Bernardine Watson: Freedom

I remember a flowered bed spread  
tucked neatly around a fold out sofa 
a polyester garden of wilted pansies  
likely chosen to match the fading wallpaper
a vain attempt I’m sure,  
to bring the outside in  
as they say in all the magazines. 

.

I remember a console sitting over in the corner  
as old and tired as the fading wallpaper 
but Sammy Davis Jr. would sing right to me- 
Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes. 

.

Such high fidelity! 
I’d twirl and twirl  
going around with the record 
catching glimpses of pansies  
from the corner of my eye.

. 

I could not have been more than three or four 
too young to understand the meaning of anything:  
our two-room apartment down a long dark hallway  
first floor back behind the colored hotel  
my parents sleeping under a polyester garden 
on a sofa that folded out  
into a room meant for living. 

.

I was much too young and didn’t understand  
that the voice I heard  
the man crooning in the console 
was a one-eyed negro singing for his supper  
and the colored hotel was named for Crispus Attucks
  a runaway slave, and the first man to die 
  for the America dream. 

.

How could I know as I twirled and twirled  
around in that room  
that my mother was dreaming on the fold out sofa  
of a house with a yard full of real pansies blooming 
and a bedroom fit for a proper lady. 
What did I know? 
I was just a little girl  
who could feel the music  
and it felt like freedom.

Copyright 2023 Bernardine Watson. First published in Gargoyle Magazine. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.

Bernardine (Dine) Watson is the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Manuscript Creative Nonfiction winner for “Transplant: A Memoir,” which will be published in October, 2023. She is the winner of the 2001 Philadelphia Celebration of Black Writing poetry award and her work has been published in numerous poetry journals and anthologies. Watson has also written on social and health issues in The Washington Post.