The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  For days after that, I called Nana’s house. Maybe she knew where my sister was. Several times a day, I left messages with Miss Delores, but my grandmother never returned my calls. I didn’t sleep well, thinking about what my sister had screamed that day. What it meant: Gandee had lied to us both. He’d hurt Lydia, and then he’d hurt me. We both had kept Gandee’s secret, kept our pain inside to protect everyone else in the family. And now I couldn’t even tell Lydia how sorry I was about what had happened to her. I didn’t even know how to make myself feel better.

  * * *

  On Christmas morning, Nana arrived at our house by taxi looking fresh and blameless, wearing the Chanel suit she’d bought in Paris on a family trip overseas, back when my father and uncle were teenagers. She handed me her purse and a platter of Creole cookies, then plucked at the tips of her gloves, like an actress in an old movie, and criticized my outfit.

  “Ailey, in my day, we used to dress for a holiday dinner. I was not aware that dungarees were proper attire for receiving company.”

  My parents emerged from the kitchen. All morning, my mother had been padding around in slippers, but she’d put her heels back on now. She wore her pearl earrings.

  “Hey, Miss Claire! My, don’t you look pretty? I’ve always loved your Chanel!”

  When my grandmother turned to me, asking, what on earth was that awful-smelling mess, and were we supposed to eat that, my father began shouting. Was she going to spoil every goddamned holiday? Jesus H. Christ, how long could this go on?

  I made an alarmed sound: I was surprised by my father’s anger. He was the calmest among us, the one to settle our female disputes. No matter how grumpy my mother was, I couldn’t remember when he’d ever raised his voice to her, or to Nana, either. But lately, ever since that day Lydia had headed back to rehab, my father had been snappish. He’d put on weight, too: his belly had gotten even rounder.

  Mama had her own surprise that evening. Instead of ignoring my grandmother, she put up a hand, telling my father she was tired of this situation and she was going to finally handle it. As she moved closer to Nana, her tone was a tranquil purr.

  “Miss Claire, you know perfectly well those are collard greens you’re smelling. And when it’s turnip greens season, we’re going to eat those, too. You’ve been coming here for Sunday dinner, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and your birthday ever since Dr. Zach died, and I always serve greens at my table. Now, I was reared to respect old folks, and that’s why I have tolerated your utter lack of manners throughout the years, how you sit at my table acting as if I’m trying to poison you, and criticize me behind my back to my own children. I’ve put up with you because I know you are a lonely, bitter woman without a true purpose driving your life. However, we have reached the end of the line. Do you understand me, Miss Claire? If you persist with your rudeness, I’m going to prepare you a lovely holiday plate, call a second taxi for you, and throw you out of the house that I helped buy with my teacher’s salary. If that is your wish, you let me know.”

  Under the sheen of powder, my grandmother’s face colored.

  Mama put her hand on Daddy’s shoulder, balancing as she took off her heels and left them on the floor. She advised my grandmother, be careful not to trip over those shoes. She’d hate for Nana to break any bones. Then Mama walked in her stockinged feet back to the kitchen, with my father and me following.

  In the kitchen, my mother picked up her wooden spoon and went to the stove. My father perched on the table’s edge.

  “Ailey, do you know that your beautiful mama is the best wife a brother could ever ask for? I love her, and I love me some greens, in almost equal proportions. And I sincerely hope there’s an extra ham hock in those greens, because I love me some pig meat, too.”

  My mother lifted the lid of a pot; when the steam rose, she leaned back. She tried to keep her lips pressed together, but laughter escaped. Daddy hopped from the table and dance-stepped up to the stove, offering his hand to her.

  “Come on, woman. Let’s take us a turn.”

  “Geoff, if you don’t stop acting silly, you better. And you know it’s not a ham hock in that pot. I used smoked turkey wings, like your doctor told me to.”

  “Who cares what he says? The more pig for me, the better! Oink, oink!”

  She swatted at his shoulder with the spoon, but he caught her by the waist. He kissed her on the forehead, and she closed her eyes.

  “Ailey, put those cookies on the table and take some cheese and crackers out there.” Her eyes still were closed. “That should tide over you-know-who until we sit down.”

  Throughout dinner, my grandmother’s signature bon mots were absent. She was quiet, in between offering meek conversation starters, which I ignored. I loaded attention on my cousin Veronica, who twirled to show me the petticoats under her dress. Malcolm had grown a scraggly goatee and was trying to get a spades game going.

  “I know how to play now,” Malcolm said. “The brothers in my dorm taught me.”

  “Spades is for suckers,” Aunt Diane said. “The trump doesn’t even change! Bid whist is what real adults play.”

  “Aw, you talking trash!” Malcolm said.

  She laughed. “And I can back it up, my dear boy.”

  “Sure can,” my mother said. “I taught Diane how to play bid whist back in 1968. Now get those cards from the kitchen. Let me show you how to run a Boston on somebody.”

  Coco waited until we’d finished dinner to call. After everyone had their turn talking, I picked up the extension in the upstairs hallway and pulled it into my room. She hadn’t returned home since her fall break. When I asked why, she told me studying for the MCAT was a lot of work.

  “Carol Rose, you missed some holiday fireworks.”

  “Uh-oh, girl, what happened?”

  “Your grandmother showed out, as per usual. She talked about the greens again, but this time Mama got her told.”

  “Aw, shit! Are you serious?”

  “Mm-hmm, girl. It was real good. You should’ve been here.”

  “Damn, I hate I missed that! But I don’t get it, though. Doesn’t Nana know greens keep you regular?”

  We laughed over the familiar, revolting rhyme of my mother: A banana in the morning and greens at night/Will keep your bowels moving just right!

  There was no talk of our sister, my worries about whether Lydia had a holiday meal or whether she was safe. I hadn’t told Coco or anyone else what had happened at my grandmother’s house. I’d become a gourd filled with secrets: my own and Lydia’s. That we both had been hurt as little girls by a man who was now dead. I’d been filled for so long, I didn’t even know what it felt like to be happy and empty.

  Soon, our silences extended, and finally, my sister and I said our farewells. An hour later, a taxi arrived for my grandmother. When I heard the horn, I walked downstairs to the foyer, where everyone stood. Merry Christmas, Nana, they called. We love you very much.

  At midnight, my father left for his shift at the hospital, and the house emptied. I offered to help my mother clean the kitchen, but she told me the work would do her good. Go on to bed. But upstairs, I couldn’t rest. Around two in the morning, I heard my mother walking the halls. I went down and heard the low sounds of a record on the turntable. It was Aretha, singing to her man. Asking, why wouldn’t he let her love him? Mama was on the couch. She pointed to the banana pudding dish on her lap: Did I want some? She only had one spoon, and she gave it to me. As we listened to Aretha’s soprano pain, I ate my fill, scraping the sides of the dish. I don’t remember dozing off, but in the morning, I was covered with a blanket.

  Song

  The Loss of Africa

  We know of those taken from the place called Africa, captured by men who had transgressed against flesh for a long time. The Africans who stole others and kept those folks for themselves. The Africans who stole others and sold those to the Europeans who would take them over the water and humiliate and sometimes torture them for life. We know about the dark-
dark folks who never would see home again.

  We know dates. We know hours. We know disbelief. We know mourning.

  We know about the years even before 1619, and the years that would come after. We know about those Africans who arrived in a place that the English called Jamestown, Virginia.

  We know which villages these Africans lived in before they were stolen, their collection of conical, huddled homes. Domestic birds running on the ground of a courtyard, feathers of black and red. A goat tied to the side of a hut and, every morning, a mother rising from her pallet, tossing grains in a pestle. And we try not to weep over what was lost to these folks.

  We know about an enemy from a neighboring village. We know of strangers who saw wealth in meat rocking bone. The names of the captives are lost to everyone but us. Their tribes. Their children, if they had them. Their beloveds they’d hoped to marry in ceremonies of laughter and wine. The rivers passing through their nations. Their words for a rooster cock-crowing. For a delectable fruit, skin the color of red intruding yellow. For their warbles and ticks of joy.

  On that English ship that would land in Jamestown the enslaved probably weren’t locked in irons. That time would come later, after the sailors saw the Africans look at water and sing. Leap overboard and the sharks swim to meet them. These “twenty and odd” folks would begin as bloody vectors, spilling lines across continents. More Africans enslaved by the English would arrive on ships.

  You already know that we know laws as well.

  We know 1662 and the words set down in the Virginia colony: partus sequitur ventrem, Latin for “that which is brought forth from the belly.” And so African—now Negro—women’s children would no longer follow the status of their fathers, as had been English common law for centuries. With dark children, their mothers would decide their fate. If a woman was enslaved, her children would be enslaved. If a woman was free, her children would be free. And if enslaved, somehow, a mother would try to hold on to her child, to keep her child from being sold. And if separated, her child would forever grieve. This is what happened to a girl named Kiné, a girl from across the water. A girl whose line would become tangled with our people who lived here, on the western side of that ocean.

  The Stories of the Mother

  Kiné had been born in Africa. Of this time there was one story she would repeat as she braided the hair of her cherished daughter, the product of the surprising love she found with Paul McCain. The story she would tell when she and her child dug in the garden beside Paul’s mother, Helen, or when Kiné brought water to Baron McCain, a man who was stiff with Kiné but who turned tender at the sight of his granddaughter.

  The present that reminded her of the past: The way Beauty held her head. Or the sound of Beauty singing. It would bring up a memory of across the water, in the compound of Kiné’s father. And children, who had been her siblings, the offspring of the four wives and three concubines of Kiné’s father.

  Kiné’s father had not been a very wealthy man. However, as her mother had liked to say, he had been very blessed and able to raise the pillar of charity high, as Allah commanded. Kiné’s father had five slaves, male and female. The three females were concubines, low-status yet beautiful women seized as captives during war. Though the concubines warmed his sleeping mat, the father also had four wives, of which Kiné’s mother, Assatou, was the first. Being first wife meant Assatou was in charge of the compound. She was a fertile woman and had given her husband several children; all but Kiné were sons.

  The day had been pleasant, starting in the dark morning with first prayers. Kiné had been playing by herself while her youngest brothers had practiced writing their Arabic letters in the dust before heading off for lessons with their teachers. The oldest sons were out of the compound, occupied by business that Kiné only thought of as manly, since it was a mystery to her. During the midday, there was a soup with dried fish for lunch. In preparation for dinner, Assatou killed a chicken, wringing its neck in a drama of squawking, before dropping it into a pot of boiling water and plucking the feathers. That would be her contribution to the largest meal. As first wife and the daughter of the district’s marabout, a holy man with great power, Assatou didn’t worry about jumping around to please a man. She’d given her husband sons before giving him a daughter, and she never caused trouble. Her place in the household was secure; the proof was in the heavy gold in her ears and around her neck.

  The mother and daughter beat the garlic and peppers in the pestle. Bum-bum. Bum-bum. The child was tiny for her size and struggled to lift her mortar. Bum-bum. Bum-bum. Assatou adjusted her long head scarf, to keep her hair covered. She admonished Kiné to do the same. The child was bored, so to keep her occupied, the mother told stories. She began with the terrible monster of the river folks, the Ninki Nanka, who had the body of a crocodile and the head of a giraffe. Also, long scales covering his tough skin, which was white underneath its belly, like the toubab, the white strangers in their midst. This monster breathed fire to paralyze its victims before eating them. This is why good little girls should stay close to their mothers and not wander about.

  Then the mother began a story about the hare and Boukie—the filthy hyena—and how the hare always was tricking the latter. Assatou had arrived at the point in her tale where the hyena had the smaller animal in his grips, when the group of men walked into the courtyard. They had the muscled strides of purpose.

  “Salaamalaikum,” Assatou said, sweeping her hand to include all the men. Peace be with you.

  “Malaikum salaam.” Only the tallest man returned the greeting. His voice was loud, as the six other men looked at their sandals.

  Assatou continued in Wolof, “Na nga def?” And how are you?

  A rushed greeting indicated bad manners, but the tall man didn’t care; he waved his hand impatiently. He didn’t want to go through the polite rituals. He asked her, where was her husband? Even at Assatou’s polite response—sir, her husband was at her father’s compound—the tall man kept talking loudly and she leaned back, meeting his eyes. Assatou was the cherished daughter of a marabout, and she took no disrespect, not even from her husband. She spoke sharply to the tall man, reminding him to respect her house, but the tall man pulled back his hand, and then slapped her. Kiné cried out, and the other women and girls in the courtyard did, too. But this was only the beginning of the agony.

  Then there were hours and days that roared as Assatou, Kiné, the other wives, her father’s concubines, and their female children were walked along the road. Kiné never would see her brothers and father again. The women and girls were tied together with rope as if they were captives of war, and the younger boys were marched in another direction.

  The tall man ended their walk at the wooden front door of a one-story house; instead of mud, this house was built of plaster. When the door was opened, an older light-skinned woman answered. Though she wore a heavy, English-style dress, her hair was wrapped in the traditional way, in cloth that was green and patterned. She had the gold earrings and bracelets of a woman who had received her bride price from a wealthy man, but she was a Christian: she wore a golden necklace with a cross pendant.

  The light-skinned woman was a signare, a woman of English and African blood who’d been given by her family as a wife to an Englishman for as long as he stayed in Africa. In this small district, this woman was the only one of her kind, but closer to the coast, there was an entire community of signares and their families. In-between women who were neither true wives nor concubines. They spoke two languages, Wolof and English, or sometimes, Mandinka and English, but were infidels who had left aside Allah and clung to the skinny Jesus that hung on a cross. Like their white fathers and husbands, the signares traded in slaves.

  The signare spoke flawless Wolof to the tall man who pushed the women and girls inside the house, through the courtyard, into a large, bare room with no furniture. There were mats woven from river reeds scattered about the floor and two buckets in the corner for relief. For the next few da
ys there was only millet for meals and no meat. There was no water for ablutions before prayer, but Kiné’s mother kept her composure. She told the women and girls that Allah would forgive them for praying with dirty feet, hands, and bodies. For now, give thanks that they were alive and surely all would be sorted out.

  Yet in the time that followed, a younger woman came and whispered news, looking over her shoulder. Her head was wrapped in the traditional way, too, with lengths of patterned red cloth, though the cloth was frayed. The woman was a slave in the household. The slave woman told Assatou, may Allah bless her and her father, the marabout. Assatou’s father had once promised the slave woman that he would pray for the slave woman’s family, who had been captured in battle to the east, sold, and gone to an unknown land. She had cried many salt tears and when the marabout gave charms to the slave woman, magic that would bring her spirit peace, he had asked for no payment. And in a matter of days, the slave woman had found that peace. She had become reconciled to her lifelong role in the signare’s house, and the signare had become nicer and less sharp in her words. The slave woman was sure this was because of the marabout’s charm.

  When she told Assatou that her husband had been accused of heresy against the faith, Assatou’s shoulders dropped in relief. There was no servant of Islam more devout than her husband. Yet then the slave woman reported what happened when Assatou’s husband was brought before the district’s imam. The imam had been at odds with Assatou’s father for years, and by extension, her husband. The imam had brought witnesses to lie about Assatou’s husband, and indeed, his entire family. They claimed her husband had been spied lying on his mat in the mornings instead of rising and completing ablutions for the dawn prayers. That he had been seen stumbling in the road, drunk with spirits. The men swore that her husband kept a pig in his courtyard and had butchered this meat and passed it around to his family to eat. And the witnesses said that Assatou’s husband and other mature family members ate heartily and drank many daytime cups of water during the month of Ramadan. Thus, none of this man’s family were true Muslims, and this is why they had been given over to the imam as slaves. The imam had decided to keep Assatou and the grown women as his concubines, but to sell the rest of the family, including Kiné.