Her entire being forever blazes through my mind. She smells like Tide, and the last swipe of creme in the travel size Nivea tin jar found only when you desperately need it. Like the bottom of her overcrowded purse that holds Wrigley’s gum, bills, and glasses on a hot day in a parking lot while my aunt runs into the bank. Her smile has one stained tooth that sits and fits in with the other porcelain ones as a confirmation of her earthly existence. Until she bites fearlessly into ice without a shiver or a shake, and you’re left questioning how angels hide in plain sight. Never fully appreciated, dark skin is the packaging of her insides. That includes more than the magic that got her through the days she didn’t get to get lost in her subconscious; the faulty foundations we built towers on top of to get lost in having too much fun playing hide and go seek. The clocks belong in museums because we don’t remember what their purpose ever was as we forget to search for exits. She she she. Her Her Her. The mice from the church on Street try to get her to talk more. They think she’s hiding something, but she’s just preoccupied being embedded. Who knew sixty-two inches of adventitious roots could stretch throughout dirt without ever seeing the light? Only hearing the banter between the sun and her stems. Only feeling my footsteps, praying that I’m moseying to the springs to bathe and know heaven.
Step. Step. Step. Pause. Stood still accepting the April slush in her white tennis shoes as punishment. Every three steps on Street required breathing in to remember the secret she couldn’t keep in her head. The one she didn’t want to keep in. Instead, the wonders of the eighth period filled her mind. Maps, figures, people whose stories ran through her like overzealous track stars. The one, two step she had to learn for the talent show. Pause. Her vomit crept through her throat, she quickly swallowed it. Laughing to herself because ironically the physical effects of her secret mirrored how she dealt with it.
As days go by and the slush melted away to turn into the perfect kind of warmth that only appears in spring, the steps she makes turn into a wobble. The fifteen-year-old beauty queen silently housed what others might call a miracle cluster of cells, perhaps just a baby, but it was 1974 so let’s just call it her choice. But like any choice, couldn't make it. Always indecisive which we all know eventually leads to staying still. Still on Street that imitated quicksand. A haven it feels comfortable to forget dreams. Lost in the decaying buildings, weekend trips to the beach, and your lover’s promises that lacked follow through. Shortcomings blur with unconditional love. The only way you know your age, is by the new streetlight that wasn’t there when you were allowed to walk on the sidewalks without thoughts. Just steps. The old man you smiled at on your path, transitions into the next and now someone smiles at you.
Pause. Entering was to know respect for the patriarch of the house. My great grandfather’s presence was felt at all times like a god. He stomped through the house and beat on his chest, all the while being at work. To this day, his green Lincoln glides up to every streetlight that 95 parallels. Never seen, or heard, but felt. Regardless, she stood by the door waiting for him. Then sitting on the plastic covered cushions of the couch, chewing on ice, calmly and strategically rehearsing her announcement: the arrival of my mother. “How’s your day been, chick?” would be his warm embrace and in one breath, she would be the loudest and clearest she had ever been. In one breath, she revealed her plan for the rest of her life and subsequently mine.
The plan seemed simple enough. She would sing the song until someone took over at the hook. Instead, men and children tap their feet to the tune as they check in to those towers that clocks didn’t exist in. I start trying to sing it and discover most of the women in my family sing it. It was never a solo but a chorus for existence. As I drive down the same street she walked, I find solace in the anonymity of being in my car. I’m wasting time before I meet him. The texts always heightened in the night, but conversation is limited during the day. I spend most of my time declaring my night would be filled with productivity, fun, and not him. But the sun goes down, and he slowly but surely changes my outlook. His words hold more meaning as he enters through my ears and waltzes on my brain. Making his way down, he adjusts my eyesight, so I can’t remember what his smile reminds me of.. It’s subtle like I imagine my grandfather’s was. Like if you didn’t study their face, you would miss it and them.
Fast forward to past his smile, I lie on his mattress that rests on the floor with no bed frame to support it. Staring at the stained ceiling. I ignore everything around me. The cigarette butts, Four Loko cans, and the holes in the walls. I block everything out and try to regain consciousness of myself. My physical self, not my mind. She’s gone. Due to the dance he has performed in my head, my brain is in overdrive. The TV hums and he blocks it by sitting on the lawn chair that mysteriously lives in his room. We both exist in the same space for hours, but in completely different realms. I’m still walking around my own head because I can’t seem to find a place to sit. He forces me to listen to his music. As the boom bap boom bap boom bap beats bounce out of the speakers, I tune it out and suddenly the fortress that I’ve built around myself is complete.
The cat from Alice in Wonderland. That’s his smile. Not exactly, but it evokes the same emotion I felt watching that when I was six. Inquisition and anxiety. The smile stretches as you look up at the sky trying to answer the question their mere presence asks you. I’m addicted to it. Baffled, tongue tied. Walking down the path of destruction, not knowing how you got there but proceeding, nonetheless.
He insists his music will make him a millionaire one day, so I’d better enjoy him now. But that was just a ploy to feel my skin. He’s successfully implanting himself in my mind, altering my vision and helping me forget what time is, but he still wants more. He doesn’t ask for it. He doesn’t force it. He shrugs, the blue tones of the TV light the room and he’s kissing my ear. With no sense of my body, I just stare at the stained white ceiling. His touch isn’t good or bad, a neutral effect but I make the occasional “ooo” and “ahh” like I’m supposed to. Simultaneously, I think about my life and “the after” of all of this. Trying to make it poetic, I envision him making his way into my days in New York, and not just my nights in Connecticut. He doesn’t ease up as he stomps through, wreaking havoc. I almost scream, but no one would hear me over the A/C I begged him to turn off at the beginning of the night.
The little fortress I’ve spent the whole night building collapses. Ruins. So we both lie in the same position side by side. The silence he’s created by pretending he’s asleep is covered by his actions screaming the obvious. To spite him, I stay and continue going back all summer. While waiting for him to say what I wanted to hear the whole night, “I don’t want you here,” I start singing that song and force him in my tower. I’m nothing in this room, and years later I’ll realize that’s how I liked it.
I’ve made intentions for the moon many times since that summer, but have gone on to see more ceilings past the haven of Connecticut. I always assumed this song was a local act, but have managed to find the same cats with their smiles in swamps, subways, and districts that ask to come inside of me. I had to turn the gun on myself, and ask for better security. I don’t receive pleasure from their stay, but the wreckage they leave behind. How many times does Alice have to go down searching for the rabbit before you have to wonder if she ever wants to leave Wonderland? Is there a rabbit or is she Wonderland herself?
Alice Walker wrote In Search of Our Mother’s Garden in 1983. Almost forty years ago, she had the thought to illustrate the journey of Black women. Black women whose spirituality was so intense, so deep, so unconscious, that they were themselves unaware of the richness they held.
The song we sing warrants questions from the audience. Hell, before I started singing I had questions about how a song could trail through decades, generations but facts aren’t passed down on birthdays. They’re realized. The weird stranger you can’t quite place, but you know them and they know you. I judged the women before me because that’s easier than admitting our sighs when we’re alone, are identical, no matter where we choose to put down our belongings that day. I’m still holding out on seeking help to make meaning of all of this. All I can offer to you, audience, is that the song starts as a hum and builds.
They stumbled blindly through their lives: creatures so abused and mutilated in body, so dimmed and confused by pain, that they considered themselves unworthy even of hope.
Her skin intrigues my eyes like velvet. The time she spent moisturizing it cannot be measured. Nivea cream right after a shower before she went into work at night. Rejuvenating her bruises like they could adopt new life, and vanish. I never asked her if she thought she was beautiful, because I couldn’t imagine her taking any time to think about that. She’s busy and her days are filled with more important things, but I saw it. On the days she forced me into baths when I preferred to stay dirty. Or that rainy afternoon, I told her I didn’t see my beauty. Trying to silence me as she noticed I was humming.
In the selfless abstractions their bodies became to the men who used them, they became more than "sexual objects," more even than mere women: they became Saints. Instead of being perceived as whole persons, their bodies became shrines: what was thought to be their minds became temples suitable for worship. These crazy "Saints" stared out at the world, wildly, like lunatics-or quietly, like suicides; and the "God" that was in their gaze was as mute as a great stone [...] Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength-in search of my mother's garden, I found my own.”
The happy ending would be the waterfall hitting my back as I bathe in the springs but I’m still en route. I’m still computing the metrics of being loved. I just know how to love. As I search for and then curse the cats with subtle smiles, I’ve made myself a statue. Nothing in and nothing out. Secret hopes of feeling safe enough to indulge and smell the flowers and trace the vegetation that coats the springs. Achieve the quiet. The refrain. Loud. Quieter. Quiet. Hum. Silence.
(Anonymous) is Cancer moon with a Virgo stellium in the eighth house, that finds peace of mind making art about her past selves.