We Are Not Broken by George M. Johnson

Author:George M. Johnson [Johnson, George M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Nonfiction, Boys & Men, Family, Multigenerational, Lgbtq
ISBN: 9780759554603
Google: zZ4gzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-11-15T00:14:05.017523+00:00

MATT TO NANNY

Dear Nanny,

I knew this day would come—the day when your physical body had served its purpose here on Earth and you became that magical, spiritual power we could call on to remind us of our faith and cover us with blessings and prayers from the other side.

You were more than just a grandmother to me. You did all the grandma things, of course—the Christmas gifts, the birthday gifts, the big hugs whenever I saw you. The amazing food you would cook for us, as both kids and adults. You were a matriarch unlike any other. But the most important thing you were to me, and to all of us, was a companion. In losing you, I didn’t lose just a grandmother—I lost one of my best friends. That’s been the hardest thing for me to process. Blood makes you family, but it’s the relationships you build that make it special and something different. Something magical. Something Black and joyous. That’s what we had.

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how much time you and I spent together over my adolescent years. Every Saturday, I was your flea market partner. You would pay me five dollars an hour to set up our section and help you sell odds and ends. And on Sundays—when we didn’t go to church—we would do the same thing again. It was our time. I learned the art of the hustle, how to sell and make my own money, and it’s something I still do to this day. Eventually, I even became your banker and sat in your room counting all the hidden envelopes of money you kept in case of emergencies.

Do you remember when we started the soup kitchen? Friday nights we would go to the church and prepare the food together. As the soup cooked over the stove, we would stay up and play rummy 500 until one AM. Afterward, we would package and store everything in the church fridge. The next morning, we would return and make deliveries to the sick and shut in throughout the city of Plainfield. You taught me how to be an activist and care for my community from a young age.

You were my constant. You were the person we could all go to if we had a problem that needed to be fixed, the person we could come to for breakfast before work and for dinner after. Even as we got older, you were still such a cool lady. You were seventy when you bought a huge pickup truck. Who does that? Driving through the city with a purple church hat and one hand on the steering wheel! I’m really going to miss your earthly being, although I know I can call on your spirit whenever I need.

Do you remember the conversation we had in the hospital a few months before you passed? I don’t even think you know how powerful your words were that day. They were words that the five-year-old boy who knew

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