Speaker 1: Bandana Country, Episode three, eight minutes and forty six seconds.
We watched together horrified. When it was over, Solange got
up and practically ran outside, no mask, no shoes. I
didn't stop her. I wanted to. I wanted to tell
her that I didn't want to be alone. I wanted
to tell her that we weren't far enough away. I
wanted to tell her that even though she'd whisked me
away to this black snow globe where I hadn't seen
a white person, let alone a cop, in months. I
wanted to keep running, but she was already gone, Babe,
I'm not stopping.
Speaker 2: You can't make me stop.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to stop. You just put these on
boots and a mask. I watched her put them on
before she picked the axe back up and kept chopping.
I didn't know why she was chopping or what she
was making, but make me one love you sugar. Where
are we going?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how long we drove around, not exactly
in circles, but also not on a direct route. I'm
not sure where we landed, somewhere outside of Bandana Country,
where only white faces peeked out at the sound of
Solange's grandmother's hooptee. We stepped in front of a building
that looked a bit like an old timey schoolhouse, but
upon closer inspection was a county court jail and police department.
She chopped out, grabbed her sign, the fixed to a
freshly shaved wooden steak, and stood in front of the building.
Speaker 2: No cops, no KKK, no Fascist USA. No cops, no KKK,
no Fascist USA. No cops, no KKK, no Fascist USA.
Speaker 1: I'm going to join her. We chanted alone for a
while until one of the white faces disappeared from behind
her window and rushed outside. Celan gave her one of
the extra signs, and shortly thereafter, an uncertain voice announced
no Fascist USA in front of the county building, before
failing to chant the rest. At the end of the night,
when it felt right to leave, the white woman tried
to hug Celange. Soland rebuffed her, and as a rule
of thumb, I grabbed my recorder at the slightest hint
of white tears. It didn't manage to start recording before
the white woman finished talking. But then again, this isn't
about her, is it.
Speaker 2: You know what you can do for me? Go get
your neighbors and tell them to come outside. Matter of fact,
take all these signs and hand them out. Y'all, march
and protest and show up and vote. We keep doing
this shit, and y'all keep acting like we're talking about
something new. Y'all can't even keep your hands off us
in a goddamn pandemic. So why don't you try remembering
us this time? Remember us when you're giving your money
and your time and your votes to racists. Remember us
when you're calling the cops on a black man for
living his life. Remember how invested you were in convincing
me you were one of the good ones. And remember
why it's impossible for me to believe you.
Speaker 1: We drove back to Bandana Country in near silence. There's
too much to think about about black death and white privilege,
about how well meaning whiteness exists on the same continuum
with the white that suppresses, the white that enslaves, the
white that hills. And I know there are some who
may think Solande was too harsh on this woman, but
I'm proud of her. She's right. No more praise for
well meaning white people, no more slow claps for cops,
hugging black kids. No more leniency. That lady did the
absolute least she could do, and at this point, the
least white people can do for us is everything.
Speaker 3: When Moses went out into his brother, what did he see?
Speaker 4: Exs.
Speaker 3: Two eleven tells us that he saw their Birden's saints.
Matter of fact, he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew.
And what did Moses do when he saw this Egyptian,
this authoritative figure, this representative of Fah beyond reproach, beating
his brother, Saints?
Speaker 4: Moses took a look around. Ha ha. He looked left,
he looked right, and guess who was there?
Speaker 3: Nobody, I said, nobody, Saints. Wasn't no politician promising him
that his life imagines. Wasn't no police commissioner swearing they
do better next time. Wasn't caring at the cookout with
the raisins and the potato salad. When the Egyptian was
beating a brother to death, Moses found himself alone, and
he picked his people.
Speaker 2: Saints.
Speaker 4: We're well beyond one Egyptian.
Speaker 3: On today, We've got cops decked out like soldiers, beating
up on kids who just.
Speaker 4: Want to tell them black lives matter.
Speaker 3: Prayer, yos, It's time to pray with your feeds.
Speaker 4: We got faith to move mountains. That ain't nothing wrong
with giving it a good he hoo. Amen.
Speaker 3: Now I'm stepping off of this pool pitch and I'm
marching down to the County Beuty and whatever whatever comes
to my spirit is coming out of my mouth on
this day that the Lord has made.
Speaker 1: And just like that, Mishop Ballad organized and led the
single largest protest in Bandanic country history. But first, I
didn't understand the sudden interest in social justice from a
man who did cried reproductive rights, spewed homophobic vitriol from
the pulpit, and insisted that a pandemic was really just
a divine trial. I call it dangerous because it is dangerous,
but it's also something else. It's the space between the
fragmented pieces of a soul that W. E. B. Du
Bois famously called double consciousness. It's the arduous journey of
a people who first learned themselves through a racist lens,
a sexist lens, a homophobic lens, and then only has
a lifetime to undo multiple generations of hatred. It's the
impulse to keep your boot on someone else's neck while
marching to relieve yourself of the boot on yours. Nearly
three months into my stay, Bandana Country still felt like
a world on the other side of a looking glass,
but this moment sucked each of us into the same
chaotic universe. Even solangees unc Gert marched and it was electric.
After weeks and weeks of feeling alone and powerless, we
felt like we could actually affect some kind of change.
The days bled into one another, marching shouting rents repeat,
I think her uncle James's home going snuck up on her.
Speaker 2: You coming, Yeah, I just need a minute.
Speaker 1: Want me to wait with you. I'll wait with you,
and I did. She was fully dressed in her black
jeans and black top, but she held her shoes in
her hands. The home going was on the other side
of an apple orchard that separates her grandmother's house from
the church grounds of the upper room Apostolic. The other trees,
the ones that don't bear fruit, boast colorful glass bottles
on their branches in their place, and it occurs to me,
I'm in a magical place, a place where multicolored glass
bottles adorn tree branches and people speak in tongues alone,
heads bowed beside brown water, and if you listen closely,
you can hear Bandanna Country reassure itself he has not
forsaken us.
Speaker 5: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Fuck this, oh shit.
Speaker 1: For the second time in a week, Solange took off
running at her Big Mama's door, but this time she
didn't stop. She kept running, pasted a half finished shed
into tall grass over nearly hidden razor wire, only stopping
where the ground gave to murky brown water. As a
matter of principle, I normally wouldn't record this, but she
brought it up, and well, just listen, can you repeat
what you just said?
Speaker 2: Have I ever given you a lucky rock?
Speaker 1: No? What are you doing? You're getting all dirty.
Speaker 2: They're hard to find, but I'd always managed to scare
one up over here. And you can't keep it for yourself,
you have to give it to someone else. Big Mama
would give me one every time I came back home,
and I don't even know where I put them all.
I haven't had one in years. No one else would
give me.
Speaker 1: One, babe. Why don't we go back? Got it? She
rinsed it in the pond until I could see a
reddish brown, surprisingly smooth, oval shaped rock, and to be honest,
it didn't look like anything special. Babe, It's just a rock.
Speaker 2: I know they're full of shit, but Big Mama believed
in them all a bandana country does and bottle trees
and covered mirrors when it rains and dreams. I know
it's all bullshit, but I just want to believe that
it'll be okay. And they do, They know it in
their bones.
Speaker 1: She holds out the lucky rock to me, and for
a moment, I don't know what to do. It's so
painfully ordinary and a little bit gross, fresh out of
the mud and pond water, but I take it. It's
surprisingly soft and smooth to the touch. I look at
it in my palm and think, these lucky rocks, rich
red brown color seem appropriate, passed down between so many
pairs of brown hands, imbued with such significance, beneath so
many pairs of brown eyes.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I left. I'm free, freer than Big Mama
or Uncle James or Mary ever got to be. But
it's all going to shit, and everyone here believes it'll
be okay, and I just want a piece of that
Anchor and Bishop Ballad can be backwards and dangerous, but
sometimes I wish to see the world through their eyes,
just for a little bit. I wish I believed that
Lazarus rose so I could believe enough to raise Big
Mama up. And I know, God, she'd be so disappointed.
She'd want to fix me. She'd try. She'd beat me,
lay hands on me, maybe even drown me in holy
water until she's satisfied that the demon is gone and
I just stopped failing her. But maybe she'd just sit
with me and hold lucky rocks between our hands and
praying tongues until it just stopped. Don't you want it
to just stop, just for a second. Maybe I could
raise her up, just for a little while, give her
back to the Lord before she cursed me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to fight her, to tell her she craved
a Faustian bargain, that the faith she put on a
pedestal came with too much sacrifice. But she clearly knows
that better than me. And maybe what I really wanted
to fight was the distance between me and this inconsolable
corner of her heart that broke the day her grandmother died,
begging her to come back to the church. There's nothing
I could say to reach that hurt, so I pushed
the rock into my pocket and led her back home.
We booked our return flights the next day, giving ourselves
a couple more weeks to get our affairs in order.
The churches had been allowed to reopen, and Bishop Ballard
celebrated with a fish fry in the church gardens. The
upper Room regularly led marches and organized the people of
Bandanna Country to write letters, petition, and call their representatives.
Aunt Gert kept leaving us meals that after twelve weeks,
I can finally digest polk salad without issue. At some point,
I'd realized that Celune had actually given me my second
lucky rock. The first had been tucked neatly away with
my recording equipment since Mary handed it to me. But
the crown jewel of the summer was on Friday, June nineteenth,
when Selange whisked me out of her Big Mama's house
and into the backyard.
Speaker 2: You recording always so set the scene.
Speaker 1: I'm standing behind Solange's house, left to her by her grandmother,
known affectionately as Big Mama.
Speaker 2: Mm hm, tell them what you see.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There are tall trees with verdant canopies,
fields of god knows what, but it's all delicious in
the right hands, an old shed no one knows how
to get into, and an old school straw broom on
the ground not too far from the shed.
Speaker 2: Come here.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a second. I got the first lucky rock
and pressed it into her palm. I knew I couldn't
pray with her. I don't know how, and I don't
believe everything will be okay. I know it'll be challenging,
but I will work with her every moment I can
to make the next moment better.
Speaker 2: You ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: And then we jumped the room. What would your big
mama say if she saw us jumping the room behind
her house?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but she wouldn't call you my room mate.
That's a shore, Amen, Jesus take the wheel show.
Speaker 1: That's a good one.
Speaker 5: Let's keep it. You were listening to Bandana Country, written
and directed by H Harvey, Line produced by Tim Craig,
Audio produced by Max Ade, starring Nakogavia as Rosa, Jasmine
Boone as Solange, and featuring Tim Craig and Brittany Michelle
as chorus including Aunt gert Mary Bishop Ballard, uncles, aunts,
and newscasters. Produced and presented by Black Revolutionary Theater Workshop,
twenty twenty five. All rights reserved,