Whirlwind Publishing

i don’t know how it happened but the plants I’ve been tending for the last two months turns out not to be the bean plants i could’ve sworn i planted. no, it turns out it’s a weed called pigweed. i read the name and thought to myself "figures – even in my own garden, i can’t get away from pigs".

I don’t like being surrounded – either by weeds or by pigs so I decided to see what I can find out about pigweed. Turns out pigweed is some kind of catchall phrase that can or can not be pigweed. It’s all very confusing.

What’s not confusing is the name Amaranth.

Amaranthus, collectively known as amaranth, is a cosmopolitan genus of herbs. Approximately 60 species are recognized, with inflorescences and foliage ranging from purple and red to gold. Members of this genus share many characteristics and uses with members of the closely related genus Celosia.

Although several species are often considered weeds, people around the world value amaranths as leaf vegetables, cereals, and ornamentals. A traditional food plant in Africa, amaranth has the potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development and support sustainable land care.

Still trying to figure out how the bean plant turned into weeds that somehow grew in a line like they had been planted, I started to realize it might be edible. I knew – because one of my neighbors told me and I confirmed it – that edible purslane (also known as pigweed) grew in my garden.

I haven’t yet tried it. I can’t quite get over my nervous about eating weeds. I spent a significant amount of time researching amaranth – trying to make as sure i could that it was safe to eat – and give to my son to eat. While OCD’ing on the research, I read something that immediately calmed my fears:

In the Caribbean, the leaves are called callaloo and are sometimes used in a soup called pepperpot soup.

My stepfather was Jamaican and one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten is his callaloo (when he didn’t add nasty ass saltfish to it). I’ve had batches of it expressed to me wherever I’ve lived – that’s how much I loved it.When I look at how it grew and think about how he also grew callaloo in his garden, I wonder if he was somehow – spiritually responsible for its orderly presence in my garden.

Whether he was or wasn’t, I can’t call. But I can and will eat.

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1st, 3rd & 4th picture by Tichaona

Purslane pic: http://www.ppdl.purdue.edu/ppdl/weeklypics/3-17-08.html

Morning is not my talking time. For one, I’m disgruntled over having to be mommy right off the bat. Before my eyes are properly unclotted from sleep, I’m running lists through my mind. No peanut butter. No jam. Very little honey. No cheese. Damn! That means lunchables – which means a 7am run to the grocery store.

So when I have to talk, I’m brief: “Sankara – get up!”

Then I begin my morning perambulations round the apartment for the things to go into his backpack: towel, swimming trunks, flip flops, lunch bag, damnit!

“Sankara, get up!”

On my next rotation, I hear voices from the Cosby show. I slow down long enough to hear mention of church. ‘Please god, no’ is my next thought.

He comes when I’m in the kitchen. Having found a jar of peanut butter on a top shelf, I’m smearing it on the bread –relieved I don’t have to drive to the store.

“’What is church?”

“A place people go to pray.”

“I know – we don’t go to church. Why don’t we go to church?”

“Because I don’t think you have to go to church to pray”. Actually, I say “because when I was a child, my mother told me she wanted me to be free to make up my own mind and when I was an adult, it didn’t make sense to me to go to church. So I didn’t. “ Halfway through my resentfully muttered diatribe, I realize he doesn’t understand.

I just want to continue dripping the honey on the peanut butter but I know we’ll be having this conversation again – the way we’ve had it before. In the midst of castigating myself for having a child as well as congratulating myself for having just one, the solution comes to me.

“You know why we don’t have to go to church? Because god is inside of you – and that god is good and positive – like you were when your friend fell at the park and you were worried. You don’t need to go outside to pray to something that’s inside.”

“Is there a bad god?”

(goddamnit, tichaona, don’t you ever learn?)

Sighing, I answer, yes of course there’s a bad god, everything comes in twos: up/down, in/out, male/female. People call the bad god the devil.

Then he starts to tell me how he “knows all about it”. He saw a show on TV where there was a guy “in a gown with an oval above his head” and “a guy all in red with a tail and a pitchfork”.

Yes, the guy all in red is the devil, the bad god. When you don’t want to do things that are good for you, that’s the bad god in you leading the way.

And then I hit on a piece of brilliance to tie it all together!

“You know why your mind is your greatest weapon?”

“No.”

“Because it allows you to choose – to decide whether your good god or bad god is going to be in charge; whether you’re going to care about your friends or have a fit because you don’t get to avoid something that’s good for you.

Days of wine and roses

Were never a part of my twenty-four

Except once.

Understanding my need to sip and sniff,

He brought me Ethiopian honey wine

And Somali Rose incense.

Understanding his need to not return

to breaking his mother’s back,

I stood on oak-peopled corners

And entreated first wonders

To catch the aroma of Afrika.

One hundred and thirty two moons

Beyond my winter after the summer of love birth,

He was my alpha.

Joyfully submitting, I laid under him

Matching him movement for movement.

My lips curved in a half moon when he said,

Sis, they told you wrong, you can dance.

I loved him so much I kissed him to the point

I was able to laughingly two-step embarrassment

When my sister, known as Semi-Love, said

I heard you two smacking lips in the kitchen.

He was the beginning of my womanhood

But I didn’t know I was the end of his manhood

Until my allegiance to my then prison-bound husband

Made me say good-bye.

Several copper-wire conversations later,

There was so much sorrow in his voice

When he said, if I knew you wanted to be

A married woman, I would’ve married you.

Devoid of my essence, he took a header off

Off a rickety staircase. I didn’t believe anything

Anybody told me, thinking it was a ploy

to get me to focus on my husband

Until I called his long-time sister friend.

She heard me say my name and went silent

And I knew…my alpha was dead.

Grief is perennial. It walks with me daily.