Today he cut up with scissors the sleeves on Gammy’s dress and got into the habit of breaking Coca Cola bottles, writes my single working mom in her diary.
For Gammy’s safety, Grampa takes over as my day sitter and, most memorably, takes me with him to the Black Fifth Ward—to fix a stinking overflowing toilet; to collect rent; to give his tenants Manischewitz Kosher Wine for Christmas.
While we go there, three men from the Fifth Ward come to us every two weeks in the summer. And Grampa always asks them to arrive at 12 noon. For lunch. Which involves Gammy, who slathers mustard on white bread, piles on slices of Hebrew National Salami, rips open bags of chips, and pops the caps off bottles of the RC Cola the men prefer. Poppity-Pop-Pop!
Fed and fueled, they muscle their manual mowers. The squeaking blades attacking my ears are subdued by the euphoria I feel from the sweet scent of fresh cut grass. Grampa works with the men, his sickle whisking away the long grass around his fig and date trees as the four of them collectively move and sweat, and share the same air.
A confounding event happens, though. I am three and with Grampa at a supermarket near Rice University, where I watch a Black sacker sipping from a water fountain. Spotting me, he gives me a wink and a grin on his way back to popping open sacks. Poppity-Pop-Pop! I run to the fountain and start jumping up to reach the spigot. Lifting me smooth as an escalator toward the lever, Grampa suddenly swerves me away, and to the other fountain.
Reflecting on this later in life, I realize he had to walk a fine line in a Jim Crow Houston.
And so, the three-year-old I was becomes a 15-year-old sacking groceries at that same supermarket; becomes a 17-year-old going to Black nightclubs; a 26-year-old writing an ad that runs in Ebony Magazine; and becomes the adult I am today-marching for Laquan McDonald’s justice, for George Floyd’s justice, marching for reparations.
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