from Silent Screams: Chapter I: A Walk in the Park

These people were my relatives, my ancestors. And this place could be my refuge.

—Octavia Butler

Pearl drove down the same old roads. Rural Alabama, always the same, a great place to drive away from. But this time she loved the ease that her new car afforded her. She nosed her black BMW down the rough and ugly roads. This wasn’t just a new car—she sported freedom. No car note. She felt victorious. She had beaten the odds that Black women paid higher prices for everything. She had thrust herself in consumer magazines for months. Educating herself had paid off.

She glanced over at her sleeping daughter. The power of mother love was the only reason on earth that steered her in the direction of Silk Hope, Alabama. Raising Belle on her own had been difficult in the beginning, but like magic, the struggle turned into joy. Her daughter was Princeton-bound, and it was her duty to offer her strong armor—her heritage. Their lives were about to be tested. And if she understood nothing else, she knew that they must come home and start at the beginning.

She shifted her focus to the highway and remembered that her mother was to be part of this weekend as well. In fact, had her sister not telephoned to tell her how fragile her mother seemed, and how important a visit from Belle would be for her, before she left for college, she might not have come. Her mother always had to be dealt with. Pearl hoped that they could get along. Before now they hadn’t had to. Big Mama had mothered them all. In a way she was also returning home to honor Big Mama. This was her first trip back since her funeral.

She couldn’t remember a time when Big Mama didn’t live with them. After Grandpa Alex died—before she was born—Big Mama moved in and took over the assembly line of domestic relations. An ideal set-up since her mother showed no interest in nothing except cleaning and shining Minnie Paine’s house, the woman she had worked for for as long as Pearl could remember.

With Big Mama there, her mother had the courage and means to put Mr. Tex Banks out of the house and out of their lives. Mr. Tex was her mother’s third husband, her sister’s father and everybody’s disappointment. A tiny man who sported a processed hairdo, with copper-colored skin which shaded toward red, in the summer. He never had much to say unless it was on the weekend when he had been drinking. They often didn’t see him after payday on Fridays until late Sunday night when he would stumble in without money or food.

Soon after Big Mama moved in, her mother set Mr. Tex’s clothes outside of their front door in five brown paper bags. She told Mr. Leroy Lynne to go by the sawmill and tell him to come and pick them up, and that if they weren’t gone by that Saturday, she was going to give them to Mr. Pig Walker.

Five years ago, when Pearl heard the news of Big Mama’s death, she was getting ready to go to Holland to secure a relationship with a flower dealership. Her flower shop, Sassy Stems was going international. But she dropped everything and journeyed the rough roads of Alabama with Belle, not believing her grandmother was gone. Now she traveled a different journey.

Pearl continued to drive, fussing to herself about the bad roads. Why don’t the taxpayers do something? Highway 33 had served as the only main road for at least 30 years. Well, she thought, the road was just like the town—unimproved. She was shaking her head in disbelief when she heard a noise from the outside. She assumed it was more bad roads, but the noise grew louder and her car jerked. She swerved along the shoulder of the road.

“Belle, wake up. Something’s wrong with the car.”

“I hate this...