Death says, “I’ll be there when I am.” I place the receiver on the hook without saying goodbye. I’m not thrilled about this. I washed the tableware by hand and have dishes in the warmer. I won’t remove the dishes until the last possible moment so the food warms the plate and the plate warms the food. I have too many settings in preparation and not all for use. Sometimes Death hasn’t the slightest consideration for my wants. This isn’t the first time they’ve called right before serving to say they won’t show up. I have to remember Death isn’t a want but a condition. The others— Hope, Birth, Faith, Power, Grace, yes, the whole lot—will arrive soon, as they tend to travel grouped together, or so the other neighbours say.
My dress is starched and ironed; the pleats of its skirt make a charming fan. My nails are buffed and painted matte yellow; my shoes are operant and polished. My hair is coiffed using the finest oils Money can buy. Money won’t be in attendance this evening. Money tends to articulate its presence through a certain absence, shows what it can do before where it comes from. Almost, I respect it. Almost, I understand. Money is a paper body prone to being grabbed and torn and stolen. Its body is a very fragile thing. Travelling may prove too dangerous for it.
I unconcern myself with the things I can’t control and concern myself with the things I can: the sweetness of the soup starter; the order of songs I will play during the evening; the temperature of my home; the caliber of the questions I will ask.
The situation isn’t as strange as it seems. I won’t bore you with the details of event planning. I will say I moved to this neighbourhood anticipating receiving answers. I once lived in the Neighbourhood of Organized Religion—where one could consult the gods—but the gods were too vaporous and too many of their adherents insisted on showing up to dinner in the gods’ place. While I always have enough food to share, I don’t always have patience to share it. I don’t call myself a good person which helps in alleviating any unnecessary over-curiosity in and of my own capacity for shortcomings. The neighbourhood of the gods—generally green, temperate and pleasant—presented too many avenues for people to speak definitively on the Why? without much evidence of How? beyond dogma. Why? is a barren tree if a soaker hose of How? isn’t used to water it.
So I moved here, to the Neighbourhood of How.
The neighbours are as curious as the weather as the place. Each day’s weather occurs as a riddle and we figure it out. The weather report is a list of conditions devoid of the approval or disapproval of the person delivering them. In a different universe, listing conditions would be called Facts, but here we call them Rounds of Happening. The Neighbourhood of How is subject to a lot of difference—fur hats and stockingless legs on “blustery” evenings; goose down parkas and bikinis and long-sleeved shirts on “high humidity” mornings—and the difference is welcomed because all persons in the Neighbourhood of How have relinquished rights of Punishment by Judgement and simply do, as they see fit, in their understanding of How?.
I will also say the journey to this neighbourhood wasn’t easy. I’ve lived in many other places: The Neighbourhood of What; Absolute Yes; Impenetrable No; and Because. (Because was my least favourite: constantly on fire with no desire or direction to draw the fires tame.) It took a great deal of time to reach the clarity of mind needed to agree to the stipulations of living here. Upon signing my lease, I had to relinquish Knowledge and accept Persistence to Study. I’d always wanted to live here but cared too much about Knowing to be ready. I spent a lot of time Knowing in fixed, half-decorated houses, houses as incomplete as the neighbourhoods themselves. But now I ask, How? and my home is furnished with all the movables I need and can experience.
At half past five, the doorbell rings. I pinch a pleat to remind myself of its stiffness, to remind myself this is happening and I am ready to serve the guests who’ve often served me.
I don’t look through the peephole, compose my face, and place my hand on the knob. “Be we as you are,” I whisper.
I open the door and across the threshold are my colourful guests. Although they’re more auras than bodies, many have hands and feet.
“Come in, come in! Make yourselves welcome.” I step aside, they pass through the door, and glide to the dining room. Their hunger is direct.
At the square table set for eight, the auras take their places behind the chairs and wait. Hope pairs with Love, Birth pairs with Faith, Power with Grace, and I pair with Alone, not a conditional guest but a long-term, cached resident of every house I’ve lived in.
I go to the kitchen and remove the dinner plates. The plates are so warm to the touch I giggle. Grace, a purple aura with three hands, and Power, a clear aura with two feet and a staff, join me and say in unison, “Need help?”
I turn to them and wonder why I didn’t ask for help when I’ve got who I’ve got in my house. A significant part of learning How? is learning How to Phrase which really means learning How to Identify the Distance of Vulnerabilities. Does vulnerability inhabit the length of a slip? A fall exposing dishes, now shattered, as surrogate panels of care gifted to you by a loved someone who no longer lives—can live— in neighbourhoods like these? What is the distance of loss?
“Yes, I do need help. May you help me?”
Power touches its staff to my leg and I feel Forgiveness rush into the house, embrace me kindly and barrel through the unopened backdoor. Grace grabs the plates from my arms and floats back to the dining room. I exhale.
I return to the dining room with the soup starter on a silver tray. The guests are seated. While only Birth has a mouth, I sense they are all smiling and I smile too.
Love—a mammoth, green aura that speaks in song—sing-asks, “Do you want to serve dinner? Or should we serve ourselves?”
I settle in my chair. My forehead loosens its scroll of worry wrinkles and I pause. My mouth is open but unmoving.
Hope, the most standard body of the bunch, is Lilliputian and sturdy with the head of a cyclops and the rest of its body covered with pairs of eyes. “We will believe no less of you if we are to serve ourselves. We are more than what we make and take. We are what we can and do give.” Hope speaks through a series of blinks that writes words in the air for all of us to read, feel, and hear.
Birth and Faith, conjoined and complimentary pinkish auras, say, “Leave it to Hope to put on a flickering light show for every little thing Love does.”
We all laugh and my scroll of worry further unloosens. I soften my eyes and say, “Yes, among friends, we serve ourselves and each other.”
The guests radiate Joy—a hovering light that switches on when Laughter is thick—and the house is full with warm candor. The pleats of my dress lose their shape (the fan now a curtain); my hair frizzes out of its prescribed style and my head reveals its crown, a thick black bush of pen spring coils and z-shaped strands also called lightning.
Dinner lasts for many hours. Birth and Faith chat the most. Faith speculates the plausibility of inconceivable phenomena; Birth travels between dimensions of space and time to bring the inconceivable into Being. Between the second and third courses, a bleating baby goat in a sequin jacket meanders into the dining room all because Faith suggested it would be funny, Power agreed by striking down its staff and Birth opened its mouth to expectorate it.
Grace asks questions like, “How do you bring about Peace?” and Power asks questions like, “Who’s Peace? What do they carry? Do you know if they even want to be here with us?” Power, a gentle receiver, doesn’t know who anyone is and asks for individuals to identify themselves first. I like Grace and Power because they don’t rule by force but they do persist through benevolent inquiry.
Hope writes our responses on the ceiling and Love sings them aloud for us to hear again. Love is the most radiant of the bunch and it is easy to understand how the others, myself included, shine through them.
After dessert, the guests ask for a hug. The auras embrace me and I see nothing but an expansive, thawing darkness. I am not scared or lost; I am together and finding. After the embrace, Love sings, “See you soon. We all know how to meet each other now.” They all file out; Birth exits last, smiling.
I close the door and lean against it. I breathe from the belly and realize: the questions I end up asking are never ones founded and plucked from planning.
At half past eleven, the doorbell rings. I scramble out of bed. I put on my slip shoes and terry cloth housecoat. I tiptoe to the door and peer through the peephole. All I see is brightness and cannot tell if I have somehow, without notice, skipped rest and am viewing a new part of morning. I open the door. The light asks, “Too late for tea and a transition?” I feel my body losing energy, growing limp with the Knowledge I’d relinquished. “Of course not,” I say and widen the opening, inviting the glow in. Death enters and sits on the bottom stair. I go to the kitchen, fill the kettle, and turn the burner on high. Death’s effulgence consumes the house. My limbs begin to lose coordination.
“Do you take honey with your tea? It’s Passiflora.”
As the water comes to a boil, the kettle releases a shrill skirl, and Death says, “Yes.” I swear to you, Death’s voice is no different from a protracted, strident chorus of chirps, like adult oscines singing their infant songs, before the blue-black of night yellowing into dawn, right after a torrent and tree leaves are still heavy and dripping wet.
Joselia Rebekah Hughes is a disabled Afro-Caribbean writer and artist based in the Bronx, NY. Some of her writing has appeared in Apogee Journal, Leste Magazine, and Ocean State Review. Her debut full length text, Blackable: A Nopem, is forthcoming on Inpatient Press.
Image description: An abstract digital artwork made of layers upon layers of outlines and cut out shapes within a square space. The foundation is a rich burgundy. Atop that, a comingling of shockingly vibrant red, purple, blue, lime green, and turquoise shapes with smooth, rounded edges and shapes cut out in black with sharper angles and lanky lines and curves. The black cutouts have edges highlighted by chalky lines in purple, teal, and white. The highlighted black shapes appear like dancing figures, animals, stretching limbs, wings, capes, reaching in all directions, filling the space with an exuberant sensation of motion.
Above: Joselia R. Hughes, It’s Always Been Both, 2020. Digital drawing.
Image description: A digital artwork showing a set of stylized figures that are made of black lines—thick and thin, wavy and straight, meandering and focused—and negative space where the background shows through. The figures are set on a painted background, a mix of thick brush strokes and speckled dabs in lilac, purple, orange, salmon, and fuchsia. In places, a layer of texture, like knotted string or fingerprints, shows through portions of the figures.
This article is published in issue 38.2 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue
Since you're here
BlackFlash exists thanks to support from its readers. We are a not-for-profit organization. If you value our content, consider supporting BlackFlash by subscribing to the magazine or making a donation. A subscription gets you 3 beautiful issues per year delivered to your door, and any donation over $25 gets a tax receipt. Your support helps compensate our staff and contributors for their hard work.