Hold Love Strong Read Free

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    My mother quaked with another contraction and she moaned and rolled her head from side to side as if her neck and spine were suddenly severed. Then she stopped and looked down at the round mound of her belly, her eyes so wide it seemed she was surprised by the sight. She put her hands on it, and with her fingers spread as wide as they could stretch, my mother began to weep. But it was not weeping caused by physical pain, or by ignorance, or even a weeping caused by fear. My mother wept because although she was still a child she had enough sense to understand that she was not prepared to shape my life. She couldn’t multiply or divide. She didn’t know north, south, east, or west. She couldn’t tell time on a regular clock. This is not to say she was dumb. In fact, my mother was brilliant, so smart she could remember all of the words in a song after hearing it just once. What my mother was then was the product of low expectations. She had been failed so she had failed. And yet, social promotion: she had just graduated the seventh grade.
    But when she felt weak, when she felt hopeless and useless and begged my grandma to make the pain stop, to let her quit, my grandma said, “No!” My mother couldn’t stop, not even if great God Almighty Himself said she could quit. And so, because my grandma was not the type of woman anyone could disregard, my mother pushed with her life. She clenched the air in her fists. She gritted her teeth. She closed her eyes so tightly she saw everything she’d ever wished to see, every mountain and ocean, every sandy beach, tropical waterfall; elephants and lions and giraffes in Africa; she saw Jesus, she shook President Reagan’s hand; she saw the Statue of Liberty; herself with a car, a fur coat; a collie like Lassie; she saw herself as a movie star. Her toes curled. Her calves cramped. Her heart became a volcano bursting blood. She saw her dreams. She felt their temperature. She smelled them.
    My grandma saw my head. She took it in her hands and pulled gently, but then, holding one hand up as if halting a train, she shouted: “STOP!”
    Every muscle in my mother’s body went limp. My umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck. My mother’s pushing combined with my twisting and turning was killing me. I was being lynched and I was hanging myself. My face was the color of an electric blue bruise. One more push or pull, one more twist, and I was dead. My mother begged to understand what was happening.
    â€œMomma,” she said, propping herself on her elbows. “Momma, please.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” asked Rhonda. “Ma, what is it?”
    My grandma breathed deep. “Shh, both of you, let me think.”
    Outside of the bathroom, Eric stopped hollering, Donnel stopped asking questions, and my Uncle Roosevelt stopped hushing and singing lullabies. All of Ever Park, all of Queens went silent. Then, in through the door burst Cherrie.
    â€œThey coming!” she shouted. “A ambulance is on the way!”
    My Aunt Rhonda looked over her shoulder at Cherrie, her eyes demanding silence.
    Cherrie stopped in the middle of the living room. “What’s going on?” Cherrie said, her voice a fraction of its preceding size.
    In the bathroom, my grandma looked up at the ceiling. “God,” she whispered. “Jesus. Somebody, please help me save this child.”
    My grandma took one deep breath, closed her eyes, and made the same prayer silently. Then she opened her eyes, gently held my head and slowly drew my shoulders free. She paused to think. What next? What could she possibly do? The umbilical cord was taut. She cupped her hand beneath me, breathed, then cautiously guiding me in an un-hurried somersault, she turned me upside down, freed my legs, and unwound the umbilical cord from my neck. My grandma saved me from that which fed and kept me for the first nine months of my life. She cleared my nostrils