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.