“#1 Reason I LOVE Black Women”

-for my favorite collection of essays author, Alice Walker, *In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens*

Well, my Nana. My first mother.

I think about her Leslie Jones (but darker) beauty,

daily,

even though she’s been dead

And buried

for 30 years.

It was my nana who ran THAT ship. Let the all male household, know exactly what it is.

She was a seamstress, abused and misused. Saving her pin money to put my dad through

Art

school.

My grandfather was not having it. Real men

don’t draw shit.

They go to war and come home, broken medics, in Vietnam….

Segregated armies where the GI bill means

Absolutely nothing….

My youngest Uncle, and his Howard living, couldn’t possibly think the black panthers were DOING anything. So my grandad would wait at the door with his drug wheel. And when my uncle walked in , spin it, to see which drug he was currently taking…lol

My nana had the type of garden, I’ve been in search of ever since. And I was the only one who worked in it, cuz my cousin was too busy in dresses, telling me how I would never keep a man

With my legs all scratched up like that.

My nana embraced everybody? Pretty much equally. Even the racist neighbors who would cut their eyes at me while I gave them the

Finger. After how they spoke to her.

No one and I mean

no one

disrespected my nana in my presence.

She used to embarrass me with it. Bring our entire lunch to the movies. And laugh so loudly, I would shrink down in my seat.

She was the one who defended me. Told my dad to

Leave me alone. She doesn’t like dresses. You better let that girl shop in the

boy’s section.

Every Sunday was family dinner. We all would gather round hammocks, and pork chops, and collard greens, and chitlins, and

I couldn’t STAND the smell of them cooking.

She did my hair with ultra sheen and showed me how to wash my panties, right in the tub with me.

We danced the line to Soul Train, and made my grumpy grandpa angry.

And at night she would tuck us in and tell us stories. Bout Harriet Tubman, and Ida B. Wells, and Nat Turner, and her own mother, who’s parents came up north, from slavery,

In Virginia…

I miss my Nana. She was my best friend. And every time I wanna kill myself?

I think about what she’d do to me if she saw me in a make believe heaven over

“Nonsense…

Baby gurl! What the HELL is the Internet?! You killed yourself over THAT mess?!”

Lol