Chapters (31)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Room in the Dark I
- Fawns of the Diaspora Court Liliane in Paris, While Tabou Combo Whispers “Coq Qualité” in Her Ears
- Room in the Dark II
- “I Usedta Drink, Smoke and Do the Hoochie-Koo,” or What’s a Girl to Do When Her Mother Looks Like Ruth Brown
- Room in the Dark III
- “El Bochinche” es que only Fe Cortijo Knows or All the LeBron Brothers Know If Victor-Jésus María Sang Lili to Her Freedom
- Room in the Dark IV
- And Where Is Garnett Mimms?
- Room in the Dark V
- I Know Where Kansas City Is, But Did Wilbert Harrison Ever Get There?
- Room in the Dark VI
- Zoom Went the Strings of Liliane’s Heart, But Arsenio Rodriguez Could Have Told Her the Music Sounds Just as Sweet When We’re Blind and Still We See
- Room in the Dark VII
- I Know Where the E Train Stops But I’m “Sendin’ Out an S.O.S.” and I’m Not Edwin Starr Either
- Room in the Dark VIII
- “Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby” or Wouldn’t It Be Great If the Lead Singer of The Crests Wasn’t a White Boy and I Could Be My Mother?
- Room in the Dark IX
- Every Time My Lil World Seems Blue, I Just Haveta Look at You and Learn Eye-Hand Coordination
- Room in the Dark X
- “That’s Why I Love Her So and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I Want to Know” or Why Jackie Wilson Died in Silence
- Room in the Dark XI
- There’s No Use Cryin’ “Forever” or Hyacinthe Returns from a Very Blue Holiday for Real B(l)ack at Ya
- Room in the Dark XII
- Lollie Struts Her Stuff Thru “The Sea of Love” or the Brides of Frankenstein Catch the Bouquet
- By Ntozake Shange
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright
I am touching the rafters of my dreams when all of a sudden The Isley Brothers’ sideman’s selection “Shout” blares all round me in a twirling swish of me in his arms in this den of iniquity that was clearly Eden. I should think so, I said to myself, trying to steady myself from a true swoon’n’ faint.
“Yeah, sí. Liliane.”
“The artist?”
“Yeah, most of the time, yeah.”
“I haven’t seen you since you let all those blackbirds free out some tower you built in Port-au-Prince a couple of years ago.”
“You mean, the birds with messages from the first free Africans in the New World.”
“Well, baby, they weren’t the first free ones…”
“The first ones freed by their own armed struggle.”
“Right…I gave you a message to put on one of them. Don’t you remember?”
I am feeling my face get red, so red I’m going to explode. I can’t say anything. I am talking to the man I’ve even been taking home with me every night, a man I don’t know. He says he’s been in one of my projects. And how he has, every sinew, contraction, and gesture. Yes.
“Liliane, are you alright? Can I get you something?”
I still can’t say anything. I just shout for a colored joy, a gritty pelvis-born glee rises up outta my throat and I haveta smile to let it out.
“Oh, pick me up and kiss me again. Then we can talk all night long.”
“You sure,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes would make a guy with eyes in the back of his head jealous.
“Oh yes,” I say.
“You know what my message on the free-flying bird said?”
“No, of course not. They went out in the sky around the world tied up in our dreams and desires to be found like anything else that’s sacred.”
“My message said, now I wrote it out by hand, now, my message said, ‘I want to see this woman again without machetes and barbed wire so close.’”
“C’mon, now.”
“Seriously, I thought about that a lot. You sending them birds anywhere they wanted to fly with whatever wishes anybody brought you. I never thought I’d run into you again, though.”
“I’ve been…Could you put here, here, your left hand by my cheek. Yeah. Humm. I’ve been trying to draw this.”
“What?”
“This feeling, your hand from this angle, there.”
“Lili, I’m not sure I’m gettin’ all this. Go slower.”
“No, you don’t want me to go slower. I’ll get too confused. Just let me tell you the truth.”
“Well, okay, but everything’s alright.”