Seventh Offering: Purpose

How the old gods loved and laughed over Jarena Lee, their daughter!

I saw my daughter as she began to think seriously of breaking up housekeeping, and forsaking all to preach the everlasting Gospel. I didn’t judge her. Like her grandmother, I went by water, followed them along the arc of the Tendwa nza Kongo. I saw the ones who stretched their hands out to the sea and the ones who dared to walk on it. Beautiful. I grew pointed teeth that day, gnashed them in my mouth, tasted blood and wondered what it was. That was the first warning and also the first sign that she would survive. Funny how it could be both.

As she moved toward where my mother lived, I forgot the years had passed. But the same light that I saw in the bend of a back became the light that she used to stand up straight, to speak out loud, to sing. She said, “The Lord was pleased to give me light and liberty among the people,” and I laughed at what love a young girl could lavish on old deities, and how silly she was. She thought she’d discovered a new way of living. And I turned to my mother, my mother, who was happy to see me, and the happiness was mutual between us, and we chuckled together. I laughed a bit too hard, I think, because my mother boldly tried to look me out of countenance, but I recovered.

I am so sorry Mama, I couldn’t help it! Don’t our daughters know that the purpose they carry is not new?

Mama smiled at me, rubbed my forehead with rainbows, and said “I have always believed I had the worth of souls at heart but they needed to believe colored people had souls too.”

I did not mind the rubbing, I was grateful for the touch. I did not mind the teasing, I was grateful for the grace.

One night, when I finally did decide that time must pause, just for a moment, to give me a chance to place a pebble of this new dirt in my mouth, roll it around, taste the salt and silica of old hearts and sinew, feet that still remember, that still rub their heels into the moss and grass, I met her there. I could see the circle that formed around her (ah, she truly was my daughter then!) and the way the words she spoke hit the air and vibrated, changed frequency.

She looked up when I walked down the aisle, bent my knee for a blessing, to be anointed, a humble penitent, and in the most friendly manner shook hands with me, lifted me to my feet. She knew me. “The Lord was with me, glory be,” she said and trailed off, fell into my eyes and was lost in the space between the worlds where we had a precious time and much weeping was heard among the people. A lifetime, ten lifetimes in just a moment.

Her hands squeezed mine. “I know you,” she whispered.

I pressed my fingers, still slick with mud and pebbled with dirt, into the flesh of her cheek, an offering of reshaped flesh and singular purpose, an offering of light meeting light across the waters, across worlds.

“You do know me,” I answered, and my laugh was the sound of bells on the air. “You always will.”

She rejoiced much to see me.

Learn more about Jarena Lee: “Jarena Lee and the Early A.M.E. Church,” National Museum of African American History and Culture: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/jarena-lee-and-early-ame-church.

Text in bold: Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee Giving an Account of her Call to Preach the Gospel, 1849

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This is offering #7 of Stitch Open My Eyes a 12-week community offering on history and memory in slavery’s archive. Because the Black freedom struggle during slavery should be a topic of conversation at every kitchen table. Follow along by subscribing below.