Gloryland Read Free

whatever I wanted to be. I could be an engineer or a doctor cause I liked the idea of fixing what’s broken, whether it’s a plow or something alive. Yeah, a doctor, that’d be better than sharecropping. I thought this at night in a warm wind like God breathing on me, in bed where I felt the most safe. And the thinking turned to dreaming, and it got scary to be dreaming about who I could be.
    That’s when I began to get sick. Dreaming about becoming
someone I could never be made me sick, but not on the outside. On the outside I was strong and young and could last all day out in the sun, in the field, but inside something was breaking, going dark even under the sun. When it happened I got cold inside like it was winter even when I was working in the fields. I’d be sweating on the outside but all ice inside, like chills and then fever, from dreaming things that could never be, would never be cause I was a nigger , and niggers ain’t supposed to dream.
    The sickness got real bad after Mama and I had a run-in with some white man in Spartanburg. We had gone into town for supplies and were walking in the road that morning with the sun glaring down, so I could barely make out the people walking close by, up on a wooden sidewalk. I remember Mama was gripping my hand hard like she was worried someone would steal me, and with me being small my hand was higher than my head, which made my arm and shoulder ache. It was hot and my eyes stung with sweat. I felt like a sack of corn being pulled along.
    Suddenly a shadow came across the sun and a white man stepped off the sidewalk and down into the road, right down onto my foot.
    “Damn!” I yelled in pain.
    “Elijah!” Mama hissed. “You better watch your mouth!”
    “Nigger!” the man spat. “Why don’t you watch where you’re goin, boy?”
    I thought the pain in my arm and shoulder was bad, but it was nothing compared to what I felt in my gut. I spent most of my time at home, where nobody ever used that word, and this was the first time I remembered hearing it. But the way he said it cut like a knife, deep inside so you couldn’t see the hurt. I felt hot tears on my cheeks, and everything got blurry.
    Mama’s grip got even tighter. She spun me around and we walked back the way we’d come. When we got to the wagon and got in, Mama reached down, and with a hard flick of her wrists and the snap of the reins the mules woke up. She turned us round and got us out of town, never saying a word along the way, but there was a
stiffness to her body like she used too much starch in her dress and it had gone into her bones.
    What I can’t forget is Mama talking to me when we got home. When we got inside where there was shelter, her holding my face in her rough warm hands like she was praying, I felt how warm it was and safe to be there in her hands. Nothing could hurt me in that shelter that was hands and love, and she said, “Elijah, you forget that man, he nothin to you or to me or your daddy. But you ain’t nothin, cause I didn’t work a day and a half bringin nothin into this world. I didn’t bleed tears or sweat blood bringin nothin into my life. You could never be nothin, you could never be anyone’s nigger. You my boy Elijah, you my son, and my son ain’t a nigger, and your daddy ain’t a nigger, and I ain’t a nigger, and it don’t matter how much it get said, don’t make it true.
    “That man’s cussin somethin inside him, somethin he hates inside him, but not you cause he don’t even know who you are, Elijah. Cause what I’m holdin in my hands is somethin good and kind, and I know you’ll never be a nigger unless you forget who you are!”
    That’s what Mama said, so I never try to be something I ain’t, and I ain’t ever been a nigger. But I’m Seminole and I’m colored, just like sundown I’m colored, like dirt that’s warm and black and red too, like the sun’s been shining so long the dirt remembers all that light and holds on to it. It takes a