Histories
Over the last few years, I’ve started pressing record whenever my grandmother enters the room. A small brown woman, toasted almond brown from an afternoon nap in the sun, perched amongst a cloud of decorative pillows poised for comfort or stability. There’s always a story in her eyes, an “I know more than I’m saying right now” look in her dark brown eyes. Her aura is stately and sublime, commanding poise, attention, and care from any whom she encounters.
This past visit home was the first time I’d seen her outside of her house in almost 3 years. Long gone were the times of our visits to the grocery store or even lunch dates for BLTs at the local diner. Time can be cruel even to those undeserving. She’s unsteady on her feet and even more of a homebody than she’s ever been, for reasons I’ll never really see clearly. I imagine her maiden namesake towering gently around her, hiding her secrets and details. We’re so much of the same.
When I finally saw her outside of her home, her presence shrunken down by grief and loss, shrouded by a cohort of close kin, who stood watch outside of her stone walls. She is a celebrity. Protected. Coveted. Beloved. Deservingly so, she is in the world’s terms a matriarchal figure; in our terms, she is the leader, the one who carries all our burdens and love. I watch her closely for how I should behave. The last time we were in this scenario, my walls tumbled with the weight. I couldn’t see her clearly enough to imitate, even though I tried. Unfiltered, it feels like I alone cracked under pressure, showing my grief to the world even though that’s not the family way. This time, I was among those who followed the code, not a single tear shed for the public’s view. The time for breakdown could only be within the walls of Grandma Daisy’s palace.
I started recording conversations for the sake of my own entertainment, at first. I would recount her story of the cow’s tail breaking off in the field before her date or try to imagine the house on Metz Road for my pleasure. I did it in secret. Replaying the stories in my head as an exercise in closeness. Now the recordings feel like a duty, to preserve the unique histories that are also so true to Black american families across this mired country and only deserve be told in the words of those who’ve experienced them.
Somehow now all of the visits to Grandma Daisy’s are about the past. I can’t walk through the door without being tickled by the web of memories that greet you at the front door. As those who’ve gathered sit, their mouths begin to spin more Virginia tales of the Stevens Clan, deepening the lure. I’m mesmerized each time by the triumphs and darknesses of these histories. Vividly, all the Stevens’ paint pictures with their words, slipping in and out of the awareness that their stories leave listeners tightly wound. At some point the telling becomes theatrical, harkening back to the days they would recite Paul Lawrence Dunbar from memory (having learned the prose as children). Effortlessly, I subscribe to any version of the stories they tell, each time with different details, held forth like shining treasures and bridges to the stories of others.
The last time around the campfire, my mother joined in the fray. I feel guilt for not realizing until now that her Stevens blood runs as deep as mine. Her story telling prowess just as enthralling and moving as the rest. I heard words I’d never heard from her before, as she painted the picture of a childhood I hadn’t known. She bloomed, revealing untold secrets and mysteries of a life in Ettrick County. Like the lure of the house on Metz Road, she too told stories of spirits in familiar haunts on Penmare Drive. The ghostly figures of her parents standing watch in the room as she open her past to us. I felt the air leave the room, herstory giving life to us who listened. Awestruck, I managed to record it. Wondering what details the next retelling would bring.
