If anyone can, A BLACK WOMEN CAN!
That’s one of the many lessons I learned from my Grandma Isabell. While exploring the beginning of my story in Trini’s Blues, I couldn’t help but think of her. An Outspoken, Fearless, Sharecropping Mother of 17!!!! Whew Chile!! Supa Dupa Bad. The stories. The sacrifice. I can only imagine what it meant to be a black woman in her time.
In her honor and spirit, I bring you an excerpt from Isabell’s Next Chapter. A story that takes my Grandma places I imagine she could go in another lifetime. Far from her North Carolina farm. An adventure filled with missteps, love, lessons, and a bit of history.
I hope you hear the rhythm of her tongue and the sound of her voice as my written performance plays in and outside the boundaries of her life.
Sincerely,
B.A. Buie
A Recipe For Freedom
Everything stretched. Hair stretched pass waist. Cheeks stretched pass eyes. Shoulders pass hips. Arms pass thighs. Thighs pass fingers.
Everything stretched. Pain pass pleasure. Joy pass misery. Bellies pass nourishment. Voice pass thought. Beat pass rhythm.
Everything stretched. Sunset pass work. Fields pass fields. Children pass wombs. Church pass hymns.
But not color. Color, rarely reached. Until me.
Just enough reached me to leave me alone in a family of high-yella, grey-eyed folk. My appearance gave them all away. Generations of lies. Status and reputations are on the line. “Hide Her!”, “We can always use a hand in the field”, “You sure this yours?”
HAHAHHA Native American? We done mixed so much with white folk we don’t know what the hell we are. But I always knew what I was. I was a slave. A slave to the drop of color in my skin. A slave to my daddy who treated me like a field hand instead of a daughter. SLAVE to my sisters with their red hair and white skin. SLAVE to a mother who told me not even a cousin would be willing to give me babies and risk it being black. Albert was black. Yep, black like chewing tobacca. Black and hard working. And you know what he told me? He said my skin was brown like honey. Not bitter and hard. It’s soft and sweet. And he would give me babies. A lot of em. And I would be free.
He had a white man willing to give us a place to raise our babies if we give him our hands, back, and feet. And we did. We gave him ours and the hands, back, and feet of our children. Even gave him my baby girl. So tiny her clothes fit in a preserve jar. Those tobacco fields were to close to the house. Cut them back!! When the fields burned, so did the house. And so did my baby girl. Her body never found, but I know she in there. Regardless Albert stayed on top of me. The price of my freedom. All worth it to see the look on my family’s face when I strutted my brown, high-yella, and black children into church. Some carrying their sister or brother, some barefoot, some hair comb, some wouldn’t shut up. But I didn’t care. We sit on the front row. Johnny-Mack, Mae, Becca, Miss Ann, Poot, Ray Jr, Fran, Robert, Lianne, Pearl, Ester, Angel, Alicia, Kat, Nelle, heads Up, listening to the word. Eventually, we brought that land. We put water in the house and the sun shined on the inside. Even at night. But I was tired and Albert was mean. I was no longer a slave to my daddy, my mama, my sisters. I still a slave. I still not free. But he can’t have my children. He can’t have em! So I gave them to the schoolhouse. The schoolhouse gave them to the world and they gave me freedom.