F o r a l o o p b y h i s a u d a c i t y I w a s h i s s h a m e B u t f o r m e y o u b e c a m e E v e r y t h i n g I n e e d e d A n d e v e n t h i n g s I d i d n ’ t O v e r b e a r i n g , o v e r p r o t e c t i v e , a n d d i s t a n t I d o n ’ t u n d e r s t a n d w h y y o u g u a r d y o u r h e a r t f r o m m e B u t I k n o w t h e r e ’ s a r e a s o n E v e n i f I c a n ’ t s e e i t i n t h i s s e a s o n I k n o w n o w t h e r e ’ s a l w a y s a n e e d f o r s e c r e t s L o v e T a t i D e c e m b e r 3 1 , 1 9 9 9 O N HER WAY DOWNSTAIRS , T ATI tossed the sheets of paper she’d ripped from her notebook into the burning r eplace. The radio announcer’s voice greeted her as she entered the basement. I t ’ s e l e v e n o ’ c l o c k , a n d w e a r e l i v e f r o m C h i c a g o ’ s h o t t e s t , n e w e s t n i g h t c l u b , W o r s h i p H a u s C h i c a g o . I t ’ s c r a zy o u t h e r e . I f y o u a i n ’ t l e f t t h e h o u s e y e t , y o u c a n f o r g e t a bo u t i t , b e c a u s e t h e l i n e i s t h i c c c k k k . M i k e L o v e a n d t h e D i z w i l l j o i n u s s o o n t o g e t t h i s p a r t y s t a r t e d a s w e b r i n g i n t h e n e w y e a r . Y o u ’ r e l i s t e n i n g t o C h i c a g o ’ s n u m b e r o n e s t a t i o n f o r h i p - h o p a n d R & B . L i v e f r o m W o r s h i p H a u s C h i c a g o f o r t h e n i n e t y - n i n e a n d t h e t w o t h o u s a n d s . “Please turn that o ?” Tati collapsed on the futon as the chords of Juvenile’s “Back That Thang Up” came through the speaker. “What’s wrong with you?” Nadia asked. She turned around to face Tati. A at iron in one hand, her hair sectioned and parted, she began straightening the strands at the nape of her neck. “They’re live from Roman’s club.” “I know. How’d it go?” “It went.”
Nadia grunted. “You’ve had us worked up over this mess since Thanksgiving, and now you can’t bear to hear the radio broadcasting from his club? You might as well tell me what happened.” “He basically said you made your choices and he made his.” “That’s it?” Nadia asked, standing up straight. She held the at iron less than an inch from the skin of her neck. Tati shrugged. “He said I was too old to be barking up the daddy tree.” “Shit!” Nadia released the at iron and set it to the side. “I’m sorry, Tati.” Her knees cracked as she sat in her chair. “I know this is not the way you wanted things to go.” “I didn’t have any expectations.” “Yes, you did. You always have.” Under the recessed lights of the basement, Tati watched as Nadia’s blank gaze softened. Everything that she’d k ept to herself was out in the open. The hardness she’d held was broken apart. The entombed tumor of her past removed. Nadia met Tati’s gaze with her own knowing look. They were women, together, not just mother and daughter, parent and child. “We weren’t together very long. Only a few months. I met him when I was still trying to gure out what I wanted to do with my life after I dropped out of school.” “I didn’t know that.” “There’s a lot of things you don’t know, Tati, but that’s another conversation. Anyway, he and his wife weren’t together at the time. I knew better. But...” Nadia shrugged. Tati nodded. There was nothing left to explain. Nothing to apologize for. Nothing that could be changed. What happened, happened. “He had a way of making me feel like I knew him. He was good at making me feel like I was wanted when he didn’t wanna have shit to do with me. Not in the end.” Tati recognized the pattern. The emails, the willingness to meet, the direct answers to her questions followed by the rejection. His rebuke had been on r eplay in her mind. Y o u ’ v e s e e n m y p r i o r i t i e s . I t ’ s t i m e y o u a n d y o u r ma m a fi n d y o u r o w n .
Nadia stood from her chair. “You goin’ outside?” Tati asked. “Nah,” she said, sitting back down. “Not tonight. It’s past time I start tryna quit.” “Never thought I’d hear you say that.” “I didn’t start smoking ’til I was pregnant with you,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Mama!” “What? I’m being honest. Isn’t that what you lookin’ for?” She shrugged. “It reminded me of him... Later... it helped me forget about how hard it was being a young single mother. Whether I was raising you right. Whether I made the right decision.” Nadia didn’t specify the decision but Tati knew. Her birth was less than ideal. It was a choice that she was alive. Nadia’s choice to birth, to raise, to love. Active in every st ep. A daily acc eptance. She met Tati’s gaze, eyes wet but full with life and not a hint of regret. She said, “It’s time to put that cross down. For good. Like I should have a long time ago.” Nadia pressed the sides of her face with her ngers to dry the eye stings that had es caped. Standing, she returned to her station and picked up the at iron from the burgundy towel where it rested. “Whatchu ’bout to do?” Tati asked. Nadia clicked the plates. “What it look like? You see my head is a mess.” “I didn’t notice.” Tati smirked as she stood up from the futon. She approached Nadia and took the at iron from her. “Tati, what the hell! W hat are you doin’?” “I’m about to do your hair.” “Is that right?” They both laughed. The sound twinkled around them, joyous in their relief, boisterous with freedom. Each of them liberated in their own way. “C’mon, Mama, sit down,” Tati said. She bumped Nadia’s hip with her own to get her to move out of the way and sit in the chair, then followed the st eps she’d seen Nadia do for years. She tied the
barber paper around Nadia’s neck and whipped the cape over her body. “Oh, you for real?” Nadia said. “I told you, I got you.” Tati took over the station. She checked the temperature of the at iron and placed the hot comb in the electric stove to heat up to hit Nadia’s edges when it was time. Tati pulled the rattail comb from where it was stuck in Nadia’s head and let her blow-dried pouf of a mane fall down to her shoulders. “You ready?” Tati asked. “I should be asking you the same thing,” Nadia said. “Make sure you got that oil for my scalp.” “I got it.” Nadia released herself to the salon experience. She closed her eyes and relaxed her neck, a rag doll as Tati’s hands plunged into her hair and massaged her scalp. Tati’s ngers raked through the locks from roots to ends before she began to part rows and sections for straightening. Without music, the basement had never been so quiet. Aside from the reworks going o outside in the neighborhood, the only sounds were their breathing and the sizzling of the irons until they heard a click at the door and a turn of the lock. “Who is that?” Tati asked. “Probably your mimi. I gave her a key when you left for school.” “You told her, didn’t you?” “Told me what?” Gladys asked as her short heels clopped on the concrete oor. “Mama, what’re you doing here?” Nadia asked. “Yeah, I thought you were going to Watch Night at church to wait for the Rapture.” Tati smirked. “If the Lord is coming, I’m sure he’ll know where to nd me,” Gladys said. She set the book she was carrying down on the futon as she took o her coat and gently removed her scarf from where it covered her hair. “Besides,” she continued, “if I do go, I wanna go free.” “What do you mean?” Tati and Nadia asked together. Gladys grabbed the book. “Tati, here, once asked me about the names in this Bible.”
“I used to ask you about the names in that Bible,” Nadia reminded. “Okay. Well, y’all both asked me. Do you wanna know about ’em or not?” “New Year’s Eve is the day you wanna tell us about our family tree?” Tati rolled her eyes. “You already found one good-for-nothing branch that needs to be sheared, might as well nd the vine that’s fruitful,” Gladys said. “Mama, not tonight,” Nadia said. “I ain’t here to talk about him.” Gladys looked from Tati to Nadia, her eyes warm and face soft. They had never heard Gladys sound so gentle. As if she remembered the moment she too needed tenderness. Despite their di erences and all their bickering in this moment, they were on one accord. Agreed in the ways of women with experience. She continued, “What’s going on with Tati made me remember some of the stories I’ve heard.” “Like what?” Tati asked. Gladys closed the distance between the three of them. She set the Bible with the cracked spine and fragile, gold-rimmed pages in Nadia’s lap and opened it slowly to the page of names. Nadia and Tati both pored closely over the names, written in a thick black ink they knew hadn’t come from a regular pen. “Why’s that one scratched out?” Tati pointed to a space that had been struck through and blotted. As if whoever’s name had been written was never supposed to be known. “I don’t know. This Bible belonged to my great-grandmother, Emma. You see her name there.” Gladys pointed to the top of the page, where the names began. “I called her Mama Em. She was born enslaved. Daughter of the owner.” “Really?!” Tati exclaimed. “Mama, you wanna talk about slavery now?” Nadia asked. “On New Year’s Eve?” “If I don’t tell you, you ain’t never gon’ know. And if the Y2 K coming for us —” Gladys sighed and shook her head. She left them with the Bible and crossed back over to the futon. Rocking on the cushion, she stared past Tati and Nadia to the steam rising from the hair stove as if she were trying to decipher code.
“They cut o her head because she ran,” Gladys said. “That’s what Mama Em used to mutter.” Nadia looked up from the Bible. “What does that mean?” “It’s why I never took you back to Land’s End. Only once when you were a little girl. It’s the reason you don’t remember.” “What are you talking about?” “Whose head?” “When you nd all this out?” “Why you telling us now?” Tati and Nadia p eppered her with questions, but Gladys didn’t answer. She stared at the steam and watched the girl dance in the smoke, legs and feet lifted from the ground and hands spread, arms akimbo in the air. She watched her with joy before she recounted the pain. Like Ruby, Jubi, and Emma before her, Gladys was overcome by the spirit. She’d have sworn on the Bible that belonged to her mothers that she’d heard a voice say, clear as day, G o , while she was standing in the church pew, singing from the hymnal, waiting to see what the end was gon’ be. Without thought she’d followed the instructions that burned on her heart. She’d gone home, gotten her Bible, then driven to Nadia’s to give them the truth. They had thirty minutes until midnight. She gured that was enough time to give them the gospel. A testament of their own family. But she had not the voice for the words. All she could do was rock and stare as the girl danced in the steam. All she could do was r epeat the legend she didn’t even know herself to be true while Tati and Nadia asked for answers. When Gladys nally found her voice, dry and gravelly, it was two minutes after midnight. With her soul still sound in her body, she told Tati and Nadia the story that had been told to her. Not that it was much, for she’d heard it secondhand from Jubi, who’d heard it secondhand from Emma, who’d never gotten it straight from Evangeline.
P a r t 4 T h e B e g i n n i n g
S u m m e r 1 8 6 0 If you must know... it began in the barracoon. That’s what she would have said if she could have told her own story. It began in the barracoon and continued on the ship. Plucked as she was away from the pack of captives marched for miles over a month or more across the continent to the coast. Instead of staying in the bottom, she was pulled away, prodded with the butt of a gun out of the dungeon and up to a room where a white man waited. Though the air was clearer, not as thick with the stench of shit and blood or lled with the mourning wails of women and children, it still trembled with its own kind of terror. To stand as one before a pale face without the comfort of closeness to others of her kind instilled in her a fright she couldn’t name. The scream she felt climb from the turmoil tossing her belly caught in her throat. So she stood by the closed door, unmoving, watching the candlelight icker. She wished the re were closer, bigger, big enough to consume her on the spot and take her away from this hell she’d been forced to enter. He sat on the small bed in the spacious room. The captain’s quarters. It had a window looking out over the coast. The salty air blew in on a breeze, but all was black. The ocean, the sky, the room, her skin. She was the oldest of the young ones. Her hips were still narrow and stomach taut. Supple breasts stood instead of hung. But she’d had more than one blood. He could tell from the streaks he saw crusted and dried on her legs when she was brought in. She was old enough to bed, but young enough not to know better. He’d chosen her because he believed she would be compliant on the rst try. But even if she wasn’t, he knew how to make her malleable. The cat was wound on a wooden chair near the window, its barbed, biting tails sle eping like a rattlesnake turned in on itself.