I didn't mind the cleaning too much. I tried to do whatever chores I had to do as fast as I could and get back to whatever book I was engrossed in at the time. My greatest fear was when he was decked out in a fresh pair of pajamas and I was forced to sit with him and keep him company. Given a choice, I would have preferred a whipping. He would always begin by slurring in his thick Bajan accent, “Come, Annie, sit here.” I never could figure out if he called Tonia and me by our eldest sister's name because he could not tell us apart due to old age or, worse yet, he had never taken the time to learn our names in the first place.
He sat to the left of the doorway in the dark mahogany morris chair that was low to the floor, lower than looked comfortable for a man his age. Of the three chairs in the room, that was the only one that I had ever seen him sitting in. That chair and its mate were from the 1930s, when he was married to my grandmother, and except for dust, a few dings, and rings on the arms marking where he routinely rested his enamel cup, the wood still looked pristine. It was an antique; my dad said that they didn't make them that way anymore, with wood so well cured that it would last forever. The cushions showed hints of vivid blues, greens, and reds deep in the seams, where time was unable to reach in and dim their vibrance. Everywhere else the fabric was stiff with age and had been weathered and worn into a pattern of overlapping stains in shades of amber, yellow, and sepia. He seemed to notice neither the stains nor the scent of half a century of splotches, spills, and the various accidents of children and grandchildren that did not come out—no matter how often the cushions were beaten, washed, and put out to dry on the low galvanized roof My mother said older people did not notice these things. I did, however. To me he just smelled like old people, so I practiced holding my breath for as long as I could and was able to hold up to a count of twenty-five or until I started daydreaming or got lost in his story—if it was particularly interesting that day.
I remember once sitting with him. I reached down to shoo away the horde of mosquitoes dining on my exposed calves and for the first time took a long, hard look at the man who had once struck me with terror. Sunken deep within the embrace of the chair, he no longer looked like a giant ogre. He looked rather small, smaller than I was, like a child dwarfed by the chair's heavy lines. His frail arms conformed to the contours of its arms. His bony hands were almost the same color as the wood, and when I squinted, they blurred into one—just as the drone of his voice blurred into the background noises along with the lazy buzz of the insects attracted to the sugar in the mug of lime juice that sweated on the table next to the poorly tuned radio that looked as if it were bought at the same time as the chairs were and played more crackles, pops, and bleeps than music. I turned at the sound of shouting outside. From where I sat in the doorway I could see my cousins chasing each other. Whenever I was forced to sit with him, I placed the wobbly dining room chair, one from the set that my aunt threw out last Christmas, across the doorway just in case I had to make a run for it and so that my mother could see me from our window and know that I had gone above and beyond the call of duty His chair faced the only window. It opened out to the back boundary and was covered by BRC wire for burglar-proofing. It did little for improving light or ventilation, but it was the only thing that saved the tiny room from feeling like a cave. As he recounted a story about life in the old days and family members long since dead and gone that I had heard at least three times before, he stared out of it with an unwavering gaze as if watching reruns of his life on a TV screen. I turned to see what was so interesting out that window, but all I could see were fronds of razor grass, as tall and thick as sugarcane stalks, gracefully dancing in the warm breeze, cut up like a jigsaw puzzle by the squares of the BRC. Then he started to talk about his wife, my grandmother, Lenora. He spoke as if she were in the other room and at any minute she would come out to meet him; from his withering form it was more than likely going to be the other way round.
A few days later my father took my grandfather to the hospital. He never came home. I didn't cry at the funeral. His two-room house stayed empty and abandoned for fifteen years until it was torn down because of termites. The antique morris chairs and the mismatched furniture were eventually burned for the same reason. The piles of stones remained where they stood until they were used to build the retaining walls on either side of the property. Except for memories and a few pictures crackled and dimmed by age, all traces of my grandfather have disappeared. It was not until I was myself an adult and had had to face the same demons of class, race, and love that I could understand his pain and in my mind transform the monster into a man. I learned to forgive and to return goodness even to people who had not first extended goodness to me. His boring stories about his life taught and gave me a sense of history from which I forged my future. They left in my heart the determination to someday restore my branch of the family to its former glory.
Silence․ The Language of Trees
ABDUL ALI
I,T WAS AN UNSEASONABLY WARM November afternoon. Washington's pigeons were more phantom than bird, since I hadn't seen one all day. The temperature belied the postautumn skin of the trees: the leaves that changed from squash yellow to plum red and later, pumpkin orange, all within weeks—a festive yet dreary time for tree-watching.
My grandfather once told me to trust trees. They knew things like if you wanted to know what kind of neighborhood you're in, “Look at the trees,” he would say. “If there ain't any, get lost.” If you wanted to know if it was okay to stop during a long drive in a southern town, look at the trees. “If there's bloodstains on any, move like the wind.”
The trees spoke to me that afternoon. They had already shed all of their gold, red, and brown leaves. The sun came out, touching my brow until beads of sweat traveled the length of my mushroom-shaped nose. Moments passed before I felt the buzz from my cell phone. A voice introduced itself: “Your grandfather has passed.” It took me a few moments to register what this actually meant. Maybe he was in a car that just rode by and “passed” in that way. Or maybe he wanted to surprise me for the holidays, and I had inadvertently “passed” him on the street. A big balloon swelled in my throat. Not only did I fear the worst-case scenario, but a knowing feeling set in.
Losing a grandparent is like losing two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A grandparent knows not only the kind of person you are but the kind of person you came from, so the loss is multiplied. I learned a valuable lesson from my grandfather's passing: that it was difficult to count the men in my life who let me know that I mattered to them, that I had a part of them in my blood, and they had a part of me in theirs, that my children had a part of them, and part of me, and themselves …
I knew of several women who loved me: my mother, grandmothers, neighbors, girlfriends, and now my daughter. It didn't matter how young or old, women, up to that point, seemed programmed to love me. My daughter memorized my footsteps, squealing whenever I entered the house, calling out dah-dah, her arms making the letter Y, motioning for me to pick her up. Aside from my grandfather, there weren't many opportunities for me to know that it was natural for men to care about their sons (or daughters).
The men in my family love differently. At family gatherings, watching fathers hug their sons is festive. Without saying anything, handshakes become preludes to conversations. If you hold on too long, then it is assumed you are in need of something. If you let go too fast, then you must be hiding something. We speak silently, look deep into each other's eyes for the truth, and, after that's confirmed, our ears open. We listen to how the other chooses his words. We measure their laughter. An open-shut laugh is not a good sign. The theatrical ones where you can see the inside of someone's mouth, maybe even get a slap on the knee—this is a sure sign that everything is fine. It's never a real silence; if you listen hard, you can hear the inflection in my grandfather's unspoken thought when I got accepted to Howard. Grandpa, born during the Great Depression, had learned the value of thrift, so imagine the psychic obstacle he overcame to send me a
check every month so I wouldn't have to worry about money.
A common refrain growing up was: Actions speak louder than words. We walk carrying the world on our shoulders. It happens in the slap across the back during visits, three-minute-long laughs, or a heavy sigh that turns to a hum. We do not write cards. Silent missives move about the room during the holidays in the form of stares. “So what did you say you're studying?” a distant cousin would ask.
MY GRANDFATHER had an elegant way of expressing his feelings. He would sit me down and tell me things that happened before I was born, or even before my mother was born. He'd talk about how he'd take my grandmother up to Harlem to the Apollo to see Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughan. The watch that he pawned to buy my grandmother summer dresses when he was broke, and all about the extraterrestrial sounds I made when I was a week old.
Grandpa always called me son. He colored his hair black so he appeared thirty years younger, never carrying himself like the octogenarian that he was. I used to think he was old-school, and he was, in the gentlemanly Ossie Davis sort of way. I picked up a few of his mannerisms: his pensive nature, never making rash decisions, worrisomeness, and frugality. There was something symbiotic about our natures—how I'd call him when I got a bad feeling; how he called me the night before he died to tell me how special I was to him.
Little did I realize that he was like a father to me. Of course I still longed for one like other people had—most people my age didn't have fathers in their eighties. It didn't matter, though. In the twenty-one years that I knew him, he measured and passed along his eighty-six years of stories, lessons, jokes, mostly picked up through his vast travels, like how he lived in Germany during the Second World War; that he visited most African countries before they became independent and changed their names; that both of his parents died before he was thirteen, forcing the abrupt end to his formal education; self-educating himself through reading several newspapers, circling unfamiliar words and looking them up later (sometimes calling me, putting my knowledge to the test), training his ear to foreign languages when he traveled abroad; how his parents were probably slaves; his escaping the Panama Canal. How he wanted better for me … All of this prepared me for fatherhood, learning his language, how to say a lot using few words, an economy with words whose value lay in action: a fine way of being close to someone you love without saying very much.
My grandfather would take me places with him, all a part of my grooming. Whenever we'd go out to eat, we'd turn on our silent language. If we had a waitress who was extraordinarily good, he'd rub his thumb against his index and middle finger. This meant she wants a big tip. How we'd laugh conspiratori-ally He was funny that way. When my cousin got married, we flew to Chicago, my first time on a plane as an adult, and I fell in love. There was a special feeling going somewhere on a plane that Greyhound or Amtrak simply could not rival. At the reception, Grandpa wore a tuxedo and I wore a new suit. And I saw Grandpa dance with a doctor from Silver Spring, Maryland. They danced in a way that I thought only people my age did in the music videos. The crowd had encircled him and this woman, who was probably thirty years his junior. I never saw my grandfather so happy. All I could do was cheer him on.
I SERIOUSLY DOUBTED the existence of “unconditional” love until my daughter was born. I can still feel her hour-old self squeeze my index finger as a phalanx of nurses poked, prodded, and vaccinated her. At first she screamed, probably at the bewilderment of leaving her mother's womb to being in a sort of outer space. Then there were all of the unfamiliar faces giving her needles and affixing nametags to her tiny arm. I was speechless at the bigness of the moment. All I could do was watch. Eventually, when she opened her eyes, our eyes touched. I held out my finger, and she grabbed it, slowly quieting her lament. Even today she grabs my finger and falls asleep on my lap. For me, there's a psychic attachment to that moment; we were linked from the very first hour. I'd like to think that although there weren't words exchanged during that early moment between us, so much was said, our own quiet speak, where I said that I was going to be there for her, that I loved and welcomed her, and that we too would develop a special language that placed a higher value on actions than just words.
WHO WOULD HAVE ever thought that through my grandfather I would receive my biggest lesson about language: how to read between the lines, that there was something important to be had from silence; how to watch the man who's speaking, look him in the eyes, see if those eyes travel or sit steady; listen to their inflection, and measure a man's handshake. How to show, rather than just say, you love someone. I can hear his voice in these lessons like when he suggested that I listen to Nina Simone: Have a reverence for things old, that there was something to be said about things that survived the test of time. Take the first chance to get travel; pay off credit cards monthly (still working on this one); take care of your family; make your presence felt without being next to a person; not to be afraid to be sensitive; eat lots of plantains and mangoes and rice and peas with coconut milk; laugh hard and often. I remember as if it were yesterday how he reprimanded his friends for laughing at my dream of becoming a writer as we drove past a Porsche dealership and I said, “And I'm gonna drive that car.” I forget what exactly they were laughing at, my wanting to be a writer or being able to afford a Porsche or trying to do both.
That fateful November afternoon my grandfather, like the leaves on the trees, left, ceremoniously, obedient to nature's call. Trees change colors. Not Grandpa, though. He remained true to form, calling me the night before, saying, “I love you, son,” leaving me an inheritance of memories that spans over one hundred years. My memories and his washed into our own language, like leaves from the same tree. I couldn't help but think as the wind blew a flurry of leaves, feeling like skin across my face, that Grandpa was still speaking.
Two Cents and a Question
L. A. BANKS
LOVE-THE GREATEST EXPRESSION of it and my earliest experience of such a heavenly phenomenon—was being protected by a vast, warm blanket of family as a child. Many hands and hugs made up that big-breasted, jelly-rolled love that came from aunties, and grandmothers, my mother, plus her girlfriends as second and third mothers, good teachers and church ladies, neighbors who looked out for your welfare, and oh, yes … most assuredly my father, who called me his baby girl, his princess, along with many doting uncles, layer upon layer of adults who cared. Indeed, I was blessed.
These people gave emotional shelter, gave children a chance to be just that—kids. Not that these folks were perfect or didn't have the same problems that people face today. Oh, yeah, there were divorces, relationship dramas, job layoffs, funny money, folks that drank too much, folks that ate too much, some folks with hypertension, some had “sugar,” some had wayward children, some had wayward spouses … but that was grown folks’ bizness.
They seemed to say without words, “That don't have nuthin’ to do with you, baby,” just by guarding you from the rigors of gaining adult awareness too soon. Even those with so-called funny money would find a dollar to put in your hand at a barbecue, just ‘cause you were a kid and had run past them. Adults in the family could even be fighting like cats and dogs with your momma or daddy (as many of our family folks did from time to time) but still would hug you up if you were a child, because by being a child, you were exempt from whatever the family dispute of the moment was.
So, don't get me wrong, I'm not painting the picture here of the perfect family Not even close. I wouldn't know what that was if it jumped up and bit me. But I do know I was loved and that was the counterbalancing weight to any and all ills, much of which I was oblivious to until later. That was not by chance; that was by design—because somebody loved me enough while I was a child to shelter my young psyche from some of the things that it wasn't ready to handle.
For a magical and protected time, because of that profound love, they let children have a childhood. Now, with a number of years under my belt, and hindsight being twenty-tw
enty I know in my soul and based upon what I've witnessed that what they gave me was the most profound expression of love one can offer another human being. A chance to grow up knowing you were loved.
Here's two more cents: I personally don't believe that kids need to see everything and/or be a part of everything adult. I know we have this new open-society thing going on, and I'm not alluding to dirty family secrets either. I'm not talking about sweeping things under the rug that will one day land a person on a therapist's couch, uh uh. What I'm talking about is general-purpose sheltering. Perhaps a better word is discretion. Some conversations, again, just one woman's opinion, are not for young ears.
Maybe this process went out with high-buttoned shoes, as they say, but I don't remember hearing adults “talk their business” in front of children back in my day. Just sitting on the bus, train, or subway, I hear women describing, in great detail, all dey bizness with wee folk on their laps, and I can't but help scratch my head. Same deal in the supermarket or walking through any department store, loud conversations abound. Whether it's a sister talking into a Bluetooth to her friend with a toddler in tow, or she's walking with a girlfriend, nobody lowers her voice to speak on anything, it seems.
I cringe and keep asking: Don't you love that baby enough to speak in code or to be a little discreet? Aw, girl, don't say that about that child's daddy in front of the boy. … Why you gotta go there in earshot of a tyke?
Is it me?
I'm not saying that folks didn't have the same types of business to discuss then as they do now. Frankly, I'm of the mind that the dynamics that went on between man and woman, as well as the domestic dramas that go along with any relationship, ain't changed since Adam and Eve. Yet there was a protocol, it seemed, to when and how this information spilled into the minds and ears of children. Sure, women laughed and hooted about a hot, steamy lover too. A lot of the who-shot-John-and-how was communicated in a meaningful eye-cut, a swivel of the neck that would make a girlfriend double over laughing, and a hand placed on the hip in a way that made a statement. One-word exclamations, Chil'l, said it all.
It's All Love Page 26