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’m here now where butterflies, bees, and garter snakes make their home, ephemeral, transient creatures like me: they delight and disappear. Liliane taught me that. We come and go. We provoke laughter or desire and we disappear. Liliane was like a sister to me cause she loved my brother and she loved me. Sawyer woulda died for her, but he never got the chance. White folks, no niggahs, hunted him down. That’s not true, but I had to say that so they’ll let me outta this goddamn place. Sawyer got killt, somebody blew his ass away, cause he was a niggah ’n whoever was payin’ em was not. Didn’t no black somebody send my brother to his grave. Was a brother up for sale, looking for somebody to caress his arms, shoulders, run palms down his thighs, and tongues over his balls and deep, deep down in his throat. Silly niggahs’d do anything for money. If he’d wanted to, my brother, Sawyer, could’ve paid niggahs to…oh let’s say their tongues would meet somewhere; the center of his groin, uhhhmmmm. Unless Liliane introduced herself to the situation. Then, oh my God, Sawyer and Liliane had their way with the world; the world as they knew it.
And thank God I was always a part of it. I was always included in anything Sawyer and Lili did: everything, everywhere. This is not really as perverse as you think. Lili visited me here in this awful place with locked wards and room inspections at most inappropriate times. My sense of her is chaste. Liliane gave what she gave to Sawyer, and the rest of us will never really know what that was cause Lili and Sawyer never got all we could give them. Consequently, he’s dead and she’s gone.
Query: Is Aurelia gonna set Lili straight, too? We could all go off to the chapel together. I’ll get a big big white lace dress with a hoop skirt and bundle my dreads on the tip-top of my head. Aurelia knows better than to make me cut my dreads. That’s another reason I’m here. I let my hair go back, get nappy, turn back, wrinkle, crinkle, twist, curl, swirl, oh shit. I’ve gotta stop these lists. I don’t really know if they are listening to me or not. There are two-way mirrors and microphones in here, I’m sure. It’s a teaching hospital and whatever they didn’t find out about us during slavery and circus tours, they gonna find out now. That’s what they think, but when Lili came to visit she told me even when they think they know they don’t know. Lollie says it is not the worst thing in the world that I imagine I’m cutting white folks’ throats during pleasant banter at the lunch table. Has Aurelia seen to Lollie? That’s what I want to know.