But he told everybody about his condition. Embarrassed me to no end at times, but there was absolutely no shame in his game. It was shame, he said, that kept black folks from getting education and treatment. From learning how to protect themselves. Kept them in a state of blissful ignorance, which further perpetuated the problem and gave the disease the upper hand. No, he wanted folks to know what it was that had landed him in that wheelchair. To know exactly what it was that had thinned his hair and loosened his teeth. To know what had stripped the flesh from his bones and produced that sickening stench of decay that seemed to slough off with his dying skin. He wanted the world to know the proper name of the beast that had left him wearing diapers at the age of thirty-four, and would, in three weeks time, send him to a lonely, early grave.
“I’ve got AIDS, you know,” he’d tell family and friends alike, spreading his arms to allow them a good look at the once-muscular, athletic body that was now nothing but bone and large puddles of skin beneath his clothing. Then he’d wait a moment or two for his declaration to sink in, calmly accepting first the blank stare, then the silent judgment and the subtle shifting of the feet into backward gear, as though his very words were contagious. He’d call out loudly, often at retreating backs, “If you’re not careful, you can get it too! Protect yourself, you hear? We know how this thing is spread now. No reason for you to end up the same way as me.”
I was called home again in early May.
“He’s asking for you,” my sister Michelle said, surprising me with a telephone call to North Carolina where my military unit had deployed to an Army airfield. “He opened his eyes and said, ‘Get Tracy.’”
I was off that base on the first thing smoking.
At his bedside, I smiled. Yes, he was emaciated and struggling for his life, but he was my brother and I was happy to be in his presence. Even if he didn’t know I was there. My parents looked lost, helpless. After a lifetime of looking to them as my source of stability and solidity, it was frightening to see them so withered by pain. So beat down by this haunting thing called death.
In the bed, Bland struggled. I approached him and kissed his forehead. He opened his eyes and wiggled his eyebrows, our special signal that he was aware of my presence. We stood around his bed and formed a barrier with our love, touching his arms, rubbing his legs and feet, and hoping the power of our family bond was strong enough to keep death at bay, somehow make it all better. You see, he was the only one we had. Our only boy. And that he chose an alternative lifestyle was unimportant to us. We wanted to keep him. We’d deal with our biases and prejudices later. Right now, we wanted our boy-child. Our brother. Our son.
I wanted to stay with him. To be with him throughout the night just in case he met up with something he couldn’t handle alone. To let him know I had his back.
They took me home.
The call came in the predawn hours. He’d slipped away in much the same way he’d come into this world, gently and during the night. I cried mightily for him. For what AIDS had stolen from us, from him. I cried for all he would never be, all he would never do, and I cried some selfish tears as well. Tears for my children and my nieces and nephews who would grow up without knowing the love, the humor and the beauty of their uncle. “Don’t let them forget me,” he’d begged. I cried so that I would remember.
It hit me at the funeral home in Brooklyn. His name was spelled out in neat, white block letters on a large black felt board, BLAND JENTRY CARR, JR, so it must be true. I stared down into the casket and tried my best to understand. What did this shell lying before me have to do with my beautiful, vibrant brother?
But I still felt a link. A bond that death had not been able to sever. Did death know my brother played a mean game of Bid Whist? That he had been a champion chess player? That he’d played and won tournaments all over New York City? Did death care that my brother had been blessed with the gift of prose? A prolific poet who kept journals filled to the brim, and who wrote because it was as natural to him as breathing. You see, it was difficult for me to concede victory to death, because I still felt so bonded.
Hah! I laughed right in death’s face. You didn’t get all of him! We cheated you after all. You’ve done nothing by taking his body. The part of him that really matters lives right here in my heart.
We’d removed Bland’s personal belongings from his rented room several days earlier. There wasn’t much in the way of material things to leave his mark on the world, to say he’d even come this way. A few items of clothing, countless books and leather-bound journals, two marble chess sets, boxes of letters I’d sent from far corners of the world.
Walking past his coffin, I pulled a folded square of paper from my pocket and faced a room filled with kinfolks and friends and read from a page in my brother’s journal:
Sister
Close to me as my own
heartbeat
We wordlessly say
I know your feelings
You know mine
Of one mind, We
Of one blood, Us
I love you
Sister
And as I stood in that crowded room with wails flying from my mouth, gazing into the finality of my brother’s face and feeling his blood running through my veins, I had but one thought.
Brother, did you get enough love?
Tracy Price-Thompson
Where’s Your Notebook?
Being a black man in America is like having another job.
Arthur Ashe
I was thirteen years old when Dad called my two younger brothers and me into the game room of our house. I was excited! I thought we were going to play pool or pinball or maybe even watch movies together, just us guys! “Bring a notebook and something to write with,” my dad bellowed before we reached the game room. My brothers and I stopped dead in our tracks and stared at each other in horror! His request was unusual, and our excitement turned to dread as we became well aware that games or movies were not the reason we were pulled away from watching Fat Albert. This felt more official and tedious, like schoolwork, chores or worse, a family meeting.
As we each retrieved a notebook and pencil we continued to ponder the reason for this summons. We ruled out a family meeting because Mom was still out shopping. We entered the game room to find three metal folding chairs facing a huge blackboard. Dad instructed us to sit in the chairs and NOT on the cushioned sofa just inches from us.
“I want your full attention. That is why I have you sitting in these chairs,” he stated, businesslike.
Immediately we began to pout and whine.
“Where’s Mom, aren’t we gonna wait for Mom?” my youngest brother asked.
“Is this gonna take long?” my other brother sighed.
I silently squirmed in the uncomfortable metal chair.
“Your mother won’t be back for hours, and if you must know, she has nothing to do with this,” he said calmly. “And how long this takes depends entirely upon each of you. The more you participate, the more you’ll learn, and the faster we can move on and be done. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” we responded unenthusiastically.
“Now,” my father began, “we are going to have a weekly meeting with just us guys. We will have these meetings every Saturday morning, but if you have school or sports activities on Saturday morning, we’ll reschedule for Sundays after church. I’m going to teach you what I have learned about life. It is my responsibility, before God, to prepare you to be strong, proud, African American men who will be assets to the community and to the world at large. It is a responsibility I take very seriously.”
I just had to jump in, “You’re going to teach us everything about life?”
“Everything I can.”
“But that will take forever.”
“Maybe.” He turned to begin writing on the blackboard. “Maybe.”
For the next five years, rain or shine, in sickness or in health, Dad taught us about life once a week. He instructed us on a wide variety of s
ubjects—personal hygiene, puberty, etiquette, the importance of education, racism, dating, respect for women, respect for those in authority, respect for our elders, Christian salvation, a good work ethic, what it means to be an adult, what to look for in a wife, landscaping, minor home repairs, auto repairs, budgeting, investing, civic duties and the list goes on. We begrudgingly filled notebook after notebook after notebook.
As I approached my eighteenth birthday, the weekly lessons became monthly lessons and then every other month, until they slowly drifted away. My brothers and I were older, we had girlfriends, school activities, sports activities and job responsibilities that became extremely difficult to schedule around. I’m not sure when it happened, but the importance of our weekly lessons and notebooks began to pale in comparison to our busy teenage lives. Soon the classes and the notebooks were mere memories.
It’s been years now since we had those classes with Dad in the game room. We are grown with careers and wives of our own. At every challenge in life, my brothers and I have frantically looked in attics, basements and storage sheds for our notebooks. We can’t find them anywhere.
At least once a month one of us has a situation where we need to call home and ask Dad for his advice or guidance. We hesitantly pick up the phone to call him, knowing good and well he’s going to laugh and say, “Where’s your notebook?”
John W. Stewart Jr.
It Runs in the Family
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all these.
George Washington Carver
My childhood had its ups and downs but included my momma, Karen, who was so supportive that I was destined to succeed in life.
She never missed any of my school events, poetry contests, honor roll assemblies, student government elections or the countless football and basketball games spanning six years of cheer leading. When I graduated from college, I was selected to give the commencement address. Just like old times, my mother sat in a chair in my dorm room and listened to my speech over and over again.
That reminded me of a time when I used to be embarrassed by my mother. She always laughed just a little too loud. She never dressed the way I wanted her to dress. She had very few outfits that weren’t gold or red, and you’d be hard pressed to find something in her closet without a sequin sewn on it. I respected my mother for her talents, but I just wanted her to be a little more like other mothers and a lot less crazy.
When I entered a statewide speech contest, I prayed for my mother to magically transform into the normal mother everyone else seemed to have. The whole time I gave my speech she moved her lips as if she was coaching me. Instead of feeling grateful for her involvement, I worried other people would think she was talking to herself.
It felt impossible to pass for normal when our craziness was as obvious as the frilly Easter-looking dress I had to wear. By the time I made it to the finals, I had given my mother strict conditions. First, even though we couldn’t afford it, I demanded a blue suit, like the other girls. I instructed her not to mouth the words to my speech. Finally, I warned, under no circumstances should she jump up and down and make whooping noises if I won. This wasn’t a Dunbar High School pep rally; it was the suburban Optimist Club speech contest, and we had to look the part.
When I took to the stage, one of ten finalists remaining of the thousands of girls in the competition, I looked around the room. There was only one other brown face that looked like mine. Momma’s. The opinion of the other contestants, the crowd and the judges became increasingly less important to me.
As I delivered my presentation, possibly one of the most flawless performances of my fourteen years on Earth, I realized my mother was sitting in her seat with her face turned toward the door rather than the stage—obeying my strict directives. I had thought that if she didn’t look at me, she wouldn’t be tempted to do any of those crazy things that distracted me.
I realized now that the only way she knew all the words to my speech was because she had obviously memorized it, too—just to show her support for me. I knew then that I had no desire to win without my mother seeing it and celebrating in whatever way she chose to.
Near the end of my speech, I stepped from behind the podium, walked down the stage and onto the main floor. I wanted Momma’s attention. My mother sat still in her contorted position gripping the side of the white linen tablecloth, desperately trying to do what I had asked her to do: Be someone else. She never moved. I finished with a dramatic close, but she never looked up. While the rest of the crowd rose to their feet in a standing ovation, Momma was still. When they handed me the plaque and the scholarship money, Momma allowed herself to simply smile.
Without our traditional ‘cutting up’ and ‘act a fool’ celebration, my victory felt empty. In that moment, with my future looking bright, I realized you can’t enjoy where you are going if you deny where you are from.
I let her know from that moment on she could whoop and holler and be herself. I wouldn’t want her any other way. After all, she was my momma, and if she was crazy, then call me crazy, too.
Jarralynne Agee
Fried Chicken and Collard Greens
For every one of us that succeeds, it’s because there’s somebody there to show you the way out.
Oprah Winfrey
It was eight months since Momma had prepared fried chicken and collard greens. I distinctly remember standing beside her as she cracked some eggs, added Carnation milk, sprinkled her secret seasonings, beat the mixture and then carefully dipped a piece of chicken for a full coating. This precision seemed wasted as she dropped each piece in a brown grocery store bag filled with flour. Once all the pieces were in, the shakedown began until the entire chicken skin was covered in flour. I’ll never figure how each piece got so evenly coated, but when the shaking was over, the chicken was entirely white.
The finale was placing each piece in a skillet of hot grease. The crackle and sizzle meant we’d be “grubbing down” soon and always drew my four brothers.
“Do I smell chicken and collard greens?” one would ask warmly.
And they would be correct. Boiling next to the chicken was always a big pot of collard greens—handpicked from our garden and cleaned by the women in the house (including any kinfolk who might have dropped by).
The preparation was as much a part of dinner as the cooking. We would gather in a circle around a table—as if we were going to play cards—with greens spread atop. Then the real pickin’ began as we inspected one leaf at a time, examining it for worms or unfamiliars. We also picked over topics of discussion, usually ranging from boys to men. However, as “young ’uns” my three sisters and I dared not talk too much for fear of getting a “pop in the mouth” for being “fast.”
This ritual was known as Soul Food Sunday by some, but we just called it Dinner at Momma’s, until I renamed it The Last Supper when Momma died.
It was mid-November when she left us. My siblings and I, fully grown, were planning our usual visit home for Thanksgiving. I believe Momma timed her passing so we’d be together without an added trip home. We arrived during Thanksgiving just to become eight motherless children. There was nothing to be thankful for that year.
My oldest sister insisted we still have Thanksgiving dinner and so we womenfolk gathered in the kitchen while the men pretended to help but really watched football. It was just like all the other Thanksgivings—except Momma wasn’t there.
“You should fry the chicken and do the collard greens,” my youngest sister said. I was stunned and angry. “You watched Momma all the time, and you cook the most like her,” she finished.
Although intended as a compliment, I knew she was really saying, “Momma’s gone so you help us move on.” I refused.
“There will be no fried chicken or collard greens,” I stated.
My sisters glared at me, and my brothers
seemed to gain bionic hearing, darting into the kitchen as if it were on fire. “What’s dinner without fried chicken and collard greens?” they all sang out in unison.
“It’s the same as dinner without Momma,” I shouted back—hitting a nerve in every one of their bodies.
The rest of Thanksgiving passed solemnly as we ate turkey, string beans, mashed potatoes and desserts. Nothing tasted quite right, and by the end of the meal, we agreed we’d never eat collard greens and chicken as good as Momma’s ever again; therefore, we’d never have them again. Sadly, we surrendered the two foods we remembered Momma for most.
Six months later the family gathered for a grand celebration of Momma’s first (and favored) grandchild’s graduation. After the graduation, my friend invited us to her family reunion cookout later in the day.
When we arrived, Mrs. Spark, the family matriarch, grabbed my sisters and I, leading us to the kitchen while jabbering about “needing more hands to work.” My brothers settled in front of the living room’s big screen television and ball game.
I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw card table setups. On each were vegetables—snap peas, green beans and yes, collard greens.
“Y’all know how to pick greens and all?” Mrs. Spark asked shortly.
“Yes, ma’am,” we stuttered uneasily.
She chuckled and said, “Well, pull up a chair. What you standin’ there for? Hmmph, young folk act like they ain’t never seen fresh greens and such.”
The other women started in chiding about the state of the world and how bagged greens were an abomination to how God intended us to cook.
We took our seats and began the familiar process of cleaning greens. My sisters jumped into the conversation and the laughter, but I was still dazed. Then, as if reading my mind, Mrs. Spark tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to join her at the stove.
Chicken Soup for the African American Soul Page 9