“Your feet can receive healing from the earth. I is imagining I activating their receiving powers.”
Receiving powers. Sounds like something Afua would write about. This makes me laugh just a little, and I risk a few words. “I can’t imagine rubbing anyone’s hard feet, even if it was in wool socks or my favorite gramma.”
“I can tell. Yours is always ashy like you don’t even like rubbing yuh own with a lil’ cocoa butter.” She giggles.
“Oh, snap, you came for my feet like that, girl? You had me thinking I had some cute model feet.” I start rolling too, because she is right. In general, I kind of skip lotioning them and throw on my socks and sneakers.
“I like to take time and just rub my feet in the morning and give thanks for them like my grandma does,” says Audre, holding and rubbing my heels, ankles, and calves. Hmm, feeling her that close, I just want her to lie down next to me. The pain from chemo in my body gets sharper and starts to move through me again. I feel like it is trying to split me. I turn on my side and pull my body tight to myself, I close my eyes, trying not to cry. Audre looks at me, and I can see her eyes are scared. She starts rubbing my back and talking to me real quiet and low and stuttering a little bit, like she was scared.
“I is here, Mabel, just let me hold you, okay? Breathe with me, o-okay? The pain always want to leave you; just breathe it out. You still here, Mabel, I still with you. Okay? So you’ll always be here.”
Slowly, she slides down next to me, holding me from behind. She rubs my stomach real slow and breathes with me. I start to relax into the ground and into her body.
She sings that her love is my love, that it would take an eternity to break us. Whitney. I close my eyes and I just feel her arms wrapped around and holding me and hear her voice and I feel myself disappear into sleep.
When my eyes open up, the sun has shifted completely out of the sky and it’s twilight. My favorite time of the day, when I can see the arrival of stars. I look over and Audre is still lying next to me, looking at the sky. And then she looks over at me and smiles.
“You sleep hard, gyal. Snorin’, talkin’, and everything! Do you remember your dream?” she asks.
And I do.
I look up at the stars in the sky and it all tumbles down into me, I remember it all.
Audre and her grandma were in it (though I don’t know what she looks like, so I think my dream brain just substituted young Anita Baker), and I was walking behind them in these woods, up this hill. No matter how much I tried to keep up with them, I was falling behind. I tried to speak to her and I had no voice, even when I tried screaming, it was gasping and silence. She got so ahead of me, she was gone, and I didn’t know which direction she went and the wind was picking up. Next, I was in the midst of a hurricane. I was in love with the hurricane, with the annihilation of it, the power of it. And it felt good to be a part of that power, to be able to move myself into the void of destruction and feel like I was safe. That I was loved. Then all of a sudden, I was at the top of this mountain and Afua was there, but he was someone else too. He was the watcher. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what it felt like. He was just the feeling of peace. And there was still a hurricane, but instead of destruction, it was the swirl of cosmos, it was just the everything. And nothing. Then there was nothing. Just a limitless feeling.
I finish describing my dream and look over at Audre, and she is looking at me kinda shook.
“Whoa, gyal, all that? You dream me? Queenie? And you dream Afua? That’s weird. What yuh think that mean?” she asks, peering at me through her thick lenses.
I realize I hadn’t mentioned the letter to her, even though it has been on my mind. Maybe because I felt stupid to be writing it in the first place. Telling a random stranger things I haven’t been able to tell Audre or my parents or the therapist at the hospital, things my mama been trying to get me to say.
“I wrote him a couple weeks ago and he just wrote back. Maybe that is why he was in the dream?” I try to be chill about it.
“Oh.”
I can tell she is feeling some type of way by the way she gets quiet. It is an awkward quiet.
“Audre, you cool?”
“Yes, I cool,” she say in a way that I can tell she ain’t cool.
“Mabel. Yuh never seem like you want to tell me important things. I ain’t the only one who is private about my life.” She looks away from me to the sky.
“It wasn’t a secret, Audre. I just didn’t know why I was doing it, so I didn’t even really think about it like that. I didn’t even know if he was still alive, to be honest. I wrote it when I was bored.” It seems like everyone has feelings about me writing Afua. There is more awkward silence.
“So . . . what it say then? Is you going to tell me that?” she asks, still seeming a little irritated, but curious.
“Of course! You can read it, if you want.”
“You sure?” she said, sounding softer.
“Fah sho. I wanted to share it with you, anyway.” As I reach down to grab for it in my pocket, I realize I’m covered in a soft blanket that she must have placed on me when I was sleeping. It smells like her and it makes me smile imagining her tucking me in. I stay quiet while she reads the letter.
* * *
• • •
“He sounds real, you know? And real sweet!” She is smiling, sitting, and using her phone for light to read by. “He said we gotta learn the stars, astrology, and thing. He mentioned me. You told him about me?” She looks up at me and I nod. She smiles bigger and continues to re-read the letter.
“And you tell him about Whitney? You is a nerd, for real! He favorite song is ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go?’ Awwww. I don’t know why that is so, so sad to me.” She hands me back the letter and snuggles under the blanket with me. I put my arm around her, even though I’m self-conscious about how skinny it is now, yet she melts into me. It just feels natural. It feels good to be this close to her, on the dirt, under the stars and trees.
“How do you feel? You going to write him again?”
I think about it for a second. “After that dream, I think I’m supposed to.”
“Yes, I think so too,” says Audre, snuggling closer to me. We fit perfectly. My skinny, tall self, and her short, thick self. The pain is still there, but there is also Audre and the way I feel when I am around her. Just warm and safe, but wild too, like the hurricane in my dream. Lying there with her, I feel like if I could be as perfect as nature, maybe I could live forever.
AUDRE
I WAKE UP FEELING EXTRA COZY and sleepy under my blankets. It’s Saturday, and since I ain’t got school, I feeling to stay in my bed longer and I do. After a while, I feeling restless and I get up and put on my glasses and look out the window.
Everybody has been telling me about it, like it a bully that I have to keep my eye out for, but this bully never show up, despite all the talk. Until now. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, and I start jumping up and down, it’s so glorious.
“Dad, Dad! Look, you see it snow!?” I come out of my room, and he is sitting by his altar, meditating. “Oh!” I quick turn back to my room.
“Audre, it’s all good—I was almost done anyhow.” He smoothly rises. “And either way, this is your first snow—some kind of special rite of passage as a Minnesotan. What do you think about it?” He joins me at the window.
It takes me a minute to find words. “It’s like nothing I ever experience. Like an overnight monsoon, but it accumulate like a sandstorm. I mean it is unbelievable and just so much of it. And it keep coming down.” I see our neighbors across the street, bundled up like rotis, waddling around and cleaning the snow off their car.
“Dumpling, I have to shovel our walk. Want to come outside and help? Really experience it? Make your first snowperson? Or snow angel?” He cracks a little smile and does the old shimmy dance he does when he is excited.
“Okay, girl. You going to have to introduce yourself to it one day, though.” He begins putting on his boots.
I watch him from the window slide the shovel underneath and then lift the big piles of snow from off our walk into our yard. I watch him for a while and then go into my room and lie in my bed, but the window catches my eye. I look at the snow coming down some more on a tree that had just lost all its leaves and is now holding snow as their replacements. It’s truly beautiful. I decide I want to go outside.
When I finally conclude I have enough layers on, I is already sweating and it’s difficult to even move. I step outside the door and onto the first step.
“Look at this snow queen! You look like you from here, girl. Actually you were born here, remember that? Minnesota girl!” he says, leaning on he shovel and cheering me on as I step out into the whiteness, like I is just learning how to walk. The cool air grazes my face wherever there isn’t a scarf or hat. Meanwhile, Dad must be hot from shoveling; he has unzipped he own coat and stuff he hat in he pocket.
The sidewalk feels funny under my boots, like the ground got a cushion on it. Snowflakes hit my glasses and melt. I step into the front yard that yesterday was green grass and leaves and is now a jungle of snow. I keep walking and when I bring my hand down to touch it, I feel something whizz past me and land. I look back, and my dad is giggling.
“Try making a snowball, honey. This kind of snow is perfect for it.” He packs the snow into a ball in he gloved hands, then flings it into the air, letting it land and disintegrate on impact.
I pick up a handful and start patting it down in my gloves. It makes a nice little ball, and I throw it into the yard, where it sinks through the surface. Magic. It feel like living inside a snow cone. Real strange, like a different planet altogether. I never imagined how snow would actually feel like.
“You know what?” my dad said, watching me and my island-girl apprehension at all of the snowfall surrounding me. “I have a surprise for you. Let me finish up and we going to have a little field trip,” he says, and starts shoveling again before I can answer.
* * *
• • •
I soak in the tub and think about my first snow day. It’s barely evening but it’s already black like deep night and the bathroom is dark except for a candle. My skin is cold and clammy and welcomes the warmth and plunge of the bathwater. I can’t believe I went sledding today—and that I loved it.
From the trunk of his Volvo, my dad produced a purple plastic-tray-looking thing with a rope dangling from it. We walked into the park and I felt like I was walking in a desert of snow, each foot dragging and heavy.
“It’s like sit-down skiing?” I asked him, looking at a small crowd of people basking in the snowy mayhem, with no fear. “You want me to do that?”
“It’s called sledding, baby. Here I’ll go first, okay?” My dad somehow managed to get he hard-back self into the sled with he big ol’ boots. He rocked forward once and then dropped over the edge of the hill, zooming down into the snow at what seemed like extreme speed. When he hit the bottom of the hill, his sled spun around and he let out a yell of joy. I couldn’t help but smile.
“You scared?” said a little voice that pulled my attention from my dad. She looked about nine and was brown, cute, and nosy. “I been doing this since I was three. I ain’t scared, it’s fun. Why you scared?”
“Umm, I ain’t scared. I just watching.”
“You know this the baby hill, right?” she said.
My dad walked up and offered me the sled. I decline.
“I thought you said you wasn’t scared though?” the little girl said. “You want me to go down with you?”
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” I said.
“Do you, boo.” Then she got on her sled and hits the hill without hesitation.
“Dad, okay. Let me try it once. Just one time.”
He smiled and handed me the sled quick, probably afraid I’d change my mind. I placed it on the edge of the hill. It slid around when I tried to sit in it. My dad centered the sled and started to give me more advice.
“So, Audre. All you gotta do is get over this little edge and gravity will do the rest. You got this, honey.”
I took a deep breath, rocked forward a tiny bit, and then I dropped off into the snowy abyss, my face whooshed in the cold, and snow flying all over me, my stomach instantly releasing a tribe of butterflies. I zoomed and swished and leaped through the snow. When I landed at the bottom of the hill a few seconds later, I fell back and looked at the sky. It was washed in gray clouds, puffy and drifting down flakes on my face, as I felt like I was floating on the snow beneath me.
I giggle and wiggle around in my hot bath. The candlelight glistens onto the water, giving the room a glow. I can’t wait to tell Mabel about sledding when I see her next. The water is warming my body and skin. I try to get as much of my skin under the water as possible and stretch my body underneath the liquid surface.
MABEL
SINCE AUDRE’S DREAMO EXPERIMENTS, things have been weird and I can’t explain it, how real it feels. It feels like I’m been traveling to other worlds and times. To be specific, the world and times of Queenie, Audre’s grandma, and it’s vivid and I feel it all over me. In this world, I am hearing and feeling the experiences and spirit of Queenie. Last night was the weirdest one yet. . .
* * *
• • •
I following a tall and handsome stranger through the woods. She song is trembling the leaves, grasses, and trees that was laid out in this hidden city bush. Mahal is slim and wild, like my boy Marley (my biggest love, my heart still broken he gone—two years already). She look like a man from behind, her back strong and broad, and in the front she got less tut-tuts than me. And she face is sweet and pretty while still being handsome in a way that I want to stare but I try not to look at too long. She got a small guitar that she call a cavaquinho, that reminds me of the cuatro that they have back home, swinging and strapped onto she back. Also slung on she was a leather bag she made for she self from back home.
The air feel soft, and like it can reach all the corners of my chest every time I breathe. I feel so happy, I start to hum a song to myself, just to feel the rumble of my voice pour through me alongside hers. Where I is walking is green and alive. I feel each tree is my friend and wan’ tell me something they been holding in for a long time. I is tuck up in a forest so big you ain’t feel like it amidst this harsh city that still ain’t feeling like my home after ten months.
I used to listen to Bob Marley sing about a “Concrete Jungle” when I was in Trinidad but ain’t understand it before I move to Brooklyn. Hard glass surfaces, high-rises, stone-gray cages, sidewalks that are harder than bitterness. Brownstone and limestone homes that hold the fury of lives in this city. In winter, the cold and the underground of this city will depress you, like a damp blanket on your heart is what I discover after a season of subways of snow and ice into Manhattan and working in a hospital that is old and white and with matching old and white nurses, who tell me to repeat myself slowly so that they can understand me “thick accent.” Steupse.
But this is lush green. It is almost like home, and I is grateful to feel close to Spirit. Mahal is clearing the forest ahead of us, and as we step through, she creates passageways with her strong arms. She is taller than me and walk with power in she legs and back, yet she feet hit the ground soft. She nineteen like me too. She skin copper and dot up with freckles of she grandpa’s cocoa skin, her mama’s daddy who raised her after her parents left for work and never came back. She tell me later that her grandpa was an Afro-curandeiro, a Black healer, and taught she how to play the stringed instrument that looks like she borrow a child’s guitar, but it sound like a conve
rsation between angels when she sing while playing it, I would soon discover.
We reach the top of a hill and see the roofs of trees as far as we can see and much further away, all a Brooklyn and Manhattan. From she bag, she bring out a quilt that she lays out before us. Also from she bag is a feast for two runaways: almonds, raisins, grapes, apples, sorrel, lime juice, a chocolate bar, and four doubles (two for each of us).
The whole time we is talking real mellow and nice, like we ain’t just meet the night before.
“This, I can do all day, every day. For real, Queenie. Be in nature and read clouds, read all of the songs of life in the wind,” she says to me. She is leaned on her side, biting into an apple, looking at me, and I is avoiding she eyes and watching at the sky. I is thinking that meeting Mahal is the most interesting thing that happen to me in 1983.
* * *
• • •
The night before, my sister-roommate Daphne is working the late shift at the hospital and I have our place to myself and I feeling real irie, for once. I was home-cooking curry and playing my reggae records real loud like I does like it and which Daphne ass always complaining about. I was singing loud and wining my hips and stirring up all dem vibes in my food.
I almost ain’t hear a knock at my door, but this knock wanted to be heard. Probably one of them church women, ain’t wan’ hear people jammin’. But when I looked out the peephole and I saw a face that familiar, but I ain’t quite remember how it is I knew it right away. Next, I realized, I had started seeing this person in passing in our building recently. Some mornings I would see them waiting for the subway at the platform or walking away with a small guitar on they back. They was handsome, masculine, and always dressed sharp in slacks or a buttoned-up shirt, colors and patterns that made them look royal and artsy. And like they from a home of mine I ain’t never been to yet. I kind of surprised myself, when I opened the door with small hesitation. They got thick, midnight curls surrounding a smile. I mean they face was a smile mainly. You see a face like that and you notice eyes that soft and you know this not just a handsome person but a friend. We stood there watching at each other for a moment before they remembered to introduce they self and I recall to be annoyed.
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them Page 15