Blue Dawn
Breena Clarke
Blue dawn
My leg shakin’ and shakin’. I dance when I sit tonight. Tonight, with the boy’s head in my lap, I tap my foot and clomp and stomp on the floorboards.
“Careful you don’t wake ‘im. Let’m sleep,” Mama said.
She right. But he don’t stir. He all in like ev’ry night. Boy can sleep. He put ‘imself to rest. He goin’ rest easy on ‘morrow. He goin’ free.
Mama say, “He a baby. What can freed be to him?”
I think to pinch ‘im to wake ‘im, but Mama’s right. Let a weary child sleep.
Him with a peanut head resting on my arm like the little nut next to its partner.
This the las’ night! They goin’ toll the church bells all over Georgetown. He won’t miss nothin’. They goin to toll bells. Bells will wake him to freed. Won’t even be dawn when the bells commence. Soon as the midnight bell is tolled, them sister bells will start to sing out the new. Them church bells will sing out as soon as the last day of bondage is over. This night’s the king of all nights before. Them bells goin’ wake the dead. No hush! No quiet before this dawn!
Hallelujah! When the midnight bell ring, I stand up and cavort. My little bun don’t rouse up. I lift ‘im into my arm like I ain’t done since the first time. I carry him and he clutch round my neck, his mossy hair smelling like a horse stall, but he don’t rouse. Mama jump up and slam her feet against the floor boards. She cry out a word I ain’ ever heard. She calling somebody?
White people sad. They shootin’ in the air to scare us. They crying ‘cause colored happy. That’s the way. They don’t wan’ colored beside ‘em. They wan’ us head down and cringin’. Huh! They shits out the same hole as us do. Ask the gal dumps out the pot. The Ma’am went up country in her carriage. She got plenty bond people there still. She ‘on’t want to see dawn in town, hear them bells, know we walking off.
I’ma sit here while the bells ring. The fire gone low a long time back. Mama put a cover over me and the child, his soupy arms dangling down my side. She pat and thump us soft while she doin’ it. April air’s still cool. Spring juices set to run. I’m goin’ sit here with the boy’s head
in my lap, and
Let the las’ day go,
let the dawn come.
It come blue!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Maisie’s Account:
A dog witnesses the most destructive racial conflict in American history
Tulsa, Oklahoma 1921
May 31, the first night of the white peoples' rampage, a bottle of gasoline with a flaming rag crashed through our parlor window. We were in the kitchen and fortunate that all of us got out before the house was engulfed. We rushed out to the street, and nitroglycerin bombs were falling from the sky. We dodged about and hid beneath the dogwood tree nearby. Our home was on the second floor of Papa's undertaking business, The Samuel Bazemore Funeral Home. Like the other firebombed houses, our house was quickly consumed by flames because water lines to our neighborhood had gone dry. How? Why? We got nothing through our faucets, and our hoses were useless. Papa would not use the water in the rain barrel because he said that would only waste what little we had to drink. Oh, he was so clear-headed in a crisis! But his heart was broken at the devastation to his lovely funeral parlor and our home.
We were not alone. Businesses up and down Greenwood Avenue and Archer Streets were set upon, riddled with bullets, and burned. Then after the first night's attacks, the sheriffs came and took all the colored folks to "safe" detention. Papa and Mama and Harold and Alice were taken off in a truck. I followed them to the armory and was barred at the gate. Papa and Mama and Harold and Alice were confined for two full days
I saw the white mobs. I saw what they did. The aromas of gunpowder, turpentine, nitroglycerin, sawdust, human flesh permeated. A dense cloud of this malevolent amalgam sat above my head. Add to it the odor of their race hatred, and I could barely catch a clean, unencumbered breath. I sat on the periphery of the marauders and watched, listened as they descended upon Greenwood like a pack of wolves. Paradoxically, I understood them and understood they could not be stopped. Once a wolf pack has decided on a course of action, they do not arrest themselves for any reason of reason or compassion. I understood that I could not prevent them from carrying out their destruction. I could only witness. I'm very well-behaved and as clean as I can be expected to be. Mama has always regularly washed me with strong soap, and I have the lovely brindle coat typical of bitches who've been in Tulsa since the first people called it Tulsey Town. My line is long here about. I know I am here to watch and witness for Papa and Mama and Harold and Alice.
When they were let go, Papa, Mama, Harold, and Alice came back to the place our home was. The enthusiasm with which I greeted them nearly caused my chest to explode, and I almost knocked Mama to the ground. I apologized profusely by licking her hand, wagging my tail, and allowing Harold and Alice to pounce on me and hug my neck. They had been worried about me!
The Samuel Bazemore Funeral Home - our home - was nothing but ashes. Our furniture was gone or broken up and left in a pile. They couldn't haul off the bed that Mama and Papa slept in, so the looters hacked it to splinters. Papa took Mama into his arms and whispered to her that we children would lose all hope if she started bawling. She must be brave. Oh, that was all she needed to hear for Mama is very brave. She picked up a piece of the bedstead and used it to poke at piles of debris to see what we could salvage.
The soot and ashes of our life covered Mama and Papa and Harold and Alice from head to toe. I could not see myself, but I, too, felt I was covered with what had once been our comfortable, happy home. Why had they burnt us out? We had never harmed anyone. Papa was an exemplary businessman. He was kind and considerate of folks in need. Mama was beautiful and dignified and kind, kind, so kind. Why would anyone want to harm them, their children, their home?
