some people in the book were strongly opposed to their children learning about slavery. A quote from one of the fathers in the book is “I know what Miss Hazel intends! She is using our children to become a national celebrity! Oh yes, you want your fifteen minutes of fame. Well, let me tell you, you’re not going to get it at the expense of my son!” Miss Hazel then tries to tell him she couldn’t care less about being on television. The father replies that he sends his son to school to learn the basics, not to get worked up about a bunch of primitives who have been fighting and killing each other since time began. If I were Miss Hazel, I think I would have about blown my top. But then in the book you learn that some people might reason with the angry father. They say buying slaves to free them promotes capturing them, but I think the most important thing is to keep all of the people of the world free. We all have that right, no matter what color skin or what name. Slaves aren’t even allowed to keep their names! They are given new Arab names! Think about how you would feel if someone stripped you of your home, your family, your way of living and even your name. That would be the most terrible fate on earth. I would never mean to say all Arabs are bad, because you can’t brand a race. Some of them are taking the Sudanese as slaves, but you can’t dislike all of them. Most of them are people just like you and me. Like Aziz, in this book. Aziz didn’t know what it was like for the slaves his father bought. But then one day he went with his father to buy slaves and he saw a girl being taken away from her sister, the only thing she had left of her own past. Also Aziz’s father struck a man because he would not obey him. Aziz can’t figure out how he is going to make it through the rest of his life, and sits in his bed thinking, It’s a lie. It’s a lie. They are exactly like us. At the end of the book you learn these facts: in the civil war going on in Sudan, 1.9 million people in Southern and Central Sudan have died, and 4 million Sudanese have had to flee from their homes, leaving their houses, jobs, farms, food and toys behind. Should anyone have to live like this? You decide. Kat Clark, 11Racine,Wisconsin
November/December 2001
Phyllis and Me
I ran down the stairs, grabbed my backpack and rushed out the door just as the bus turned the corner. It was the first day of school. I was new. I wondered whether the fourth-graders would like me. What if they didn’t? On the bus, I sat next to a girl who was tall and had long brown curly hair that went down to her waist. She wore a short blue-jean skirt with black platform flip-flops, and a green-and-purple-striped sleeveless shirt. She looked nothing like me. I was short, with straight black hair that went down to my shoulders. I was wearing bell-bottoms with white socks, white sneakers and an orange T-shirt. “Hi,” the girl said, “my name is Meagan, what’s yours?” “I’m Elizabeth,” I said. “Well, Lizzie, since you’re new, I might as well warn you about Phyllis. She’s crazy and she plays baby imaginary games.” I looked down at my lap and remembered the games I used to play with my old best friend Ashley. We would pretend that we were horses running free in the fields, or running away from horse catchers. Ashley never called me Lizzie. She knew I liked my full name, Elizabeth. At recess, I sat on the cement steps in front of the school with Meagan and her friend Jane. “Look at that handsome boy over there,” Jane said, pointing to a tall boy near a grove of trees on the edge of the playground. “Oh my gosh! He’s so cute,” Meagan said. “Look at that handsome boy over there,” Jane said, pointing to a tall boy near a grove of trees All I could see was a tall boy, who looked a bit mean. Behind him, a girl was crawling on her hands and knees and talking to herself. He was teasing her, but she didn’t seem to mind. The girl reminded me of Ashley. At the next recess, I was following Meagan and Jane to the cement steps, when the girl that had been crawling on her hands and knees the day before walked up to me and asked, “What animal are you?” I was puzzled for a moment, but then I thought I knew what she meant. “I was born in the year of the monkey,” I answered. “You don’t look like a monkey to me,” she said, “You look more like a panther. Don’t you think I look like a lion?” I stared at the girl’s red straight hair which was pulled up in a bun with the ends sticking up all over the top of her head. She did look something like a lion. She was thin, and she had freckles all over her arms, legs and face. “Quick! Here comes the hunter!” She pointed to the tall boy who had been teasing her the day before. She grabbed my arm and ran to the grove of trees at the edge of the playground. “Lion,” I gasped, “that was a good escape, but he’ll find us soon. We need to go deeper into the woods!” Lion ran ahead of me, deeper into the grove of trees, and I followed as fast as my legs would carry me. Then we heard the bell. Lion raced back through the trees beside me, when a stick popped out from the edge of the path. I had no time to slow down, or stop, so I tripped over the stick and landed on my face in the dirt. Lion landed beside me a few seconds after I had landed. Lion jumped to her feet and shouted, “I’m going to get you this time, Mike.” It was the tall boy. One of the lunch monitors ran over and told Mike to go to the principal’s office, and helped me get up. Lion had a bloody nose and a skinned knee. I had a scraped chin, and a mouth full of dirt. In the nurse’s office, Mrs. Smackers, our school nurse, gave Lion a tissue for her bloody nose. “Here you go, Phyllis,” she said. Phyllis? I thought. Lion was crazy Phyllis? She sure didn’t seem crazy to me. When I got on the bus, I sat next to Meagan, and she said, “I’m not going to sit with you until you stop playing with Phyllis. I warned you not to, but you didn’t take my word for it.” I had been looking forward to playing with Phyllis at recess the next day, but now I had changed my mind. The next day, I sat on the concrete steps with Meagan and Jane. Mike came over and apologized to me. I didn’t say anything back because I was still mad at him. After Mike left, Meagan said, “You’re so lucky! He likes you!” Then Phyllis came over and asked, “Aren’t you going to play with me, Panther?” Meagan and Jane both laughed. “Don’t you know her name is Lizzie?” “Her name isn’t Lizzie, it’s Elizabeth,” Phyllis said. I looked at Phyllis, then at Meagan and Jane, and I said, “Maybe I’ll play tomorrow, but right now, I’m busy.” Phyllis looked down at her feet and walked away slowly. Meagan and Jane gave me a high five, and said, “Great work!” but I felt like I had done something terrible. I watched Phyllis sit down on the path near the grove of trees. I wished I could be climbing trees and running from hunters, instead of talking about boys. Then I saw Mike walking toward Phyllis with a stick in his hand. I jumped up and ran across the playground. “Mike!” I shouted. I ran up to him and said in a low voice, “I have a message. Meagan and Jane want you to go sit with them.” “They do?” “Well, yeah! Of course. They think you’re the cutest guy in school.” He dropped the stick, and started walking toward Meagan and Jane. Meagan put her hand over her mouth, and Jane’s jaw dropped. I looked at Phyllis and said, “Hey, Lion, let’s get
The Baseball
I was only eight when Pearl Harbor was bombed. It was so long ago—back when I had fountains of cranberry-red hair tamed into ragged half-ponytails. Back when I had yellow dresses with hems that danced around my legs, displaying scraped knees; I never did girly stuff. No, I broke the sugar bowls at tea parties and tore the silken gowns of dolls. Besides, my idol was no woman. It was Sammy. He was my brother, eight years older than I, and I worshiped him. I always tried to tag along with him and his gigantic friends—he always tried to avoid this by taking giant steps, scaling treetops, running races, playing ball. So I lengthened my strides and walked like him, confident, big, I-mean-business strides. I took a deep breath and gripped the rough limbs of the oak out front, pulling myself into a palace of emerald leaves and sun-dappled branches. I practiced running by the steaming bog and bony cattails over the golden hilltop behind the baseball field, teaching my legs to move and letting the air roar in my ears like a jet plane, feeling at first as if I were going to topple over, then speeding up and finding I had wings. And in the folds of spangled night, I trudged to the baseball diamond with my brother’s too-big mitt and my brother’s too-heavy bat, and tossed baseballs into the air, watching their vague outline fall where I wanted, then slamming them out of sight. One day, Sammy discovered a gold mine of baseballs bordering the outfield and asked his friends in puzzlement about where they had come from. Nearby, following them as usual, I chirped up. I announced my secret rehearsals, then showed him what I could do. I walked next to Sammy with great, joyous steps. I climbed up the maples, the bays, the twining cypress, the keeling willow. I raced his friends and beat them all. And I showed what a ballplayer I was. “You guys are lucky,” Sammy snorted to his friends. “You guys don’t have a bratty, tomboy little sister that’s one hundred percent bad news.” But I could see in his eyes that he was proud of me. I raced his friends and beat them all. And I showed what a ballplayer I was Probably the thing I’ll remember most about that time was how we played. It was fantastic. We started after our homework was done. School was tough for me—I understood all the subjects, but went around doing them in unusual ways. In poetry I wrote without uppercase letters or punctuation; in math I added up numbers by making faces out of the digits first. My teachers didn’t understand, and as a girl who didn’t act the way girls were supposed to, I had no friends to help me parry their unconcealed disapproval. But I had Sammy. And every day, without fail, we would hastily do our work, then get bats and gloves and join his buddies, split into teams, and get dirty. We’d play until the darkness of purple dusk fell, until Mom trudged up the hill, battling the wind as it billowed out her skirts and ruffled up her auburn hair. And when her call rang round the dugout, Sammy would wave good-bye to his friends and drag his feet back home, holding my slender white fingers in his big, warm hand. I still believe today that if it wasn’t for Hitler, Sammy Corboy could have become a professional ballplayer. We found out about Pearl Harbor when listening to “The Green Hornet” after dinner. Sammy and I were wedged together into the same faded, pink armchair, listening attentively to the radio. Then there was a rush of static, and our program was interrupted. “We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. This morning, Japanese planes attacked the American military base in Pearl Harbor . . .” We stared at the radio as if it was going to explode in our faces. The distant war was creeping into our home like a tiger closing in on prey. * * * Sammy and his friends wanted to fight. They talked of the Japanese and Germans as if they were a cup of something nasty that had spilled and simply had to be wiped up. No need for soap or sponges—just a rag would do. They seemed to think they could just go overseas, kick butt, and be back in time for dinner. One of Sammy’s best friends, a tall boy named Rolando, was two years older and signed up immediately. I watched him leave, happy, determined. He never came back. My music teacher, Mr. Phelps, went abroad as well, abandoning the class to a series of frazzled volunteers. I never saw him again, either, but it never really registered in my eight-year-old mind how grim the situation was and that he was really dead. I guess I thought he had gone away somewhere and, like Rolando, would come back sometime or other. Death is just a word when you’re young. Everything was changing. I grew out of my oxfords the summer following the bombing, and Mom replaced them with some old saddle shoes she found at the “Shoe Exchange” that were much too big and stuffed the toe with newspaper. We collected bacon grease off the griddle in tin cans, and when the cans were full gave them to the fat butcher three blocks away. I was told they were somehow used in the manufacturing of bombs. Gold stars stared from windows everywhere, and adults were tense, stretched thin, looking older, on the verge of breaking. Everything in my world was a roller coaster—except baseball. The sport insisted on keeping the same rules, the diamond still waiting patiently for me every day after school, its popularity never faltering. Hordes of kids would crowd round the makeshift bleachers and watch all the high-schoolers and me play on weekends. The kids my age jeered at me, but it
