but stirred at the end when
Mongo Santamaría’s band
hit the stage,
beating the congas so hard
Daddy’s heart woke
to the vibrations.
Later, I asked him
why he’d taken me to this movie
if he couldn’t even stay awake,
apart from the concert that followed.
He said what really mattered
was that I have a chance to see
all there was of black beauty
and music and magic in the world.
Otherwise, what would I weave
into my stories?
Notebook
Daddy knows everybody, I swear. Today, he took me to meet John Oliver Killens—at his house! He wrote this famous book of essays called Black Man’s Burden, giving white people a piece of his mind. Daddy had him autograph a copy for me. My first signed book ever!
MICHAUX’S
Mention Harlem
and the Apollo is what
often comes to mind, but
Daddy introduced me to
another entertainment venue:
National Memorial African Bookstore
or, as everybody called it, Michaux’s,
its exterior busy with posters
and signs like:
“Knowledge is power
and you need it every hour.”
I followed Daddy through the door and,
like Alice, slid down a magical rabbit hole.
Eyes too wide for words,
I gazed at the walls and walls of books
sandwiched together:
The Souls of Black Folk, Black Boy,
Maud Martha, And Then We Heard the Thunder,
books signed by Eartha Kitt, LeRoi Jones,
and Langston Hughes, a local.
Surely, the neighborhood library
was jealous!
From the corner of my eye,
I spied a staircase leading—where?
“What’s there?”
I asked Mr. Michaux, pointing.
“Go on down and see,” he coaxed.
Daddy nodded, letting me know
it was okay to explore.
I trod carefully, step by step,
down into a dimly lit cavern
of floor-to-ceiling metal cases
bulging with even more books.
I roamed the narrow aisles,
gingerly tracing the
delicately bound spines
as if each was
a book-shaped diamond,
the name of each author a ruby:
Zora Neale Hurston, John O. Killens,
Rosa Guy, Gwendolyn Brooks,
Henry Dumas, Chinua Achebe—
hundreds and thousands
of beautiful books by and about
people who look like me,
stories from the African Diaspora
my father spoke of passionately.
For more than an hour,
I devoured a page here, two pages there,
easily squeezing between bookcases
crammed so tightly,
no claustrophobic
could survive the adventure.
As for me, I knew I’d found
a place to call home
for the foreseeable future.
When I finally let Daddy drag me away,
I left Michaux’s with a single thought:
My books will be here, someday.
Notebook
I spent the weekend with Daddy. We didn’t go out anywhere, since it was raining, but I didn’t care, except for the food part. I just ended up making us eggs and toast until I got sick of it. For dinner, I talked him into ordering pizza. Might as well give up thinking he’s ever going to learn to cook.
MY BLACK ME
My father fed me
Invisible Man,
Native Son,
No Longer at Ease,
Black Man’s Burden,
and the more I read,
the madder I got,
and I already
had reason
to scream,
but my father
kept me dreaming
of what words
I might bring
to the world.
ROOMMATES
I don’t try sharing
my life with Mom anymore.
We’re just roommates, now.
Notebook
I got to hear Daddy practicing Messiah on his violin last weekend. He’s getting ready for the holidays. Man, I wish I could ride around with him as he travels all over Jersey and DC, sitting in with the violin section of different orchestras, playing the “Hallelujah” chorus. Maybe next year I’ll ask if I can tag along.
EASTER EVE, 1966
There was a ripple in my soul that night.
A push. A pull. It’s difficult to describe. There was
a wordless something that poked and prodded,
and made sleep impossible. And then it came,
a harsh telephone ring, piercing the air, bringing
the unwanted explanation: On the Jersey Turnpike,
on the way home from visiting his Cousin Isabel,
Daddy was in a terrible crash, smashed into the median.
My father’s MG now nothing more than an accordion.
What was left of him lay in a hospital, dying.
I can’t tell you what powered my body, how I managed
to dress, fold myself into the taxi next to my mother, or
even find breath as we sped to the emergency entrance.
We learned what room he was in, raced to the place
we didn’t want to be. A doctor stopped us at the door,
told us to prepare ourselves, as if we could.
My eyes were as confused as me, not knowing where to focus.
There were countless tubes crisscrossing the hospital bed,
revealing bits of the broken body that was supposed to be
my father. He was unrecognizable beneath the endless swaths
of bandages and bruises. And the sounds! The noises!
The beeps, the mechanical whistles, and the drone of the
oxygen machine threatening to shut down between breaths,
at any moment, it seemed. That was enough to send me screaming
from the room, but I remained. Useless. Tearless. Stunned,
leaning against a wall, staring at my father until I couldn’t.
Stumbling into the hall, I found Carol there, and we clung
silently, holding each other up, and my thoughts spun
and they spun and they spun a web empty of words,
except for two: oh, Daddy!
MARKING TIME
1.
The pacing began.
Hope and I
pounded the pavement
between visits
to the death room.
2.
The weeks turned
like a mad spinning wheel,
weaving worry
into despair,
a useless thread.
Each day,
there was less of my father
to hold.
3.
Morning by morning,
he wept,
tears the only language
left to him.
4.
Five weeks in,
the truth revealed
was unrelenting
in its sadness.
The if of his survival
a stunted thing.
His beautiful brain
a wreck, a relic to be
relegated to the past.
No more symphonies,
no more sweet violin solos,
no more holiday “Hallelujah” chorus.
Lord, my sister and I prayed,
Take him fast.
The adults reprimanded us,
understanding nothing
of our love.
5.
One morning,
I found my mother
at his bedside,
caressing his cheek,
and whispering promises.
“You come through this,” she said,
“and we’ll give it another try.”
It was too late for what she wanted,
but I could see her heart breaking.
I slipped into the room and laid a hand
on her shoulder.
Why do some people
wait too long
for everything?
6.
Week six,
my father fell asleep
while I was home in bed,
a hard answer
to a hard prayer.
Was there mercy too, Lord,
in the end?
If there was,
my Daddy woke up
in heaven.
FINDING FAULT
Daddy’s death unequivocal,
I came home from the funeral
with space in my brain
for questions.
Why was he driving
so late at night?
Why didn’t he sleep over
in Jersey
at Cousin Isabel’s
and drive home
Easter morning?
We all know—knew—
his penchant for
nodding off
anytime, anywhere,
which is why he avoided
getting behind the wheel
when he was sleepy.
Why’d he do it, this time?
A phone call to Cousin Isabel
was slow to provide an answer.
She hemmed and hawed and dodged,
until I pressed her.
“He’d promised to see you
Easter morning,
and he refused
to break his promise,
said he was done
with all that.
I told him to stay here,
get some rest,
call you in the morning,
but he wouldn’t listen.”
Isabel heard my voice
clogged with tears.
She would’ve hugged me
if she could.
“It’s all my fault,”
I whispered.
“No! Don’t go there, honey,” said Isabel.
“This was your father’s decision,
no one else’s,
and it would kill him if—sorry.
I mean to say,
he wouldn’t want you
to blame yourself.”
My voice went into hiding,
so I hung up the phone.
Cousin Isabel said
all the right things.
Still, that night,
a sliver of guilt
pierced my heart.
Notebook
Mom started drinking again. I didn’t notice until after
we got back from the funeral.
Not now, Mom. Please!
“How are you doing?” Mrs. Wexler asked when I went back to school. She knew my father was my best friend. I shrugged because, really, what could I say? I wish it was my mom ’cause that would have been easier? You can’t say things like that. Not out loud.
I don’t care what
Stokely Carmichael says.
I may be black,
but I don’t feel
powerful
at all.
NEWS ROUND-UP
There’s something on the news
about an unmanned spaceship
headed for the moon,
but I can’t take it in.
Tears make everything
blurry.
Notebook
I came home yesterday, still numb from Daddy’s passing. I found a novel in my book-bag I didn’t put there. That Mrs. Wexler, always slipping me a surprise. She really keeps me going.
The novel was Another Country by James Baldwin, some author Mrs. Wexler says I should know. I turned the book over and saw the photo of the author. My mind was a little foggy. Still, I knew I’d seen him before, but where was—oh! At the Copa. The man in the elevator. A famous author, Daddy said. Wow. I get it now.
We had a good time that day, Daddy, didn’t we?
CANDLE IN THE DARK
The Prophet
warmed my pocket.
I carried that tea-stained,
dog-eared paperback
everywhere I went.
The sheer muscular light
of Khalil Gibran’s language
made me want to be him
on the inside,
made me long to
chisel away the dark,
wielding sharp,
light-bringing words
of my own.
Notebook
Mom’s wigging out again,
seeing people who aren’t there.
Lord, if this thing
turns out to be in my DNA,
I’ll scream.
Have mercy, Jesus.
I don’t have the energy
to go through life
like a loon.
WORDS TO LIVE BY
“No matter what’s going on
with your mother,”
Mrs. Wexler told me,
“focus on your studies,
on your future.
That’s your job.
Your father
would say the same,
wouldn’t he?”
I nodded, then she
writing another
essay.
Notebook
I missed my last homework assignment.
Some book I was supposed to read for a report.
Mrs. Wexler called me into her office. I didn’t even bother
to try to hide my pain.
“This too shall pass,”
my teacher tells me.
I’d suck my teeth
and turn away,
but I don’t because
Mrs. Wexler told me
she’s a Holocaust survivor,
and I read
The Diary of Anne Frank.
Somebody comes back
from that,
you have to believe
anything is possible.
MIXED GRIEF
The pain of losing my father
could not be quantified or even hinted at,
though the realization that he was free of pain
brought a flicker of pleasure that
no measure of grief could destroy.
But I missed the lyric strains of
that violin he played so well.
It hurt to imagine a universe
devoid of his ministering melodies.
Mom never understood:
she needed their healing
more than most. But
she hadn’t earned my sympathy.
My thoughts were on me
missing a father forever gone, off
creating cantatas in heaven,
and praising God
in pizzicato.
Notebook
Daddy wasn’t much of a dancer. He was better than somebody with two left feet, but barely. Something I read in The Prophet tonight made me think of that. It was a chapter on death, and it said, “And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
Daddy, are you dancing now?
ICE QUEEN IN SUMMER
Dressing for the day,
I found the pristine pair
of milk-white ice skates
Daddy lavished on me
last Christmas.
I retrieved them
from the closet floor,
ignored the sharpness
of the blades,
and grabbed, them, clinging,
bringing them to my bed,
where I sat, caressing the last gift
my father would ever
have the chance
to give me.
The Mystery of Memory #4
Where do memories hide?
They sneak into
Hard-to-reach crevices,
and nestle quietly until
some random thought
or question
burrows in,
hooks one by the tail,
and pulls.
Finally, out into the light
it comes,
sheepishly.
Who would imagine what
the mere sight
of ice skates
might open?
Watching ice dancers
compete on TV,
I flash to the skates
my father had gifted me.
But why?
Why’d he buy them at all?
So odd.
I had never skated.
Or had I?
A call to an old friend
woke visions of me
clinging to the rails
at Wollman’s Rink
in Central Park,
tentatively pushing off onto the ice,
holding Debra’s hands
for dear life
while she
spun me dizzy,
reminding me
of her Olympic dreams;
the exquisite joy of glide,
of spin, of jump,
feet finally fitted
in those magic