PANCAKE

‘Oh, Lord, bless me indeed and increase my territory. Keep your hand on me, and keep
evil from me, that I may not cause pain.’ And God granted her what she requested.

I can remember always wanting to be with my grandma, my father’s mom. I can
remember always thinking she and I were one. That I was more important than anything that she
may have ever experienced in life or could ever be. I remember knowing at the beginning of
memory that she was always there, and we had never been apart. We were born together, and we
would most assuredly live forever, together.

Her heart only beat for me and me alone. I could not see around her, or above her, or
beneath her, or past her, or through her. I could only see her. She was Jesus to me. My personal
Savior. My Rock. My everlasting to everlasting. Afterall she was love and her flaws were never
evident to me. To this day, this very moment, they still aren’t.
I lived for a point in time on Bartlette St. in Sumter SC. The West side of the tracks.
Where the well to do negros resided, I guess. I lived with my mom at the time. I think, I can’t
remember if anyone else lived with us at the time of this memory.
I think it is important to note that my grandma lived on the South side of the tracks in a
modest neighborhood of sorts. She would often come to my house on her way to or on her way
from her job as a maid to two old white sisters that lived around the corner from my house.

As I said before, I remember being my grandmama’s only thought day and night.
Begging was not an annoyance to her, it was just the way I communicated how much I needed to
be a part of her life and every breathe and every step she took. Just a reminder that I was never
going to leave her side, after all what good child doesn’t make her request known unto her god.
She reminded me constantly that there was honor in all work, no matter what the job was, and I
believed her. So I needed to see this place of honor that took her attention someplace else other
than me, this job had to be presidential to be so top secret, why couldn’t I glean from it, why
would she come all the way across the tracks to work in secret, with me being only four houses
away? The secret place of the almighty! My grandma, “The Almighty.”

I don’t remember how old I was when she finally said yes. I just remember being tiny and
feeling every fiber of my being explode like confetti from a cannon, when the Circus comes to
town and the excitement of everyone cheering from the bleachers as the clowns finally enter the
tent. I was headed to a place of honor, a place where the Almighty had made room for me to see
her work up close and personal. Finally, a seat at the table.

“Children are to be seen and not heard.” That was a staple of every southern home in the
1970s. Except at my grandma’s house. I was given the name Chatty Kathy after a pull string doll
that was popular in the 1960s. There was just no shutting me up. I had to fill the air with words
whether necessary or not. But on this particular Saturday morning walking hand in hand with my grandma, through the old-school chain-link fence, and up the creaky wooden steps to the
Craftsman style porch, a sense of uneasy quietness interrupted our sense of security, our laugh
out loud comradery, our journey of unending bliss. The Almighty was in work mode, her place
of honor, her secret place. We entered the house through a side door near the rear of the house on
the wrap around porch. I was told not to talk at all and to step where she stepped. I was told not
to touch anything and not to look at anything, just in case curiosity got the better of me. But of
course, I am a child and I look anyway. There is nothing in the house that looks like my
grandma. The house is devoid of life. The temperature is cold and ungiving, despite the sunlight
fighting its way between the cracks of the half-drawn blinds.

There’s a smell of “chicken grease in an old Crisco can sitting on the stove” that lingers
through the nostrils of every little black child in the south. It permeates the walls in your
grandma’s kitchen, it lets you know you are in grandma’s house. There’s a warmth, a feeling, a
life with a heartbeat that thrives in a house with a soul. This house, this place of honor that got
my grandma’s attention, had no soul.

“Come in here child and sit on the floor under this table. Make yourself small and quieter
than a church mouse, ya hear?” “Don’t you move or make a sound, cross ya legs Indian style,
gone ask the missus if I can make you a pancake.”

And just like that she disappears around the corner out of sight, but not out of mind. I sit
on the cold floor, that’s clean enough to lick ice cream from. I listen, there in the dark for any
sign of life. For a whisper of an asked question, the humble whisper of a “please and a thank
you”, for such a small request, of one pancake. A humble and giving answer of “yes, of course
you can.” Any sound of agreement, that’s aching to break through, but there is none. No sounds
of Joy bursting from the walls that held Jesus on a Crucifix. A Crucifix is surely a sign that, good
had to be somewhere lurking about. The house is small in comparison to my house only a half a
block away, a world away at this point. But still, I can hear nothing, where is my god and why
has she left me in the dark, in the cold, in this world devoid of life or love. This world that is
pressing cold against my tiny brown body. I’m hungry and a little afraid now. I can hardly feel
the confetti bursting inside of me, it has been replaced with crumbling rock and a sinking feeling.
But I know my grandma will never leave me nor forsake me, she and I are one.

My faith was starting to turn those crumbling rocks in my stomach to a mist, a mist that filled my
belly like the juice from eating too much watermelon. My Faith, that thing I was born into, that thing which gave birth to me and would be my guiding spirit, that
thing I would have no understanding of until I am well into adulthood, but have lived my entire
life by and I am hopeful. And just like that, watermelon filling my belly she returns, and the darkness dissipates in her presence.

She doesn’t speak to me, or say come from under the table. She reaches for the string on the blind above the
table and lets in a little more light.

She turns towards the refrigerator in the small kitchen and reaches in to pull something
out. I sit there, barely taking breathes. I don’t want to make a sound. I want to be quieter than
that church mouse. I watch her short dark legs from my cold space under the table move to and
fro with purpose and unyielding to my discomfort, and after a few minutes and just for a
moment I can smell something familiar, my pancake. The curious thing about this pancake is the
smell of it did not encapsulate the small kitchen. There was no laughter of syrup tickling butter in
the air, like it did when grandma made them at her house. Another sign that this house had no
soul, how does a house drown out the smell of such a happy food. Then I hear “Earlene, I am
going uptown to run some errands.” Before I can turn my head, grandma reaches for my hand
under the table and pulls me out and up.

I keep my eyes pointed to the floor, I hear my grandmother introduce me and to this very
day, I cannot remember what that white lady said to me. I just remember, she wasn’t mean, she
wasn’t degrading, she was simply without feeling. Just like her house that had no soul. I
remember whispering the words yes ma’am. But to what, did she ask me a question, did she give
me a command? I fear that memory will never surface. When she left grandma sat me at the table
to eat my one pancake. I ate that pancake like it was the best pancake in the universe. I savored
every single bite, I left not one crumb or one spot of syrup to be delivered to the trash. Somehow
in that moment, I knew that sacrifice that went into me receiving that pancake and my seat at the
table. The tears, the years on her knees, the blood, the suffering, the unwarranted shame.

In that moment, I saw her honor, her grace, her covering, and her favor over and in my
life. I saw her Faith. I saw why she loved me so much. I saw why I would never have no other
god before her. She was my world, and she created every loving thing in it.