“The Help” for the Newly Niggerized

Posted on by sonsyrea

After seeing the movie “The Help” on opening day, I couldn’t help think about a story I stumbled upon recently, another story that has not been told. I met a homeless white woman who lives out of her Volkswagon. She asked me to write her story and immediately I obliged. Then we got stuck on the word “nigger”. 

I met her one morning when I was out on my power walk. She asked me to help her into K-Mart so she could use the bathroom. I did not realize initially that she was homeless. I saw only an elderly, kindly, caucasian woman who needed help. I returned her kindness and she mentioned that she has lots of stories to tell and would like to write a book. I told her that I am a writer and possibly could help her get her stories together. Since I had time, we bought a notepad and pen there on the spot and I began taking notes. 

I was finding her story fascinating, insightful, at times witty, some parts wise, parts tragic. I ended up spending more time with her than I had planned. Traces of her story – her family history, current insights and observations – uncannily were similar to my own. Her story also seemed to me somewhat a cautionary tale. 

I was with her, feverishly writing as she spoke, excited about encouraging her to tell her story – until she mentioned the “N” word. Obama’s not a nigger, she said. He’s not even an American, because he’s from Kenya. She wants to move out of this country because “The Russians” have taken over. She went on and on until I interrupted.

“What is a nigger?” I asked. 

“You know,” she said, laughing. “My friends and I used to refer to you all as niggers. It’s a friendly term.” 

“It’s an offensive term. A very, very offensive term,” I assured her. 

Of course, I left her at the broken down car she sleeps in and returned to my comfortable home. I later thought about Dr. Cornel West’ statements about how middle-mainstream America is being “niggerized”, marginalized, ostracized. I’ll pray for the homeless white woman – and, yes, I’ll go back and help her tell her story. I know a compelling story when I stumble upon it. 

In one of the wealthiest counties in one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in the world, a white woman has been “niggerized.” 

What’s a nigger? The American Heritage College dictionary defines it as, “a disparaging term for a member of any socially, economically, or politically deprived group of people.”

What should we title this story?

The Grass is Greener – When You Water It

Posted on by sonsyrea

This morning I woke up, as usual, about 5:30 to meditate and pray before tuning into Steve Harvey’s 6 o’clock call to God. That’s not what Steve calls it, but I call it that because I consider it similar to the early morning worship I learned growing up as a Muslim. (But that’s another story for another day.)

Steve’s call to God-morning testimony-moment-of-inspiration, whatever we want to call it, was about God’s gifts to us this morning. He used the famous quote, “God’s gift to you is your potential, your talents. Your gifts back to God is what you become, what you make of your talents and potential.” Or something like that. He told of individuals who turned their talents for cooking, baking, singing into businesses and successful careers. He didn’t reference a Biblical scripture to support this as he sometimes does, but the real-life anecdotes from people he knows, rang true enough for me. This got me to thinking about my own talents and potential. I love to write. It prospers me psychologically even before it adds up to dollars that makes sense. I like to spend my first hour of the day writing and more often than not I do.

But this morning, something that Steve said reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with my 91-year-old grandparents. We were in their backyard, where they had proudly showed me the tomatoes, okra, bell peppers, and chives they are growing. I marveled at the mere fact that even as their health has declined and age as slowed them considerably, they are still producing. They still grow vegetables they freeze and can to have through the winter months. But their level of productivity was not what amazed me the most.

Grandma had sat on the steps for a rest as Granddad was digging up a cluster of chives to send home with me. I told them that I am growing a pot of basil my next door neighbor gave me, and a pot of mint. I have not planted a whole garden, but someday I may. We talked about the mint that used to grow wild in their garden. They told me how many, many years ago, when my granddad worked for Marriott, managing its contract for food services at a hospital, for extra cash, they sold the company mint from their back yard. This story of their enterprising and collective effort was only another small gift from this moment spent with them.

They offered me mustard greens and offered to pick them because they figured they could pick them faster since they’re old pros at it.

“I just can’t stand to see you struggling, picking one at a time,” Grandma said, bending over, pulling up handfuls.

“They don’t look ready to me,” I told her. “Looks like they need to grow some more. They’re so small.”

“They’re tender when they’re young like that,” she said. “I like mine tender.”

“But I don’t want to take your greens you put all the work into growing,” I said.

“We got greens going to bed!” Granddad said. “That little bit you got there ain’t enough to feed me. Go on and fill that bag up. We got plenty greens. Here, let me help you.”

Granddad’s hip is bad, so rather than bend, he had to kneel to pick greens.

“We gave away our first crop,” Grandma told me. “The Bible says give your…what is that they call it?”

“Your first fruits. Give your first fruits to God,” I said, surprised that this information had been inside. I had not thought about it. Couldn’t remember where I had read it or heard it. Some church somewhere, or one of the may self-help books I’ve read, probably.

“Yeah. That’s it. Give your first fruits to God and you’ll never want for anything,” Grandma added.

Before I left their home with a box full of books, dated as far back as 1914, a bag of fresh greens, and a pot of chives to grow my own seasonings for the future, I also felt blessed by stories they shared, stories I had not heard in our 45 years together.

I had not known, for instance, that Granddad had helped take care of his parents and carried some of the lessons he learned from theme the rest of his life. He didn’t put it that way. He simply mentioned, by way of explanation, that even when he was missing in action, according to my Grandma, he was not missing at all.

“Granddad is it true that you were gone for three years during World War II and Grandma didn’t know if you were coming home or not?” I asked yesterday, determined to clear up a few issues while there is still time.

“I didn’t know if I was coming home!” he said passionately. “We were at war!”

He told me about taking the ship to Italy and losing friends. They were not sure what might happen the next day.

“You couldn’t call or write?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what though. I sent my checks home,” he said. “I had half of it going to my momma and the other half going to your grandma.”

“So Grandma, you knew he was alive because the money was coming,” I said, begging the question of why she had told me only half the story, but also feeling relieved as I realized this inclination I have to tell only my half of the story is maybe a trait I inherited. She looked chagrinned and Granddad finished telling his side.

“My momma saved all the money I sent to her. Your Grandma here didn’t have a nickel of it when I got back.”

Grandma shrugged and I smiled imagining the conversation they must have had when Granddad returned. I knew that she had felt like she had been left in the big city, at 21, to fend for herself after she moved her with her new husband then he was called to war. I never knew that Granddad had not considered her totally alone and helpless. They took a train together back to his home to visit his parents and he told his mother to use the money she had saved for him to build a bathroom onto the house.

“I told them I didn’t want to have to go to no outhouse the next time I came. So take the money I sent and get a bathroom built.” They did.

They told me about when they bought the house we were standing in, how they looked at house all over the city, but Grandma wanted this one. So they bought it. Granddad had told me years ago how he had not known how they could afford this house, but everyday when he rode by it on a bus going to work he prayed and knew in his heart this would be his house. Yesterday he told me that it turned out that the man selling the house was a fellow member of the masons and allowed them to move in before they went to settlement.

They told me about using the attic in their house to cure hogs. They would drive home to Georgia to visit and return with two whole hogs. In their basement, they soaked the hogs in salt water.

“How long did they have to soak?” I asked.

“I don’t remember now. A certain amount of time, you had to soak ‘em,” Granddad said.

“Then you hung them in the attic. I never knew how you could keep them from stinking. I mean it’s dead meat – not refrigerated,” I said, recalling bits and pieces of the story I’d heard over the years.

“That’s why you soak them in the salt. The salt preserves ‘em. Then we hung them up there in the attic. And my father, he had showed me how to make sausage and everything. My children never wanted for nothing!” he said proudly. “Well, I don’t know about after they got grown cause they joined the moozlems and stopped eating pork.”

We laughed.

“They still got the lesson though,” I assured him. “My mother taught me how to buy in bulk and stay stocked with staples. Always a bag of rice, some beans…”

He smiled at his memories.

“I always keep a stock of things. You would never see me going back and forth to the grocery store every week. I got a store in my basement,” he said.

I had noticed three gallon jugs of laundry detergent in the basement. I did not mention that I like going to the grocery store practically everyday because I had wasted too much food buying fresh produce in bulk, not having the time to cook and freeze like they do. Since I could remember, they had always kept two freezers full of food in their basement, too. One freezer was full of meats and fish, the other was full of vegetables they grew, apples and peaches they picked. When I lived with them through a job transition once I had helped scale and gut a cooler full of fresh fish they had caught. We formed an assembly line, the three of us, at the double-sink Granddad had installed himself years ago.

“We have always had a freezer full of meat,” Granddad told me. “When they first sold us the freezer, that was the way they sold it to you. You bought the freezer, and for a certain amount each month, they bought you the meats.”

“Haven’t you ever lost it, had it go bad in a power outage?” I asked, because I had not remembered ever hearing him complain about something like that.

He shook his head.

“I have always trusted in God. And I never went through that. Never had the power stay out so long the meat went bad. I trust in God.”

I nodded, smiling.

I noticed what looked like a pan of cornbread covered in foil on the counter and asked for a bite to eat – having already declined their offer to cook something for lunch. I just wanted a small taste of something and remembered Grandma’s cornbread was actually better than the boxed Jiffy mix she started with. She added her own enhancements on the box mix. 

“I made biscuits. You’re welcomed to them,” she said. 

“Take them all,” Granddad said. “Take them home.” 

I only wanted one to take the edge off my hunger. I had left over beef and veggies waiting for me at home. I spotted a jar of Grandma’s homemade jelly and ended up eating three biscuits because they tasted better than they looked and the jelly was heavenly even though it had not jelled. Grandma apologized for the lack of firmness in her jelly. Granddad proudly explained that it had been made from apples they picked from the tree at their vacation camp site a short drive from where they live. He suggested I take a jar of jelly home with me, too. 

We covered a lot of ground in my short visit. Grandma disclosed a couple secrets she probably was supposed to take back to heaven with her. Granddad denied it all. One of her complaints I tried to mitigate, but couldn’t. Granddad assured me that he is taking good care of them as he always had. 

“And when we die, ya’ll don’t have to come up with a nickel to bury us,” he said. He’s got that all taken care of, too. He told me of when and how he decided to pay for it all.

“When I die, all you got to do is call the Latneys and say, ‘he’s dead,’. They’ll come and pick me up, and everything is taken care of, paid in full. You don’t have to worry about nothing,” he said. 

Grandma had begun preparing me for their inevitable departure a few years ago when we wrote the obituary she wants used. She told me the particulars about what she wants to wear. Last year when she was not sure she would survive major surgery, and she lay restless, strapped in bed in an intensive care unit, she called out to me as I was leaving. 

“My obituary’s in the punch bowl!” she had said, telling me that if she didn’t make it out the next morning, the story of her life we had worked on was in with all her other important papers stashed in a glass, crystal-looking punch bowl. 

“Ya’ll are miracles in my mind,” I told them yesterday. 

“Bless you,” Granddad said. 

I had told Grandma a couple weeks ago that the mere fact that she’s still alive after professing her surrender before going into surgery last year amazes me. She had told me, “I’ve lived a good life…I’m ready…whenever God sees fit to take me I’m ready…I’m tired…” I did not expect her to live past Christmas. But by spring, she was planting seeds for another harvest. 

Yesterday as Granddad pulled greens for my dinner, I offered to mow their lawn. No, he said, my uncle is planning to teach my 12-year-old cousin, how to cut his grandparents’ grass.  I used to take pride in keeping up their lawn. Granddad had taught me how to mow the grass evenly, how to trim the hedges using his electric clippers. He had taught me to water the grass early in the morning or late in the evenings, never when the sun is high.  

Yesterday’s visit – their stories, the fruits from their garden, the laughter, the memories – was such a blessing, it came to mind this morning as I prayed and considered making my morning writings, my morning thoughts, my first fruits offering to God.

Rather than pondering my current problems, past regrets, and fears about the future, “weed” thoughts that choke the life out of my potential, I should begin my day with nourishing thoughts – and writings. Thoughts of thanks for all that I do have, praise for all the good in my past, and thoughts of hope for my future will nourish my God-given talents and potential, while lamenting all that I seem to lack will, like weeds, choke the life out.

I got out of bed this morning, thanking God that although I do not have the job I expected to have had a year or more ago, yesterday I had time, un-rushed, to spend with two people who have lived well a very long time trusting God and the many gifts He has given them. Jobs helped sustain them, but so did their relationships with their parents, their passion for gardening, their practice of tithing, their relationships with their children, their grandchildren, and their church.

Today I will water my basil and mint and the chives – and many other “fruits” I got from Grandparents yesterday, fully appreciating them as gifts God has planted in my life.

Malcolm, Marable and Me – Update

Posted on by sonsyrea

The book is just too big for me to take it all in at once. It was a novel dare. I would read Manning Marable’s controversial “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” in a week and either join the parade of reviewers and social commentators praising his thorough research, or chime in with Bro. Malcolm’s children and grandson, condemning the tome for its dusty innuendo, questioning the author’s motives. I planned to swallow the book whole. But it was too big. Besides, halfway into it I realized I had “been there and done that.” Next!

Half way into the book I was fully appreciating its exhaustive research, its discovery and disclosure of details and FBI documents I had been unaware of as a child growing up in the Nation of Islam, which Bro. Malcolm made famous, and in turn became famous for.

The book was coming up short on what I had hoped to get – a sense of the overall experience of the organization and the people in Bro. Malcom had miistered to. I had hoped it would reveal a better sense of the men, women, and children Bro. Malcolm was motivating to build what, as it turned out, would be a front-runner for the mega churches of today.

The 595-page book requires a substantial commitment of my time, mental energy, and interest. I simply did not have it to give – yet. I bought the book, full-price. Cash, thank you very much, but it would cost more than a couple of weeks of good time to read it. I love reading, but it is a slow grind for me. I have to savor a passage word-by-word, digest a chapter at a time. I’ll pick up the Malcolm-Marable “master piece” again. But right now, I am more interested in hearing from other former NOI members about their experiences in the organization in the 50s, 60s, 70, 80, 90s and now.

So far, based on just a few interviews I’ve done, no one wholly regrets their time in the Nation of Islam. The former members I have talked to, in fact, are grateful for the lessons they learned and for the motivation, self-discipline and empowerment they gained – even if they won’t send a dime to keep the organization going because of the manners of corruptions and personal distress the organization has also caused individuals and families.

However, in case you missed it, here is one former NOI brother outraged by the book – to the tune of a $50 million lawsuit filed last week: http://www.wbgo.org/newsarticle/former-nation-of-islam-minister-is-suing-writer-and-publisher-of-new-malcolm-x-biography.

Also, reading what Bro. Malcolm’s grandson had to say last week on what would have been the icon’s 86th birthday was well worth the time, and I am sooooo looking forward to the book he is writing. Check him out here if you missed this: http://newamericamedia.org/2011/05/malcolm-x-grandson-decries-marable-biography-on-86th-birthday-observation.php.

If you, or someone you know spent any time as a member of the NOI, please hit me on facebook. I would loke to speak with them.

Have a blessed day!

When You Walk through a Storm…

Posted on by sonsyrea

As I stepped out my front door this morning for a power walk around the neighborhood, I was taken aback by the rising storm. Just like that, a song I learned in junior high school came to mind and I began to sing it internally. 

When you walk through a storm

Keep your head up high

And don’t be afraid of the storm

At the end of the storm is a golden sky

And the sweet…something and something and something

 I couldn’t remember all the words, but the part I did remember brought a smile to my face.

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain

Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on

Walk on

With hope in your heart

And you’ll never walk alone

 I took in a deep breath as the main phrase filled me up.  I remembered vividly the music teacher and glee club director who taught us the song.  A smile curled my lips as I remembered Mrs. Overstreet, as heavy as Aretha Franklin before Aretha was heavy. Mrs. Overstreet was very passionate about her work and the messages she intended to impart.

 “Sing!” she demanded, pounded the piano keys.

“You will NE-VEEEEEER walk alone!”

“Louder!”

“You will NEEEEEE-VEEEEER walk alone!” We sang as loud as our voices could stretch.

The memory of the song and the woman who taught it to us quickened my pace as I race-walked through my neighborhood.  The winds whipped up dry leaves around me. Clouds darkened the sky. And the trees whistled, swayed, and danced to the rhythm set by the pending storm. I replayed the song in my mind. When you walk through a storm keep your head up high. But when I glanced down I noticed a shiny nickel and was reminded of another childhood treasure.

My uncles used to tell me, “Don’t take no wooden nickels.” I was delighted by the memory. I didn’t ask them what they meant, because I thought I knew.  A girl in my neighborhood had become the fool of the group because she had taken a wooden nickel from one of the boys in exchange for a sexual favor. We were only eight to ten years old and some of the kids our age or slightly older played a “nasty game” where a girl would let a boy hump her for a nickel. A “hump” was a boy’s bumping his pelvic area into the girl’s pelvic. For a dime he could hump her butt one time. It’s ironic that even at that age, even with strict parents, which most of us had, we found ways to test the taboo and to put a monetary value on sexual gratification and submission. Even at that age at least one of the girls, the one who took the wooden nickel and became the joke of the hood, learned to pay closer attention to what she was giving and getting. When I picked up the shiny nickel on my power walk this morning, I was reminded to pay closer attention to my gifts and exchanges.

Walk on through the wind

I turned the corner and noticed a penny on the ground. Yes, it was a shiny penny, not a dull, dirty one, ironically.  I put it in my pocket, too.  It didn’t generate any memories or inspiration. It was just a shiny penny that could close a sale at the grocery store I planned to walk to later. 

As the wind got stronger, I felt charged and wished I could breathe it in and harness for a flight, as if I could spread my wings and lift up like a bird. I breathed in deeply, thanking God for the fresh air, the charge, and the memories.

 Mrs. Overstreet died some years ago, but the lesson she taught us through a secular song was resurrected in my heart today. Our teacher loved Broadway musicals and used them to connect us to the whiter world outside our nearly all-black one.  This song she taught us for our graduation, had been written for the musical Carousel that opened on Broadway in 1945.  A song written by white men in the 1940s, taught by my school teacher in the 1970s, could still inspire me in the new millennium. Now that’s classic, I thought. Thunder clapped, then roared.  The skies opened up and the first sprinkling of what promised to be a downpour delighted me as I made my way back inside.

I looked up the lyrics on the Internet to fill in the words I had forgotten. Once in cyberspace I saw a news headline saying 250 people have been killed in storms ripping through southern states in the past couple of days; hundreds were injured. As the skies dumped torrential rains outside my windows and I hard the loud clash of thunder, I thought about natural disasters that tore up whole cities, states and rocked whole countries.

How blessed I am to walk through a storm.  To draw inspiration from a storm because it has not threatened my life and the very foundation beneath me. Even before the storm ended, I heard birds singing in the rain. Within minutes this little storm would be over, and I will step outside looking for a rainbow.  Then I’ll find a reputable charity through which to make donations to help others who have suffered life-flattening storms.

Keep your head up high.

Here are the lyrics:

When you walk through a storm

Keep your chin up high

And don’t be afraid of the dark.

At he end of the storm

Is a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark.

 

Walk on through the wind,

Walk on through the rain,

Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on

With hope in your heart

And you’ll never walk alone,

You’ll never walk alone.

Now sing! Just kidding. Here’s wishing you inspiration from the storms in your life and from your fondest memories as well. A yoga instructor once told our class she loves a storm because it seems to clean the air.  How have storms, real and figurative, inspired you? Does something you learned from a teacher – or coach – in your youth inspired as an adult?