My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 117

“Be Vewy Vewy Ouiet”

By

HERMINE PINSON

Before I went in to dinner, I sat on
my back steps and popped my second
Prexylin of the evening to go with my
first cigarette and my first beer. To the
naked eye, the lawn gave the illusion
of a checkerboard. I could have hired
someone, but I wanted to work with
my hands, as my father had done when
I was growing up and he mowed our
backyard in Hampton and yards all
around Newport News, really, wherever
someone needed a yard man. For fifty
years, he made the homeliest, most
unkempt lawn trim and shapely. I liked
the idea of working so hard that sweat
sealed my shirt to my back, although
in day-job in my shirt and tie uniform,
a “brother on the corner” would not
necessarily call me “brother.”

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I finished mowing the
lawn before the sun
exited and the moon
blinked on. I had
labored so long I didn’t
even notice the moon
reclining like they say
in storybooks.

I was cutting grass with a flourish, in
in broad stripes, making parallel passes
back and forth over the moles holes,
ant crab grass, following the natural
slope of the land, going down to the far
end, near a tangle of trees and foliage.
Then, with equal flourish I used an
industrial a roller to go back over the
lawn at a right angle, until the bent tips
of grass blades looked darker than
the straight ones, creating the patterned
effect. I almost chortled when I thought
about it, plaid grass!

After twenty-five years with Haggis
Pharmaceuticals, I could afford to
hire someone like my father, with his
roughened palms, calloused and
permanently stained by grass, motor
oil, and dirt, but it felt like a betrayal
of my origins. Before his death,
my father often visited me and
complemented me on my success, my
spaciousness house and lush yard that
went on for half an acre in the back.
He’d been gone a year now. I thought
about my last conversation with him.
“Billy, you sure you can handle this yard,
son? You think you can do all this by
yourself, what with your job?” said Pop.
“I have someone to come and cut the
back yard beyond that stand of trees,
when I don’t have time to get out there.”