Ama Ata Aidoo

Here in this truly no man’s land, all is fair as understood not in terms of Penelope’s false blondness but that which is right and healthy. Where we throw our big hairy legs and bottoms that make any Levi’s cry for air. Hairy too are the faces we acknowledge —some were born that way—or as signs of: the pills we took in, the wombs we threw out, and plain normal aging. Yet ancient graces walk elegantly tall or charmingly petite in celebration pinks and royal indigos . . . as though the earth itself was newly found, the air a discovery. We were not afraid of ideas. Not our own. Not those of others. Along those corridors and in those easy days’ assemblies, apologizing for our being was not on. We were Nobody’s wives or mistresses. No one called us “Mother”: and when some daughters present did, it was with the clearest mandate that they picked the fight where we brought it. We were only ourselves: each alone as when we were born, and shall be, when we died. But living and together, a true power thing that searches researches solving resolving . . . And as always sweetly hopeful as only women can be.

They had asked me— a worthy friend and a loving brother— to “stop shouldering the world’s troubles,” —one meaning Africa, the other women— “learn to laugh and live!” I grow hot: thinking that laughing? That’s easy: it’s all we do instead of crying. And since there’s so much to cry about we laugh and laugh and laugh. But living? You could tell them that’s not easy. In a real life in a real world perhaps. But here where on a bare belly for less than a cedi, you gathered in single pieces and carried ten bushels of solid stones your four-month-old baby straddled on your back, slipped, fell broke your arm—? Laughing we do for fear of crying. Living we don’t discuss here.

Come near, come round, My dear sisters My dear brothers. Come take a peek, and Have a glance Someone is claiming to be dead And she looks like Juliana! Here we are, straw on straw, clutching at each one in the dark, wondering if it’s true, and if it’s a fact which is the ugliest in this news. If what has been is what now is, Then darkness is here and may never leave. The pot is broken for the clan The house is shaken, its fires long dead. Hear the screaming tornado, The boastful roaring hurricane: at the workplace in the market, here by the hearth at home. Esi Boah Bediako Dwemoh Our beautiful singular Juliana It’s true we shall all die one day, Did you have to leave this soon? Dear All-consuming Mother Earth, Voracious, indiscriminate, Carnivorous cannibal, We wish this meat you would spit out, Offer us back our Juliana: Beautiful Winsome Joyous. Kind and thoughtful Mrs. Dwemoh Please listen, and listen good: If you dreamt You could skip town Sneak out of our lives And disappear, Happy you’d finished Your allotted tasks, Then Mighty Mama, think again. For us your task if not yet done. Trainer of trainers The teachers’ teacher We know why This noon in the tropics Schoolrooms are silent The children abandoned. The wisest counselor Accomplished crafter Sower of hope and joy and peace You cloaked us in love and habiliments. Good Mother Juliana Are you sure you want to leave? Come near, come round, My dear sisters My dear brothers. Come take a peek, and Have a glance Someone is claiming to be dead And she looks like Juliana!

—in memoriam Cheikh Anta Diop, and for John Henrik Clarke, Ivan van Sertima, Adotey Bing, Aida Brako, Vincent Odamtten, and by special request, Esi Doughan and Kinna Likimani. Who was it said the reason why you never see Black Folks properly e-v-e-r on film or TV is ’cause White Folks “find them threatening”? Whopei! Abae-o-o-o! We always thought our beautiful black skin was the Problem. So Afia and Ola Eye-leen, Lola, and Tapu bleached and blotched their skins ugly to please our masters and our masters’ servants. Now don’t come telling me flat noses, thick lips, and small ears must also disappear to put the world at ease? That must explain why the Princess Nefertiti and the youthful King Tut were dragged to Michael Jackson’s beauty doctor long before Young Michael was born, and also why the Sphinx who looked like Great Ancestor King Khafre is being redone! We should have known we were in trouble the day we heard a Corsican general traveled to Giza by way of Paris and a crown to shoot the Sphinx’s nose off for not-at-all-looking like his. Enfin! Helas!! Mon Dieu!!! Ebusuafo, for years the Sphinx stood massive eternal riddled with wisdom and all very thick-lipped very flat-nosed. We never saw him photographed head-on. But in the year 2020 the New Sphinx will be unveiled full visage on view straight nose raised thin lips tight and even, maybe, blue-eyed: a perfect image of the men who vested so much interest in his changing face. You see,Wekumei, when folks figure you are their slave your past belongs to them. And mind you, the Man will try to grab our future too. Shall we let him?

Where the Bead Speaks My uncle was the prophetic one, throwing his beads this way and that, diving, foretelling, warnings galore, sweet promising. One eye on the past, four to the future, half a dozen or more for now. He was good if the news was good; for evil news we blamed the beads. Made from bones or fashioned glass, cut out from stones or beaten brass It’s the many human hours, Sister, it’s the sweat and blood, Brother, which makes the bead a thing apart from precious diamonds, opals, and gold. Turn them this way, shake them that way, see how they shine incandescent, see how they glow in a million hues. Elegant and enchanting bead, flowered flawed, folded, or fielded, you are the true frame of our feasts, your festivals, fetes, and fiestas. Give me a bead that’s wrapped in joy; find me a bead to carry my grief. We sing of beads, and sing with beads; just see how well they show on us. Beads are the zeze of our joyous trails, the ziz of life when all else fails. Beads are zany, zesty, zingy, the greatest zaiku, a grief zapper. Speak to me of beads, Grandma, speak to me. Talk to me of beads, Nana, talk to me. She brightened up immediately, she looked at me with a welcome smile. Grandma pulled up a stool and sat, she listened well to me and asked: “You want a tale on beads, do you? You want a tale or two? I’ll tell a tale or two to you. But to speak to you of every bead, in words that sing and dance like them, you and I shall surely need more than my life in hours and days, more than your life in weeks and years. A million lifetimes is not much if beads are the theme, the thought, the thing. We dive for beads, we swim, we float, we mine for beads, we comb the woods. Koli beads for the infant on his wrist and on her waist, cascades of white beads for the mother, a very fitting celebrant. There are beads that are tame like what welcomed baby here; there are beads that are wild, lion’s teeth, lightning struck. And there are beads around my waist, For only my and my dot-dot’s eyes!! Have you seen my love tonight? Asked the ardent warrior youth. Light of step, curved like a bow, her eyes were wonders to behold. She was oiled and very clean, she was powdered like a queen, she wore a sarong of the purest silk, her toes were nestled in their thongs. Have you seen my love tonight? She who wore gold beads in her hair? Then the pretty maiden asked, who has seen my love tonight? Who has seen my warrior brave? he had said no more to war, he had buried his arrowhead. His girdle was free of blood and sweat. He was adorned in his very best, he was oiled like a king, with beads of silver in his hair. Who has seen my love tonight? They welcome us here in the palest white and bid us farewell in black, sometimes blue, and brown, and red, metallic green, or indigo. There are beads, by far the most, that are polished, tarred, and feathered. There are beads, worked over and under, elegant hued, thin and narrow. Beads are the zaffered, the zingiest, the zenith of all great times. Cool, calm, and forever collected, clawed, clayed, or colored, constantly changing, bead you are the best, you are the greatest. So don’t talk to me of the chevron. Don’t ever talk of it. Don’t break my ears on the chevron. Don’t break my ears!!! As barter for my life and yours, no gem on earth could fit the bill. Not gold, and if not even gold, then what on earth is chevron? I dread the chevron. It was a weapon of oppression, and not at all . . . a bead. Seven whole humans for one bead? And what kind of trade was that? A layer each of sand and mud for the lives of our kinsmen? So what if it was one and not seven? One soul for a shiny piece of bead? This sounds like the greatest greed, this sounds like utter foolishness! Don’t talk to me of the chevron, don’t even mention it. Don’t break my ears on the chevron, don’t break my ears. They say that cheap beads prattle, rattle, and tattle, but great beads never talk. Yet if a string of beads is fine, it sings, it dances, it jumps, and sizzles. If a string of beads is truly fine, it can speak in a million tongues. It will have something for all, and say the most amazing things. And every now and every then every bead laughs out aloud. There are beads that are smaller than the hopes of a mean mind. Though called bodom, as in a dog, poochy pug, puggy pooch, bodom beads, they are so big, they are the elephants of the pack. They lead the way and announce the day. The nature of beads is a mystery, the how of it, the feel, the glow of earthly gems: the least and most, our first and true try to create, to beautify our human selves. The best of doors to human hearts, our spirit’s window to the world, beads clothe our woes in vivid color. Beads like angels plead for us. Beads can lift the heaviest heart. And like tea and precious brews, beads can warm us when we are cold, and cool us when we are hot. Blessed are the beads that bring us peace. Spare us, O Lord, in this lifetime, beads of war, chaos, and strife. No beaded strings of calamities, earthquakes, floods, and famine. No veritable tsunamis of woe. Keep us cool and keep us warm. For each color in the rainbow, there is a bead, somewhere on earth: a million years old, if a day, or shy in its newsness, and done this dawn. Blue beads, green beads, yellow beads and grey, black beads, white beads, red beads and brown. Your rise from heaps of your own ash with more of you than ever were. You, bead, are an awesome one, you are the phoenix of the years. Their making uses endless hours, the how, the when, the what of it. The wearing is by a billion souls whichever way, however much, and everywhere . . . Mined and molten man-made wonder, raw organic, or cooked, and dried, forever treasured, forever prized. Bettered and bartered, broken and beaten, burnt or badgered, bruised and bloodied you are the never-left-behind, oldest, ordered, owned invention. Pure and precious, polished pearl, still safe, sacred, scraped, or scratched; Traded, treated, tough in trouble, unique, unmatched, unbreakable. Verdant velvet, virginal as rain, beads are virile, vestal, vain. Gilded and golden, there can be no palanquin. If you are not sitting with the king, you are the queen, the soul, and spirit within. Beads are deserving, beads are worthy, wash me some beads to warm my skin, a token of love, a gift for my kin. Hollowed and hallowed, jingled, jangled, juggled, you are our life’s companion, the closest friend until the end. Don’t tell me if there were no beads something else could meet our needs. Something what? Something where? Please keep it there, even if it’s rare.

Aunt. Don’t ask me how I come to address my mother thus. Long complex, complicated stories: heart-warmingly familial and sadly colonial. You know how utterly, wonderfully insensitive the young can be? Oh no. We are not here talking adults who should know better but never do. Aunt, I thank you for being alive today, alert, crisp. Since we don’t know tomorrow, see me touching wood, clutching at timbers, hugging forests: So I can enter young, age, infirmities defied. Hear my offspring chirping: “Mummy, touch plastic, it lasts longer!” O, she knows her mama well. The queen of plastics a tropical Bedouin, she must travel light. Check out the wood, feel its weight, its warmth check out the beauty of its lines, and perfumed shavings. Back to you, My Dear Mother, I can hear the hailing chorus at the drop of your name. And don’t I love to drop it here, there, and everywhere? Not missing out by time of day, not only when some chance provides, but pulled and dragged into talks private and public. Listen to the “is-your-mother-still-alive” greeting, eyes popping out, mouth agape and trembling: That here, in narrow spaces and not-much-time, who was I to live? Then she who bore me? Me da ase. Ye de ase.