For Nunu The nightmare began on a Sunday morning. I walked sleepily down to my kitchen; stopping only for a moment to watch God’s light dance on the lemon-scented floorboards. It was summer-time so I had grown used to the Sun waking before me. My wide eyed brother raced toward me and said simply, “Mom has something to tell you.” “Now what,” I groaned as a million thoughts of messy rooms and sliding grades scurried across my mind. I sighed deeply before trudging into the dining room where I first spotted my mother. I started to explain that whatever happened was the fault of somebody, anybody else until I recognized the cherry-red veins on her eyes that invariably arrived after she had wept. See, in my family tears are reserved only for funerals and weddings and I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be the latter. I braced myself for the news. “Baby, I’ve got something to tell you. Your cousin, Marquis, was murdered last night.”
“How,” I uttered almost inaudibly. She paused for a moment before replying “A police officer shot and killed him. Nunu’s gone.” She continued talking for a while in an attempt to answer questions unasked, but none of the details mattered much to me after that. I wiped a single salty tear from the corner of my mouth before gritting my teeth in a futile effort to gain my composure. With every blink a new tear fell and before I could retreat back to my room, I began to sob ungovernably in front of both my mother and brother. The tears went from a manageable, but steady stream to a cascade in a matter of moments. I held my breath for what seemed like hours and eventually the tears subsided, but not soon enough. My whole body was warm with embarrassment and I felt sweat forming in the palms of my hands. The sudden onset of emotions surprised even me. After all, I knew Death. Death had entered my world and left it in a disarray once before, but this time was different. This time I was grieving not for myself, but for Nunu’s family-- my family. I excused myself from the room and lumbered back up the stairs to the solace of my bedroom. As I positioned myself back into my warm and wrinkled bedsheets I thought of the last time Marquis, Nunu for short, and I had spoken.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Baby, I’m driving. Talk to Nunu. Here Nunu this is Baby, Mika’s daughter,” my aunt said promptly handing the phone to her son. “Umm.. hi. This is Devonn.” I spoke first, unsure of the direction in which the conversation would go. He was my older cousin and my aunt’s son, but that’s all I knew about him. “Hey, Baby, you sound so grown. How old are you now?” he responded, voice dripping with sticky sweet southern hospitality. “Fourteen.” “You so proper. Mama, ain’t she proper?” I could hear my aunt’s jovial laugh pierce the atmosphere. “Let me talk to her,” my aunt answered gaily. “Alright, Ma. I’ll talk to you later, Baby.” “Alrighty, talk to you soon.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I fell into a short-lived slumber soon after my daydream, enervated by the tragedy, but content with the memory.
off to paradise Three days after I got the news of Nunu’s tragic demise, myself along with seven members of my Saint Louis based family crammed into a van that my uncle rented just hours before and began the seventeen hour trek to Florida. The ride began well. My great-uncle and grandmother told stories of Coahoma, Mississippi, the town laced with racism that raised my family. They told and retold the story of my great-great grandmother, Delia Averyhart, a black woman born years after slavery who grew up to be the wealthiest woman in small-town Coahoma after opening a brothel on the right side of the tracks. My grandmothers face glowed with pride as she spoke about the time when she was just a blink over adolescence and fully realized the power and the pride that came with being an Averyhart. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “They did things different in the South back then, Baby,” my grandmother started. I had heard this tale numerous times, but I listened intently out of respect for Granny; she loved to tell this story. “Me and my brother Mike, my brother Earl and my sister Jackie would always visit my grandma Delia every summer down in Coahoma. This one time we went down across the tracks to the corner store. We grabbed our little nickel icecream cones and went up to the counter. When we got up to the counter I noticed a white man glaring at us, but I didn’t think much of it. Later I realized that down in the South little Negro kids didn’t step in front of white men, but we were from Saint Louis, we didn’t know nothin’ about that. Ain’t that right, Mike?” My Uncle Mike answered “Yeah, Paula.” from the front seat, obviously too wrapped up in his own thoughts to be paying any mind to my grandmother’s visit back into her childhood. “Mhhmm... the store clerk saw the way the man was looking at us and said, “This here is Delia’s grandkids.” The man didn’t look at us crazy after that.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hours later, after my loved ones had fallen into their slumbers and I was accompanied only by the soft light of the moon and the whistling of the overstuffed van I thought of the story my grandmother had told me. In my experience many Southern Blacks over the age of fifty either feel racism is an issue of the past or that it burns just as fiercely as it did in the time of Martin, Medgar and Malcolm. In my grandmother’s experience being brown and female were two obstacles that she had learned to just get over and I admired her for that unapologetic obstinacy. I do believe wholeheartedly that a change has come, but just how much? I had no definite answer to that question, but three things I knew for sure: I knew I was a girl with skin like burnt coffee beans and a heart laced with bitterness to match; I knew that the Georgia trees my uncle was speeding past were ones unlike those of which my people had hung from less than a century ago; and I knew that my cousin was an unarmed black boy with a black mama and a black daddy who was shot over five times by a police officer who cared about nothing more than that.
Sleep evaded me that night.
arrival We arrived at my aunt’s house around five-thirty in morning. I stood in the background as my Aunt Jackie greeted my grandmother, brother, cousin, uncles and aunt. “Now I know Baby ain’t just gonna ignore her auntie like that is she ?” my aunt remarked sarcastically. After mustering up all the strength left in my fatigued body I walked up to my aunt and embraced her. She was right, I had been ignoring her; not because I didn’t want to see her because Lord knows I did, but because I was afraid to see her broken. For fifteen years I had noted nothing but strength out of the women in my family and the thought of seeing my beloved aunt vulnerable and hurting struck fear in every cell of my being.
the wake I rose out of the hotel bed that I shared with my grandmother before sifting through my tousled duffel bag in an attempt to find an outfit presentable enough for the wake. After trying on almost every ensemble that I’d brought, I finally decided on a navy blue dress that cut off just above the knee. “We’re only gonna be at the funeral home for an hour or so, Baby. I’m not trying to stand around in that place for too long,” my aunt’s words soothed me. Ever since my father’s funeral I’d grown a fierce disdain of being in the presence of the deceased.
Upon arriving at the funeral home we were greeted by my cousin’s friends and coworkers. They were a rough bunch, most of them adorned with skull caps, tattoos or false eyelashes, but they loved Nunu and I had a feeling that he had loved them too. I mosied into the funeral home holding both my aunt and my grandmother’s hands. I sat my grandmother down near the exit before dawdling down to the casket. The image I saw will remain wrapped up in my subconscious forever. My cousin’s once plump cheekbones and full lips were now nothing more than deflated memories of the man he once was. His hair a carefully contained mass of dreadlocks, nothing like the two ponytails that he had constantly sported before his demise. “Hey Marquis, this is Devonn. I hope you can see me seeing you right now. I love you. Watch over your mama, she needs you.” I began to touch him, but I pulled my fingers back quickly remembering a story I was told about the dead feeling cold and plastic. I wanted to remember him warm and tall and strong. The way he was supposed to be.
the funeral The morning of the funeral I walked into my aunt’s sunbathed kitchen and greeted her warmly. She was on the phone with Marquis’ friends again trying to uncover the story behind his untimely death. I sat on the Coca-Cola colored couch across from her for a few minutes straining to hear the muffled voice on the other side of the phone. She had resorted to gathering information from Nunu’s friends, the only witnesses, as opposed to contacting the police who were none too forthcoming when it came to the story of an officer involved shooting. “How are you, Devonn?” my aunt inquired moments after ending her phone conversation. “Tired, hungry, drained, exasperated, sad, worried,” I thought. I hadn’t eaten in days and my lack of rest had finally began to catch up on me. After a few moments of carefully considering my answer I simply said: “I’m fine, Aunt Jackie.” She knew I wasn’t, but she didn’t pry.
My uncle recited a solemn prayer to a room full of family and we began our journey to the church. Upon arrival I realized the impact that my cousin’s death had on so many people: friends, family and strangers. I walked into the church slowly, fingers intertwined with my grandmother’s. As the choir began crooning hymns I thought only of my aunt three rows in front of me and my grandmother at my side. The manner in which they were grieving left me agonized. My aunt clapped and sang and smiled as everyone around her sat soaking in their grief. I realized that I hadn’t seen her cry once since I’d arrived and that fact terrorized me. This was her son, and I could hear the pain that she had tried so desperately to hide in every word she spoke. Even her laughter resonated with agony. She was a shaken champagne bottle and I prayed that I would be around to help her clean up after she erupted. My grandmother, on the other hand, hadn’t stopped sobbing since she heard the news of Marquis’ passing. Her eyes, now a permanent shade of red, held overstuffed bags that she’d acquired from nights left sleepless. I helplessly sat next to her trembling body and watched her weep for her nephew. These women were my strength and seeing them incapacitated by grief left me speechless.
universal park The night after the funeral my Aunt decided that my entire family should take a moonlit excursion to Universal Orlando in order to end the trip on a lighter note. When we arrived at the park scores of my family emptied their vehicles and gathered around my aunt. Even in the midst of tragedy we all looked to her for guidance. She directed us to the center of the park to a waiting boat. The boat, almost fifty feet in length, carried us from one end of the park to the other. I sat in silence holding my baby cousin’s small, smooth hand as the boat rocked gently underneath me. Watching my family laugh and sing with such joy reassured me that happiness was always around the corner. I glanced up at my aunt’s smiling face only to realize that this moment of joy would be short-lived. The next day we would all return to the comfortable monotony of Missouri leaving her, my uncle, and their remaining children knee- deep in grief. Tears pricked the corner of my eyes and I braced myself for what was sure to be yet another public crying spell. I swallowed the cry that had taken siege in my throat. “This couldn’t possibly be happening again,” I thought as a single hot tear clung to my lashes. I looked down at my curious little cousin and realized that her almond eyes saw just as much as my own and that if I couldn’t be strong for myself, I had to be strong for her. I tucked my tears back into my eyes and returned the cry to the depths of my heart. “She will be fine. I will be fine. Everything will be fine,” I murmured before joining my youngest cousins in a giggle filled rendition of “Row Your Boat.”
I got to know Florida at that park and her bubble-gum hued sunsets, cotton candy clouds and air, salty like movie theater popcorn, left me wholly satisfied.
departure I prolonged our stay as much as I could, but when my uncle said it was time to go, it was time to go.
My uncle recited yet another prayer, this time asking God to bless and keep us on the journey back home. After prayer and salutations we all packed back into the too-small van and began the trek back home. Every mile that we drove was a mile further and further away from my cousin’s already rotting corpse. Hate and sorrow held me captive and somewhere between Georgia and Tennessee I let my guard down, succumbing to the pain that I had attempted desperately to ignore. I wept in heaving moans, disregarding the obvious judgment and confusion of my family. After the last tear escaped my eyelids I vowed that that would be the last time I cried over Marquis and the events surrounding his death. I still worry often, but my tears remain dutifully stagnant behind my eyelids. I subsequently fell asleep, but not before harkening back to the last conversation I had with Marquis. “I’ll talk to you later, Baby,” I heard him say in my ear. “Yes, Marquis. You sure will,” I whispered before closing my eyes and resting reassuredly for the first time in since his death.