To Live and Grieve in LA, Part Three - Mama's Hands

I miss my mother’s hands. I dreamed of them last night. Small, soft, covered in rings (she insisted that a lady wears jewelry), smelling like White Diamonds or Red Door, and perfect red nails. She got her nails done regularly, not too long, not too short, always red with little touches of gold. Her favorite nail lady lways tried to get her to try a different design, a new color, but she saw no reason to change it. She liked what she liked and that was that. That’s how she was about everything. You knew for sure that any Yes or No she gave you was a firm one. She, and her hands, were steady and steadying because of that. Her hands were how she showed love, that she was there.

Her hands braided my hair, scratched my scalp, and applied Super Gro hair grease between the rows. My sisters and I all had the same braid pattern, two swooping bangs and a swirly cornrows that ended in a tidy bun on our crowns. Looking back, it was probably the only pattern she knew, but it was our pattern. I remember the sound of her breathing as I sat between her knees. She would turn my head this way and that, and her hands would pop me on the shoulder if I pulled away or fidgeted. You could feel every single strand of hair being twisted into place as she softly sang “Jesus, Light of the World”.

There was a large scar on one her hands (I’m devastated that I can’t remember which one). About the size of a silver dollar. I remember how the ridges of it felt, how it was about two shades lighter than the rest of her hand. She got this scar as a child. She was running away from what she thought was the Klan, and sliced it open when she crashed through a door to escape. It wasn’t the Klan, but was still something she had to heal from. When I would stare at it, I remember that once she was a girl, growing into womanhood in a society that hated people like us so much that the threat of them coming to attack your family, real or imagined, was enough to traumatize. I mourn that she had to face that fear as a child. Sometimes that fear made her hold onto tighter than she intended. she didn’t want us to experience pain, not if she could help it. But pain and trauma of all stripes find you, no matter how our parents view their responibility to keep it from happening. And when those times did find us, she was right there, guiding us through them.

I remember her hands cooking for us. She revealed to me recently that she never actually liked cooking, but since kids insist on eating, she managed. She taught us to cook early, partly because she didn’t want to, mostly because she wanted us to know how to take care of ourselves. There were the routine meals - spaghetti meant that Mom and Dad were going out and that I was babysitting. Mom pulling out her Pampered Chef stoneware, we were meant having a dinner people over for dinner. My Dad was in the Army, and they would invite his soldiers over for a break from the Mess Hall. They would host house parties, where I learned how to make daiquiris and how to carry a conversation. We learned how to lay a perfect table and how to care for silver. She always put out her best for guests - silver, cloth napkins, one of her many sets of china. She used to buy sets of china and cutlery in threes, so that her daughters would have the best on their tables too.

I grew up in Europe due to my parents’ careers, but at meal times, we were still in South Carolina. Even though she didn’t enjoy cooking, she was a master at it. I would watch her hands create magic, each pot contained its own spell. She had this old tattered recipe book full of recipes. Some of the pages were so thumbed through that you could barely see the ingrediants, but it never really mattered. She cooked food by memory, by rote. Her hands were guided by the same ancestors that guide mine now. The recipe book was her own sort of grimoire, a story of generations of love and making do and family.

One time I finally convinced her to teach me how to make her red rice. There’s something about learning to cook Red Rice in a pot that’s older than you that hits different. She wouldn’t let me write things down, she wanted me to just watch her hands (besides, “no one has time to wait for you to take notes, Faye,” she would say). She did let me take photos as we worked, and those pictures now serve as my Red Rice recipe. I don’t really need it, because she was right, watching her hands really locked in what I needed (plus she made me repeat every step, once a teacher, always a teacher). There are little lessons hidden in each photo, like how Roger Wood is the only acceptable sausage for your red rice, covering your hands in salt before chopping an onion to keep from crying, (because Salt is protection), and how to measure the water for rice with your finger.

But one of my most impactful memories I have about her hands is how I had the honor of taking care of them. I’ve cared for my mother at different times, and it always felt like the most natural thing in the world, caring for the body that raised mine. Last December, I held her hand as we sat the table, massaging the skin with lemon scented lotion. I will always remember the scent of that lotion, the sharrpness of the lemon, the feel of it as it absorbed into her arms. The way she watched me in my work, amused that I wouldn’t let my Mama go around with dry hands. I just loved her so much, and i think that moment is a gift - Mother and Daughter, silently applying love and prayers to each other.