Sheree L. Greer

I. Tell Them About Our Lineage

“Trouble don’t last always” is what my mama says and it’s what her mama said to her and her mama to her and her mama’s mama was thinking it while working, hunched over the green leaves and prickly bolls. Her hands are swollen and bleeding, cotton sticking to sores that won’t ever fully heal. “Trouble don’t last always,” she thinking it while she’s watching her children in the rows beyond her, head on the swivel for the sweat-stank, dead-tooth overseer, because her youngest child, the one who looks just like her—them eyes ready and roaming, that jaw set tight and sure—is bound to be broken for standing with a back too straight and speaking with a voice too clear. She whispers it softly through dry, sun-cracked lips, “Trouble don’t last always,” then she blink slow, a dream behind her eyelids, the flash of black the safest place for imagination, the darkness a hiding place for hope. She’s dreaming for a day like today, when her child’s child’s child’s child will stand in the living room of their own house with nothing to fear and no one to answer to.

II. Tell Them How to Read the Sky

Pops liked to sneak about          sliding between sycamore slats          jumping over junk piles

Pops liked to laugh and dream          riding other people’s horses          picking other people’s fruit

Watching the sun sink lower and lower

Negotiating how much travel time home

Mama liked to hide & seek          hushed and hunched in bushes          silent and squat against porch sides

Mama liked to sing and dance          slapping hands with sisterfriends          wriggling hips to rhymes

Watching the sun sink lower and lower

Negotiating how much travel time home

III. Tell Them to Be Careful

I sit with my daddy’s mama in her garden, surrounded by snap peas and tomatoes, turnip and collard greens, sweet potatoes and zucchini. My Granny smells like cinnamon and sugar and soil. She lets me play with the loose skin of her elbow, the skin is corn-huskers soft and silky between my fingertips, and she giggle and smile and tell me how silly I am while I’m thinking about the stretch and lift that skin makes possible: how she used to lift my father up with both arms and kiss his forehead and how she used to snatch him close and hold his shoulders, telling him to stay outta them white people’s yard and stay off that white man’s horse and stay from under them white people’s fruit trees.

And that’s the same kind of warning she starts to give me, leaning her head against my shoulder and saying don’t do nothin’ that will get you killed like: reaching for your wallet, selling loosies on the block, pulling up your hood when it’s raining, playing your music loud, standing on the bus stop, sitting in your room, grinding some fine thang at the club, going to Wednesday night Bible study, asking for help, telling men no, being a woman and holding your woman’s hand, being a him or a her or a they in a body/in clothes/in places that someone who ain’t you forbids/don’t like/won’t accept, moving too slow, moving too fast, minding your own business, demanding your rights, being too quiet, being too loud, crying, running, pleading for your life, crying, standing, refusing.

I tell my granny I know, I know, but before I can say it again, that I know, that I understand, my mama’s mama comes through the shadows of the garage, where the cold beers and record player are kept, and says, “You damned if you do, you damned if you don’t, so fuck it.” Granny blinks her shock then me and my grandmothers laugh so hard we double over, holding our stomachs, and showing all our teeth.

IV. Tell Them We Are More Than Doomed Headlines

“Trouble don’t last always” comes to mind as I scroll

Tap-read-swipe-to-refresh

Scroll

Tap-read-swipe-to-refresh

Scroll

No flashing sevens

Just TILT TILT TILT

V. Tell Them Their Smiles Are Their Own

Smile or Don’t

Frown when you are unhappy and even when you ain’t if you want to look mean or unfuckwitable or both

Smirk because it’s funny or because you know something they don’t even if you keep it to yourself

Make no expression at all if you want—and it don’t make you a “stuck-up bitch” like that young dude pumping gas said or that old dude cutting grass said.

Speak or Don’t

Eat when you are hungry and even when you ain’t if you got a taste for something sweet or salty or both

Laugh because it’s funny not to keep from crying because if you want to cry welcome the tears

Scream if you must—shit be scary, shit be sad, shit be too much sometimes.

VI. Tell Them to Pray

We serve our ancestors a plate of our Sunday best, cracked and faded porcelain from our mama’s mama’s mama’s dinner set, golden rims intact though and surface slightly curved and piled with prime cuts and healthy, steaming scoops, and even that corner piece with the perfect crust from bubbling, melting, browning in the ancient oven. That plate carefully set on white cloth with candle and tall, cool glass of water to freshen our house, our road, our head.

This is how we remember what they try to make us forget. This is how we ask for help:

From pew or mat, standing or sitting. In quiet or noise, alone or together. Close your eyes. Rub your palms together, let the rhythmic whisper of flesh on flesh, conjure a heat that blurs the lines between then and now.

Share the dream behind your eyelids, know the flash of black is the best place for imagination, the darkness a hiding place for hope.

VII. Tell Them We Are Each Other’s Bond

The sun blazes overhead and the sky’s blue is all electric. The grass goes neon green and the garden rumbles, turnips and potatoes pushing themselves up from the dirt, the ruffage curling and uncurling, peas popping out the pod like popcorn exploding in a pot full of oil. Al Green blasts from the garage—guitar, trumpet, “Take me to the rivuh!” The wooden slats clapping in time with the snare and tinted window trembling with bass. The back yard is crowded now, and I smell barbecue, the smoke sudden and hickory sweet, billowing from a barrel grill mysteriously manifested like an answered prayer.

#IssaCookOut and everybody is here:

Trayvon and Eric, Renisha and Rekia. Oscar and Mike. Freddie and Miriam. Tanisha and Yvette. Mama Kathryn Johnston fans herself with a Mother Emanuel Church fan and chatted with Tywanza, Sheronda, and Myra, while the rest of the nine Bible study members set up for us to eat. Mama Cynthia, Mama Susie, and Mama Ethel spread a flowered tablecloth on the wide, oak picnic table alongside the house. The house, red brick and cracked white paint, looks bigger than I remember it. Senator Pickney comes out the screen door, arms full of shucked corn for the grill. Elder Daniel and Elder DePayne take a seat next to my grandfather Ira, who passed his lighter to my great-grandfather Rufus, a click and blaze of red flame against the tip of his cherry-wood cigar. Aiyana Mo’Nay and Tamir come flying out the back door, the screen clattering against the frame. They blowing bubbles and spinning them fidget-thangs. My great-aunt Beauty pokes her head out the window and yells after them, “y’all ain’t gone be running in and out this house! You come in again, you stayin’ in!”

Laughter swells over my shoulder and I turn. On a card table to my right, an in-progress game of dominoes. My uncle Tony, looking just like the pictures my mama showed me, winks at me while arranging his dominoes. My uncle Del, no longer carrying his cane, stands over him, a hand on his shoulder. Chairman Fred Hampton scratches his beard, Southside Chicago gleaming in his eyes as he leans forward, counting dots for his next play. He grins and makes his play. “You in trouble, now,” he says. “Trouble don’t last always,” Zora says, holding four dominoes in one hand, the ivory like a row of teeth. She looks over at me and smiles like she knows a million and one secrets to joy. She slams a domino down so hard the crack of it shakes the earth from the middle and out and out and out and out and out and out and out forever.

VIII. Tell Them You Love Them Unconditionally
No matter what, you can always come home.