Raised by Hand

by Glenis Redmond

photographs courtesy of the author

I talk with my hands. Picture me as a girl, a deepmahogany, full of joy, ruling recess and outdoor play. Picture my hands, masters at hopscotch, hula-hoop, and handclap games. I took on handclap games wholeheartedly and incredibly seriously. I believe these games were my early understanding of poetry: rhythm, rhyme, and timing:

A sailor went to sea sea sea

To see what he could see see see

But all that he could see see see

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea or

Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack

All dressed in black, black, black

With silver buttons, buttons, buttons

All down her back, back, back

She asked her mother, mother, mother

For fifty cents, cents, cents

To see the elephants, elephants, elephants

Jump over the fence, fence, fence.

They jumped so high, high, high

They reached the sky, sky, sky

And they didn’t come back, back, back

’Til the Fourth of July, ’ly, ’ly!

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could outplay or out-dance me in those days. I lived in the moment as the hula-hoop went from neck to waist, to knees, to ankles. This is how I embodied “Be Here Now.” I was full of sass and kinesthetic wonder, like many Black girls. This is where I expressed my fullest self, and I did not need anyone to judge, teach, or correct me. Talking with my hands did not begin with me on the playground, but for the longest time that is what I was concerned with, my singular self.

As I grew, I learned that I was made up from what my South Carolina–born parents poured into me with their handiwork, my father with his play-by-ear music and my seamstress and amazing homemaker mother. Then, my ancestors, the griots who told stories in West Africa, joined the line of humble people who were field hands who knew the intricacies of working the red clay soil.

I talked with my hands as a woman, especially as a poet. It is partly why people categorize me as a performance poet. I move. I practically dance while performing poetry. I never took an acting class. My work is not stylized. Though I won poetry slams in the ’90s, my poetic delivery harkens back much further than a poetry slam or even the beat poets. It reaches back to my ancestors of West Africa and lineage in the Black South. These confluences of expressive storytelling traditions are woven within me. When I read my poetry, it is much less a performance and more of me being my truest self. It is not a persona. I am a griot, a traveling poet imparting stories, information, and knowledge of my history.

How I am was handed to me.

“ I was raised by my father ’ s musical ear and my mama ’ s know - how . f rom them, i learned steadfastness, timing, and rhythm.”

I was raised by my father’s musical ear and my mama’s know-how. From them, I learned steadfastness, timing, and rhythm. My father knew how to phrase a song and how to tell a story. My mom cooked by scratch and always knew how to make something out of the bits and ends, whether food or fabric. Though we lived around the world on military bases, we ate mostly Southern food. Mom had a musicality and timing in the kitchen, knowing when to stir and when to take the food out so all the dishes were hot when all were ready. She was always very relaxed in her preparation and serving, whether it was for the seven of us or when twenty-five people gathered at our house for the holidays.

She was also a magician when it came to sewing. She often made my sister Velinda’s outfits without patterns. If we saw it in the magazine, she could make it. My sister was fond of the “Make It Tonight” patterns and that is just what our mother did.

My parents were my first poetry school. They gave me the foundation to be an Afro-Carolinian griot and make and deliver poems of my lineage, musings, and understandings of the world.

Dad, as an Air Force enlisted, gave our family a pathway out of the racist South in 1957. During the day, he worked on the flight line in Supply and though he took his duties seriously, his heart belonged to music. Before my dad was anything, he was an artist, a musician who played the piano by ear. He was a self-taught wunderkind, who started playing the piano at age three. Like many Black artists, he began playing in the church. When we lived in the South, he was always the church pianist. When we moved from base to base, he oversaw music at the chapel for the monthly gospel service. His music turned the service into a down home gospel experience. We sang spirituals and contemporary gospel songs of the day like “Oh Happy Day” or “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” The music radiated throughout the sanctuary. This was my father at his best, leading and connecting the community through song and our cultural histories.

Church I loved because there was so much art, theater, and music. The preacher at the center, my father off to the side providing a musical through line. When the preacher needed emphasis, he just looked my father’s way; he knew how to set the tone and mood of the moment. As a child I took it all in. I absorbed what sometimes looked like chaos to outsiders of the Black church experience. I relished the structure and drama. I loved the rise and fall of the preacher’s voice. I loved the pacing. My favorite was the call and response embedded in how the preacher interacted with us along with the cadence, humor, and storytelling. This too, taught me how to give and take delivery of my poems, how to leave space for the audience to answer back. Church too, was

“ a wonderful piece of literature that reads like dance and music. in lyrical prose, the author, an african american woman, tells who she is and where she is from and what made her who she is. and embraces it all.”

—DAVID CECELSKI, FINAL JUDGE

one of my first poetry schools. This rich artist/religious/ritualistic experience trained me as a poet. By night, Dad played with his blues/jazz band wherever we lived. It wasn’t until after my dad died in 2003, when I saw the movie Ray, that I realized how dad had patterned himself after Ray Charles. Secular music was taboo in his childhood home, but he snuck and listened to the radio as much as possible. He had instant recall. If he heard a song, he could play it. His instant recall made him curious. Though he could not read music, he was so talented that he was offered a position in the Air Force band. He turned it down, because he did not want to keep a rigorous touring schedule and be away from the family six months out of the year. Our household was always filled with music and song. Dad played as soon as he got off work until well into the night. We would gather around singing our favorites: “Hit the Road Jack” or “Chain of Fools” and many others. We were a musical household. My four siblings and I loved to dance as children. We were drawn to dance-off and talent shows. Also, we had choreographed dance routines when we went to school dances. If we showed up, we showed out. We won every talent show or dance contest we ever entered. I was a teenager when I learned from a friend that our household was unusual. I thought everyone was immersed in music the way we were.

The other thrum in our household was much quieter. Mom and her resourceful loving ways were woven through our everyday life. She held us together at every turn. From food to home décor and to making and putting clothes on our backs. Mom’s ever-present handiwork was taken for granted in its steadfastness. I remember being five years old and understanding and feeling the firmness of her hands when she cornrowed my hair. When she zipped me in my jacket or laced me in my shoes, I felt put together with an inarticulate love. I cherished the homemade outfits she made for me. I was one of the best dressed girls in my class with her homemade jumpers, rompers, smocks, and dresses. I always wore one-of-a-kinds, dreamt up by me and made by my mother’s hand. For one school dance – I think I had been watching one too many Solid Gold Dancer episodes – I wanted a gold lame outfit. It had a long V-neck top with drawstrings on the arms. The pants had drawstrings down the legs. When I walked into the door of the Raritan club on Highway 25, the party began. Saturday Night Fever had nothing on my mood or my threads.

In my household, creativity was born of make do and improvisation. I am sure it is why, even today, I look for eclectic, unique, colorful fashion. Mom also made my brother’s prom suits in the ’70s. She outfitted the house with her original curtain and tablecloths. We joked she made everything but our shoes, but if she had the tools, she would have made them as well.

Her food was enviable too. She cooked Southern recipes: cornbread, pintos, and collard greens. Her cooking and sewing skills were indeed market ready, but that was not her dream or mission. Her goal was to be a wife and mother. We ate a lot of fried food, as that was the tradition she came from: porkchops, chicken and green tomatoes. She learned to cook and sew from her mother on a wood stove. So, modern conventions felt like child’s play to her.

I come from a rich heritage of can-do, make-a-way-out-of-no-way women. The quilts of my grandmother and great-grandmother are in my possession. When I hold these relics, they make me understand what led me to where I am today. The lay of land, the swatches of fabric held together by prayer and tight stitches.

After my father died, I was asked to be the keynote speaker at the Arts Northwest in Tacoma, Washington, one of the many places we had lived. My mom wanted to visit Tacoma one last time. We went to see where we had lived on base, but one subdivision had been leveled. This was completely disheartening. The house was smaller than I remembered. As we drove up, the car radio started playing Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away.” I cried, as it is a song that reminds me of my dad, from an album he gave to me for Christmas when I was twelve.

The next day we went to see the Gee’s Bend quilts at the museum. I marveled as I was surrounded by the quilts of these Black women from Alabama. Their work looks like the women of my family. The video interviews of the Black quilters talking mesmerized me. When I looked over, I saw my mom sitting on a bench, crying. I asked her what was the matter, and she said, “This is not art. I lived this hard life.”

“ these humble make-do women left me a strong line to follow . . . the lore stitched by their own hands.”

As a poet and woman, I follow the way: the stitches Rachel Cunningham (my great-grandmother), Katie Latimore (my grandmother) and Jeanette Redmond (my mother) sewed. These humble makedo women left me a strong line to follow. I follow them not with stories written down by them but by the lore stitched by their own hands.

I am filled with longing when I hear of others who have written journals from their ancestors. The loss I feel is incalculable. The deepest angst resides in the fact that my grandmother and greatgrandmother did not have access to education due to laws forbidding them to be educated as Black women. My great-grandmother was born in the late 1800s and could not read or write. My grandmother was born in 1901 and she was only functionally literate with her third-grade education. Our stories from them had to be told. The oral tradition was grounded in necessity. I had to glean their lives not by what they wrote, but by what they did. I pick up their quilts and I read between their stitches to understand their stories.

Once I told my mother, “When you die, I only want your great-grandma’s quilt and her churn.” I was being truthful, not morbid. I want my mom around as long as possible – hopefully, at least the 109 years that her mother lived. Yet, these items held meaning. My wish just rolled out of my mouth with an earnest plea. A few months after this declaration my mom showed up to my home in Asheville, North Carolina. When I opened the door, she was holding the red and white quilt.

My foremothers also made clothes, curtains, and tablecloths to adorn their homes, but it was their handmade quilts that spoke to me the most. She told me she wanted me to have them right away. She knew that I would cherish them. Those quilts tell of how these women took care of us. Quilts made when all their other labors were done. I revere how they took a threaded needle in hand and stitched the cloth together, pieced together with resourceful intention. They did not throw anything away. They made use of scraps, castoffs and remnants of cloth, outgrown clothes, tablecloths, and sheets. They made quilts, not for decoration, but for utility, to put on beds. They made quilts for warmth and security with their work-worn hands. They covered us with their home hewn heft.

To hear my mother tell it, her mother and grandmother quilted in a circle with other women of the family and on quilting frames. They stitched and stitched until they had a whole quilt. Many hands make light work, goes the saying. They would help each other complete one for each other’s home. Mama speaks of this time with a longing. She told me she was not allowed to quilt with the women because she was left-handed, and her stitches went the wrong way. She made a few quilts on her own (on the sewing machine), but I am sure that is why she gravitated to making clothes as an adult.

In their quilts there’s both beauty and struggle. That’s why they speak to me. Quilts always find their way into my poems as metaphors, but their literal presence made an impression on me as a child and as a woman. My foremothers would never call themselves artists. They were doing what women of the land did for centuries. As a poet, I read their hand-stitched quilts like maps. They take me to the back country of South Carolina that taught me about place.

Both of my parents had their areas of passion. From the make-do household, we were held together by both of their resourcefulness. My father’s ear for music taught me to listen and move to the mood of the music. My mama’s hand taught me to make what I dreamed up. They taught me essential craft elements of patterns, rhythm, pacing, and timing. Their improvisational (make-do) ways shaped how I looked at the world and what stories were important for me to tell.

I am not a quilter like my foremothers, but during 2021, when I almost died from cancer, I made a quilt. Though my hands were feeble from neuropathy due to the multiple myeloma medication I took to beat cancer, I took a needle in hand and made a Legacy Quilt. As if I was trying to document our lineage with pins and needles this time instead of the pen. I wanted to physically join the women in my family. I could feel their hands on mine. I made unwieldy stitches, but they steadied me, and my hands danced across the cloth.

“ my hands are part of an unchoreographed dance. they extend my poems. they compose. they direct. they summon. they conjure. they beckon. i am a one-woman symphony of hands , arms , hips , head , and legs , but mostly hands.”

I am not a quilter like the women who came before me, but I talk with my hands. From as early as I can remember, my hands have led – in conversation and even while I perform poetry. My hands are part of an unchoreographed dance. They extend my poems. They compose. They direct. They summon. They conjure. They beckon. I am a one-woman symphony of hands, arms, hips, head, and legs, but mostly hands. When I speak, when I write, I pray. I move to a music that I have made in verse. When I perform, I realize I am not singular. I am made up of a collective of the women who stitched me into being. I am made up of my father’s playby-ear music. His hands on black and white keys laid a path for me to follow. Hands have been laid down before me. They provide a clue and traces of my ancestral line from West Africa, disrupted by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I do my best to follow. They all claim me, so when I speak with my hands as a daughter, a mother of twins, and now a grandmother (Gaga) of two, it is with many hands that I speak most fluently. It is with my hands that I talk back to myself, others, and the universe. n

BY GLENIS REDMOND

Story

Some hate the stories I tell, say, Don’t go back as if my mouth is connected to their hearts. My head bowed, my eyes intent on the stitch, not busy with blame, I work the pieces, render the trade I learned at my mother’s and my grandmother’s hand. We call it make something out of nothin. These stories are useful things – stitches I follow They guide me clear And help me stand.

GLENIS REDMOND , a long-time resident of Asheville, NC, is a performance poet, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumnus. Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In this capacity, in 2014–16 she prepared youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House. She is the author of three published poetry collections, and her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times. In 2020, she received the highest arts award in her home state of South Carolina, the Governor’s Award and in 2022 was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Read her poems and essays in NCLR Online 2014, 2019, and 2021, and NCLR 2012, 2014, and 2019, the latter of which includes an interview with her.

2022 James Applewhite Poetry Prize Finalist

BY DEBRA KAUFMAN

Heading West

Raised on fairy tales and country air, the sisters expected buffeting winds, kept their not-knowing minds open, expected to somehow prevail. They mapped the fine points of their astrology charts and set out on a fair day – not chasing a dream but drifting along one, hitchhiking always west, a quiet dare buzzing in their souls.

In Kansas, when the money ran out, a kindly couple invited them to the farm –meals and prayers in exchange for light chores. At The Way we share everything. Soon the sisters were filled with goodness and light that shone through them and made their hair shine. They lit campfires, did laundry, swept floors, planted beets and turnips in the dry, spare earth.

So much to do! Bees hummed, Come get our honey. Chickens muttered, Here’s another egg. So much to learn! They combed through the blessed study guides, chanted with the Reverend, We care as He cares. They spoke in tongues, sang songs of praise, practiced the nine manifestations of the holy spirit. God is here and everywhere. One sister stayed a year. The other is still there.