Wind Chimes (for Nipsey)
It was a sunny day, but Mrs. Williams was not in the best mood.
Her brow was furrowed, and her protruding lips which usually puckered out as though she was going to either kiss you, or spit on you, were now persed together tightly as she squeezed out tense words to the 6 little kids in front of her. As she paced back and forth, a few slivers of sunshine cut through the burgular bars and drapes of her cluttered living room and lit up her wrinkled brown face. She was the exact color I see when I press a fresh brown Crayola firmly against a sheet of white paper and scribble sloppily until the tip turns flat.
"I told you children (pronounced: "churrrdren") DO NOT go in my garden!" she snarled.
"Theres spiders, and bees, and even birds that can peck your little eyes out," she continued, "What if something happen to y'all?"
We listened guiltily, our curiosity having already outweighed the dangers in Mrs. Williams little garden. There were tiny buds of unknown plants growing just above the soil, fully bloomed sunflowers dancing in the breeze, a little patch of bluebonnets, and vines clinging and climbing the worn wooden fencing. In the corner of the garden, a skinny rectangular pot held a tall plant with a few unripe cherry tomatoes hanging from its green branches. As we chased each other, zigzagging around flowers, two birds quickly swooped in from the overhanging trees. Uninterested in our movements, they perched on the edge of the pot, their beaks pecking and piercing the new tomatoes. We watched in awe and sadness as each of the tomatoes skin was broken - the birds pecking at the flesh and wetting their beaks with the juices bleeding from the fruit. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the jingle of metal-on-metal and a random melody echoing loudly throughout the entire garden. The birds, startled, flapped and fluttered before leaping from the edge of the tomato pot and flying off into the distance. The noise broke all of us out of our trance and we turned to David, at the front of the garden, by the fence. His little brown hands shook in anger; one was balled in a fist, the other held a long stick - and he spoke, as if he was responding to a question we had all asked in our minds: "I just wanted to scare away the birds...they were killing all the plants, and taking all the fruit". His voice shook, but we nodded in agreement, finally noticing the clusters of metal rods and bells suspended above us, hanging from wire strung across the garden - far above our heads. David had grabbed the longest stick he could find and swung it into the heavens - banging and clanking anything he could. We stood there over a minute later, stil hypnotized, the sounds still echoing - only softer now...less menacing and chaotic; it felt like music was floating down from the sky.
It was all this commotion and jingling that had alerted Mrs. Williams to our location.
"David, you're always making some kind of noise and fuss somewhere! I want you to sit your little butt in that corner, and don't say a word there until ya daddy comes to pick you up!"
"The rest of you, I'ma say it for the last time - DO NOT go running 'round my garden!"
That was over 20 years ago.
I woke up today realizing that there will always be a need to enrich and protect our communities - the youth and their potential - and the first fruits they produce; our music, our minds, our inventions, our economic power through business. There will always be outside forces that swoop into our communities to pillage, damage and even kill us or what we own with little regard for the repercussions of their actions. They don't know how much love, care, feeding, support went into growing a healthy young black child, into growing a small business, or even into growing enough income to send a kid to college.
Some of us have an inherent purpose to use our lives to touch the wind chimes...to sound off in a way that may sound harsh to some, but that shows those outside our community that someone is keeping watch. That sound lasts...and as time passes, you start to hear the music behind it. You realize it was never really chaos. As the wind chimes slow, you hear a melody that comforts people and attracts the world to listen.
I never saw David again. He was never perfect; he had always been in a bit of trouble. But I remembered him. So every time a bird would perch in my parent's little garden in our backyard, I would yell and run towards it. No stick or wind chimes to aid me...I realized I could simply use my voice.
RIP Ermias.
