The ocean has called me for as long as I can remember. Papa used to say I had salt water in my veins. I imagine I was born there, that Maame Aba squatted in the water and pushed me out and away from her. I imagine that the salty water filled my nose upon my first breath. It is only right for me to give my life back to it.
My mother had told me to look up her sister when I came to the District, that she’d take care of me. I didn’t know what she meant by “take care of.” Aunt Mary was a spinster. Her prized only son was seemingly immaculately conceived, and then gunned down at twenty-five in a way that made my mother shake her head and murmur about how Atlanta was right where she needed to be. When her son died there wasn’t much else for Aunt Mary to concentrate on besides her bid whist game and E&J, which she said was short for Ease & Jesus. She couldn’t cook; her culinary misadventures were fodder for stories my mother told to smooth over missing her sister.
Photo credit: Lola Flash
On the back seat of my cab, there was a copy of The Seattle Times left there by a fare I’d taken earlier to Lake City. I only went as far as high school, but I did a year of community college before my money ran out, and I still love to read so whenever somebody leaves a magazine or a book on the back seat I save it so I can have something to look at during my lunch break. I put the cab in neutral, clicked on the ceiling light, and reached for the paper. The front page, above the crease, was filled with a story about the Occupy Seattle protesters, who had taken over Westlake Park, speaking truth to power. Even though I hadn’t made it to that demonstration, everything happening there hit pretty close to home for me.
The Girl ambles along the chaotic trail worn into the sandy earth by the hundreds walking before her. Cold, cold, is all she thinks, as she pulls the frayed corners of the woven blanket tighter around her thin shoulders. She walks, not raising her head, instead letting herself be guided by the Old Woman several paces in front of her.
All of it, no matter. Junior’s romantic criminality made it possible. Sentimental psychopath. P.W. too. They’d met in detention. They’d lived there together for eight years until they were 18 and could no longer be tried, back then, for crimes of ten year-olds. Junior had attempted to play the piano in the recreation room their teacher, Miss Lisa, had set up in the Center. P.W. sang abstractedly to the radio. The piano never took with Junior. Now, P.W. was as much a DJ as he was a driver, as much confidant and metaphysician as he was a killer. P.W. : rare groove aficionado. Junior, connoisseur.
It is the Age of Aquarius. Kennedy is dead. Malcolm X is dead. Coretta buried her King. You still have your milk teeth. You are seated, swinging your feet. You are going to the hospital to visit Little Brother. He burned his leg on the iron Mother forgot to turn off. When he burned his leg, she was sleeping. When he burned his leg, Father was awake. Father was awake in another house with a needle in his arm.
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