The Smell of Ripe Grass

My spirit often fought this silent fury of growing up on the south side of the Southern Railroad tracks of living southern black.

Marginalized and cut-off from the right world and the right life. I never fought so hard in this invisible war until he came; I never felt the battle scars until he left.

His mother named him Edison, and that name has followed me every day of my life. When I turn on the house lights, burn macaroni and cheese in the microwave, and tap a few gospel keys on the church keyboard Edison pops up for no good reason. Not Thomas Edison, but Edison James. His sweet face, perfect dimples deeper than the slit in my Grandma Katie B’s hot apple pies, the smell of sweet tobacco behind his ear and the grape shaped birthmark underneath his right hip. Haunt me daily.

“Do you love me?” He had asked me over and over, but he wouldn’t let me respond for kissing me so much.

My fingers tapped his ribs as a sign of Yes; then he tumbled me to the ground and held me close. The smell of ripe grass seduced me even more and we lingered with the universe behind the big brown barn.

“I’m going away for two weeks to training camp in Statesboro. Are you gonna miss me?”

“No.” My hand shoved his leg off my thigh. “I’m attending that pediatric nursing workshop at Children’s Healthcare in Atlanta next week, too. Remember?”

Edison caught a fallen white magnolia blossom that fell out of the large tree we laid under. He then planted it through a set of cornrows above my ear. When he looked at me his eyes caught me off guard. They matched the blueberry bunches that marked the dirt path leading to our hideaway.

“I’ll be gone for as long as you and if things work out I’ll have a job waiting for me after graduation. Remember?”

“Yeah.” He caressed the magnolia blossom and my face. “I remember, but still… You’ll miss me. Right?”

I took the flower out of my hair and placed it in his hand. “Whatever.”

Edison hiked one of his strong legs over my two petite ones and looked me in the eye. “Why’d you do that?”

I couldn’t look at him.

“I think you’re gonna miss me.” He grinned.

His smile was contagious, so I let myself go with a teary grin and a whispered confession, “So.”

“I’m glad. Then the time will fly by.”

He put the magnolia blossom back in my hair.
The roundness of my behind helped me to pivot my body and to thrust Edison’s leg off mine with little force.

“It’ll be longer than a fly by. I won’t see you again…not like this.”

He stood tall over me, mirroring the magnolia tree. Edison smelled of Irish Spring and Calvin Klein mixed with the sprays grass from the field. When he pulled me close, I swooned from his perfect scent.

“That won’t happen, Yasmine. ‘“Wherever I go, you go. Wherever you go, I go…” His voice always caught the wind-a seductive whistle. ”Cause I love ya too much.”

My cheek muscles flamed and my lips feverish. “But it won’t matter. After graduation you’ll treat me like you used to. You’ll ignore me and act like you don’t know me, and I’ll have no choice but to do the same.”

“I wasn’t acting. I didn’t know you then and you’re being melodramatic as usual.”

Not melodramatic. Just black. Edison lived in a renovated plantation house and his father dreamed of separating from the north again every time Valdosta’s annual Juneteenth Celebration Parade closed down Ashley Street. Segregation still existed in South Georgia. It didn’t matter how many years had passed since Martin Luther King’s March on Washington and how many African American women won the Miss America pageant. Most folk fought hard against change. Not race, nor class, but change.

The magnolia trees and the blueberry bunches welcomed change season after season, but not us. No matter how inevitable.

I dusted the remaining grass off my shorts, and said, “Well, then forget my melodramatic behind at camp. It’s the best thing for the both of us.”

And then without a warning I ran away from Edison and his uncle’s pasture as fast as my short legs could extend themselves. Edison, a first string running back at Valdosta State, preparing for a professional career in the NFL couldn’t catch my stride. My life ran away from too many unchangeable things.

As I sprinted in that sweltering summer heat, my sweat and tears stung my cheeks and I deserved this punishment until Edison showed up on my doorstep, banging on my Mama’s front door.

“Excuse, you!” My brother, Terrance stood over the door.

This year T won the best left-defensive tackle in the SEC. All-SEC, in fact. T loved to tackle the white quarterbacks. Football was payback for many wrongs in our lives, he often said to my Mama when she questioned his aggression.

“Whatchu doin' here, James?” T’s voice thundered down the foyer.

“I need to see Yasmine.” Edison’s head up high, but not higher than T’s.

“Whatchu need to see her for?”

I visualized T’s thick eyebrows frowning into perfect upside-down V's.

“Come on, man. Can you just let me in? I need to see her.”

“Ttttt.” T sneered and turned around to see me hiding behind the dining room wall. “I ain’t gone let you in my house, partner. Why you asking for my sister anyway?”

Terrance backed Edison out the screen door, and then shut it behind him.

Edison’s cheeks turned plum red. “Yasmine and I lo-“

Before Edison finished his declaration, T leaped on him and threw them both off the porch. My legs trembled and I couldn’t move. Thank God Mama heard the rumble and ran from the kitchen.

“Lord, have mercy!” Mama hit T on the back. “

Terrance Jerome Anderson, get off that boy! Right now!”

When T stepped back I saw Edison lying in the dirt folded into the ground. A broken brick from the porch lay underneath his sun-bleached head. The color of his crimson cheeks flowed into the red Georgia clay. A bright light burned in the sky, while buzzards circled wildly and a chilled wind swooped in from the Okefenokee Swamp. My heart lodged into my throat and the tears fell like an afternoon thundershower-fast and hard.
I ran to Edison’s side, holding his bruised face and rocking him in my lap.

“Call the ambulance!”

Mama stood there with her hands clasped tight over her mouth and T ran off into the woods. A bubbling fury boiled in my soul when Edison breathed his last breath. The smell of dirt became a permanent stench in my nose.

T died that day, too. Sheriff Hogan coincidentally found him in Ocean Pond, a restricted and private lake for the rich white folks of Lake Park. The newspapers reported he drowned, but T lettered on the varsity swim team and worked as senior lifeguard at Southside Recreation Center. No one questioned T’s death and neither did I. I prepared for other battles to fight.