To me, I agree with him; it’s true, it do sound nice. And at night it do look like the original garden. Magical and innocent.
MABEL
“HERE WE GO, yo, here we go, yo, so wuz, so wuz, so wuz the scenario?” is bumping loud as hell through the house, vibrating through the floors and shaking me out of sleep. My dad uses classic hip-hop as curriculum, proverb, reflection, and a practical tool in his fatherhood. Sometimes, I hate classic hip-hop.
It’s his Saturday morning ritual to bump some wake-yo-ass-up music first thing in the a.m. to inspire his children to get started on their chores, ensuring that we will never ever grow up “trifling as hell.” And his ass loves to clean and work, so he ain’t trying to hear shit about our feelings. The only person allowed to ever sleep in late is my mother. She is an artist who can sing, dance, and act—or as she likes to say—“I’m a hustler, baby.” She told me that early in her and my dad’s relationship, she let him know that she don’t play none of this crack-of-dawn ish and affirms her right to sleep in errrrday. We kids have no such sovereignty.
I’m still feeling sick and drained. Last night my belly was hurting and it still is, not as much though. I do feel like I can use some more sleep. I’m supposed to be helping my dad weed Black Eden right now, but I just ain’t feeling it, which matters none to him. It’s his pride and joy, that garden, but I could think of better things to do on a Saturday morning. Or a Wednesday night. Or a Sunday afternoon.
My mama’s Saturday morning contribution is making a bomb brunch when she finally wakes up. Brunch is my mama’s only religion. And she will testify. “Listen, brunch is the best meal, straight up, hands down. No. Other. Contenders. Let me tell you sumthin’.” (She will often start a sermon mid-meal.) “You just got so much to choose from. You got pancakes AND waffles AND French toast. And if you feeling bougie, a fluffy and moist frittata or quiche. AND of course you got real grown-folks drank—mimosas, Bellinis. Something to sip to get you riiiiiight!” She’s feelin’ herself, so she keeps right on going with her menu. “Then you got tofu scrambles and veggie bacon, turkey bacon, vegan sausage patties, ya heard? AND fruit salads and hash browns. I don’t think you heard me. I said HASH BROWNS. And if that ain’t for you, come get you some home fries, homie!” And then she takes it on home. “But it ain’t just the food. It’s the luxuriation of eating it! You can just kick back and eat it all day. Like I said, brunch is the best, I don’t care what no one say.”
She usually invites us in to her feast after we been in Black Eden for hours sweating and picking in the fields, some days family and friends will come by to eat and hang out as well.
“Mabel, you up, sweet pea? Let’s knock it out before it get too hot, girl. Then you can chill all day.” I hear my dad directly outside my door.
“Give me a second, Dad!” Sigh. I ain’t feel like it today. Like, for real, for real. But whatever, I know after a couple of minutes out there with him I’ll be into it. That’s always how it is. Also, I was able to negotiate a recent increase in allowance, so thinking ’bout my money is motivating a playa too. I find some energy from somewhere, and I slowly get up and throw on a T-shirt, cut-off jeans, and my raggedy, duct-taped gardening sneakers. The only time he don’t fuss at what I got on is when we gardening. Otherwise, he always got feelings about my clothes. He told me once, I need to stop wearing his hand-me-downs and wear stuff for a “young woman my age.” Like he even know. My mom told him to shut it up, that it’s my body. She don’t be caring how I dress; even if she don’t get my style she finally has stopped trying to give me her old floral hippie dresses.
Honestly, I have always wanted to be like my dad and it used to be cool, but now that he got Sahir and I got titties, he is switchin’ up on me. I still wanna be like him, though. He is a smart dude, who always reading or gardening at the crib. He works hard for the gas company, fixing boilers and stuff. He loves us like crazy. My mom will go off on rants about something little, and he will listen and respond gently, even if she is the one kinda trippin’. And his sneaker game is soooo tight. He got sneakers in every color for every occasion. My mom calls it his one real addiction. Either way, I don’t need to be in lip gloss and tight jeans so he can feel like they raising me right.
I head to Black Eden. His garden oasis is an empty lot next door that he transformed when we first moved to this house when I was five. He had a vision for it, and him and my mom have made it happen, although gardening is certainly more his passion.
“They was thinkin’ Obama was gonna magical Negro the end to racism. Shiiiit. As Mos said, ‘Same shit, just remixed, different arrangement, put you on a yacht, but they won’t call it a slave ship,’ that’s what should be taught in school, hunh, sweet pea?” He’s workin’ the earth loose with his hoe, while he’s workin’ his stream of thought. “That our conditions in this nation have been oriented toward our demise and disenfranchisement? It depresses me when I think about it. For real. Folks way smarter than me, still locked up over a little bit of weed or a bad decision. And be gone a minute too just robbed of life . . . Why you got me talking about this shit, again?”
“For my paper, Dad. I got a lot, so talk about something else, since you getting all in your feelings,” I tease him, as I loosen the soil with my trowel around deep-rooted dandelions.
We been talking about the school-to-prison pipeline for my college-application writing sample the other day, and that’s had him reflecting to his core ever since.
“Hmm. I know me and your mama got some books on that,” he says, which I knew he was going to say, since they always got a book on everything. I roll my eyes on the inside and listen to him.
“Actually there is this one book written by a brother who was locked up. It’s about prison life and is kind of almost a spiritual book. Something like ‘Your melanin is from Black space.’” He twists his beard as he tries to remember. “It ain’t that, but it’s like that. He was really deep, all into ancient cultures and astrology too. That was a book that everyone was reading back in the nineties. Dang, what was the name of that brother? Amun? No . . . Afua, or something like that. He breaks things down real deep. He got death row for allegedly killing his best friend and a cop, but he’s always maintained his innocence. I think it would be good for you to read for this project,” he concludes, and I make a note of it, although I probably won’t read it. I feel bad because I almost never read any of my dad’s book recommendations. They just always seem like more education then recreation. I’d rather read my mom’s science fiction—or her Zane romance novels, low-key.
Dad’s harvesting the collards and kale, and I’m pulling dandelions from the same patch. He got a big straw hat and overalls with a tank top and some old Timbs. He dark like me and got dimples like me. Otherwise, he has a shaved head and a big beard, and he’s real built too. Like a swole Rick Ross. I drop the dandelion roots in a basket. After I weed the dandelions, I’m going to pick strawberries for the shortcake my mom is making tonight for his friend, Uncle Sunny, and his long-lost Caribbean daughter, Audre.
“Apparently, Sunny’s girl was really all into ‘the Lordt’ for a while, which I knew had Sunny tripping, since he meditating now.” Dad told us last night after he first heard from his friend. “But I remember, before he find Buddha and got saved, he dabbled with the Five-Percenters in the nineties for a good little hot second. Oh, yep, and even a stint with them Twelve Tribes cats in them Earth, Wind and Fire costumes. I’ll never let him forget that.” He just shook his head at the memory. “He always was seeking, though, and maybe she get that interest in the spiritual life from him.”
Dad giggles again, thinking about his best friend, who I have known most my life. “Me and your mama be telling him, raising y’all generation is some new stuff—a journey. I don’t know, maybe there is a reason they gonna live together now and I know he’ll do his thing, even if it’s out the blue. And either way, me and your mama got his back,” he says, taking a mome
nt to drink a sip of water, with sprigs of mint from a big mason jar near him. He passes it to me. The sweat is flowing down his face and he wipes it with his handkerchief. He look like he from the country for real and not the North Side hood.
“What’s up with Terrell? You ain’t had him over in forever. He working this summer?” my dad asks, trying to be casual and yet still managing to be extra obvious. I realize I ain’t really explain the breakup. Or even mention it. I liked Terrell for the most part, especially playing ball with him, talking with him, and chilling with him. And I love his mama, who was really nice to me. I even liked snuggling on his bed with him, but kissing on him just felt like too much, and then touching his junk . . . it made him happy but wasn’t really my thing. He wanted me to and I tried it out, but just was more into snuggling with him instead. He is still a homie, but I ain’t want to be his girlfriend. And since we broke up he done already booed up with this girl, LaTanza, so Terrell gon’ be aight.
“Terrell is cool. He looking at colleges. We broke up,” I say, hoping he will just leave it at that. But he don’t. He was quiet for a second.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I thought y’all was cute.” And this is where I roll my eyes into my head, hard as hell, and my dad chuckles, thinking I’m playing. I ignore him and get back to the dirt.
My body still isn’t feeling much better, but the fresh morning air is soothing, I ain’t gonna lie. It’s early but getting hotter. August is my favorite time of summer, when everything is alive and ready to eat. The garden is peaceful. My trowel slides down the spine of the dandelion root, and I know how to do it just right to get the whole root out, like a femur in that game Operation. (My mom dries the roots for tea. She always doing weird things like keeping and drying weeds. She says they are medicine, that they heal the blood or whatever. I don’t care; as long as she puts mad maple syrup in it, I’ll drink it with some ice.)
Harvesting and weeding is the one chore I actually don’t mind. Feeling the dirt in my fingers feels natural to me. I like when it is sunny and the earth is dark like this. It’s weird but sometimes, when the heat is on my skin and my hand is in the dirt, it makes me feel all fluttery and sexy, like when me and Jada was kicking it. I know, that shit is weird.
All of a sudden the ickiness I was feeling before turns into a big wave of I’m-finna-throw-up. I realize my dad is talking to me, but I can barely hear him over the noise of my body.
“Hunh, Dad?”
“You think you can hang with Sunny’s girl today after dinner?”
“Fah sho, I’ll kick it.” I don’t know why I feel so wack. “Hey, Dad, I really don’t feel well. I can come back out later, but Imma go lie down,” I say, getting up and feeling even more sick. He starts to look worried.
“Girl, I hope you ain’t got the flu. Head up to bed and I’ll ask your mama to make you some of her special tea,” he says, picking up the baskets and following me into the house. My dad think my mama’s teas fix everything. And they mostly do.
I feel weak as hell, but I manage to make it upstairs. I’m not sure if it’s my period. I feel like I’m always starting or getting done with that thing. I sit on my bed for a second, wondering if I should be near the toilet in case I actually do throw up. I look down at my feet and focus on the words I have scribbled on the white rubber part of my Chucks. One says, “It’s not right,” and the other one says, “But it’s okay.” Whitney’s words always soothe me. After a moment, the icky feeling inside subsides. In a little bit, my mama and dad bring me up some water and tea.
My mom is in her silk robe and silk headscarf, and her eyes still sleepy, but concerned. “Your daddy said you ain’t feeling good, baby?” she asks, sitting on my bed, feeling my neck and forehead.
“Just my stomach and feeling a little weak. I’ll be aight though,” I tell her. She look all in my eye to see if she believe me.
“You look like you in pain,” says my dad. He’s sounding worried, even though I’m saying I feel okay. My mom’s one eyebrow is still up high, not convinced.
“Mm-hmm. Okay, get some rest, girl. Imma head back to sleep, but just call me if you need me though. Okay? I’ll check in with you when I wake up for real. Love you, baby,” she says and they leave the room.
As I lay down in my bed, I close my eyes. I hum a song and feel my body relax.
“It’s not right, but it’s okay. I’m gonna make it anyway.” Whitney’s lyrics become a chant that I use to distract myself from the pain I’m feeling.
I lie in the darkness behind my eyelids. All of a sudden I think of my mom. I start remembering once when I was seven and got sick. She took off from work, and made me chicken soup with carrots, herbs, and dumplings. Afterward, she lay with me in my bed and we watched cartoons and we sipped hot fresh lemon-and-honey tea. It’s one of my favorite memories. I start thinking about Whitney and wonder who she was thinking about when she was singing that song.
AUDRE
TWO WEEKS AGO, Queenie, my mom, and Episode dropped me to the airport to leave for Minneapolis. I was trying my best not to cry and to act strong. But Epi was crying hard, like someone thief he puppy. And I kinda is he puppy, following him around since we little. We always been close. He more like my big brother than cousin, and even though he six years older, he never talk down to me. He felt sad I ain’t feel I could tell him I love someone. He was pissed when he hear how my mom act about Neri and ain’t understand why I was being sent off for “dis lesbian ting,” that it was my business. He even tried to change my mama’s mind, for I to stay with he and Sarya, even though I begged him not to, in case she do anything worse. But she ain’t cared about anything he said since she think he one of the reasons I “fall astray.”
I hugged my mama goodbye first. To get it over with, to be true. She did a prayer with me, which I ain’t want and gave me the book of psalms, that I also really ain’t want. I thank she. Next, I hugged Epi. His dreads was wrapped up high in a light-blue fabric, his skin gingery and gold. And when he hugged me and picked me up, his face was hot and wet me up with tears. He gave me a book on vegan cooking and another one on color therapy. “Sarya and I find dat for you, for da States, since we know you like all a dem healing type a ting. I love you, cuzzo. Whatever you need, eh? Respect.”
Queenie was bawling too. “I ain’t even saying bye. I love you, and I is in every breeze you feel and you is right here,” she say, squeezing me to she chest.
On the plane, I was a mess on the inside, holding back tears so hard, my chest and stomach began to hurt. Finally, I erupted in sobbing. I looked out the window and I saw that I was rising up above the edges of trees and beyond the ocean of home. Next, we broke above the clouds and we was above the sky itself, flying away from Trinidad. How am I going to make the trip, I feeling so busted up? I was crying so hard that the business-looking man with a Grenadian accent in my aisle got concerned and called the flight attendant. She was pretty and had kindness in she eyes and asked me if I was okay. “Yes, I fine,” I lied, and pulled my pain in.
The plane’s bathroom was sterile and tight solitude. I sat on the steel and beige commode. I looked at my face in the mirror, the light burning white and cold. I waterfalled my sobs into the yellow handkerchief Queenie gave me. My face was puffed up and sad and red, and I felt stchupid and ugly and alone. Hopeless. I think of Neri and how even though she only knew me a little while, she always knew how to make me feel okay. I thought of her singing to me and how it sound with the ocean waves and the leaves shakin’ in breeze. I thought of her and Queenie, and I grounded myself in her and Queenie’s distant love. I breathed deep and deep and deep. I placed my hand at my chest to feel the lump of my new divine pouch. In the mirror, I looked into my own eyes again and I saw a piece of lightning and hurricane look back into me.
I returned to my seat by the window, still crying quietly, but it a gentle drip now. Most people are asleep. I pushed up the window shade and I saw the majesty of th
e night. The moon was real fat and luscious in its light. Full and shining on the clouds that looked like an ocean of slow-moving silvery and milky waves. I remembered what Queenie taught me and thought of Obatala for ancient wisdom and soulful peace and something in me started to feel tenderized and calm. I thought of Yemanja and being rocked and held in her depths. I thought of Queenie’s words, “Spirit is everywhere,” and I saw it in the ocean and beach made from night and moon and sky and stars.
By the time I reached Minneapolis to reunite with my father, something in me was feeling a little less break up. I smiled and tried to look like I ain’t too bad a mess inside of me.
* * *
• • •
Since I been here two weeks, I still ain’t feel comfortable at all and don’t think I ever will or even want to. One thing that is real good about my father, though, is that he leave me be, unlike my mother, who was always findin’ a reason to mess and fuss with me. I’m in my new American bedroom that used to be my father’s roommate’s room and then he “stuff” room (which must be an American thing) and now it’s my room. The walls are a light shade of blue-green—for the ocean he say—which he painted right before I came. The walls are bare, except for one painting of a pretty, brown-skinned girl on a black-velvet canvas in a carved wooden frame. He got it at the thrift store, and he said he thought I might like it. I wondered to myself how he figure what I like, since he and I ain’t know each other that good. Yet, even so, I do kinda love the picture. It remind of something Queenie would paint. The oil paint on the blackness. It look like the girl is emerging wet from night, her expression is looking past and beyond and still not seeing. She the closest thing to a friend I have in America.
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them Page 5
