Black Short Stories : Trauma Part the Third

river

Watch Her Flow
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Mar 22, 2004
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I played with the kids down the street. One day a big White man drove up in a big old style pick-up truck. All the kids started running like it was the Ku Klux Klan coming to pick us up.

Now, I know ya'll chillun ain't skeered o' ol' Mr. Tibbs.
Nah'm, we ain't skeered. Willine told her mother.

I didn't run. I was from D.C., a city that was some 87% Black in the sixties and seventies, and didn't understand their fear. I didn't understand what they meant when they called us minorities either.

Willine and I were best playmates every time I went to visit my godparents. But it was an off and on thing because she was just as defensive as Margaret and I never knew what little thing would tick her off. One day we were playing on her porch and I wanted us to do one thing and she wanted us to do something else so she decided she didn't want me to touch her doll. Instead of getting mad I decided to just go home peacefully. There were times when I would do that but there were also times when I would tell people just what I thought. The woman next door to Willine was listening and she called me back and told me to give Margaret her blessing. Margaret just cussed about that nosey old heifer.

Margaret had stopped going to Church and had nothing but curse words to say about all of them, but she let me go to a little Church on the corner with her next door neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Love. The people at this Church told me in order to be saved I had to be a Christian. I didn't have the foggiest idea what they were talking about. I knew Jesus but what is a Christian? I began to think and wonder: Who exactly is Jesus? What is His relationship to God? Is Santa Claus really His brother? It never occurred to me to read the Bible. A Bible was something you found on coffee tables and alters to show that God is somewhere around. But not to actually read. I mean, it's holy, right. I won't argue with anyone who wants to contend that I really didn't know the Lord when I was little. But He knew me and that is what is most important.

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall any snatch them out of My hand.

Later when I moved back to D. C. I found out why my godmother had to tell herself all those things. She actually did have a lot of bad stuff to look back on as a prelude to death. Margaret was too strong a woman for such a passive man as my godfather DeeDee (Detroit Michigan Pannel was his full name). Most of Margaret's friends seemed to be men. If any of them ever did something she didn't like she let them know it.

Well Miss Margaret, I'm sorry.
Don't tell me you're sorry. I know you're sorry. All ******* are sorry. You're about the sorriest ****** I've ever seen
And they would laugh.

If a woman did something she didn't like, Margaret would call her every kind of sow and hussy. DeeDee would just say Now Baby Doooll. And that was as forceful as he ever got with her no matter how out of line she became. There was no masculine energy in their house so she looked for it elsewhere. The neighbors would gossip and she would cuss them. DeeDee would just close his eyes to it all and say Now Baby Doooll. Everybody was fairly happy with this arrangement until tragedy struck.

Margaret had a friend who had a son that everybody called Sugarman. He was like the neighborhood stud or something. A Hershey bar with an afro. When my family came down to Birmingham to take me back to D.C. I thought my young aunt Angie would like him and was eager to introduce them. She took one look at his orange and purple bell-bottomed pants that Margaret had made for him and dismissed him as a bama.

You've got a nice little shape. He said to me one night. We were in the livingroom sitting on the couch talking. Have you ever done it? I can show you something.

I froze in the face of this unreal reality. This is how it happens in the books, but the overwhelming desire of a grown man was too much for a twelve year old girl.
Ah no. I said. I have to go. Margaret is calling me. Good night. And I backed away into the other room.

He was twenty one then and obviously not too particular about who or how old his women were. Margaret wasn't too particular either because one day after I left, DeeDee found them together. A 21 year old man and a 59 year old woman; naturally my mother didn't give me any details. I guess something finally clicked in DeeDee because he shot Sugarman to death and they put him in jail where he died of a heart attack. I haven't seen or heard from Margaret since I left Birmingham and I don't know where she is now. My mother said Margaret's daughter- in-law told her she had moved to San Francisco, but years later my father said DeeDee had shot her too.

Twenty-one years later, I am left to wonder what went on in that house on that day of death. What was said and what was felt? Did the blood of her young lover, his heart-broken mother a deceived friend, bring Margaret back like the prodigal daughter? Or did she even have time? What could have gone through DeeDee's heart and mind as he sat in jail with the culmination of all those years of marriage before his eyes like a montage on the grey cell walls? They had survived tuberculosis together. And she was his Baby Doooll--and he a lucky, easy-going, gold-toothed, Presbyterian with a beautiful wife who loved him.

These lonely mysteries I ponder
They stretch their haunting limbs
Over years and miles
Wonder sighs over answers
Hidden in the nooks and crannies
The doorways and stairways of the dead

The End
 

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