The following post is a lot more sentimental than I usually am in my writing. I can’t remember when or how I learned that sentimentality was undesirable and ineffective in writing, but I’d say ” in my MFA” would be a good guess. I’m especially sentimental when writing to and about my mother(s). I’m especially sentimental right this moment, because I’m reading Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, with all its attendant complicated feelings about motherhood, (literary) lineage and what we do with our Black women geniuses when they are no longer living (and in life). I’m also surprised to say I’m more homesick than I’ve been in the seven years since I first left, and it probably has something to do with the recent visit of my mum and aunt for my graduation.
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Erzulie’s Last and Firstborn
“Everything bore the weight of everything else.”
-from Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Before we began to sink, we were a house full of women, in a town surrounded by yellow sand like sawdust. In that house, we gave birth to each other’s children– niece’s hands at the end of daughter’s arms; aunty’s eyes inside great-grandmother’s well-worn face; the gravel in mother’s voice coming out of sister’s mouth.
Before we began to sink, we were slim-footed and polishing the speckled floor tiles with our pacing. We were a favorite dress checkered yellow and white, ironed stiff in anticipation of fathers we didn’t need, fathers who were always arriving but never quite making it.
Before we began to sink, we were more vast and plenty than any father’s absence; we were frustrated and clench-teethed that those gaps in his presence wrote their way into our songs at all. We were enough and all at once; we were carrying around our curses and calmness in each other’s pockets.
Before we began to sink, we were the Big, Wide, Solemn Blue and the hands holding us sturdy by the shoulders so we could not dive beyond the waving surface. We were deep laughter over fingers picking through grilled fish, their bones curved and threatening like hooks. We were heavy thighs atop too-thin legs shone over with lotion. We were free and easy joy without the threat of stifle.
Until a certain day, when that Big Wide Blue– vengeful and mourning– rolled over itself and onto the land, over our shingled roof and our crooked windows, and over our selves. We were fractured sorrow, and we were willful letting go. We were guilt.
Before we began to sink, we were a whole cosmos always beyond our own reach.
We are, still.
A note about Erzulie: She is one of the Haitian lwas that I have been fixated on since I started my research in graduate school. A lot of my characters resemble her so closely in a way that still surprises me, considering the fact that I wrote them before I ever even heard her name or read anything about her. In writing the post above, I was thinking of Lasyrenn (or La Sirène) who is one of the aspects of Erzulie, and dwells in the sea. The symbol pictured above is Erzulie’s veve, used in ceremonies as a sort of gateway to summon and welcome loas to earth. Each loa has a unique veve, usually drawn on the ground out of flour or similar materials.
zoegadegbeku.com 