Sawubona, Nana Garland
Written by Kimberly Brazwell for Juneteenth, June 2020
This bloodline.
All callous handed and nappy haired.
All strong legs and bicuspid laugh.
All phoenix and insubordinately living.
Leads back to Lynchburg.
We grew wombs with babies.
In the shadows of the noose namesakes.
I am mother of future mothers.
Holding legacy eggs in my Sankofa mouth.
I stand in the gap.
Daughter of Patricia.
Daughter of Louise.
Daughter of Irene.
Daughter of Anna.
Daughter of a daughter who died name unknown.
Daughter of Jennie Garland,
whose whole identity on a census
was relegated to the phrase,
“cleanin house”.
Sawubona, Nana Jennie!
I see you but I have grave news.
Did you know your daughter,
name unknown was raped
by some miniscule mister
who made you call him master?
Massively erroneous in malicious character.
Making generations of Amarillo matriarchs
from resentful blood deemed mulatto?
Did you know this heavenly body
inherited your tidiness and a nervous system
fully engrafted with the hell you survived?
Face of freckles mapping out constellations
you maybe fell asleep gazing at
when you rested that aching back.
I carry your backaches with pride.
Maybe like yours, my tailbone deep dives,
forcing me to walk shoulders back and chest wide.
No slump, hump or shuffle, grounded; arrived.
Nana Jennie,
You would have been just about my age.
Do you remember 1865?
Do you remember
the spring they told you it was over?
Do you remember thinking
your back would stop aching?
Do you remember crimson dirt
and dead bodies who fought
to see who could make the most money
off your manual labor?
Do you remember cleaning house
while some man who wore wigs
and dentures made of enslaved men’s teeth
made his 13th amendment
to a fantasy fiction novel called the constitution?
…Said you could be a whole person
but made it a crime for you to stand up straight?
Do you remember thinking this slavery
was a child too old to still be nursing?
Nana Jennie, do you remember when
the Gemini babies were born that year?
And they told you to take the day off
…for mister …forever?
Nana Jennie, you won’t believe this,
But we saw spring come with no freedom – again.
And then we saw one too many lynchings.
And we quit cooling the earth
so the volcanos wouldn’t erupt.
And this time, instead of waiting for the soldiers
to tell us we were free to resign,
we fired ourselves up and burned the world down.
Just like you, we’re cleaning house.
We made picture movies
of our village members turning into ancestors.
We arrested the police.
We fired mister’s wife for slander.
We renamed the plantation.
We knocked down colonizer statues.
We scoffed at mister’s money.
We turned knees into movements.
Made oceans of our literacy on signs in protest.
Divested the wealth of black bodies
from wall street markets.
We spellchecked their amendments.
We painted your face on buildings.
We made a holy day of your retirement.
After all that cleaning you did,
this house is still filthy and the stains won’t come out;
so I scrub, sweep, polish and spit shine
until the back pain hushes
in the sea salt tears of your satisfaction
- when neither of us hurts to say our names.
And should the house get dirty again,
I’ll burn it once more and this time, bury the ashes.
I’ll teach my free daughters
to build a house of their own,
should the ceilings here be too low
for how tall they stand on the shoulders
of our lineage of greatness.
Sit still, put your feet up and rest infinitely, Nana Jennie.
I’ll finish cleaning up for you.
It’s June again; the sun is high and your work is done.
