The Waking (38 page)

“
Hallelujah!”

“
Plain.
”

“
Yes!”

“
I’m a plain man who believes in God.”

“
Yes!”

“
Proud.
”

“
Yes!”

“
I’m a proud man who believes in hard work and honest labor.”

“
Amen!”

“
Simple.
”

“
Yes!”

“
There ain’t nothin’ fancy about me, and you can ask my wife and children about that. I’m so far behind the times that I’ll never catch up even if I live to be a thousand years old. But I’m
real.
”

“
Yes!” I shout along with the others. While tears do what tears do, I open my mouth and shout.

“
When I was seven, I got real and realized that I couldn’t go through this life by myself. I knelt down in the front of my church and asked Jesus to come into my heart. That’s real.”

“
Amen!”

“
And the power, the power is real.”

“
Yes!”

“
No matter how powerless the for show world tries to make me, I just smile, get quiet, and feel the power.”

“
Amen!”

“
One day I’m gonna die, but I won’t be free
at last,
oh no. I’ll never be free at last cuz I’ve been free, really free, since I was seven years old, and all it took was the simplest of requests. I said, ‘Jesus, come into my heart.’”

“
Amen!”

“
That’s all it took.”

“
Yes!”

“
Five simple, plain, honest words. And the shackles, the chains, they’re gone.”

“
Yes!”

“
They’re at the bottom of some ocean, and I don’t … care … where.”

“
Amen!”

Reverend Lewis pats his stomach. “Makes me feel light, don’t you know.” He looks out at the storm. “God’s speakin’ to you today, I feel it.”

“
Amen!”

“
You been held down, held back for
far
too long.”

“
Yes!” the others shout.

Yes, I cry in my mind. And I’ve been doing the holding.

“
Let it go! Let it all go! Throw off the chains that bind you! Throw off those shackles that have you stuck on that ship! Let it go! Let it all go!”

While everyone jumps and shouts in a frenzy all around me, I feel the weight of my life on my shoulders. I can’t get up. I don’t have the strength. I ruined Mary, I defiled my body, I sold the poison that nearly killed me, I have such hate, such rage inside for the man who killed my mama, for the man who left my mama, for the city that won’t let me
be.
I want to stand up, but the weight is too much!

“
Let it go!” Reverend Lewis shouts. “Let it all go!”

Maxi puts his hand on me but doesn’t speak. My eyes are so full of tears I can’t see straight. “I can’t get up,” I tell him. “I can’t move.”

“
Let it go! Let it all go!” The shouts go on and on.

“
Let me help you,” Maxi says, and he pulls on my arm until I’m able to stand. “Come,” he says.

“
I can’t. I’ve been … I’ve been …”

Maxi shakes his head. “Wherever you have been, you are here now. Hold onto that. Come.”

He leads me up to the front, and I close my eyes, tears streaking down my face. I feel hands on my back, my sides, my arms, lifting me, helping me with the weight that’s so heavy on me. I feel so many hands that I start to feel light, like I’m completely in their hands, weightless.

Reach out your hand, brother,
a soft female voice whispers in my head.

I try, but I can’t move it. I open my eyes and look at my scars. There are so many. And they’re so deep, too deep.

Jes’ reach out your hand!
an older woman’s voice shouts
.

So heavy, so heavy. “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”

Let it go, let it all go,
their voices say together.

I stare down at the cross on my arm then look out into the rain.

“
Jesus, come into my heart!” I shout.

And my arm moves, my right arm moves, the cross shining out, my battered knuckles crusted red, my fingers reaching, floating through the air.

Reverend Lewis takes my hand and pulls me to him, hugging me tightly. “Welcome home, brother Emmanuel, welcome home.”

I look behind me and see everyone back on the benches and chairs. They were right behind me, weren’t they? I felt their hands, I heard their voices, I felt …

I know I felt hands helping me, voices encouraging me.

“
I felt hands,” I whisper to Reverend Lewis. “I heard their voices.”

“
You felt your ancestors’ hands, Emmanuel. You heard your ancestors’ voices. They’ve always been around you, and they’ve been waitin’ for this moment to help you. They was just waitin’ for you to ask. And so was Jesus. He’s been carryin’ you for years, and you didn’t know it.”

I turn again to the crowd, and they’re clapping and jumping and smiling, a few even crying, Maxi shouting, “Thank you! Thank you, Jesus!” to the sky.

“
You’re home now, Emmanuel,” Reverend Lewis says, his arm still around my shoulder. He picks up the microphone and sings, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

While everyone joins in, I return to Maxi, who hugs me, calls me “brother,” and urges me to sing. I don’t know the words, so I hum the tune, and the whole time I’m thinking about that sparrow, the one at the McKees Rocks Bridge the night I jumped. It was as soaked as I was, yet it could still fly. Red doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I
can
fly.

During the rest of the long service of singing, testifying, and praising, I wonder about my other family, my white family. Do I really need to find them? Do I really need to find the Cajun? A part of me needs to find him, but another part says, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.”

I have had men and women all around me for almost a month, strong, sturdy, hard-working people. They have taught me what it means to be a man, what it means to be human. I know I’m a man now. I feel clean, really clean, and I know I can raise my son to be a man, too. I have to get back home. I know I won’t be a hero when I get there, but I’ll have voices helping me and hands holding me up, all under the watchful eye of St. Benedict the Moor, the white-black man with his arms wide welcoming me back, welcoming me home.

It’s really coming down now, rivulets of water racing under our feet, but no one’s stopping his hands from clapping, or her feet from dancing, or our voices from shouting. I want to go out in that rain, to baptize myself. Can a man do that? I find myself drifting through the puddles into the rain, and I’m not alone. Several others, most of them as young as me, duck out of the tent into the rain, and it’s warm rain, soft rain.

I close my eyes. I don’t quite feel physically healed, but my heart … my heart feels something, and my eyes are wide open, and my soul …

My soul is
mighty.

I’m gonna get up mighty tomorrow and get on back home. I may take a bus as far as my money can take me, I may walk.

I may even do a little marching.

Yeah. No more free rides, no more trains, no more boats.

Free.

I open my eyes, and even though it rains hard enough to dent my hair, the sun shines through, and everywhere is a rainbow.

Everywhere.

Rainbows.

Part IV: On the Road

18: On Greyhound, Mobile to Opelika, Alabama

Maxi drops me off at the Greyhound station the next morning. “We cannot convince you to stay even one more day?”

“
I would love to stay,” I say, and I would. I’ve never felt more loved, more at home. “Maybe one day I’ll be back with my family for a visit.”

“
You will always be welcome here.” He reaches into his shirt pocket for a little card and hands it to me. “There’s someone you should meet.”

I see the name of Olivette Howard with a Homewood address in Pittsburgh. “Who’s she?”

“
The ladies tell me that she is your cousin. She grew up here and moved away many years ago. You must introduce yourself to her.”

“
I will.” I have a cousin in Pittsburgh.

Maxi reaches into the back seat and picks up a backpack. “The ladies have also prepared this for your journey.” He hands the backpack to me. “Look inside.”

I unzip the main pouch and see cookies, cake, and bread in baggies, a toothbrush and toothpaste, some soap, a hand towel, a canteen full of water, my new socks, underwear, and T-shirts, my multicolored blanket, and a stack of photographs taken at the church yesterday. I flip through the photos and see all those people again.

“
Turn them over,” Maxi says.

On the back of each photo are the names of the people in the picture.

“
So many names, hmm?”

“
I’ll never remember them all.”

“
In time you will.”

I dig some more and come up with a disposable lighter. I hold it up in front of me. “I don’t smoke,” I say.

“
They insist that you will need it. I asked them to include some bug spray, but they said you would not need it”

I don’t ask how they know, and I drop the lighter back into the bag. “Thank them for me.”

“
I will. I am sorry that I cannot wait with you. Our meeting continues again today.”

I laugh. “When will that meeting end?”

“
It ends when it ends. We have no clock here.” He grasps my arm at the elbow, and I grasp his. “We will meet again.”

“
I hope so.”

“
I know so.” He releases my arm. “And one day you will know so, too. Just listen to the wind. The wind never lies.”

The wind never lies. You hear that?

It ain’t nothing but African mumbo-jumbo.

I like it.

You would.

I stand in line to get a bus ticket, holding another backpack, ready to travel a thousand miles back to Mary. I only have seventy-two dollars, my boots still look funny, I have a funny tan because my neck, face, and hands are dark as night, and I have pockets full of poems. It’s time to make haste slowly home, and while it’s crazy to take a bus in Alabama, this time crazy makes sense because I am too emotionally exhausted to do any walking this morning. I still have no ID, but I’m no longer lost in America. I’ve been found.

The Africatown folks were in the swamps for a spell and then freed. I’ve been stuck in a swamp for nearly thirty years. Swamp time’s over. It’s dry land time. I have to reconnect with water, earth, and humanity, and I’ll have to come back here one day with my son … or even my
sons,
who knows? They’ll need a place where they can run free, grow with the land, feel the wind in their faces, taste the rain without frowning, let the sun love them brown, eat collard greens and sweet potato pie, and see the land of their truly African-American ancestors bloom again. I have to bring them here to—

“
One way or round trip?” I hear someone say.

“
Huh?”

“
You’re holding up the line.”

I focus on the man selling tickets at the counter. “Sorry. I was daydreaming. Uh, how far will fifty dollars get me?”

“
One-way or round trip?”

“
Oh, one-way.”

“
Which direction?”

I look at the map of Alabama behind him. “Northeast. I’ve got to get to Pittsburgh eventually.”

He clicks a few keys on his computer. “I can get you as far as … Opelika.”

I like the sound of that. Oh-pell-eye-kuh. Sounds African. “How far is Opelika from Atlanta?”

“
About … a hundred miles or so.”

“
Fine.” I count out the money and hand it to him, and he gives me a ticket.

“
Any baggage?”

I shrug my shoulder toward him. “Only this backpack.” And this is the only baggage I need. I look around at all the folks with their fancy luggage, many of it on wheels. They never feel the weight of their baggage. I wear my weight, feel my baggage, and grow strong by the journey.

Oh brother. Just get on the bus.

As I step onto the 11 AM bus, I glance once more to the west. Here’s to you, Daddy. One day we’ll find each other. Until then—

“
C’mon, buddy, move it or lose it,” the bus driver says.

And with that, my journey begins. Again.

Instead of watching the soggy scenery roll by and being lulled to sleep by the bus’s windshield wipers, I pull out a notepad and write a letter to my future son: