Femme Noir Read Free Page B

came to Uganda. What family was not slaughtered or burned were either lucky enough to run away or unlucky enough to be kidnapped and sold into slavery. The princess was unlucky. She lost her home, her family, her position, her wealth, all the life she had known. She was not much older than you. Two or three years, maybe.”
    I blinked, feeling great pride in the resourcefulness of children like myself.
    “She used her coins one by one. At first trying to buy her freedom, but when that didn’t work, she used them to bribe food from her captors and to persuade them not to rape her. When at last she arrived in the New World, she used her remaining money to buy a better station in life. She saved her last coin to remind herself of who she really was. She prayed with it in her hands at night, carried it in her bosom at day. It never left her. See how it is rubbed smooth?” My grama tilted her wrist so I could touch the warm coin and feel its silky surface. I nodded.
    “That is how many prayers have been rubbed into this coin. That’s how many women have carried the heritage and the memories. My great-grandmother got it off her mother’s body after she died, before the slave owners could steal it. Then my grandmother carved a hole in it so she could wear it. Then my mother gave it to me, and I’ll give it to your mama this year on her birthday. And someday, it will belong to you. You must treasure it always and never lose it. Remember who you are and the wishes for a better life that the princess has passed down to you.”
    “Okay, Grama.”
    My grandmother, Elsie Merica Madewell, saw the antebellum South in depressed shambles with picking cotton as a black person’s only possible future, so she packed up her husband and nine children and moved, by horse and buggy, to Los Angeles where my grandfather, Amos Madewell, started a restaurant to feed local railroad workers and my grandmother took in sewing and started a little church.
    My mother, Emily Anne, pitched in with the rest of her siblings, helping with the restaurant and working hard getting her education. During college at Mooreland University, Emily met Benjamin Delaney and they married. My father was one of a handful of black veterinarians serving the black farmers and black cowboys and rodeos of the entire Southwest region. When my father was killed by a horse trampling him, I was ten years old, and the hardest hit.
    That was when I discovered basketball. I was a skinny, knock-kneed, googly-eyed, nappy-haired, broken-hearted girl alone on the court. Even though the boys called me names and tried to keep me out, my mama had power and influence in the community, so she was able to put me on a team even though I was the only girl.
    I excelled and went to my parents’ collegiate alma mater on an unheard-of basketball scholarship.
    That night at Tonya’s, after basketball all day, after dinner and sex, my shock broke like a fever and I felt alert and strong and ready to leave Los Angeles.
    Through Tonya, I had gotten a referral for a hotel and a bar. Tonya knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had been to Tulsa. “The Phillips Hotel and Jody’s Bar and Grill,” Tonya said, hanging up the phone. I frowned at the piece of paper with addresses on it. “The Phillips is downtown, and Jody’s is on south and east of that, whatever. And I checked my Lesbian Connection. There’s a contact dyke in Tulsa, Darcy Tate, who might be helpful. Will you be okay?” Tonya handed me the scrap. I nodded. I needed to be alone for a while to think. I needed a plan. Tonya left me alone by the pool in the back until I had a game strategy and a game face. Then I wordlessly took Tonya to bed.

Chapter Four
     
    The next day, my plane took off from LAX headed for Tulsa International Airport without a single empty seat. I was surprised to see so many people wanting to go to Oklahoma. I expected an empty plane where I could stretch out, perhaps be the only passenger. Who the