Home to Pine Bluff an excerpt

photo courtesy of Dorriss Tatum

     We slipped away from California in the middle of the night.  My mother was less than miserable in her new marriage and we would leave with her.  My brother, Toure’, one year older than myself, and I packed ourselves into the back of my mom’s old, beat down, banged up, tan Volvo as she prepared to drive us through the California desert, east through Texas, and on to Arkansas.  We made it to Arizona before she gave up and turned around.  Before we went back, we’d spent the night beneath the desert’s pure light, looking up at all those billions of stars whose brilliance shattered the night’s peace.  I remember the silence, then I remember my mother’s voice.  It was a voice much like my grandmother’s; full of stories told in detail and in the rhythm I have come to recognize as purely Black and Southern.   These voices sound like blackberries tastes:  heavy, complicated by a joy/wildness/ and time.  They can be found quite often by accident, if you stop somewhere to get a cool drink, and turn right when you were directed to go left.  They sound like warm, whitemeal corn bread and don’t need nothing to go with them.  In the desert that night, my mother told my brother and me about UFOs and shooting stars as we traced the distant lights falling, streaming and then fading across the black and dotted sky.  She didn’t know we were afraid.  My brother caught a fever the next day and we had to go back.  But I didn’t want to; I wanted to go home.  My brother did too, sick or not.  And I knew he did because I did, and we didn’t do much on our own, that is, separate from each other, from the time  my mother carried me home from Jefferson County Hospital.   

     We’d ended up at Alexander’s a year later, after my mother finally figured out she might not want to stay in California.  We, my mother, my brother Toure’, my new brother Kiye’, and I rolled into Pine Bluff in the middle of the school year, 1976.  Earth Wind and Fire was hot on the radio and things were popping at their usual on the yard of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.  We moved into an apartment that sat on the edge of Lake Pine Bluff, and across from the college.  It had two bedrooms and white vinyl floors.  Fraternity boys lived next door to us and we could hear their canes tapping the floor late into fall evenings. Besides that, the place was quiet and most importantly, within walking distance to my grandmother’s house.   After we enrolled in school, and started taking the bus home, we would sometimes take the wrong bus, and get dropped off in front of my grandmother’s to spend the afternoon with her.  She had stale lemon cookies and lime sherbert waiting for us for just those occasions.  We knew we would get it for going over there, but we decided that price not to heavy for the comfort provided by our grandmother’s kindness.  My mother didn’t want us to weigh down my grandmother, who had already raised eight children of her own, and had my cousin Keesha in the house as well.   She was babysitting my little brother, Kiye’during the day and my cousin, Tarek, would be in on the weekends. Mama told us we need not worry my grandmother and grandfather like that.  But we couldn’t stay away.  And we took plenty chastisement for disobeying her. 

     After so many nights listening to the fraternity boys tap their canes on the floor, and being outdone by the stubborn, country roaches, we moved to the backwoods of the Jean’s edition.  During the sixties my mother had protested the city to get running water into the Jean’s edition.  The neighborhood consisted of lots complimented by white, black or blue trimmed shotgun houses with screened porches.  Most houses had patches for summer gardens.  Green, sharp grass or dirt covered the lots.  Thin, drop-chested, white-haired black and brown skinned ladies sat out on their porches with fly swatters and lemonade or sun tea.  They would wait for you to speak to them as you passed.  You spoke first, “Hey Miss Bob.” 

She would respond, “Hey deaah.  Ain’t chu’ Annie ______ baby?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Tell Mama, Bob said Hey.” 

“Yes, Ma’am,” slowing my walk to stay close enough to hear her without her knowing I needed to. 

“Tell Mama she need to call me ‘bout __________, and tell huh to let it ring ‘cause sometime I be at the back uh duh house, and it take me a minute to get to dat durn phone.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You be sure and tell huh, heah?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Alright, little bit."  She paused, as if she had a corn hull stuck in her teeth and needed to locate it first with her tongue to suck it out.  Looking at me now with a studied air, “You shole is gettin’ fat.”

“Uhn, huh.”  A familiar conflagration rose inside me.  

“Good to see you walkin’, though.”

By then, I had moved on.   

“Ok, Miss. Bob, I’ll tell huh.  Bye.”  That last bit flat and tippin ‘round mad.  My toes pointed toward North Spruce Street.   

Musings on The Best it Actually Gets

We rode the last five miles of the trip at no more than 7 miles per hour. So many rocks hit the bottom of the car, we forgot that modern rides were supposed to be fairly quiet and bump free. Not only did we have the noise and jolting to adjust to, we had to fight the rising heat that steamed its way into the cab all the way from Dallas, and it had pretty much worn us completely out. For my parents, especially my dad, this was the ultimate. This is where they wanted to be: Camden. We children, my two brothers and I, preferred the comfort of the city, where we could see Bozo at 3 o'clock. Camden was the country. And really, we were not quite in Camden. Camden was in town. The farm was decidedly out of town.

We had left the main highway about 10 miles and an hour earlier. In 1977, the last portion of the road to the farm was still made of red clay and rocks. Once we got off the main highway, which had taken us first through Hope, then the small Arkansas town of Camden, we turned off onto a smaller, rougher road that was more conducive to motor vehicles than the last rocky portion on which my dad had to drive so slowly. Once off the main road, all we saw were trees: Pine, Magnolia, Sassafras, Black Tupelo, and maybe even a Dogwood here and there. They lined both sides of the road and hung over to where we could grab them as the car brushed and bumped its way along the backwoods way. Everything I saw exploded with an unbelievable green--the kind of green I missed in Southern California, where the sky is lined with flat, tea brown, hoe-hum hills. I would often stare at the green trees and try to somehow save them for later. Maybe I could summon their lushness at some perfect time, after I returned home stuck with my dry desert Southern California landscapes (It would be a very long time before I appreciated them). That slightly thick viscous Arkansas green would forever ease my disposition, especially during times of tightness and worry.

We had been to the farm many times. It was almost always summer and almost always hot. As we wound the last bend in the road that opened onto the clearing, I knew not that this would be the visit above all others; the one by which I measure all childish and adult pleasures. This visit alone and forever would shape my understanding of Joy.

It must have been 85 degrees; set aside the relative humidity, which usually hovered around 80 percent. The sun shone hot but hazy, then ducked as we approached the house which sat at the end of the slow, pink, clay road that had led us through the silent southern Arkansas wood. The house opened itself up as we cracked our teeth and circled the garden that welcomed us to the homestead.

Grandmother's flower garden reached its peak at the end of June, way before the dirt got too hard and the rain man got too shy and bashful. She never let anyone down: black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's Lace, Pale Purple Coneflower, and a little Showy Evening Primrose to top everything off. To the right of her flower garden lay her vegetable garden: perfect rows of collards, turnips, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, white corn, and watermelon! Oh heaven, wait a minute. We jumped out of the car, dusted ourselves off, and put our heads down looking at the ground faining sheepishness, holding out our hands to hug Grandmother and Granddad.

"Oh, how these chillren' 'dun growed!" They both would say. After hugs and cheek squeezes, "Y'all come on in and get something to eat. Know y'all tied. The chillren gone have to come back out and see what we got fo' 'em."

We went into the house after stepping through the screened porch, set up just for days like this. Folks could gather in the day, away from the flies and mosquitoes. They could just sit and talk 'bout Ms. Lena (now 98 years old, and still sewing, then selling quilts) , or the latest situation with the well water or the phone line shared by every family within 15 miles. We'd carry our bags to one of the bedrooms, the smell of sweetbutter and mothballs hanging in the air. There were three bedrooms, but no one but Grandmother and Granddad slept in any of the beds regularly. Sleep was monumental for us on the farm because we knew we had to go in early and wake up early. First, however, we would get to collapse into the cool, white sheets and down pillows and mattresses. We tucked our bags away amid the dark walnut appointments.

"Y'all Chillren go on out in the side yard," Grandmother said. And we took her command out into the yard next to the chicken coup. Next to the chicken coup, we saw a row of 5 tall, raw wooden crates, enclosed by chicken wire. Each box had a little wooden door with a knob. "Go 'head,'' She said from the back door. We, my two brothers and myself, with much negotiation, opened one box, stuck in our hands, and pulled out a gargantuan, black, floppy eared rabbit! Oh what delight! Not only was there one in that box, but every box had a floppy eared rabbit! There were more of them than there were of us. We took out three and plopped them onto the patch of grass that encircled the rabbit pens. Grandmother told us we could play with the rabbits all day if we wanted. We could even go get a little rope to walk one around. That we did.

We walked the rabbits around the entire farm, I with the big black floppy eared rabbit. Both my brothers had two white floppy eared rabbits. We walked until we ended up in the grove lined with rows of plum trees. Succulent, fat, and purple plums fell right into our hands as we played into the approaching cool of evening. On that day those rabbits played every role possible for a human to take on in scenario after scenario predominantly inspired by 70s TV.

Once the sun went down, we set a bath in the tub in the yard and filled it with water from the well. That was the best bath I ever took. And I think the most fun I ever had in one day.

We collapsed to sleep that night, not knowing that Granddad would soon not be able to see at all and that grandmother would be alone on the farm for too many years before she passed. But what gladness I took from that visit. In my life I have known ecstasy but a bit, but this one unequalled day, I know as It.