family dinner
Now, the climb up the hill to the campus of brick soaked the sweat onto her back, air so sweet she sucks her teeth, both at the lingering taste and at a loss of direction. Her feet sink into the grass as she wades over picnic blankets and frisbees, the burning sun searing the scrap of paper she clung to with dewy fingertips. As her gentle grip slips, the words, scribbled with pencil, bleeds deeper into the page, the image a blood memory.
Lifting her burning gaze at the disappearing script, she catches the women draped in pale dresses, skipping in a trance. Limbs fly and fall, their bodies gathering into an infinite circle on the beaten earth. The pitch escaping the ladies’ lips, hair the color of hay and firelogs bundled into knots stuck to their heads, bounces across the stiff buildings enclosing the lawn of green. The pitch pierces her ear and she presses her hand against her face to protect what has already permeated through her bones, the sound chattering beneath her. She shudders before she stands to witness the great structure of marble and cream, resting deathly still to the movements of white cloths before it.
So, it’s been a hundred years.
Her brown paper bags bunch at her legs and the walk becomes longer than she remembers. Its rich vanilla stench disguises the treasure of ripe fruits and fresh cheeses from the one-woman-market, the one who travels her odd some of miles to park her truck along the road, assembling her table, always, on the side of liberation each week.
The neighborhood beneath the blue mountains is the home away from home that is neither their own, yet the two women seem to always find each other. Behind her market, standing before the university hill, her smile this evening was shimmering wide as the waning sun shone onto her purple plum stained lips. Her dark eyes were more sunken than they were the other day, the sockets caving and craving rest.
The labor here, continues.
CA-LUH-THUMP… CA-LUH-THUMP… CA-LUH-THUMP!
Grazing the path she once came, the grounds beneath her rumble and quake until the girls in the white dresses begin to blur. She starts to run before becoming the rush of little boys on great horses, big beautiful things, their big shots ringing into the air, pinging off the sleek marbles and newly-laid bricks. In amused heckles, the animals do not go beyond which she bounds, one of the steep allies to the shops, and she is again, alone.
A pigment of red dusts the air and her throat traps it all with every breath. Her gasping chest welcomes the stench of smoke pluming and dancing, coercing her towards the clanging of labor and moans of rest on either side of her in the alleyway.
Her feet drive her closer, but that ain’t the way.
The hook of the bags weigh her body deeply into the ground, her arms aching to drag them. The steep concrete pathway down to the block of shops with large and loud signs in black and white or the usual older man with excited eyes for acting out the “good ole” times.
Merry crowds of men push past her in waves on the sidewalk, their wet drinks spilling from their pale hands as each one sips on the faux taste of ecstasy. She refuses to move aside.
Beneath the bridge, as the train rumbles and the metal clangs into a vicious song, a few boys in men’s clothing swallow the walkway. One graciously knocks into her brown body, tripping her and the foot she has over the other. The bags rip, the fruits fall, and she survives the tumble. Once the train clears, so do the men, and she rises again.
The walk becomes particularly long without the fruits of that woman’s smile. Still, as the men start to dim and the streetlights knowingly flicker, she discovers the same thick stench of sweat and sweets, an abundance of smoke pooling into the cool summer sky. The world deepens into dusk and the neighborhood glimmers with lit windows and doorways. The music of tackling children laughing with full bellies and the sleek rocking chairs creaking atop porches soothes her aching body.
Approaching the house of golden oak, her fingers linger on her forehead, feeling whether the tiny hairs are where she laid them, but Mama J is already there. She leans against the door, the warm orange of the kitchen lights and the piercing blue of the television meshing into something beautiful behind her. The scraping of the last bite and deep sips of chilled drinks pulls the hunger in her stomach and her soul, empty and exhausted. The familiar sound of her family pulls her into Mama J’s arms, the smooth cloth of her Sunday dress pressing against her face stained tired with tears.
I’m so glad you’re here. Mama J smiles, eyeing the girl before her that is fire, a Black fire, and will blow them all away. Now, get in here and get ‘sumthin to eat.