Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [24]
Grandma packed the satchel in record time. Before Rhonda knew it, she and Grandma were on a Greyhound bus, holding greasy brown paper bags on their laps. The bags were filled with fried chicken parts and white bread wrapped in wax paper. The chicken was the sustenance that would take them from New York’s Port Authority to the dank and dusty Smithfield, Virginia, bus depot. The chicken would be Rhonda’s only source of company during the ten and a half hours of Grandma’s silence.
Grandma and Rhonda stepped off the bus and into a yellow taxicab. Instinctively, Rhonda knew something was wrong. Grandma always said, “Taxicab riding is for rich folks, pregnant women, and sinners.” Grandma sitting stoically silent in the back of a taxi meant that something was very wrong—or that Grandma had finally gone public about her own sinful ways.
When they arrived, Grandma pushed, pulled, and dragged Rhonda out of the taxi. The driver yelled at them for not shutting the car door, but Grandma was already on the porch and announcing her arrival. Uncle Jimmy was standing on the screened-in porch, staring at but not seeing them. His speech sounded mechanical. He said something about dying and a coma. He was talking about his wife, Aunt Mattie. She had suffered a diabetic stroke. Her doctor had insisted that she be taken to the white folks’ hospital on the other side of the county. Colored people could only visit on Saturday. This was Tuesday.
Rhonda learned a great deal over the next four days, which proved to be very suspenseful. Later on in her life, what she learned would prove very helpful. Grandma began each day with a ritual of sorts. She would walk through every room in the house, lighting candles and incense. With that done, she would return to each room to pray and sing. Of Aunt Mattie, she said, “I’ve got to call her spirit back home.” She said barely a word to Rhonda or Uncle Jimmy. And, much to Rhonda’s dismay, she did very little cooking.
Uncle Jimmy stayed on the porch, rocking in his chair. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that he was staring out into the woods that surrounded the house. But Rhonda knew that he was silently staring at Aunt Mattie’s empty chair that sat directly across from his. Sometimes Rhonda would stand next to him and pat his shoulder in an effort to comfort him. He never responded. He just stared. Rhonda, a big-city kid left on her own in the Deep South, decided it best to keep company with the pigs and chickens.
When night fell, the suspense began. Just about the time it turned dark, Grandma would take Rhonda into the woods to pick herbs. When you’re a big-city kid, walking in the woods at night can be a terrifying experience. When the grandmother with whom you are walking in the woods at night talks to the bushes before she picks their branches, terror is a more apt description. Rhonda hung onto Grandma’s skirt every step of the way, but she knew that if one of those bushes answered Grandma’s questions, Grandma would be on her own.
Rhonda was always relieved when she saw the porch lights that provided a beacon back to the house, where Grandma ritualistically prepared the collected herbs. Grandma carefully laid each bundle out before her on the porch. It was an unspoken signal for Uncle Jimmy to go inside. Silently, Grandma would pick up a bundle of herbs and pray over it. The prayers eventually gave way to the humming of a hymn, which continued until each leaf from every stem in the bunch had been picked and placed in a large metal washtub. Rhonda watched silently, resisting the urge to sing out loud when Grandma hummed her favorite hymns. When all of the leaves had been removed from the branches, Grandma covered the washtub with a white towel and motioned Rhonda into the house