As a young girl, I used to ride my bicycle down the road with her name on it. It was the main road around the Middletown Psychiatric Center where my mother worked and was named after the woman who spent her life working to make the lives of people with mental health issues and prisoners better.
She was one of the most promising writers to come out of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, but died alone in obscurity. Her writings today are being revisited as they delve into the idea of race and sexuality in the black community.
About a week or so before my seventh birthday, my family climbed into my grandma’s gold station wagon. We were headed out to the Fair Oaks Drive-In to see this new movie everyone was talking about. It had opened on May 25, 1977, but this was the first time my mom could take us all.
A squirrel steals a black walnut off Gram’s back porch.
I placed the half-full bucket of black walnuts on the ground and took a deep breath. For Gram, it’s not so hard to carry, but I’m still little and half-full is more than enough for me. I turned around and looked back toward her back yard, full of trees, scanning the surface to see if I had missed any black walnuts.
I got to thinking the other day and I concluded I have done a lot of stupid things in my life so far. I’m willing to try anything once. I do things without thinking of the consequences because it seems like a good idea at the time. I’m also dumb.
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