The Blue Is Where God Lives

Copyright © 2023 Sharon Sochil WashingtonCover © 2023 ABRAMSPublished in 2023 by The Overlook Press,an imprint of ABRAMS.All rights reserved.No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.Library of Congress Control Number: 2022947228ISBN: 978-1-4197-6710-4eISBN: 978-1-64700-964-9The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The author and publisher make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this material.Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.ABRAMS The Art of Books195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007abramsbooks.com To Richard Peña, who said, when everyone else said the opposite:“You should write. You’re a really good writer.” PRE(R)AMBLEThey say it came from the ships. Living in the cracks of the planks. A memory inhibitor. Something designed to erase yourself. Sleeping on pillows made of ash. Dripping from the dicks of men the color of clouds and seeping into the material consciousness of our sleep. We didn’t really understand the severity of the situation. Language had been rerouted. Killings were rampant. We caught it. Ended up acting just like them.Those of us lining both sides of the ancient Gambia River became West Africans. West Africans became Geechee. Geechee became Black—a condition that created White people.Black folks lost themselves when they moved up north. And memories had the pleasure of being rescored in the palm of a new music and new tongues speaking wildly, pulled from the cracks of Creation like a demon with curses to pass out weekly on one of their most favorite holidays—Sunday. We cursed that day, making it so that if we worked on that day, they—the cloud-colored people—would end up no longer able to speak in tongues. An exorcism of almost six million Black folks left the open space of southern American landscapes that overwhelmed with dreams of red, yellow, orange, and blue—a sky so blue it makes you want to curl up and immerse yourself in it, and so wide dumbass motherfuckers thought they could touch it. Fools were always jumping off roofs trying to touch it. When southerners got up north, they found buildings so tall that they hid the sky. People from the south couldn’t get their balance, and they never did get their balance back. Ran some of them plum crazy, as the old folks used to say—plum crazy.The axe-wielding woman was one of them old Geechee people who moved north and went plum crazy.She held that axe to her grandson’s head, spewing threats that at first nobody took seriously, even though she had already made good on that fuckin’ promise. In Houston, Blue was kept in suspense for two hours before they told her the truth. It would have been more humane if they had just told her the truth from the beginning.This axe-wielding woman had unobtainable hopes about her actions. She hoped they would not be misinterpreted as a desperate act but as a radical gesture demanding that life should change and that things should end as they were. But this was no glorious call for revolution; it was the result of a fragmented self—and fragmented selves were so common by then that she barely drew a crowd, even though she had already started hacking into the boy’s mother.Eventually, when it was over, she was described as having no memory of the past two hours. Meanwhile, Blue was flooded with memories. Memories that belonged to that axe-wielding lunatic. And other memories that popped in and out of Blue’s mind like a jigsaw time line, making no sense at all. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Houston. To Detroit. South migrating north. Then the reverse. New York. To Houston. Then on down to the coast, where Texas and Mexico meet in the desert. The Detroit family. The East Texas Rose family. Moving on a nomadic time line also known as the diaspora, like motherless ants with no antennae. Unplanned re-memberings that work like severed limbs looking for a way to appendage themselves back to me.Because I changed too. I’m no different. But I did try to hold on to some elements of myself. Despite my efforts, the umbrella and the little white gloves overtook me. And as unfortunate as it was, those two hours did give me some time to start revealing myself, and the living history that has colonized me, initially perceived to be a Lie. But we do work that out later.As you may have guessed by now, I was there in Detroit, in proximity to Texas. When the blood gurgled from the mouth of Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, as her breath snagged in her throat, as her spirit struggled to slip away. Faint as it was, Tsitra held on to her life. Her body still working to pulsate streams of blood running onto the floor. Her dark skin turned purple from the bruising. Tsitra, lying on her right side, could see us. Lying there caked in her blood, she could see us. The axe-wielding woman holding Tsitra’s son in one hand and the Georgia-made axe in the other. She could see us. The baby not even crying at all. She could see us. Looking up at his grandmother through the biggest, blackest most innocent eyes you’ve ever seen. She could see us. Sitting on the floor next to her. She could see us. Comforting her. She could see us. Stroking her left cheek with the caress of a hand. She could see us. While his grandmother ranted and raved, she could see us.These two hours required me to rely on re-memberings rather than history because I know I cannot, should not, trust recorded history to help