I’ve forgotten what I came to say.

It’s

sorta

like

as

if

it was gonna be about Juneteenth

the one that’s just gone by

and

it

was

gonna

maybe

start

with

something

like

“Why hello, Ms Hemings, Are You the One Whose Family Works for Thom?”

 

Or maybe that was gonna be its title.

I mean I capitalized all the right words.

Save one. And I wonder what it means that I

didn’t?

couldn’t?

wouldn’t?

capitalize an H hello.

 

Oh,

I remember now,

I was distracted.

Right.

By an email.

By an email about an Arthur Miller play,

the one called Incident at Vichy,

that I was in when just a boy of twenty six

or maybe I was twenty seven.

Either way,

I thought I was a man then

and I was scared of being thirty.

 

The distraction of the email

or

perhaps

remembering the fear of being

thirty

took me not to Vichy

but to Paris

when I’d become a man of sixty two

or maybe I was sixty three.

Either way,

I knew I was a boy then

and I was scared of sixty five.

 

In Paris

every day

to get to butoh class…

You know butoh, right?

The dance?

The one where you move slow enough

that your body empties

and the spirits of your relatives

who exploded with Hiroshima

or maybe it was Nagasaki

can enter you

and have their say

embodied?

 

so anyway

every day

I had to leave what used to be the Hotel California…

I know,

I know,

but that’s what they used to call it

back then when I was there.

Just bear with me, will ya?

Thanks.

 

so anyway

every day

I had to leave the Left Bank’s Hotel California

and cross

the Bridge of the Archbishopric…

aka The Pont de l’Archevêché

but I prefer the English word Archbishopric

in hopeful hopes

that your first-class brain

will bounce toward boarding schools

and indigenous Canadians

and bodily remains.

 

so anyway I crossed The Pont de l’Archevêché

to cut behind Notre-Dame de Pari

to take the Pont Saint-Louis

to cross the Pont Louis Philippe

so I could saunter up Rue Vieille du Temple

to get to butoh class.

 

Oh.

Right.

My distracted-by-butoh point here

is

that

on the ass-end of Île de la Cité

right there in Notre-Dame’s backyard

there were

and still most likely are

some steps

down to the water

and

there’s a gate there to stop you from going

down

and the gate

was always

locked.

 

One day

on the way home from butoh class

the gate was unlocked and open

and

I

went

down

the

steps

and

at the bottom of the stairs

I found myself…

or at least I found a part of me I’ve carried ever since.

 

so anyway

I found myself

looking at the Seine

from the oh so disadvantaged point

of the

mémorial des martyrs de la déportation

aka

where they, whoever they were,

put them – we know who “them” were –

on the boats

that took

them

to

the

trains

that took

them

to

the

camps

that…

 

And there I stood

with nothing I could do

but wave

a kind of metaphorical goodbye.

I promise you I did not think

right then

that even if they, whoever they were,

had help from IBM

they were nowhere as efficient as we could be

back home

where we just lynched them on the spot

and tossed them in the river

like we did with Emmett Till

or else we burned down part of Tulsa

and hoped those who lived would leave.

 

And

that’s

when I realized

I was

sitting

on a bus

on June 15th in 2021

and the Black man I had nodded to

was speaking.

“Sorry,”

he said,

“I took you for one of those white guys

who won’t look up at Black folk

no matter what we do.

I was rude,”

he said,

“I should have said hello.

What’s that book you’re reading?”

And I handed him

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed.

He took the book,

looked at its back cover,

wrote down the title and its author,

and handed

back

the book

to me.

 

“Good?”

he asked

and only barely raised an eyebrow when I blurted,

“Good? It’s great!

Makes me wanna turn in my well-worn coonskin cap!”

 

Oops.

 

I don’t know if he knew shit

about Davy Crockett’s headgear

or Jim Bowie’s knife

but I know he knew what coon meant

and suddenly so did I.

 

Oops.

 

 

Somehow

he pointedly refused to take offense

as

he

stood

up

and

pulled

the

cord

while nodding kindly if deliberately

 

at me.

 

“Thanks,” he said, “I’ll read it.”

 

And when the bus stopped at the corner

he got off.