Mama Ble

Mama Ble.

I regularly compared Mama Ble to the raging of the seas. Never had there been a time, where I had seen Mama B in anything but blue. One day, she was a summer ocean wave blue, and the next, a tired sea. Her walk was always graceful like the calming of water before a seasonal storm. Her dresses swept the concrete like the ripples of welcoming waves. Swish, Swish, Swish. Her black church shoes skipped amongst the pavement like the shells that would dance onto beach shores. Even without the sun, her skin shimmered. She was a fresh tanned brown woman, a sea lion that basked in the sun’s open arms.

Mama B was a tiny older woman. Her age was reflected by the poise of her back and with every coming year, it seemed to weigh her down more. Her gray hairs would shriek from underneath her blue headpieces. And her eyes glistened like sand after a rainstorm. Like a hardened clam who traveled throughout the seas, her mouth remained pursed shut for as far as I could remember. I suppose it was always that way because she was just tired.

Tired of the world’s vast changes.

Mama B grew up during segregation and that’s the only detail about her that we knew for sure. I mean, we had the he-said, she-said stories but these stories were built by the intricate hands of our imaginations.

Some said she didn’t have children while others heard stories about the Klan killing her son. Some said he was lynched in front of her while others said he was dragged away and his body was never found. Some said she sacrificed her husband to try and get her son back, others said he left her because he blamed her for the early demise of their only child. No matter what piece we found, I figured there were some truths behind every story.

Like many of our grandparents, Mama B kept a close eye on the darker hue children who lived in the neighborhood. In the summer, she would sit outside every day, in her same old rocking chair facing the sun. I regularly took breaks from the neighborhood fun just to watch her. Her brown eyes would wander until finally resting on us children. For hours, she would watch us, wide-eyed, as though amazed by the thought of black children being so free.

None of us children spoke to Mama B. When our eyes would meet hers, we would silently voice our love in waves. When the children from other neighborhoods would come to play, we made sure they left Mama B alone. If our balls flew into Mama B’s yard, we waited for her nod of approval to retrieve them. To us, Mama B was our sacred neighborhood grandmother.

She rarely had visitors and when they did come, it was her church sisters.

The church sisters were widely known as voodoo women. Mama Ble was our neighborhood voodoo lady. Every hood had one but Mama Ble was different. The church sisters would sell their services to anyone willing to buy from them but not Mama Ble. Mama B never spoke of her religion or her talents, in fact, Mama Ble rarely spoke to the adults too. If and when she did, it was often a quick murmur that our ears seemed to never catch.

Every so often, the church sisters would wander to our neighborhood to visit. With each sway of their hips, they would sweep the streets with their traditional Karabela dresses. We always would hear their church shoes before we saw them. Each foot would tap a harmonious tune onto the pavement, clicking and clacking, one by one. When the summer breezes would waltz past our ears, we could hear the language of Haitian Creole dancing between the bits of their tongues. Like Mama B, their dresses were either red or blue. The neighborhood kids always joked that Mama B’s visitors were the original Bloods and Crips.

Like clockwork, the women of all ages would dance toward Mama B’s house, swaying in the wind, and smiling at us children. They never spoke to us directly -it always a smile, a light giggle, and a kind wave. We never spoke to them either, our curiosity seemed to always keep us tight-lipped. We would watch as they gathered one by one into her house. For hours, the women would be huddled inside the confines of Mama B’s. We never knew what was happening in there but because they were known to do voodoo, I figured something magical.

The rumor was, Mama B saw everything that we couldn't see. The adults believed her talent consisted of seeing those in the underworld. I never believed them one bit. Perhaps, I did when I was a child but like most children, our imagination defined us. By the time I entered my late teens, Mama B was just an old lady to me.

When she sat on her porch, rocking back and forth, I sometimes watched her from my bedroom window. These were the only times her lips weren’t still. Her lips would move forcefully like ocean tides. Whispering nothingness into the darkness. Her eyes would wander until reaching my window. Each time this happened, my feet seemed to always go still. Her eyes locking with mine, her mouth still moving, her cheekbones would hoist her lips into a grin. We would stay like this until my discomfort took over. Shutting my eyes and willingly allowing the darkness to surround me, counting to ten then opening my eyes, I would peer down at Mama B. She would still be there, chuckling over my fear. Her eyes would move from my window and she wouldn’t look back for the rest of the day.

The distinctive night from my memory always started with Mama Ble’s dancing in my house’s hallway.

I watched as she walked back and forth raising her farm-worked arms as though in praise. Her arms would point toward the ceiling, her voice would tremble when pointing toward the floor then her hands would abruptly cusp together as though she was praying. And just as quickly as she would clap her hands, she surrendered back to her dance with the wind again, drawing her air shapes while looking at me as I lay.

As a child, I could never hear her voice but that night, I could hear her loudly. And for the first time, when I met her eyes. -I could see sadness.

Mama and Papa who stood by my door watched Mama Ble dance as though she was awakening the waters and like her eyes, they peered at me with profound sadness.

Although silent, I knew mama was weeping. Using both his arms, daddy held her steady and from the moonlight that crept into my room, I could tell that he too wept. Mama’s hair, even during a time like this, was neat. Her dreads intertwined all together in a high bun. Roped in shells, hair rings,the wool of her roots seemed to hug one another. Her light skin flickered with freckles. Many of her freckles were known to dance around her high cheekbones. Yet, on that night they were still for the first time that I could remember. Her small frame stood in the hallway, despite the unrest of emotions, it still calmed into daddy’s frame. I have only seen Mama like this one time before - when her sister was killed.

Mama was a strong lady. She grew up with five other siblings in a small apartment in Newark, New Jersey. Grandma, Mama’s mother, died before she was even seven and from the stories that I've overheard, Grandaddy was a raging drunk. By the time I met grandpa, life had gotten to him. His walk had slowed, his voice had calmed due to time, and his one blue and one green eye seemed tired but content. I could tell, even in his 70s, his love for the city streets were still dear and true. See, every summer, we would drive from Massachusetts to Newark just to see grandpa. He had somehow managed to get someone to sit him outside his apartment complex. Sitting in a folding chair, he would be there from sun up to sun down like clockwork.

As old as he was, grandpa still dressed sharp and the ladies on the block loved him. His looks never faded and the women never left. Mama would always shake her head when grandpa would peel a few dollars to all the women that would stop by – god knows what they did in exchange for that. Mama was a kind soul, despite how shitty he was as a father, she made sure to visit him each summer. Mama’s story was like many black families during the 60s and 70s, she and her siblings raised themselves. Their stories of surviving their childhood were always sad ones. If they weren’t hungry, they were high. By the time they were in their late teens, early 20s, crack had hit their neighborhood. Most of them were all strung out by then. When she and her siblings would visit one another, they would sit at their kitchen tables, laughing or crying about their past. By the grace of God. somehow, 4 survived.

One of Mama’s brothers died from AIDS, the other, Mama’s sister, was killed in a hit and run accident. Although heartbroken from the deaths of her siblings, Mama kept going. She had two kids to raise.

Daddy’s story was a little similar. He was the only boy out of eight sisters and his parents were very much alive during his childhood.

“Alive but still wasn’t shit”, those were daddy’s exact words whenever he would talk about his parents - which happened on very rare occasions.

Like his other siblings, Papa was dark skin – very, very dark-skinned. His skin always reminded me of newly laid asphalt. Daddy was midnight black but had teeth as white as untouched snow. Everyone in the neighborhood would comment on how black he was. The kids would crack jokes while the adults admired his skin. Along with his dark skin and white teeth, daddy possessed other strong features. His tall frame revealed his African ancestry while his high cheekbones were the carbon copies of those that he shared Native American blood with.

Daddy’s family grew up dirt poor in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Daddy’s mother was a drunk, like mama’s daddy, and his father was an abusive rolling stone. I knew daddy was dirt poor because I saw it with my own eyes. During a family reunion, we went to daddy’s childhood house, and what we found surprised all of us children. There was only one room in the entire house and the bathroom was outside. Daddy told us how all 10 of them, including his mother and father, slept on one bed. Most of them found themselves on the floor each night. Daddy never went back home after that reunion and he never spoke about it either.

Papa fled North Carolina as soon as he could. He ended up in Massachusetts and was swept into the drug life too. Unlike mama, papa barely won.

In their early 20s, after surviving their turbulent childhoods, mama met daddy while she was working at a homeless shelter. Daddy was a resident there. Much of their love story consisted of mama building a foundation while papa was still running from his demons. Oftentimes, papa would fall into one of his dark holes and mama was right there to get him out of it. She was either chasing him into the house when he was running from his demons or out of the house when his demons took over. I always wondered why mama never left papa, I figured it was some “hood love” type of shit, I wouldn’t realize until later that their type of love was multidimensional.

Mama kept building and saving until we moved into a twelve-room house. We were finally middle-class! About the time we moved, papa decided to give up the drugs and his second home became Narcotics Anonymous. Life from there took off from there.

CLAP!

Shuddering from the loud noise of Mama Ble’s clap, I looked up to see Mama B participating in her ritual again. This time she was closer to me. I could see the sweat dripping from her forehead. Her eyes fixated on mine, her Karabela dress swaying along my carpeted bedroom floor, her lips apart as words fell out like a water fountain.

“Sleep”, she whispered. Gathering my face in her hands, she kissed my forehead, whispering, “He will meet you there.”

Who was he? Perhaps, I misunderstood her. Before I could ask her what she meant, I felt it in my chest first.

A hand pressed against my chest ever so gently. Then another hand. Followed by an embrace. I felt the hug before I could see whose arms I shared with mine. It was a comforting sensation, I was home. I belonged here. With the embrace came darkness. The first memory of my death started with Mama Ble.