What do you want to be…

It had become their custom –

especially during these pandemic times,
once the tightest restrictions were lifted
(for how long could it be that everyone remained isolated,
quarantined in their homes,
alone and apart from everyone else
in their usually noisy, active neighborhood)
and now that summer had arrived with day after day
of clear, cloudless, azure-blue skies,
making the storms of the spring season a distant memory –

to gather on the stoops of their homes,
alternating so that no one would, could claim primacy,
for such was the egalitarian spirit of their little community.

On occasion, appropriately physically-distant,
they played kick ball
and,
depending on who was present,
they’d double-dutch jump rope.
For it was an acquired skill.
Most anyone could turn the dual bands,
but not everyone dared to leap
into the opposite-direction rapidly simultaneously twirling strands,
and then, in a syncopated march of in-step skipping feet,
to become one with the rhythm of the ropes.

When, finally, fatigued, they’d sit again on another stoop;
there to talk about the events of the days and of their years.

“Do you think school will be open come August?”
“I hope so. I miss seeing all of our friends.”
“Me, too.”
“Yes, me, too.”

“It sure got hot.”
“Yeah, overnight.”
“Quick, fast, and in a hurry!”
“A real heat-wave.”
“Doesn’t look like it’ll break soon.”
“Nope, it sure doesn’t.”

A frigid silence, at first, over them suspended,
like a hefty winter cloak, descended,
sweeping over them, enfolding them;
no one wanting to be the first to air
what everyone knew was in the air.

Finally, Ruthie, ever the boldest,
most boisterous
(though she, too, had shared in their momentary collective quiet),
and, as all always confirmed,
the brightest among them, finally said,

“Okay, what do you all think about…”
“Ahmaud?”
“Yes.”
“And Breonna?”
“Yes.”
“And George?”
“Yes.”
“And Rayshard?”
“Yes.”

With each name
(none needing the addition of a surname,
for all felt bound to them as family;
distant relatives,
older, as yet unmet,
and, now, never to be met siblings of different mothers and fathers)
their voices lowered, almost to a whisper,
which, without saying
(they, each and all, knew)
was the murmur of lamentation;
their inner, individual spirits joined in communal voice.

“And,” Ruthie breaking the silence, raising her head, eying her friends, then clasping her hands, spoke slowly, solemnly, “Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley.”

“Who are they?”

“Who were they. The four little girls killed in the bombing, almost sixty years ago, of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, by the Ku Klux Klan. Three of them were fourteen. One was eleven. Our ages. They were us before we are us.”

“Okay, Ruthie, you brought all this…all them up. What do you think?”

“I don’t think. I feel.”

“Alright, then, what do you feel?”

“I feel afraid.”

“Afraid? Afraid of what?”

“Afraid to ask ourselves what do we want to be not when, but if we grow up?”

© 2020 PRA