Pilgrimage to the Motherland

TN.May.2013.6

I took a drive back up in the holler. I wasn’t sure were I was headed, couldn’t even tell you were I was when I got there. I was hoping to find somebody sitting on the porch. I intended to pull up in the drive and ask them if I could sit on the porch [...]

When God pulls out his fork

fork

He told me that his kids confessed to smoking all his weed, this cabbie did. “When they were in their 40s, they finally admitted it. I didn’t know it was them. I thought my wife was taking my stash,” he said. I hadn’t asked him about his pot smoking habits. It never occurs to me [...]

I talk to cabbies

rearview mirror

I talk to the cabbies. Where are you from? They answer: Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Jamaica, Mississippi. What brought you to DC? A better life. Then they tell me about the people they knew before they came to D.C.. The sisters, the cousins, the aunties, the brothers. They speak about how they miss their mamas and [...]