Leaving the kitchen dirty is my rebellion. Rebellion even in its smallest forms can eventually birth great change. With change comes hope. So, for now, letting the dishes rot in the sink gives me some small satisfaction.
I turn on the water rinsing my hands as steam rises, swirling and disappearing. My fingers and palm stay under the faucet. It burns, and I don’t move. My caramel tone becomes an angry red. The water beads differently on my scars than on my smooth skin. I let the heat cocoon itself around my body, willing the warmth to move from limb to limb, head to toes.
I welcome the pain and deserve it. Atonement for sins, for empty nights and flesh and sweat and flashes of light and metal and actions that cannot be taken back. My tears stream, and I don’t recognize their salty wetness until they hit my shirt. Removing my hand, I look at its temporary redness with a practiced detachment. Feeling the pain, but not acknowledging it.
Turning the knob and allowing the water to run for a few minutes, I leave my hand under the water, feeling as it gradually turns cold.
A small window two feet above the sink offers blue-and-white tones slowly emerging from the night’s shadow. I flex my fingers and they belong to me once again, doing my bidding without fight or pain. Basking in the relief, I don’t hear Him, but tremble when He speaks, “Good morning.”
I swallow my scream.
LAYLA VIOLET POTTER
Rolling my neck side to side, I try to relieve the tension in my shoulders, the ache will soon make it to my head and beat between my eyes. I squint, removing as much of the sun from my vision as I can.
Loud sputtering noises escape the engine of my rusting 1997 Chevy Malibu that I call the Black Stallion. I lightly close the door. I don’t lock it because, hey, if you want to steal a fourteen-year-old car, you have more problems than I care to count, and I’ve got enough of my own.
Ruby tried to sound like herself on the phone. She cracked jokes and changed the conversation because it suits her to not talk about painful things. It must suit me too, because I let her do it, I didn’t press her, didn’t say, “No, Ruby! We’re going to talk about what happened...now!” I didn’t say, “No, Ruby. You’re going to come with me and we’re going to find somewhere safe for you because I see the man your father is. I see Lebanon and know you need to leave.”
I didn’t do any of that. I just told her we should go to the Bruno Mars concert, like that would change her situation in any real way.
Why didn’t I say something?
Even at the end of March, the air still bites and nips like a hungry dog. The Chi Town spring sun is deceivingly bright. I sing “Every day is a day of thanksgiving” to the concrete beat of my boots.
I want to believe these words so much that I sing them a little louder hoping the measure of volume will equal my measure of conviction. Maybe God hears me better when I’m not so much in my head. And to be honest, I have a lovely alto voice.
Stopping a few feet from the entrance of the church, I scan the block. Only a few passersby make their way up and down the street. Not many people up this early on Sunday. Most are sleeping or coming home from parties I would’ve loved to attend if I didn’t have to be here by seven o’clock in the morning.
A couple of cars are parked in various points on Indiana Avenue, in Bronzeville, a whole black world within a city; a world with only our people, who arrived barely a century ago in innumerable droves during the Great Migration, living in cramped tenements with the tenuous hope of more freedom than what was doled out down south. And now there is a weird dichotomy of stilted gentrification and unpredictable violence, and yet there’s tangible opportunity if one were to look beyond hasty misconceptions and blatant prejudices.
Long arms grab me from behind and lift me up. I scream. My lungs burn and blood rushes to my ears. I kick and flail and twist.
“Damn, Lala! It was just a joke! You actin’ like you was gonna get kidnapped!”
I turn and punch my little-big brother in the arm as hard as I can. I hope it leaves a bruise.
He’s laughing, bending over thoroughly amused at my near heart attack. “Come on, Lala. I was just playin’. I was just playin’.”
J.P. couldn’t say Layla when we were younger, just Lala. It stuck. Black people always seem to go by nicknames. They are as official as a birth certificate or driver’s license. It’s the funny and the abiding puzzle found in sticky sets of syllables, ancient and varied, affixing themselves to a person, a hundred-year-old, multirooted cypress tree, finding its depth and permanence in a grove of many lives.
My brother’s tall, muscled frame goes in for a hug. He wraps his massive arms around me again. I remain stiff for a few seconds, and then wrap my arms around him. I let go and then punch him in the arm again.
It’s not like I could stay mad at him for more than a few minutes.
Still clad in his post office uniform, my brother parts his lips in a half-moon-bright smile showing the small gap between his two front teeth.
“You’re not coming to church today?”
“Nah, sis. I’ve had enough church for this week, this weekend, hell my entire life! Besides, I just got off a double shift. I’m going home, get some sleep,” he says rubbing his bald head with his heavily muscled arm.
“You know our father, the good ole Reverend Potter, is gonna give you hell for not coming to church today.”
“Oh the holy and devout Reverend Potter can try, not like it’s gonna work.” He laughs.
“What are you doing here, then?” I ask, my heart finally starting to beat a normal rhythm inside of my chest.
“I’m dropping off the programs for this morning. Didn’t get a chance to do them earlier ’cause of Auntie Alice’s funeral.”
My brother raises his head and cranes his neck toward the sky. “Shitty circumstance, but it was a nice homegoing service. She’d have liked it.”
“Yeah, I guess she would’ve. The sermon and songs. It was nice. Maybe it’s what she would’ve wanted, but she never said much about what she liked or didn’t.”
“Yeah Auntie Alice was quiet, like Ruby. Is Ruby gonna be at church today?”
“No.” I look down the block again.
“Stop biting your bottom lip, Lala. It’s gonna get ashy as hell doin’ that.”
I shrug.
J.P. sighs. “She needs time. We all do after something like that, but especially her, now she’s all alone with her father. It’s gonna be rough.”
“That man is not a father.”
“I’m not tryin’ to debate with you, Layla. I’m only telling you what I’m seeing is all.”