In leaving my former employer it also, unfortunately, meant leaving behind my beloved creative writing group! However, I remain on the mailing list so that I can still attempt some prompt pieces when I have the chance. The first session since my departure centred on a great prompt: ‘Based on a true story’.
We were told, ‘You can be as liberal with the truth as you like (in this post-truth age)!’ I chose to tackle a historical event and to forge a fiction from the established facts. It’s a difficult subject to write about and to feel you’ve done justice to but one that I felt strongly about. Hopefully that comes through. Please do go and read about the event after reading this 500 word piece:
The Blast
There’s seven kids in the Collins family, one for each day God created the world. On a Sunday we wake like roosters so all of us got time to be made up to mama’s satisfaction before service. There’s four girls, me included, and three boys but they got they own room and we got ours. It’s a three bedroom house way down the terrace on 22nd Street. It is what it is.
Junie is 16 and the oldest, and never lets us forget it. That girl is so bossy I wonder she don’t think she mama herself, even though she only got two years on me. Junie and mama take the plaits outta our hair and comb it through, all straight like. Most Sundays I don’t see the point in the fuss when we gotta put on church hats anyway. But today’s the day I’ll be on the altar with my girlfriends singing during Reverend Cross’s sermon. We worked mighty hard getting our harmonies right and I want the whole congregation to be seeing, as well as hearing, perfection. My Sunday dress is my favourite: a navy blue one piece with a white collar. Daddy always looks sharp in his good suit and tie. Mama tries on dang near every hat she owns ‘til she satisfied her head done her lower-body justice.
We walk 10 blocks to 16th Street Baptist Church. Mama says money’s too tight for the bus. Besides, things been all unpredictable lately with black folk getting hurt ‘n hollered at on the buses. Mama says we need to keep our heads down and noses clean cos anything can flare up in Birmingham but daddy thinks different. Lotsa colored folks been marching again trying to get us the right to go to schools with white folks ‘stead of separate. Daddy and alotta other leaders been meeting at the church for some time figurin’ what’s next. I think I side with my daddy.
Church feels more like home than home do. Everybody’s gathered in a sea of smiles, organ’s playin’, my heart is leapin’. The girls be callin’ my name, ‘Addie!’ and I give em all hugs: Cynthia, Carole and Carol; I call em the three degrees. Until the service starts at 11, we free to get ready and do as we please. We head on down to the basement restrooms to put on our robes – laughing, hollering, excited to get on the altar. Cynthia says we should warm our voices. As we’re down in the basement no one can hear us. We all gather in a circle, hand in hand. I take a deep breath ready to lead the group. Then I am left breathless.
When the blast comes I don’t remember a white light or angels singing. The blast doesn’t care that we’re in our Sunday best, that we’re in God’s house, or that we’re excited for our moment. The blast, like ever’thing else in the city, seems indiscriminate with the souls of black folk.
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