Gloryland Read Free Page A

lot of sunsets to turn the ground red down deep, but I guess there’s been plenty of sunsets since the beginning, and there weren’t no niggers then. Niggers came later.
    But knowing I wasn’t a nigger made me sick, cause white folks treated me like something I wasn’t. When I got older I corrected them, I told them who I was. I said, “Elijah Yancy’s my name, what’s your name?” I didn’t really care if they told me. What mattered was that they knew who I was. I could’ve been saying I was God, I said it with such pride. I believed my mama when she said Elijah Yancy is God’s child, her child, a boy who’s got a mother and a father, people who love him, and love ain’t nothing. It matters like water matters, or the sun.

    So I held on to my dreams even though they hurt my hands, my mind, my soul. It would have been easier to let go, but I was stronger than the pain, love made me stronger, and so I held on even tighter. Deep down there was bleeding I never let anyone see, and maybe it don’t matter how much you bleed in the night if the blood’s all gone by sunup. But the sheets would be cold with my sweat cause that fever had taken me. Dreams are fire and they’ll burn you dry.

The Horse’s Paces Walk, Trot, and Canter
    Close the legs and communicate a sufficient impulse to carry him forward without giving the hand; for if you do, the head and neck may relapse into a position which will defy the control of the hand.
    from Cavalry Tactics

    sundays
    I f there’s a good day in the week, I remember it being Sunday. Sunday meant just a few chores, like chopping wood for the fire and bathing. Mama said she liked to be able to see me at least once a week, and she figured if I bathed it might be easier for God to recognize me in church.
    Sunday meant sleeping a little bit longer, but not too much. Long enough that when you got up, your bed was so warm it just pulled you back down again, and you went without a struggle.
    And Sunday usually meant Mama’s fried chicken. That fried chicken convinced me that chickens were created by God so they could be cooked by my mama for me to eat. I could eat her chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, but it was only for Sunday cause Sunday was different.
    My daddy never really relaxed, but there was a shadow of relaxation about him on Sundays. He looked different, and something about him felt different. He seemed to know deep in his body that he wouldn’t be in the field that day. All of him just sagged, but in a good way, on Sundays.
    Sunday wasn’t so much a time but a feeling inside, a feeling you could only get on that day, leastways for me. Mama used to say that life was just what happened leading up to Sunday, and the things that happened after. For her it was all about Sunday, even when it wasn’t Sunday. She said, “Elijah, Sunday’s not a day of the week, it’s somethin in your heart, and as long as you know that, then you don’t have to die and go to heaven to find God, cause God is always
waitin for you right here.” And she’d gently touch my chest with her hand.
    As the time would get closer for going to church, Mama would begin to hum a little, and I don’t remember her ever singing except on Sunday mornings. There was just a calm about her all day that you couldn’t even find an echo of any other time.
    Sunday meant washing, though, washing till my skin felt like it was going to peel off. And the water had to be hot, which is why I was chopping wood in the first place. Even when I was little, Mama would wash me so hard I thought she was trying to polish my bones, she pressed down so hard, scrubbing and scrubbing. No child could ever be that dirty, but Mama said I tried all week to be that dirty and generally succeeded.
    After we were all clean, “clean enough to be before God” is how Mama put it, we’d put one more log in the woodstove if it was wintertime, to keep the cabin warm for Grandma Sara. She never went to church, even though