To tell you a story…
What if today is a day when I just want to write poetry?
What will I draw on for my inspiration?
Not all of it is memory. Not all of it is past experience.
Some of it is new story telling with a strong foundation.
The spring leaves on the tree outside the window
are there every year. New.
Something new under the sun
which makes them glow,
their color proof that they are new
to life.
It is such a relief to know that work has become poetry
and I, myself
I have my father’s eyes when I am serious
And the ones of the woman who gave birth to me. When I smile.
I’ve my mother’s grace. My aunt’s dignity
My grandmother’s will to power
And I answer you as \dĕ ’ - b(ǝ)- rǝ\.
Springtime. I’d be on my way to the handball court when I was younger. Now the courts don’t even whisper my name. A lot more people on bikes now.
I want you to know that I am being very measured as I write this — I do not want to be long winded. But I do have, in this moment, a lot to say.
First, I am quite aware that I have been walking around with “that look.” Unfortunately, I am also aware of the fact that it scares the shit out of a lot of people. And that saddens me. Because most of the time I am thinking about some really beautiful things. Trying to figure out a way to articulate it on paper is a thought that passes through every once in a while so here you go. Sorta kinda have ta’ now, you know? When children have that look in their eye people say it’s daydreaming. When men have it they are said to be great thinkers. And when women have it they are said to be on the verge of madness. Please know that I actively reject any notion of pejorative madness. Passively, too. I am breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to you all here, opening up in a way that I have not in such a long time…it helps to imagine that we are sitting at a kitchen table somewhere in the early evening. You set the table. This point is fairly basic and speaks to all we are trying to do here. Who is ‘we’? Where is ‘here’? C’mon…with this high-end technology available you still have to be askin’ those kinds of questions? My future selves have given me enough to last a lifetime…
I decided to raid the crates to tell you a joke, and, too, a little story about my grandmother. Mainly because when I think about my grandmother now it is within the context of having been aware all along that I have been in the presence especially once, and specifically not “at least”, of a woman who was born and who had lived in the century before the last one. And I remember being a child listening to stories of her childhood home Jamaica. Those pictures from that time, though few, are alive in my mind. I will not share those with you. Instead, the childhood memory I share here now is my own. Because it speaks to the patience of my notebook. It never even registered to me when I was tiny that my grandmother, or anyone else for that matter, may have had a life back in the 1930's and 40's and 50's and sixties, before Hawaii and before my Brooklyn. As well it should not have. My job back then, back when I was tiny, was to be a little kid. To be happy and listen when my grandmother talked. And to make sure there were no random needles on the floor she might step on — there was a seamstress in the house with a lot on her mind and a lot of take-home work.:
Before the Internet and before computers, before photographs and oil paintings, we had fire and we had storytellers to help us remember.
My grandmother simply refused to go anywhere for an extended period of time — vacations and such — without a kerosene lantern. Kerosene. She wanted to make sure she always had light in case the power went out in a storm. I used to play with those lanterns at home, unlit, pretending to hunt for treasure in the distant land of my aunt’s walk-in closet with the door slightly ajar. On the nights my mother left me alone with her, my grandmother would tell me stories until she feel asleep. Sometimes my grandmother would turn on her lamp “just in case” and somehow I knew from the smell of the burn that kind of fire was dangerous — wood burning fires smell safe and warm. Fire from kerosene lanterns say, “Stay awake until your grandmother falls asleep and then blow it out. She’ll say something before then if it is still too soon.” Ours was the best case scenario of leaving neither small children nor the elderly unattended.
My grandmother knew exactly what she was doing in talking to me.
The last thing Grandma Lottie would call for before we would go out as a family, and after she was completely dressed and in her wheelchair was, “My purse!” It took a while for me to understand why my mother and my aunt would both roll their eyes. My grandmother’s purse was heavy. “You don’t need it,” they would say. But when a mother speaks… . And once she got hold of it she would keep an iron grip on the straps and be content. I only remember two occasions whereupon receiving her purse she’d subsequently called for this thing called, “My blackjack!” Both times the phrase, “You don’t need it,” was met with icy silence. It was not just that I could see the cold in the eye contact she made with her two daughters. I could hear it in the void of her stare. And this thing called a black jack, which I was not allowed to see or touch or even go near, materialized. I knew because I saw her slowly place her hand inside her purse, and all was warm again.
Not long after my grandmother died I’d gotten hold of my grandmother’s purse and hid it when I thought no one was looking. I wanted to have something of her that I could hold onto that was more tangible to me than a photograph. As an adult I had a better opportunity to examine the bag and find the true meaning in it myself. A simple purse. A red purse. Made of plastic, fashioned to look like leather. To see it, your mind would immediately go to Tinky Winky if you know that reference. I, of course, seeing Tinky Winky for the very first time, immediately thought of my grandmother.
Looking at the purse as an adult I can tell you that my grandmother had not kept much in it besides a few candies, a small bit of change…and something called a blackjack. One day, my mother asked me to reach into the top drawer of her night table to hand her the address book she always kept there. “Um, Mommy…what is this?” I asked. Her response in looking at the object I held up was a laughter. “Oh…that was your grandmother’s. She wouldn’t go anywhere without it.” Suddenly the caricature of the old lady Ruth Buzzi often played held new resonance for me. I was holding in my hand what felt to be at least a few pounds of some kind of metal bar wrapped — wound tight and sticky — in black electrical tape. A few pounds, as in possibly and no less than three, is not an exaggeration. Hindsight tells me this thing had to be some kind of sawed off piece of lead. Why my grandmother insisted on carrying it? “Mama always said she’d knock somebody upside their head if they tried to steal her purse,” is what my mother said. And that she also wanted to be prepared to do her part if we were ever attacked. My mother looked at me. I looked at her. And then we both fell out laughing.
My grandmother was not warrish. But make no mistake, she was indeed a warrior. And, aside from the late night stories she would tell, she was also a woman of very few words. She had her own brand of justice that included the phrase, “They should make one more and die,” if a product she paid good money for went out of order prematurely. This was a woman who looked for union labels. I know it was important for my grandmother to always feel she was ready for whatever might come. Even when she was in a wheelchair being pushed by her daughters, and flanked by grand children, and great-grand nieces and nephews whenever she went out. Such was that queen’s court. The reason my mother and aunt were never able to successfully disarm my grandmother is because they never became too old to get in trouble for going into their mother’s purse without permission. My memory of this one specific fact is now wonderful as I get older — to remember my mother and my aunt as daughters. What amazing women they both were. To see them both become like little girls when scolded. My aunt was born in 1916. My mother? 1921. I knew enough in my childhood to hold on tight to what I saw. To learn from what was, indeed, pure discipline. My grandmother’s purse is a memory. My grandmother’s purse is a key. An exercise in writing. My grandmother was born in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. In 1896.
What follows just makes sense. About the presence of angels. And how the reading world shifts depending on just who is the teller of any one story. Think long and hard about what I say to you, and what I said before. And look here closely on this new technology…
Paul Mooney told a joke once that I thought was going to get me thrown out of the comedy club I went to see him in. Because the laughter that came from me when I heard the punchline was loud and uncontrollable. I recognized then, as I do now, how much pain and aggravation and relief both the joke and my response were filled with. It was midway through the man’s set and the hour was late. Paul Mooney looked tired from a whole lot of things and I know that I was. This is not about the time of night, I am talking about the year. Admittedly, though, it was a little late that night. Think very hard about who you are and how you respond — these are different times. What do you think of when you think of anyone’s heaven?
Joke: What do you call a white baby with wings? An angel. What do you call a black baby with wings? A bat.
“I don’t think so,” Deborah Cowell says. “I do not think so.”
And so there you have it. A joke and a story. Because you have some time to read. And I have a little, too, to think about the value of a notebook.
Deborah Cowell is a writer.
