12:57 AM

“You rememba this,” my Gram used to always tell me after lathering me with life lessons. But instead of remembering her words, I would always remember the moments. Her eyes, glazed by glaucoma, commanded eye contact under the hood of her deeply furrowed, salt-and-pepper brows. She held my gaze. She held my hand. She held my attention. Her mouth twisted and bunched at the lips to hold the snuff. “Remember what Grandma tole you.”

Every now and then, something my Grandma said will swim to the forefront of my mind at an appropriate time.  But more often than not, I am unable to conjure up any of the life lessons I worked so hard to pull out of her. Gram was very private and, as a kid, I used to prod her for answers at every chance I got. Unaware of our difference in perspective, I would always want her to say more on every subject. Where is your husband? Why didn’t you go to high school? Why can’t I say this? Why can’t I do that? Why did you have to leave the south? She always gave me simplified answers, knowing that a privileged suburban, millennial, brat could never fathom the whys of a woman who began her adult life sharecropping at the age of 13 in 1930’s Georgia.

There were, however, those rare occasions during which Gram would lay it out for me. The truth. Those were the days I would stand before my Gram, withholding my horror at the perils of life as she shook a long, slender finger at me, “You rememba this. Rememba what I tole you.”

I sit this morning, last night, and every day since last Saturday, wishing I could remember all that she told me. Because maybe somewhere between her parables and prophesies, life lessons and turbulent truths, she gave me the information that would equip me to deal with living outside the parentheses in a parenthetical nation.  That is, being less than a human in the “land of the free (white citizens)” and the “home of the brave (audacious, barbaric, murderers)” where all (white) men are created equal. Perhaps she gave me something to help me swallow the fact that lives of people with my skin color do not matter in my country because we don’t fit into the parenthetical description. It’s possible that she may have instructed me on how to keep my head up against the weight of oppression, how to spell strength with more than letters. If only I could remember!

I envision myself explaining the Ferguson crisis to my long gone Gram. I envision my Gram shrugging her shoulders, saying, “What can ya do?” I envision the onlookers overhearing Gram’s words and thinking that dementia has finally taken over. I envision people wondering how she, as a black woman, a sharecropper, from the pre-Civil Rights south, could shrug off such an issue so nonchalantly. But, me, I would smile our secret smile because I would understand our inner dialogue.  I would understand that Gram knew her pensive granddaughter well. I would understand that Gram would only pose the question that way knowing that I would literally go off and try to figure out what I could do.

Up until this morning, I felt that the answer was “nothing.” Today, I know better. Tomorrow, I will show you.