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  • The Heritage Channel
  • Terrance Hayes (bio)

In the movie about the making of the movie about slaves a dust colored chandelier was hanging like a dust covered chandelier in the foyer of an abandoned mansion and my pout-mouthed Ma said she wanted to find a chandelier like that— she'd get one of the homeless to hang it for a six pack and transportation she said, and who said anything about slaves? We spent a few nights smudged between the walls. Nights of inviolate wine and laughter, Mornings with a finch opera outside our windows. I come from a long line of hairdressers in wigs, of blind folk in shades: a caught line, a long line of bastards and farmers with no sons, of jibber jabber, of "I'll put my foot so far up your ass, you'll be shitting my footsteps," Of "she used to," "he used to," and "we," and ennui, of "When that was" and "Who?" and "That's why they call it work." We spent a few nights in the village. Nights trading subservient curtseys below a ceiling fan hanging like a chandelier. There I was shoveling a furry former body into the trunk and phony to say what were the eyes were lit as if my headlights still cooked each pupil and that look rimmed in stupidity could have easily been mistaken for peacefulness were it in the face of a dead man and it was. Who said anything about slaves? A few nights tethered together. A few nights attending our own show. [End Page 1085] I come from a long line of bastards. My mother remembers a black man who arrived one Sunday. Her sister and two brothers called him stranger. They said your daddy brought you nothing, jealous, when she went with him across town to see his distant cousins who sat on the porch of a fine blue house asking "How is your wife? How is your daughter? Who is that child?" Saying the blood is burgundy after dark. Saying the dark is blood. Say Evil and the word will drain your good sense, but sing it and the child will know he ran away or was run over and buried all the same. It might win you Providence should you have the sort of know how the Lord is said to possess. That's why they call it Faith. Muzzled in cool wind. Muzzled in moonshine and deaf as a placenta. I come from a long line of dead men. My grandfather's medals rust in a felt lined case, Kept safe and forgotten by a daughter who has his name but only half his blood. The houseplants reaching for the dirt, the night's color seeping through holes left by the pictures she took from the walls. There is no such thing as evil without love. No one asked about our wardrobe. We talked with, but not to. That damn fool was in the woods asking for moonshine when like a spill of black ants exiting a corpse, the Negroes of the American South crawled North to the small and various catacombs of industry. My kinfolk stayed behind with him trying on names the way one tries on shoes at a sharecropper's funeral. Who said anything about slaves? A few nights attending our own movie. A few nights muzzled in booze. [End Page 1086] They said "Your daddy brought you nothing," when she returned, her shoes shined by the cuff of his white, white sleeve, her breath sweet with gum that traveled all the way from New Jersey in his pocket. We returned so covered in history, we had to wash it from our scalps. I opened the window and I was not to be trusted. I come from a long line of divas who taught themselves the wrong love and were too generous with it, too made-up and covered and dancing at happy hour with lips the color of sunset and goblets of wine. We spent a few nights smudged between the walls. Nights with the finch opera outside our windows. Thirty years later she looked into his coffin like someone looking into in water...

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