Grace After Midnight

by Felicia Pearson

  “Exactly. This is a big scene because the nail gun you buy will board up deserted houses filled with the bodies of people you’ve killed. It might sound like a routine errand, but it’s not. It’s sinister, but you play it matter-of-factly.”

  Next morning I was ready to be sinister. When we rolled, I was feeling it. Everyone said the scene came out good. I don’t wanna sound stuck on myself, but I nailed that sucker.

  The other truth is when I started appearing on the show, I’d watch myself at home and liked what I saw. Again, I don’t mean to be egotistical, but I thought I looked better on TV than in real life. That made me excited. And kept me excited.

  I ain’t ever seen myself that way before. I had to respect myself ’cause I’d become a professional actor. Being a pro actor made me act differently in my nonacting life.

  Before The Wire, I was already a little star in the hood. Everyone knew me. But the more I was on The Wire, the more it seemed I was a little star all over the country. That amazed me. And it also gave me a different feeling when strangers came up to me and said, “I love your work.”

  When I dealt dope, no one came up and said, “I love you work.” No one looked at me with eyes of appreciation.

  “You doing a good job,” an older lady told me in a restaurant. “We’re proud of you.”

  Proud of me? Man, that made me feel ten feet tall.

  “You’re treating this role very responsibly,” someone at work said.

  Pride, responsibility—man, these were new concepts.

  I liked feeling proud. I liked feeling responsible.

  I wanted to act responsibly.

  The responsible thing was to close down all my shops.

  And I did.

  Got out of the drug-running business.

  Got more and more serious about acting.

  Started feeling more positive vibes from David Simon, the guy who created the show and still writes lots of them. Started feeling the love from writers like Ed Burns and the other people who were turning out those great scripts. They was showing Baltimore for how it really is.

  I started feeling—period.

  Ain’t saying I’m the best actor out here. I know I’m not. But I also know that acting, by showing me how to feel, also showed me I hadn’t been feeling at all.

  You can’t sell dope all day and still feel.

  You can’t kill niggas and still feel.

  You just can’t.

  When I acted out the part of Snoop, I saw that to do the things she does—the murders she commits—she had to shut herself down.

  That’s an awful thing. That’s a fuckin’ brutal thing.

  Now there’s this new thing.

  This new Snoop.

  I realize the newness is due to good luck or good fate or those good angels who came from Mama’s prayers for protection. I realize I’m blessed. Being blessed is a new feeling that takes getting used to.

  I’m believing we’re all blessed—blessed to be alive. I had that blessing from the beginning but I blocked it. I hid from it. I threw off the blessing. I threw it away chasing some shit I had no business chasing.

  The old Snoop messed up that blessing that came from being cared for by good people—Mama, Pop, my godmother. Uncle and Father, though they were caught up in their own bullshit, blessed me by trying to set me straight. They blessed me by loving me. But I flipped off the blessing.

  I’ve come to believe that you gotta believe in the blessing. Ignore it and it ignores you. Embrace it and it powers you.

  The old Snoop felt powerful, but it was a power that came from a gun or a bad-ass reputation. The new Snoop feels powerful, but the power is different; it’s coming from a spirit I can’t explain.

  At first, I felt like I had to explain it. Now I don’t. I just accept it. I breathe in the spirit just like I breathe in air. I feel the spirit. It keeps me up. It keeps me clear. Keeps me where I wanna be.

  I wake up in the morning, yawn, stretch, get up, and look out the window. If the sun is shining, fine. If it ain’t, that’s fine too.

  I’m saying a little two-word prayer. “Thank you.”

  That’s the whole prayer.

  I keep saying it during the day. Saying it out loud and saying it to myself.

  I say thank you for a new point of view. Say thank you because I’m seeing everything differently.

  I’m seeing that the point of this life we’ve been given is to not shut ourselves down, but open ourselves up.

  Open up our hearts. Open up the part of our souls where hope lives. Open up our creativity and open up our minds.

  Let light pour in.

  Let light grow bright, not dim.

  Let love come in and take over.

  Let love direct us to where we need to go.

  All this is new for me.

  All this is amazing for me.

  But now that it’s happening, now that I’ve been saved by forces that I still don’t really understand, all I can do is look back with sadness and look ahead with hope.

  The sadness is for all the people I’ve fucked up. I’m truly sorry for that. I can’t give back lives and I can’t undo what I’ve done, but I can say that I regret it in the worst possible way.

  Regret pulls me in one direction; hope pulls me in another.

  Hope is for all the good I wanna do.

  The people I wanna touch.

  The light I wanna give, just as the light has been given to me.

  The light has come back, the same light that came down on me in the Cut when I recovered from Uncle’s death.

  Where does the light come from? And what do you call it?

  You can call it God. You call it Jesus. These names are good names.

  But I call it the miracle of love.

  I call it Grace after Midnight.