Shoutin' in the Fire by Danté Stewart

Author:Danté Stewart [Stewart, Danté]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

To give ourselves love, to love blackness, is to restore the true meaning of freedom, hope, and the possibility in all our lives…. Doing the work of love, we ensure our survival and our triumph over the forces of evil and destruction.

—bell hooks, SALVATION: BLACK PEOPLE AND LOVE

There is an old Polaroid of me and my sister, Dominique, that my mom has kept over the years. We were about two or three in this photo. I have on a white shirt, tucked into my green shorts that cover my belly. My sister has bows in her hair, her mouth is wide open; her pink, green, and white floral patterns consume the picture. My mom took it back in the nineties when we were visiting my Uncle Sambo one weekend. In it, my sister is screaming her lungs out as if she saw the fear of her life. I’m sitting on the couch next to her, leaning on her. I am her little brother, but not smaller—I’m chubbier.

I wonder if she looks like that cause she was afraid of Uncle Sambo like I was as a kid. I wasn’t afraid of him because he was mean. Nah, he was one of those cool great-uncles that you can’t hardly understand. It was because, in my mind, he was always like a Black Gandalf figure. He had some years on him. Old man with a long gray beard. Every time he opened his mouth you could see the teeth missing. He would reach in his left shirt pocket. Pull out the green packet of Ice Breakers. Open the wrapper. Chew. Spit. Chew. Chew some more. Spit some more. I never quite could understand why though. Somehow my sister was crying, probably pulling out her bows like my son does when my wife braids his hair. And there I was, beside her, still. Content.

I think my momma looks at old pictures of us to remind her of joyful moments in life. She hasn’t always had those. Her or my daddy. So she, like all the other Black folks we know, keeps cutouts of old newspapers, old Jet and Negro Digest magazines, obituaries and hymnbooks, comics, and whatever else reminds them of a much simpler time. They have learned to do that. Going back in time allows them to ease some of the stress built up in their shoulders, their backs, their knees, their elbows, their hearts.

My uncle’s full name was Samson Jones. He was tall, dark; his skin was oily, smooth. There were cracks in his face that let you know he had been around for years. His hands were rough, the callouses in his palms had become permanent. He, like many Black people during the turbulent years of Jim Crow, escaped from the clutches of the South to head north in hopes of a better future. He wanted to escape American hatred. And he did. He couldn’t control the hatred that he left or the hatred that he entered. But what he could control was the terms of his life.

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