Zakes Mda - Cion

It strikes me that as he negotiates the sharp bends on this road to Athens: Obed is desperately negotiating his way along the paths of a foggy past to validate his present. He cannot let go, for the past is all he has. They can’t let go; he and his mother. Two sides of the same coin. Even as these thoughts run through my mind I am well aware that I am being judgmental. But I cannot help making these observations even though I have only spent four days with this family because the past is all they ever talk about with joy and pride in their eyes. Ruth told me yesterday as we sipped her homemade root beer: “There’s one darn thing they ain’t gonna take from us…our heritage.” Generations of mothers teach their children to be proud of their origins because, and she stressed this: “We’re everybody. One day the whole world will look like us.”

Perhaps that is why when others were posing as leprechauns, politicians and superheroes, Obed resurrected a ghost from the dramatis personae of his ancestry. And this, unfortunately, landed him in the trouble we are trying to resolve today. He doesn’t seem to be worried a bit about it, though, and would rather boast about Harry Corbett than focus on the plan I have been trying to outline for him to avoid a court case that will surely land him in jail. I wish I could wipe the bravado off his face and force him to face his situation, especially because it took me a lot of patience and persuasion to get the victim of his silly actions to agree to meet us today.

Yesterday I phoned the sorority on Washington Street and talked to Beth Eddy for a long time, begging her to withdraw the charges against Obed. It was in the spirit of the day, I pleaded. He had gone to the house with the sole intention of scaring the girls rather than for any sinister motive. It was an innocent prank that went awry.

After consulting with her sorority sisters she finally agreed to meet us, provided members of the Athens County Mediation Council were invited. Even if we were to convince her to withdraw the charges she would not do so without proper mediation, she said, for there should be some form of restitution for the indignity she suffered. She agreed to contact the mediation people when I explained that I could not do so since I am a stranger in these parts. I would not know how to go about arranging such a meeting. Then I had to persuade Obed to come with me this morning. He was not quite convinced, especially because I could not explain exactly what mediation entailed. I have no experience of it. It was only after I told him the chances of Ruth finding out about his arrest were very slim if we tried to resolve the case before it reached the courts of law that he agreed to borrow his mommy’s truck under the pretext that we were going to fix my papers — whatever that meant — in Athens.

“Much as I’d like to hear more about Harry Corbett I think we should talk about what you’re going to say to the girl,” I finally tell him, seizing an opportunity availed by a pause while he stuffs more tortilla chips into his mouth.

“Don’t you worry yourself, homeboy,” he says. “I’m gonna walk. And you know why I’m gonna walk? ’Cause I ain’t done nothing.”

“We are not going there to walk, Obed. We are going there to show remorse and to ask for forgiveness.”

“I’m damned if I ask for nobody’s pardon. It’s like saying I’m guilty. You don’t know these guys, man, they gonna nail my ass!” he screams.

“We don’t want a trial because they’re surely going to nail your ass if there’s a trial. We are going to beg Beth Eddy to withdraw the case, so you better humble yourself starting now.”

He throws a glance at me and smiles cynically, shaking his head as if he pities me for my ignorance. Obviously he has no faith in my strategy. I imagine what he is thinking: what does a stranger from Africa know about the workings of justice in America, which, judging from what he was hollering to the police when they dragged him away that night of the parade of creatures, has always been unfair to his people? He brushes his jet-black hair with his fingers, adjusts the rubber band on his ponytail and then, with the same fingers, reaches for the tortilla chips in a packet next to the gear shift. He shoves them into his mouth and then goes back to fiddling with his mane.

“Harry Corbett was an old Shawnee chief,” he says. “This is Shawnee hair.”

Shawnee? The Harry Corbett that Ruth told me about yesterday was Cherokee. She was gushing about her being a Cherokee princess since she was a descendant of Cherokee blue blood in the form of the same Mr. Corbett. Her eyes were shining with pride and her ample body was gently rocking Mahlon Quigley’s swing on which we were both relaxing. Although I don’t know if I can accurately call it relaxing on her part since her hands were quite busy. She was crocheting what she called a Navajo blanket, the bulk of which was resting on her knees in its deep blue, light blue, white and cream colors.

Obed had remarked before he left for Stewart that I had done wonders for his mama because he had never seen her so relaxed. She was always working herself to death and yelling at everybody and didn’t have time for anybody. Yet there she was…sitting with me on the porch sipping root beer and occasionally forgetting about the heavy blanket to focus on giving me an education about her world and its politics.

From time to time she reached for red pieces of some delicacy from the pocket of her sweat shirt and threw them into her mouth. She closed her eyes as the pieces melted in her mouth. Her teeth were red as a result. She told me she wouldn’t share the delicacy with me because I would not like it. It was an acquired taste, I presumed. It was fired shale — she referred to it as red slate rock — that they used to eat as kids and pretended that they were bleeding because their tongues were red. She had been addicted to it from childhood. It was her only vice. It was a habit her people learned from slavery. Slaves ate mud to keep the hunger pangs away. They fired or baked it.

“It’s a tradition now of some folks. When I came from Alabama in a bus a woman and her little daughter were chewing on little pieces of baked mud.”

Down the narrow blacktop a number of men and women were all walking in the same direction. Big mothers in sweat suits and lean willowy fathers in faded jeans and colorful check shirts. Young men and women who were fast approaching the heaviness of the mothers. They walked unhurriedly, some in couples and others singly.

“This is a neighborhood of color,” said Ruth, her arms making a grand sweep in the direction of her passing neighbors. I marveled at the fact that people here all had similar features, as if they belonged to one family.

“They’re all related, that’s why,” she said. “There’s very few people who ain’t my relations.”

“And you all have strong Native American features,” I observed.

“Ain’t no pure Indians no more. Them pure Indians was all bred out. Like whites will all be bred out. That’s what scares them most. They gonna be bred out and everyone in the world will look like us.”

The people of Kilvert were going to vote at the firehouse in Stewart, she told me. Democratic Party sympathizers had organized a bus to ferry those who did not have cars to the polling station because they were scraping around for every little vote they could get for John Kerry, their presidential candidate. She herself had voted quite early in the morning, which was why she could now relax with me and enjoy a well-earned drink. It was Election Day and she was not going to desecrate it by working, except of course cooking dinner for her family. Just like Sunday. Although on Sundays she did sneak in some quilting in the afternoons when she thought God was not looking. Even as she was saying all this she continued with her crocheting. Perhaps she does not consider it work.