Chapter
One
GUARANTEED PUBLIC HUMILIATION, #3
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OF CHAPTER 1
Rayshaun’s hair wasn’t black like most kids’. It was this dusty brown like somebody had dumped a bucket of sand over it and he’d shook it off, only some stayed.
When he told me I was going to hell, I’d felt like he’d dumped dirt all over me. But I couldn’t shake it off. I didn’t let him know I felt that way, though.
After school that day, I stood in my kitchen and cried, “Mama, why’d you tell?”
The week before, my mother had come to my class for Cultural Traditions Day. She brought food like other parents did—collard greens. She talked about how African-American slaves ate them back in the day and how collards were healthy because they had a lot of fiber and more calcium than a cup of milk. All the kids kept saying her greens tasted good and that we looked just alike, except I was a pretzel stick and she had a shape.
But Alima Ross couldn’t leave it at that. Oh, no. not my mother. True to form, she had to go all extreme and tell everybody about our family’s unique little tradition.
Mama, why’d you tell we’re Buddhist?” I’d screamed in the kitchen. “Rayshaun said his mother says I’m going to hell!”
Mama had had on a nurse’s uniform—a scrub top and pants—that was pinkish-red like grapes. She stooped down and made her dark brown face even with mine. I smelled apples in the grayish afro puff on her head. With a white ball of Kleenex in her hand, she started wiping away the tears and snot that ran down my face.
“Taneesha,”
she said, “I’m so sorry Rayshaun said that to you. But sweetie, hell
and heaven aren’t places. They’re right in here.” She patted my
chest. “Buddhahood is, too. Do you know what that is?”
©Copyright
M. LaVora Perry. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Floyd
Cooper.
I sniffed and shook my head. I thought Mama might have told me what Buddhahood was before but I couldn’t remember.
“It’s happiness that’s as big as the whole universe. And when you chant, you make it come out.”
She
told me to chant for Rayshaun and his mother to be happy.
Mama and I chanted together at the altar in our living room and that made
me feel okay.
Oh, the simple mind of a kindergartner. I’d actually thought that would
be it. Chant and the world would go back to normal.
