Mother To Son: Divinity Within

 Copyright 2012 K.Omodele

This fog-filled Sunday morning, just one hour after the cock did crow, a mother snatches some dung-smeared eggs right from under a fowl and runs some stand pipe water over them. She storms through a back door clutching three warm eggs, tracking mud on the hand-polished, hardwood floor with her Bata slippers.

She sits the eggs inna old enamel bowl and turns to her son and squares off, hand akimbo. Brows dig furrows while her eyes fling daggers at her eleven-year old boy. 
He lowers his eyes.
She wrinkles her mouth around a word but then press her lips taut as a goat-skin drum.

"Un-GOD-ly? So they say." 

She jabs a finger in his chest with every thumping syllable.  

"I more spiritual than whole heap ah hypocrite wha' you see go to church every week, whether 'pon Sat'day or two time 'pon Sunday. Ah sure I more righteous than thiefin' Parson Brown with them t'ree pickney and t'ree different babymother outta di same damn congregation."

Her son's back is pressed against the rough, board wall.

"Mek ah tell yuh dis, mih Son! See here, going to church don't mek nobody Godly or righteous. Nuff ah them in church 'pon Sunday, dirty and bad mind. I don't have to go to nobody church to pray; live and treat people good. Yuh have One single Almighty but plenty ways fi express yuh love for Him. Every church want say their way is the one an' only way. That is wha' yuh call religion an' doctrine. I don't deal with religion; I deal with culture. Seven culture have seven different ways of expressin' love for The Mos' High. But, Son,  when yuh want talk to God, if yuh really want talk to HIM and feel HIM, don't bother look around out deh  for HIM."  

She  grips his sagging shoulder firm with one hand, but caresses his chest gently with the next. 

"Yuh muss find Jah within yuh heart, mih Son. A church will only give you belief an' faith.The pastor or di priest can tell you bout rituals and rites. How after the cow jump over di moon, she drop dead and mek horse fat. But yuh want find spirituality? Know yourself and yuh will find divinity within."
The boy pick up his chin off his chest, hoists it up high.

Copyright 2012 K.Omodele

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Mother To Son: Go Read a Book!

Drawing property rights to The Abeng.../ YardCore Int'l, Publishing

Copyright 2010 K. Omodele

One sun-parched, Third World July noon, a mother scurries around a metal-creaking kerosene stove, simmering curry chicken and white rice in enamel pots when she notices her eleven-year old son fingering a string, making diamonds.
Mother to Son:
“Boy, yuh bored, nuh?”
He snorts but doesn’t look up.
“If yuh bored, go and read a book! You can travel round the world in a book.”
The boy throws away the string. “OK, Mummie.”

Years later in Foreign, one January evening with the mercury sinking two degrees below zero, she’s stirring up marrow-heating soup with provisions and dumplings. He’s in his mid-teens and she refuses to buy more than one T.V., which she locks and keys in her bedroom.
“You won’t be like the typical American pickney*, nursing on no boob tube. This thing dims out yuh wits. It too visual. It show and tell you what to think, so yuh don’t even use your imagination to picture what nice piece a chicken would look like, smell like. I want yuh wonder and envision what a Andorran sunset look like, why blood deh in George Jackson eye, what Gambia mussy** feel like to Kunta Kinte. I don’t want yuh depend on the T.V. to show you.”
“Mummie, everybody I know in school got a T.V. in their room. We living in Foreign now. Is Foreign.”
“And wha happen to that? Well then read a foreign book, then. You not getting no T.V. in yuh room. Hear me, GO READ A BOOK!”

One morning three years later he’s taking this girl, Missy, home from Days Inn after a night that began in a dancehall with her gazing at his rope chain. He pulls his BMW up outside The Blue Nile across the street from Howard University. He doesn’t live with Mummie anymore and now three T.V.’s sit like Great Propagators around his apartment.

The girl’s eyes furrow. “What you stop here for?”

She half hides a chuckle and hurries behind him into the bookstore.

He nods at the girl behind the counter, “Morning,” and heads straight to the new releases where he snatches up Assata Shakur’s autobiography and marches back to the counter.

As he hands the book to the cashier, he feels Missy stare. He glares back.

She says, “I don’t mean no harm but I ain’t never known no nigga that bought no book.” She glances around the Blue Nile. “Shit, I ain’t never been with no nigga in no bookstore.”

He winces while paying fifteen dollars for the book. “You still ain’t.”

“Ain’t what?”

“Been with no nigga in no bookstore.” He spat. “I ain’t no nigga, dutty gyal***” He can feel Mummie grimacing.

The cashier gives him his change and a grin.

The girl catches her jaw before it hits the ground. “You look like a nigga to me!” she says, snaking her neck.

“And you sound like a dutty gyal to me. Go read a book, any book.”

He two-steps out the door, the girl at his heels.

*child
**must be

***dirty girl

Copyright 2010 K.Omodele


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