by Odie Hawkins
“Now you have to lay up here, Lena ’n spread your legs, just like you was gon’ have a baby, in order for me to do what I got to do. But first, lemme ask you again, are you sho’ you don’t want to have this …?”
A slow trickle of tears slid down Lena Daniels’ high cheekbones as she lay on the table. “Yes, yes I want to have the baby, but we can’t afford it, Miss Rabbit we can hardly feed the ones we got.”
Miss Rabbit patted her on the arm, “I understand, sweetheart, I understand. Awright now, sit up first you gon’ have to take off your clothes, go on, undress. I’ll git one of my ol’ flannel gowns for you to put on.”
She watched Lena unbutton the first three buttons of her blouse, sadly, deeply into her reluctant feelings. Oh God, she prayed, walking back to her bedroom for the gown Oh God, please help me, help us She fished the gown out and reacted with intense surprise to see the glistening, naked young woman in her kitchen, standing under the light, next to the white sheeted table.
“Here ya go, put this on,” she said kindly and began to review her procedure, her equipment. Boil needle tips, have kotex ready for possible hemorrhage, and, oh yes that.
“Lena Mae, you ain’t hardly got stretchmark the first, how’d you manage that?”
Lena laughed easily for the first time, “I don’t know, Jim says crumbcrushers just squirt outta me, don’t need no stretchin’.”
Miss Rabbit rinsed one of the coffee cups out and circled Lena sitting stoically on the edge of the table, Miss Rabbit’s old-fashioned flannel nightie molding her full figure. She reached to the top shelf of her kitchen cabinet, over behind a few cans of reserve soup and some dried beans for two small tea-packaged sized bags, poured a few careful measures from each of the bags into the cup.
Lena, resigned to it all, peered curiously at her back. “Can I help you with anything, Miss Rabbit?”
“No, honey, not really,” she replied, feeling strong and positive in her actions now, on home ground. She replaced the bags, bustled over to whip some hot water into the cup, poured two teaspoons of salt into it behind the hot water and stirred vigorously.
“Now Lena,” she said, blowing into the steaming cup, “I want you to drink this, as hot as you can bear it.”
“What is …?”
“Just do like I say, girl! ’n stop askin’ so many questions!” she snapped, her nerves on edge. She left her pursing her lips up to sip at the steaming brew and went about the business of sterilizing her needles.
“How’s it goin’?” she asked without turning around.
“It’s hot and it tastes turrible,” Lena replied between shudders.
Miss Rabbit smiled, remembering. “Drink much as you can of it! Push it down, don’t throw up.” The needles sterilized, she turned to face Lena with a firm set of her jaw.
“Now this is your last chance, do you want to …?”
Lena tilted the cup up and drank, scalding her mouth as the liquid ran down, a cold, resolved expression on her face.
Miss Rabbit said one more silent prayer as Lena placed her feet evenly in each stirrup chair, pulled the bottom of the gown up over her face and submissively lowered her head to the pillow.
Miss Rabbit blinked at the sight of the strongly muscled young black thighs spread, the small, gashed wound between. Beads of sweat suddenly popped out on her forehead as she eased up between Lena’s legs with the needles, remembering when they used to use cobwebs and soot to stop bleeding.
She smelled the odor at the end of the operation, suddenly realized that she had boiled her meal to death and said to Lena, crying convulsively under her nightgown veil. “Hush up woman! Stop that cryin’! You ain’t done nothin’ but lose an unwanted mouth, I done burned my stew!”
Lena uncovered her tear-streaked face and smiled at Miss Rabbit’s nitty gritty logic.
Lubertha shuffled her notes, trying to maintain a cool exterior as the arguments escalated on both sides of her, the final result of internal dissensions that had been brewing quietly but powerfully since the late summer and now, during the fourth week of the new year, were spilling out. The Club membership was facing The Year of The Tiger with bristling fangs.
Ojenkasi made his voice heard above the general noise, “Abdul! Chiyo! Maisha! All of you sisters ’n brothers, listen to me a minute!”
The group quieted down slightly, granting attention to a senior member.
“I don’t think that what y’all want to git off into would suit the spirit of what Kwendi is all about, the kinds of things we could accomplish his way,” he spoke with quiet passion, a pained look on his face.
“Kwendi’s in jail, man!” Abdul, his full beard bristling up aggressively, “and besides, who in the fuck are you to be tryin’ to tell us what the dude is all about?! There his woman sit, if anybody could tell us anything ’bout where he’s comin’ from, it would be her, not you!”
All eyes in the room suddenly swept to Lubertha, as though suddenly remembering that she was there.
She stacked her notes slowly, neatly, all of her enlightening points seemingly pointless now, and looked around the room at the faces she had grown up with, suffered with, loved.
No, no talk about the government’s jive economic policies tonight, the price of beans in the ghetto, and why. No intelligent, well thought out ideas on ways to improve Afro-American, Pan-African unity or any of the other points. This went deeper than all that, this was soul searching time.
“O.k., number one,” she began, her voice trembling slightly. “I know that some o’ y’all are gonna think that I’ve either lost my mind, gone crazy, or both. I don’t give a damn, one way or the other. I’m gon’ say what I righteously feel.”
“Go ’head, sister!” Ojenkasi encouraged her, his jaw muscles twitching.
“Everybody in here knows that Kwendi Jones is my life, and that my life is locked up.”
Maisha, Nici and Bobbi looked down at their feet sadly.
“But that doesn’t mean, under any circumstances, that we haven’t been free with each other. There’re times when I get letters from Kwendi or I go to see him, and it seems that he has much more of his shit together than any of us out here in the streets.”
Chiyo grumbled deep down in his throat, annoyed with her obliqueness.
“All I can do is ask you all to be patient with me,” she shot at him, a fierce look in her eyes. “I’m not gon’ suddenly start talkin’ like a goddamned computer!”
“Right on, sister!” Abdul, a dissenter agreed, and glared at Chiyo.
“Now then,” her voice gained force, “let’s go back a lil’ bit, to reaffirm where the organization, the Club was supposed to be goin’.”
A few of the younger members and some of the oldsters leaned forward, having fallen out of pocket for the real reason for their existence in the Club.
“In the beginning, almost five years ago now, as some of you remember, we started out as a creative writin’ group, a revolutionary group that was dedicated to exposin’, within our community, the total community, all of the sham and bullshit we could write about and change, by any means necessary. In the beginning, we screened people very closely to see where their heads were, but Kwendi, from a prison cell, said ‘Hey y’all! that’s too goddamned elitist! If a sister or a brother wants to be in, they ought to be allowed in, period.’ We didn’t deal with white folks comin’ into the Club because we weren’t concerned with white folks’ rights … and we still ain’.”
A few members of the audience seconded her comments with “Right-ons!!”
Lubertha paused, pushed her notes aside, “The Club, even from the beginnin’, despite the fact that we were pro-black, was never anti-white, not on the person to person level. Am I right about that, Johnny?”
Johnny Fox, his arms crossed, analyzing as usual, nodded in agreement.
“We considered the possibilities, at one time, of a few selective murders,” she went on coldly, “within the white community, if it would serve a positive purpose for black p
eople. But, because of our intelligence at that time” she fixed her look on Abdul “we decided against that, and I’m sure Brother Tucker can open up the book and back me up on these points. We decided to attack the oppressor on all fronts, short of murder, which is what I hear now.
“Pleazzzz,” she almost moaned the word, “please don’t nobody get the impression that I’m against the idea of killin’ a few pigs who’ve tried to make our lives miserable but where do you stop? I mean, do we go from there to dynamitin’ police stations? Assassinating politicians who aren’t doin’ what they should be doin’ for the people, black and white …?
“Nawwww, nawwww, that’s not where I want to go,” she waved her hands in exasperation. “I don’t want to get bogged down with this localized oppression we’ve always been programmed to deal with. I want to branch out, form a Club bond with oppressed people everywhere, deal with the shit that’s threatenin’ to wipe all poor people out.”
“Speak, sister!” BoBo called out, looking self-consciously at Abdul and Chiyo.
She smiled at him gratefully, feeling slightly confused about where her spontaneous speech was going. “Look, everybody I’d just like to rap for a few more minutes, and then I’ll give it up.”
“Go ’head, blow!” Ojenkasi spoke coldly at her side.
“I got a letter from Kwendi the other day that laid so much shit on my mind that I had to take a couple aspirin.”
“Hahhh hahhh hahhah!”
“Right on!”
“Brother, don’t be jivin’!”
“Y’all wanna know what he said?”
“If you don’t tell us,” Nici Miles cut in humorously, “I’m gon’ kick yo’ ass!”
Lubertha laughed, the mood of things lightening somewhat. “To begin with, it was a love letter, but I’ll skip that part of it. What he got into was what he felt was the fascist thang a lot of brothers ’n sisters were gettin’ into. He started talkin’ about how important it was to have unity, but not unity with absolute conformity, which is where some of us want to take things. Abdul says, if we don’t want to go out and shoot pigs or pour gasoline on white women ’n kids, then we ain’t ready. I have to disagree with him.…”
Abdul scowled at her, biting his bottom lip.
“I don’t think we have to sink to the subhuman level that the white boy has let his technology take him to, in dealin’ with people, in order to get our human rights. I know it’s necessary for black people to do a whole bunch o’ things, but I don’t think any of our methods should be applied to individuals Racism is an institution, not a person.”
Abdul stood slowly, his scowl deepening. “Sister Franklin, with all due respect. We went through all this shit a few years back, and we came to the realization that the only way, the only way! we gon’ get rid of white oppression, in all its forms, the only way we gon’ be granted more than a token share of what this country has gained at the sacrifice of our lives ’n labor is through bloodshed ’n violence.
“Now, you know yourself,” he added suavely, “this is one of the things Kwendi was really heavy on.”
Lubertha wiped her face with both hands, frustrated, disturbed. “Abdul, that was almost five years ago. Many, many things’ve changed, some for the better, some for the worse. Five years ago that cracker governor, the one in Alabama, whatshisname? was a superduper white racist, o.k.? Now, most of his shit has changed.
“Five years ago we had to deal with forces that were not the least bit ready to deal with any of the places we were comin’ from. Times’ve changed, and times are changin’, brother whether we like to admit it or not. The racists we knew as children have given birth to children who are not racists. We can’t afford to be stuck with old methods dealin’ with new people.”
“Bullshit!” Chiyo Mungu called out. “How in the fuck can a beast give birth to anything but a beast!?”
“I don’t know, brother,” she answered promptly, not stuttering over a single syllable. “I don’t know the answer to that. But, it’s just as hard to figure out how slaves could give birth to free men. Mutations come in many colors.”
A few members of the audience applauded, giving credit to an evenly placed point.
“The only thing I’m sayin’,” Lubertha continued, on firmer footing now, “is this; I don’t think we should be guilty of committin’ the same mistakes that the white racists committed, in the name of freedom. When I sit here and listen to Abdul say that we ought to go out in small groups and kill a few whiteys, any few then I feel we’ve gone off and become white ourselves.”
“What!?” Chiyo screamed. “What’s that you say?”
“You heard me, brother I didn’t bite my tongue. When I hear you say that we should start a war that we sho’ in hell ain’t in no shape to win, in order to stop war then I call that traditional white thinkin’. You dig? Like, hey, we had to destroy your house in order to keep the enemy away. Who is the enemy?”
She paused for a quick breath and jammed on, cutting off Cyiyo, Abdul and a few others who wanted to dispute her. “This is the kind of thinkin’ that we must not fall into, I am not tryin’ to preach the philosophy of St. Martin Luther King either, all I’m tryin’ to do is make sense.
“One of the reasons why we have Rudy in law school, why we raked and scraped enough dough together to send him, was to have a lawyer, one who would attempt to deal with the law from our perspective for a change. That’s called doin’ something by any means necessary too, you know?
“If y’all remember, when we first got active on the political scene, a lot of people called us sellouts and a bunch of other foul things, but look at what happened when the neighborhood began to benefit from what we were into.”
“Why don’t you give somebody else a chance to speak, sister? That’s what’s wrong now, the same people always have the flo’!”
Lubertha glared across the room at Chico Daddy, a red, black and green knit stuffed down onto his braided curls. Chico Daddy, the one dude in the group who never said very much. Maybe he’s right, she thought, and sat down without saying another word.
The room was suddenly alive with crosscurrents, Abdul on top of the main one.
He eased into his thing suavely, confident that a certain number would dig him as a man, rather than any woman, and that a certain number would dig him because he was there, alive, in the flesh, and their so-called leader wasn’t. “Sister speaks well, yeahhh, sister speaks well, but we have to consider a lot of other things besides what she says. We have to keep in mind the nature of the beast we dealin’ with. Number one he’s the same devil with thirty-two fangs that he was when he first slithered out from under that rock whenever that was.”
“Right on, brother! right on!”
“Git down!” and some other admiring, exclamatory remarks backed up Abdul’s opening.
Lubertha smiled sadly, becoming aware that it had all been planned. It was obvious that Abdul had been picked for the confrontation and probably the leadership. But why?
“I know,” he went on, sounding more like a new line Black Baptist preacher all the time, “I know that what the sister says is true. Yeah! The Club has done a lot! But what I’m sayin’ is that we should be doin’ more! more! more of everything!
“If it takes blowin’ away a few of the pigs, then those who got chicken hearts should stand back with the women ’n children!” He glared pointedly at Ojenkasi. Ojenkasi, confident of his manhood, shook his head and smirked disdainfully.
The group followed the scene, bursting with unh-huhs and right-ons! and other comments designed to let the speaker know that he was being given their attention.
“I’m not gon’ bite my tongue to say it, I think we’ve been slippin’ toward a too soft, too sweet thang for too long. An organization like ours has to remain tough ’n hard, bitter to the roots!”
“That’s what’s wrong with a lotta brothers like you, Abdul!” Ojenkasi cut in, unable to be cool any longer. “You dudes have such a helluva vested interest in the bitt
er section of things that you can’t even get ready for anything sweet.”
“You say that to say what?” Abdul asked, sarcasm melting over each word.
“Take it for what it’s worth. I know, you know and damned near everybody with any sense knows that the shit here ain’t near ’bout right! Not by a long shot! But what you remind me of is the dude who’s been complainin’ all his motherfuckin’ life about one thing or the other, and when he gets it squared away, he keeps on complainin’ ’cause that’s all he knows how to do.”
“See! See what I’m talkin’ about!” Abdul jabbed his finger at Ojenkasi, giving his followers and would-be followers a focal point. “That’s one of the things wrong in here, that jiveass, superduper, intellectual bullshit! The minute one of us starts talkin’ about doin’ instead of talkin’, we get twisted back around the stick with a bunch o’ words.
“We wants some action! Damn these proverbs and stinky, pootbutt pacifist ideas! Action, brotherman! Action is what we need! Direct, coldblooded action!”
Lubertha, in the middle of the discussion, quietly stuffed her notes into her purse, her mind already dealing with the sad letter she would have to write Kwendi, and stood up to leave.
The room was silenced by her movement.
“Hey, don’t stop arguin’ ’n squabblin’ for my benefit, just because I’m leavin’. Keep it up, maybe some good will come of it. I sure in hell hope so.”
Tears wobbled around in the corner of her eyes, threatening to spill out. “I don’t have anything bad to say about or to anybody here, nobody knows better than I do what frustration will make you do. I can’t really make myself feel the way Abdul feels, or Chiyo or Kwendi or anybody else because everybody comes from a slightly different place in their heads.
“All I can say is this, I understand. As a black woman, as a black American human being, I understand.”
