Who is the world?
How do we find a dwelling space where love isn’t secretive or illusive? If not in this world, shouldn’t our homes, where only the walls witness everything, be space enough for love's truth?
Read to the bottom for What’s Going on?
I'm in the process of writing a novel. Probably one of the most terrifying and illuminating ventures I've ever engaged with. When it first came to mind, I pushed it to the furthest corner toward that place we put all dreams, of which we are afraid. Then, I started to place pieces together in that same corner until it consumed all parts, forcing itself onto a yellow legal pad. I won't give anything away, as I genuinely have little idea how much breath these characters will push into the world through me. However, I woke one night, literally mid-dream, grabbed my pad, and began to scribble the words my protagonist and his grandmother yearned to tell.
Set in 1940s Fort Worth, Texas— the novel begins with death and heartbreak. "Love doesn't hang there like this," someone says as all behold a beautiful Black boy suffering under the brutality of lynching, his body left limp, his love dripping down. His lover, the protagonist, releases from the pit of his soul a yelp of mourning, which only the dead and those who speak with them can hear. Much of the novel is his battle with love and lovelessness, contempt and hatred, revenge, and redemption; St. Joseph must find a way to forgive, if not the men who killed his beloved, but himself for loving in secret. Perhaps— for he has yet to reveal this to me— neither is possible, but without the journey toward his calvary, St. Joseph will crumble under the weight of his mourning.
There is no way to mourn without that of your community. The bible calls for the weeping women when the town loses its beloved; at the wake, the community comes to say goodbye and hold the family; at the celebration of life, homegoing service, there is rejoicing because one has gone on to glory. St. Joseph is unmoved by the public declaration of mourning, for he feels his beloved belonged only to him. Therefore, he— not the lover's mother or siblings— alone should publicly weep, though he didn't publicly love. His internal scream is only available to the ears of those who loved someone so heavily but never declared it into the world. The unimaginable pain is imaginable to only those who looked God in the face and denied it to the world. No one, at this point, has broken through to St. Joseph. He is curled into the corner of his bedroom, across from the chair he and another lover— not he found on that Oaktree—first touched. One doesn't hear his weeping but the walls witness, calling each member of his family, all of whom live in Williams Court, toward the chief mourners dwelling.
"Enough" is hollered from St. Joseph's mother, who, in all her religiosity, can't fathom or accept her only son loving another man. Even still, though, this doesn't bother her as much as the silent screaming of her son filling her home. To her, indeed to everyone in Williams Court and on the east side of Fort Worth, weeks-long mourning for a gay, poor, negro boy caught amid white terror seemed to be too much. For months, I had no idea who in his house, or town, or heaven and hell, would understand St. Joseph's mourning. Then St. Joseph's grandmother, a formerly enslaved woman from Louisiana, woke me up with words so tender, I still cry when I think them through. Once she makes her way, at her precise timing when the walls whispered through the fullness of her son's home to St. Joseph's bedroom, all she can say is, "What is this that you do?"
Love, even the absence of it, doesn't invite this type of hate-filled mourning. They begin a dialogue that invites Mae Mary on a path of remembrance toward those days on the plantation and St. Joseph a pathway for forgiving himself, white people, and the world; all of which are responsible for his beloved hanging with all his love dripping down. For the first time since falling beneath Walter's body, St. Joseph spoke: "Mae, I loved him. I did. I just didn't do it in front of the crowds. The world told me I couldn't love him; told me I couldn't hold his hand and walk down in town's square. When I wanted to kiss him in front of the trees, not hidden between them, I got smacked hard. The world didn't know I loved him."
Mae Mary, who knew about the world telling her what she could or could not do, simply responded: "Who is the world?" Mae Mary wanted the names of people, near and far, who told St. Joseph he couldn't walk down from Buffalo Bar to Ma Smiths tailoring shop, holding his beloveds’ hand. Mae Mary, who lived in a world where her body was thought to belong to someone else, needed to know who in Williams Court told her only grandson, he couldn't love his beloved. When she was held in bondage, Mae Mary knew the names of those in the world who told her what she couldn’t do. They had many names: massa, Clark, driver, devil. "Name them to me." There was much to be filled in between that room, with St. Joseph and Mae Mary, the walls released a sigh of knowing, of holding in its core the truth: the world means very little to those of Williams Court. Puzzled, St. Joseph looked at his grandmother and stumbled to find words. Who is the world?
In this, St. Joseph is like many, caught up in the world, without naming who the world is. Yes, some of the faces have names— like St. Joseph's mother, who consistently lets it be known of her disproval— but many more do not. Instead, they linger in the darkness, afraid of making their hatred known. So how can any of us— those who mourn the lovelessness and those who die because of it— move toward a place of healing and redemption; when do we decide that love doesn't hang from trees or lay dead on the side of the road? How do we find a dwelling space where love isn’t secretive or illusive? If not in this world, shouldn’t our homes, where only the walls witness everything, be space enough for love's truth?
The scariest part of being a writer is that one can never escape the dire necessity to dwell in our past, evacuate the truth of a particular sitting, and then bring forth revelation so that those who read become unafraid of the world without a face. In this writing, I've had to sit with all the men like St. Joseph who've wanted to love me but allowed a nameless and faceless world to run them away. I sit with how hallow one's chest becomes when the world— through violence, or space, or distance and time— separates one beloved from another. I sit to think of all the St. Joseph's who yearn to love another man but are bound up in fear of something they cannot see. St. Joseph witnessed men loving men and knew there was no crime in it but allowed himself to succumb to the whispers of those incapable of seeing God's love in everything.
I have no idea, at this point, what the rest of his story will be. Does he finally name the nameless? Does he finally see the face of those who took his beloved? Does he ever go back in between the trees, where he and Walter played and laughed, touched, and caressed? Does he finally realize the entire time—as he snatched away his hand when it lightly touched Walters on Main Street— that he, himself, was the world who grabbed himself from loving? I will keep writing until I know these answers, but in the meantime, I can only look into the mirror and name myself as the one preventing me from loving, doing what I must.
Whats going on?
Now that I’m finally done with all the trappings of graduate school I finally have the time to freely write and dedicate the energy to this newsletter. More to come on the projects I’ve been working on like revamping We, too, are, America, W2AA Media, reintroducing bookclubs and writers groups. Stay Tuned!
What I’ve been reading:
Men we Reaped, Jesmyn Ward
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara
How the Word is Past, Clint Smith