Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Black Revolutionary Theater Weekly Deep
Podcast for the revolutionary writing that centers Black people, identities
and experiences. In The Vital Examinations of Our.
Speaker 2: Zeitgeist God Daughter by mia Ko Gavia read by Heather Harvey.
When the bullet hit Nina, she died, and there was
nothing anyone could do about it. That was the logic
of the world. Cars hit you and you die, Knives
pierce you and you die. Cops shoot you and you die.
If death were reversible, then no one, Nina thought, in
the deepest, most secret places of her heart, would have
use of Christianity, because then there would be no mystery.
Of course, Jesus would come right back. He'd rise up
like a vampire zombie with his twelve vampire zombie followers,
and they'd all eat his body and drink his blood
for breakfast, and then the King of Kings and the
fishers of men would set off to conquer the world.
He'd munch crunch crunch on the right hand of the Father,
and a whole forgiveness thing would be kind of moot,
because he'd wind up chewing the other cheek of whoever
nailed him to the damn cross anyway, or at least
that was what she told herself when she fell down.
When Nina was a young child in Indiana and would
have breakdowns of wailing and hitting and spitting, her mama
swore up and down that she was not her daughter.
You must be the devil's daughter, because my Nina don't
act like that, Mama, Justine would say. Sometimes the words
slid out like a sigh, sometimes like a curse. Sometimes
she just muttered it behind her teeth at the store,
clenching Nina's hand as she dragged her out to the
parking lot for a beating. Not a beating beating like
the kind that left van du Luth missing half a
pinky in three weeks of school, but a little beating,
the kind administered with a hair brush or a well
chosen switch, the kind that left Nina with temporary welts
and a permanent temper. Three years and two family counselors later,
Nina would learn that her beatings and Vond's were not
so different in essence, but that's a conversation for a
later time. The beatings and her mother's accompanying lectures drove
Nina crazy, and it made her want to act out more.
Every time her mother tried to beat her, Nina screeched
and spacked and clawed. She gave as good as she got,
and by the time she was twelve, the noise grew
so loud that one neighbor complained, then another, and eventually
Nina was sent to live with her mother's youngest sister,
Nina's godmother, Ain't Rita. Rita was not only her mama's
closest living relative, she was just about the only person
who could stand Justine For any bit of time. Rita
and Justine had turned out were completely complimentary. Rita was
an amazing baker and a soso cook, which was fine
because Justine was a fantastic look and a horrible baker.
Justine was an amazing singer, and Rita was a phenomenal dancer,
so once a month one would drive two hours to
the other's house and they'd hold concerts just for the
two of them. Justine was impeccably dressed and meticulously tidy.
Both Rita's style and her apartment were twin whirlwinds of
color and chachkei. But the most important fact for this
story is that all the qualities Mamma Justine tried to
stamp out of Nina, her wilfulness, her las fair attitude
toward wrinkled fabric, her tender headedness at the hot comb.
These were things that Annie Rita didn't care about in
the slightest. The things Rita did care about were which
mushrooms to gather to make fortatas, and when was the
best time to get out of bed for one's favorite cartoons,
and all the gentless ways to make Nina's hair spraying
into coily wranglets. But her favorite things were the ghost stories.
Annie Rita was the unofficial family historian, and I do
everything there was to know about their ancestors, stretching all
the way back pre emancipation. She knew about great great
great Grandma Gloria's run to freedom with Harriet Tubman. She
knew about how great great Grandpa fought in the Civil War.
And she knew, or said she knew, about the haints
and spirits that affected and afflicted the family. The haints,
aunt Rita said, were energies of ancestors manifest. They appeared
on strong, windy days and kept company with either demons
or angels or something unknown and more ancient. Some became
poltergeists of slave owners who forced their way into the
family line. Some became friendly nudges, telling one to use
these sort of spices in the stew or to take
a different path on half moon nights. But some, some
haints who were restless and RESTful all at once, who
had a particular purpose with the living, became a meld
of the African and their blood in any culture they touched,
and Aunt Rita's favorite of these were the hard She
told Nina this over dessert one night the two speared
hot dogs over a fancy camp stove in the park.
Anina giggled and gasped and quickd all at once. The
Harpies said. Rita came into the family line during the
nineteen hundreds Greek migration to Boston, when poor aegean Nkos
took great Grandma Betty for his secret wife. The two
had a tumultuous relationship that resulted in green eyed children
and a quiet yet ugly divorce. But their three daughters,
made of their sweat and sin and passion, told stories
of ancient Greek wind spirits that cleaved men in two
and carried them off in bloody pieces. The three sister's
sea glass eyes would flash as they stretched out their
skinny arms like talons. They'd speak of the bad men
on their father's side, carried away by their carrion starved lovers.
They'd speak of the sausages their great grandmothers would bring
back to their children in place of the men who
had beat or hassled them, or who'd taken their naive
husbands for fools. And they, like aunt Rita, cackled with glee.
But ain't Rita was dead, now passed six months from
a pain in her lung and soon Nina would be two. Already,
the policeman's bullet tore a jagged pain through her lungs,
and the sticky blood soaked her shoes, and final breaths
bubbled up from her throat. She didn't feel anything but
the thunk as she hit the carpet, the bullet's sharp
punch in her chest, and the final winds whushing from
her lungs. Just like aunt Rita, Nina thought, a tumor
in her chest, a bullet, and mine. She could hear
her mother screaming a minute ago. She was screaming in rage,
taking out her pain at Ain't Rita's passing on her
equally distraught daughter. The two had flung themselves at each other,
carrying into flesh and soul with razor sharp words. They
were loud again, too loud. Someone next door must have
called the police. Someone next door must have said they
were frightened. Someone next door must have asked for a
welfare check on poor Nina. Poor Nina was dying now,
or so Poor Nina thought. She thought her last breaths
would be short and stifling, but instead they kept going
and going and going, gaining strength. Her last death sigh
swirled about her, lifting her chest off the ground, convulsing
her middle as if she was vomiting to a sitting position.
This vomiting of air kept going. Nina then noticed that
the screaming was not coming from her mother, but from
the two policemen. Her mother was standing there, glassy eyed
as strong black wind punched its way through her throat.
In fact, the blood she now felt soaking the ankles
of her jeans was not coming from her either. The
black wind coming from Nina and Justine enveloped the screaming men,
and after a five minute eternity of sars, screeching winds,
and screeching, crunching, twisting flesh. The wind and the officers
were gone. Mostly there was hardly any blood left over.
The hungry wind had slurped that up like broth. But
there was the matter of the left over police car
to attend to, and potential alibis to plan, and the
disturbing gift of entrails left splattered across the tile foyer.
But Nina and her mother wouldn't worry about that. They
wouldn't know that the police officers were not only the
jerks of their department, but tied up in some unsavory activities,
and the normally dogged precinct was better for their loss.
They wouldn't know that a third wind had crumpled the
police car to the size of a pop can. All
they knew was that they were alive, and for the
moment safe. They embraced each other, apologizing and sobbing and
promising to be better. And they would be, But first
they had a floor to clean and sausages to make.
You've been listening to Black Revolutionary Theater Weekly, produced by
Black Revolutionary Theater Workshop. You can support BRTW by giving
us a like and a follow on Twitter or Instagram
at the BRTW and on Facebook at Black Revolutionary Theater Workshop.
And you can help us support and serve more black
and revolutionary artists by donating via Fractured Atlas or joining
the crew over at Patreon