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“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said, “and I think I sho
uld go.” Suddenly my thoughts went from consideration to confirmation. I took a second helping of vegetables and spread them out on my plate.
My mother glanced at my father. He slid his hand above hers on the table.
“What?” I asked, looking at them and feeling they were probably about to tell me my idea was crazy. This was the first time I’d mentioned wanting to sing. Who was this guy anyway? How did I know he was legit? And if he was, he’d said the label imprint was looking for a “voice” to define it. What did I know about that? I heard all of these judgments in my head and then realized they weren’t circulating around the table. It was me.
“We’ve been thinking about what you were going to do,” my mother said. “It’s been some time. And we know you can’t stay here with us forever.” She pursed her lips sadly and looked at my father.
“I think what your mother is trying to say ... is that we want you to go,” my father said decisively.
“Really?”
“Yeah. We want you to go,” my father said again. “Go and figure out whatever you want to do. That’s fine with us.”
My mother wiped a tear from her eye, and we sat looking at each other as if we were planning for something.
“We did you a big disser vice ... all of you,” my mother said, “trying so hard to shelter you from the outside and not letting you just go and figure things out for yourself. We did it because we love you, but none of you can live your lives just the way we want you to. And we need to let go of that. It’s not parenting. It’s selfish. So if you want to go, we fully support you. Me and your father.” She looked at him again. “Just know you will always have a place in our house and we’ll always love you. But what we want most for you is for you to be yourself.”
Aside from the moon and possibility, I learned that night over a simple dinner with my parents that my new favorite word in my new life was family. Unlike moon, family didn’t mean perfect. Unlike possibility, family didn’t mean freedom. What it meant to me was imperfect and belonging. And as insane and dysfunctional as my family was, I was loving it for its imperfection and the fact that I belonged to it. If my parents, two people who’d lived their entire lives in a place that feared change, could move on, so could we all. We could, even in our imperfections, and still remain together.
My mother watched the moon with me that night. And then, together, we went back into the house and she helped me pack my things for the morning. At first, I’d just slid an outfit into my bag, but then, my mother came in with a suitcase she’d owned when she was my age and handed it to me. “Take everything,” she said. “Don’t plan to come back until you’re ready. I’ll put the pay you made from working at the church all these weeks into your bank account in the morning. That’ll get you through the summer at least.”
When the moon was still out but the sky was brightening and showing a promise of rain, both of my parents, still in the clothes they’d worn the day before, walked me outside to my car and kissed me softly on both cheeks. “We love you,” they said. They packed my things into the car and then stood arm in arm as I started the engine and drove, in tears, out of their driveway.
PART FIVE
Something She Can Feel
Chapter Thirty-two
July 21, 2008
This was the second time I was driving to Atlanta in my car alone. The second time I’d walked out on my life altogether. The second time I felt heart-breakingly sad and unimaginably happy all at the same time. But as the hot summer rain came pelting down on top of the car, pounding a thunderous racket all around me, I realized that there was something different tugging on me in that car. As I drove along 20 this time, I felt confident in my right to own all of those emotions. I was sad that I had to walk away, but I had to get out of my old life in order to get into my new life and I didn’t feel bad about that anymore. I wasn’t worried about what was happening behind me and when I really thought about it, I wasn’t worried about what was in front of me either. If things didn’t work out with Kweku and SonySOULJOURN, I’d be okay. Maybe I’d get back into my car and drive to the next city or find a place in Atlanta. Maybe I’d decide to launch my own singing career and fly to New York or L.A. Or maybe I’d just go back to teaching and find a job somewhere in Georgia. It didn’t matter to me at that point which thing I chose. All that mattered was that I was showing up and I was doing it all on my own. There was no plan. And, ironically, that was the best plan.
The rain clouds followed me all the way into Georgia, washing the dirt from my car and the pain from my past in one long shower. When the sun came up and pushed its July heat through the thick clouds, a steam came rising off everything I could see—the road, the hood of my car, others going by, the trees, even buildings and the tops of signs. It created an odd mist for a late July morning in Georgia and when I veered off the exit toward the city, the rain just stopped in one second—cut off like a faucet the way it always did during summer Southern showers, leaving the mist to just sit thick in the air like smoke after a fire.
The rush-hour traffic slowed to a snail’s pace, and while everyone around me looked anxious and angry, I let my foot up from the gas pedal, held the brake, and just watched the miraculous picture. It was unusual and unexpected. But still beautiful. Completely beautiful.
“What’s up, ATL? It’s your girl, Shanda Smith,” a woman’s voice said when I turned on the radio. “I hope y’all liked that get-up-and-go set we just played, because y’all got to get up and goooooo.”
“That’s right, Shanda,” a man’s voice said as they laughed. “You don’t have to go to work, but you have to get up.”
“Why they have to get out the bed if they ain’t going to work, Frank?” the woman asked. “I know if I wasn’t going to work, I’d be catching some serious Zzzs!”
“How they gonna listen to us if they sleep?”
“Well, that’s what I’d do.”
Giggling along with them, I listened to their comical exchange and then realized that my car hadn’t moved one bit since I’d turned on the radio. The traffic just stopped. I couldn’t see an accident ahead. It was just a standstill. I turned up the radio and put the car in park.
“Soso, what you got in entertainment news?” the woman asked.
“I got a lot, Ms. Shaaannnda,” another exaggerated voice said and I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, but there was something sassy, snappy, and silly about it that made it appealing to me in that stopped car. “This is your girl, Ms. Sophie, and I’m about to bring you the latest in entertainment news from around the world, baby. Because when I talk, you talk, and we talk, and that’s sister talk!” A little jingle for the segment played in the background, and Ms. Sophie went through a list of Hollywood and hip-hop highlights that had occurred over the weekend. Most were interesting, but also uneventful. The eventful part was just hearing her speak this scrappy and over-the-top sister-girl chatter. “And last, but not least, we got something hot off the press from the hottest man in the game, baby!”
“Who is it?” Shanda begged.
“It’s that hunk of a man, Dame from the deep down-down and dirty.”
