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  CRAVE

  SOJOURN OF A HUNGRY SOUL

  © 2015 by Laurie Jean Cannady

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  The author has attempted to recreate events, conversations, and spaces from childhood memories and memories recounted to her by family members and friends. Some names have been changed.

  Etruscan Press

  Wilkes University

  84 West South Street

  Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766

  (570) 408-4546

  www.etruscanpress.org

  Published 2015 by Etruscan Press

  Cover design by Laurie Powers

  Cover photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

  Interior photographs courtesy of Mary Carter

  Interior design and typesetting by Susan Leonard

  The text of this book is set in Goudy Old Style.

  First Edition

  151617181954321

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cannady, Laurie Jean, 1974-

  Crave : sojourn of a hungry soul / Laurie Jean Cannady. -- First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-9903221-4-6

  1. Cannady, Laurie Jean, 1974---Childhood and youth. 2. Cannady, Laurie Jean, 1974---Family. 3. African Americans--Virginia--Biography. 4. African American families--Virginia--Biography. 5. African American families--Social conditions--20th century. 6. Virginia--Social conditions--20th century. I. Title.

  E185.97.C25A3 2015

  306.85’08996073--dc23

  2015002581

  Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Etruscan Press.

  This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

  To those curvy, unnerving, twist walking, body talking, get-all-up-in-your-face women. Ones who don’t take no crap, even though it’s often tossed at them. Ones making ends meet, when no ends exist. Those ladies can’t nobody stand, ’cause no one understands them. Not many things are dedicated to you. This book is.

  “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.”

  —Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

  “A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”

  —Proverbs 27:7

  CRAVE

  FROM SCRATCH

  From Scratch

  A Feast in the Making

  The Way It Is Done

  The Reasons

  The Coast

  MISSING INGREDIENTS

  Missing Ingredients

  White Wash

  Snow Cold

  Nowhere Man

  UNNECESSARY ADDITIVES

  Black Oak

  Learning Curve

  No-No Zone

  SIDE DISHES AND ENTREES

  Side Dishes and Entrees

  Casualty of War

  Prayer List

  The Good Reverend

  Stubble

  The Singer

  Our Song

  RESTARTING FROM SCRATCH

  Restarting from Scratch

  Sweet and Sour

  New Recipes

  Guard Duty

  Cool It Now

  HIDDEN INGREDIENTS

  Nothing New in New

  From Constitution to Queen

  Our Secret

  A Teenage Love

  Blind Spot

  Yellow Peace

  A MESS OF POTTAGE

  A Break

  Lincoln Park

  When It Rains

  Wondering and Wandering

  War of Wars

  No Peace in Dysfunction

  Few Good Men

  The Living Doesn’t Get Easier

  HUNGER PAINS

  Cutting Into a New Me

  Dirt Can Never Clean

  We Each Miss Her

  Chicken Little

  Early to Rise

  Food for Thought

  MALNUTRITION

  Never Tell

  Reawakening

  Lemme Show You Something

  Put a Fork in It

  EYES BIGGER THAN YOUR STOMACH

  Life Rang On

  My Happy

  Dull Pain

  Gotta Be My Own Healing

  Pretty as Pat

  Patty Change

  PURGE

  Mr. Lover Man

  On the Next Bus

  Acknowledgments

  Books like this aren’t written over a span of months or years. They are written over generations, with contributions, good and bad, from many. While I can’t mention all who touched this life and, by extension, this book, know that my heart knows and the list is long. Thank you all.

  Thanks to those who published excerpts from the working manuscript over the years: the online journal Red Curly Stories, Lock Haven University’s environmental journal The Hemlock, and the anthologies Appalachian Voice and Mother is a Verb.

  Many thanks go to Etruscan Press for hearing the music amidst the noise. Special thanks to Philip Brady, Jaclyn Fowler, Bill Schneider, Robert Mooney, designers, editors, and marketers, all who ensured this book would find its way to readers.

  Deepest thanks to educators: Renee Spencer, Ronald Shepherd, Barry Kitterman, Eloise Weatherspoon, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Laurie Alberts, Diane Lefer, Sue William Silverman, Philip Graham, Nathan McCall, Patrice Gaines, and Louise Crowley. Thank you for placing and nurturing the love of writing in me.

  Much thanks to Vermont College of Fine Arts and the Hurston/Wright Foundation for creating a nurturing literary environment, fertile ground for narratives like my own to grow.

  To my writing group family: Betty Cotter, Christy Bailey, Corrine Lincoln-Pinheiro, Jennifer Haugen Koski, Mark Lupinetti, Geri Whitten, Sheila Stuewe, and Anthony Caputa, thank you for reading my words as if you always knew they would reach a reader’s hands. To Vel Gatlin, Ramona Broomer, Jay Smith, Tammy Ince, Ronald Davis, Kathleen Trate, Norrice Herndon, Cynthia Ward, and Earl Herndon, thank you for being my literary and spiritual Army. You were the voices encouraging me to jump.

  To Remica Bingham-Risher, you selflessly gave your time and offered your critical eye. Thank you for helping me see. To Tim Seibles, my birthday twin, not many can do what you do with words and still walk among us, humble, inspiring, a friend to all. I can never repay you for all you’ve done, for your friendship, your mentoring, your smooth literary skills. I’ll just say “Always and Forever,” Big Brah.

  To all of the Boone Babies, I hope I did you proud. You have been a constant source of strength. I give special thanks to Grandma Rachel, Granddaddy Andrew, Aunt Ella, Uncle Junie, Uncle Joe, Aunt Della, Aunt Angie, Uncle Leonard, and Uncle Barry. Through the difficult times, I have always felt blessed to be part of a brood so big I could never truly be alone. To Aunt Vonne, Uncle Bruce, and Aunt Bir’t, thank you for filling in the holes, for sharing your stories with me, and for encouraging me to write my truth. Your care and confidence carried me through some of the most difficult times.

  To Aunt Vonne’s girls, thank you for sharing your mother and sisters with me. I’ve admired each of you since I was a little girl. To Sherry B, my second big sister, thank you for kicking my butt one minute and standing up for me the next. You will always be my sister. To Tricia, you have been protecting and loving me since we were little girls. Thank you for sharing your secrets, for tightly holding mine, for always having my back, whether I was wrong, right, up, or down. I would have kept this book hidden in my closet if not for you.

  To my brother, Champ, we fought hard, loved hard
and I am proud of the father/husband you have become. You had no male blueprint and you still found your way to peace. Dathan, sorry for all of the mess we put you through. I’m grateful our antics didn’t change you, didn’t harden you to us. If they had, I would be missing out on the love of an amazing “little-big” brother. Tom-Tom, the baby, you are the hardest working man I know. Thank you for supporting my craft and showing me that hard work pays off. To Mary, my road dog, my little sister who thinks she’s my big sister. I am so grateful to have you in my life. As we walk individual paths, I know I will always have you beside me. Champ, Dathan, Mary, Tom-Tom, I wouldn’t want to have lived this life with anyone else. What Momma said is true of each of us. “Whatever you put your hands on will prosper. It’s already written.”

  To Momma, what a brilliant, beautiful, loving, strong woman you are. Thank you for placing your stories in me so I might later use them. You never allowed me to accept that what happened to you, to other strong women in our family, was what had to be. You poured in me the belief there could be another way, even as I rejected your pouring, even as you had so little for yourself. Thank you for spending hours reliving the darkest parts of your life, for crying with me when I thought I couldn’t continue, and for trusting me with your experiences. I honor and love you. I pray I will be able to place in my daughter the same resolve, the same fight, the knowing that her spirit is one of strength, longevity, even as external evidence attempts to prove otherwise.

  To my babies, Dereck, Tariq, and Sanaa, you gave up time, cooked your own food, cheered me, and hugged me through the painful days of writing and the nights overwrought with dark memories. This book is as much yours as it is mine. It is part of your history, but it is proof that my history, my mother’s history, my grandma’s history does not have to be your future. Use these lessons wisely. For you, it is already written. Dereck, you are next.

  To Chico, only a special man could love me broken, torn, until I became whole. I could not have completed this journey without you. Thank you for reminding me I have always possessed the power to save myself.

  All praises to my Heavenly Father. Through Him all things are possible. This story proves that.

  CRAVE

  SOJOURN OF A HUNGRY SOUL

  LAURIE JEAN CANNADY

  Pretty and her five.

  Clockwise: Pretty, 23; Champ, 7; Dathan, 5; Tom-Tom, 1; Mary, 3; Laurie, 6.

  FROM SCRATCH

  From Scratch

  Before I spent a moment in this world, I was hungry. Momma told stories of my body tightening inside her body even though she was just four months pregnant with me. Food was a scarcity in Momma’s womb, my first home, and with most meals consisting of unsweetened tea and butterless biscuits, there was never enough to soothe her rumbling belly, my nursing brother, and me inside.

  Luckily for Momma, for us all, delayed satiation was nothing new. She’d also been hungry since before she was born, just as her mother and her mother’s mother had been. While some families bequeath legacies of power, wealth, and pride, my family passed down the ability to withstand prolonged periods of starvation.

  Momma was born April 5, 1956, unless you believe her birth certificate (which claims she was born April 9) over her daddy’s word. She was the youngest of Andrew Boone and Rachel Griffin’s eleven children, which meant she’d survived on leftovers and hand-me-downs long before she had us. Her birth name was Lois Jean Boone, but everybody called her “Pretty.” The local milkman, a white man who handed her a silver dollar each time he delivered, proclaimed “She’s so pretty, ‘Pretty,’ should be her name.” In a severely segregated Chesapeake, Virginia, his word meant something, so the name stuck.

  Her daddy, Big Boone, cleaned ships at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. After he and Grandma Rachel had fourteen children, with only eleven surviving childbirth, their fast-growing family proved a perfect combination for the type of poverty that makes the poor feel prosperous. Big Boone, being a resourceful man, supplemented his meager income by partnering with a German immigrant, becoming Deep Creek’s first corn liquor bootlegger.

  Big Boone brewed liquor so potent it singed nostril hairs. That’s why he was the most sought-after bootlegger in all of Chesapeake; potency equaled power, and there was no denying that long jowl, those bushy eyebrows, and protruding eyes had the power to break a man in half.

  On Friday evenings at the Boone home, coworkers became customers as they crowded his kitchen, plastic cups of liquor in one hand, small cans of grapefruit or orange juice in the other. They exchanged dollars, quarters, and dimes for spirits, and by the end of the night, some were even paying with pennies, for which Big Boone kept stacks of penny rolls.

  Once old enough, Momma, alongside her brothers and sisters, quietly served them, dodging quick hands, negotiating bodies, pressing, as men moved from room to room. Before Friday nights became juke nights, the house had been quiet, filled with Momma’s brothers and sisters cooking, cleaning alongside their mother. They had been happy then, most times. Big Boone, still himself, loved hard, but his hard balanced well with Grandma’s soft way of doing everything, her way of kissing Momma when she sent her off to school, her way of consoling her daughters when she learned they were pregnant, and her way of loving Big Boone, open, as if she could fold all of his hard into her soft body.

  But Big Boone’s absence changed things. Working at the shipyard, he spent days out at sea, while his wife managed the bootlegging business. Wherever there is liquor, there will be men. Wherever there is liquor, men, and a lonely, married woman, there will be trouble, and trouble set up shop in Big Boone’s home.

  Soon, days out to sea became breaks between fights, which ended with Grandma Rachel as bruised as Big Boone’s ego. He beat her, teased her, and later entreated her to sample his spirits just to take off the edge. Eventually, there was more edge than there was her, and he didn’t have to entreat anymore. By then, she drank whether or not he was home, whether or not they were fighting, until she moved in with one of her girlfriends and started her own bootlegging business. Her liquor might not have been as good as his, but she had what he did not—beautiful women serving it. Customers began bypassing Big Boone’s to get liquor that included female companionship, which was as much a commodity as spirits themselves. In Big Boone’s mind, Grandma Rachel had stolen his customers, just as she’d stolen herself as his woman. For that betrayal, he ordered her never to come back to that home on Shipyard Road.

  Despite his demands, there was still that tug of love, of responsibility, which pulled her to that dirt road, to that little house, whenever Big Boone was certain not to be there. I often imagine her, more a mother than afraid, praying all calculations had been correct, and she would miss Big Boone as she visited the younger Boone babies.

  One day, Momma, six, stared out the window, watching for her mother. Soon after Big Boone left for work, Grandma appeared on the horizon, pulsing down the dirt road as if she were a steamroller, barreling toward something that required her in order to be even. Her black hair, curled into flips, surrounded cheeks so taut that kisses might have made them pop. Despite having birthed fourteen children, she was slim, with narrow hips, and she wore those signature breasts all Boone women wear, which make us look as if we’re carrying a load everywhere we go.

  Once she entered the house, Grandma sat on the couch. Momma pressed her body between her legs. I see them connected, Momma’s cheek to Grandma’s chest. They are engulfed in an aura so bright, I can’t tell where Grandma’s spirit ends and Momma’s begins. They shelter in that unmoving moment, where mommas come home to their little girls, where girls grow into women who aren’t hungry before they are born.

  Until that moment becomes unsheltered and a new moment finds mother and daughter in tears, pried apart. They are barricaded in Big Boone’s bedroom. Grandma screams through swelling lips, “Andrew, leave me alone.”

  Two of her oldest boys hold the door, beating back bursts of force from the other side. “Andrew, I’m just here to see
my children,” she pleads. Her sons press harder, hoping to ward off the devil that has a hold of their daddy. The assault suddenly stops. Grandma falls to her knees, holds her face close to Momma’s. There are tears there. There is blood there, but all Momma sees is her smile. “I have to go,” she whispers. “I don’t want to, but I have to and you have to stay.”

  Momma cries, “No,” her hands extended toward her mother. Grandma hugs her, but she does not pick her up to go. Then the impact, so ferocious both boys jump away from the door. They grab their mother and thrust her and themselves out of the window, the room’s only accessible exit.

  Big Boone kicks open the door and stands in the middle of the frame. Every part of his body shakes. His hands are curled into fists. A white shirt layers every muscle of his chest as it pulses up and down. His eyebrows sprout from his forehead like dried and frazzled paint brushes. With eyes bulging, he scans the room for his wife.

  Momma watches as her daddy throws pillows on the floor, as he flings clothes and blankets out of the closet. She stares at the window where her mother and brothers made their escape. Big Boone walks over and sticks half of his body out. Unable to find his mark, his eyes rest on Momma, sitting quietly on the floor. He approaches her. She lifts her arms to him. He pauses, places his hands under her armpits, and swings her into the air. Her legs wrap around his waist. She settles on his hip and presses her cheek against his chest. They walk out of the room, connected. New moment. New Momma.

  Ten years later, Grandma Rachel would be dead, and that moment would be one of many that Momma revisits in order to remember her. But what those moments cannot give, no matter how hard they are studied, are those elusive remembrances, the smell, the touch, the voice of a mother. Those are not moments, but mementos every motherless child works hardest to keep.

  They are the ingredients of a hunger never satisfied, no matter how much there is to eat. I see this in Momma as she shares her portion with me. This is how I know my own hunger, placed in me before I was born.