Lori Johnson's Blog, page 4
July 26, 2018
A Short Story
https://www.theroot.com/the-inheritan...
April 7, 2018
Something New!
The Spring issue of Mississippi Folklife features my essay “Forgotten Images of An Invisible Man: Resurrecting the Art and Memory of Photographer TC Reese.”
http://www.mississippifolklife.org/ar...
Mississippi Folklife is an online journal that is produced under the auspices of the Mississippi Arts Commission. I do hope you will visit the journal’s website and check out my work, my Uncle TC’s photographs as well as some of the other interesting features and profiles on Mississippi Folklife’s site. (If you only want/have time to scroll thru the piece and check out the pics, that’s cool, too! lol)
Please note that my research on TC Reese is on-going. If you have any information about TC Reese, his work as a photography or know of any individuals who might be able to assist me in this quest, please feel free to inbox me. Thanks!
November 11, 2013
2nd Excerpt of Sunday Best (by Lori D. Johnson)
2nd excerpt of "SUNDAY BEST" by Lori D. Johnson
Curtis
groans and tosses what's left of the partially chewed piece of toast. Leave it to Grandma Rose to shove him into
the reluctant role of savior. Little
does she know how much he himself is in need of rescue. Just last week he'd been fired from his first
decent paying job. Typically Rose, a
woman with a rep for taking in and nurturing strays, is no slouch when it comes
to sensing discontent, whether his or anyone else's.
Silent, sullen and sorely
unappreciative, the boy reminds Curtis too much of himself, or at least the
self he'd been when he'd first landed on Grandma Rose and Old Man Lamar's
doorstep--an event precipitated by his own mother's untimely demise.
Dead mamas--just another unfortunate
thing he and the boy have in common. And
both willful departures at that--one suicide, the other overdose. The more kind-hearted adults in his life had
done their best to shield him. But even
at the tender age of ten, Curtis had been able to see through the deceptive
nicety of a term like "home-going."
What kind of mother leaves for home without taking her kids with her?
During his stiff-legged trek up the
stairs, Curtis is nearly trampled by the six year old twins, Tosha and Tiara,
on their giggle-filled race down. A
happy pair, they push past him, seemingly unfazed by the fact that their mother
no longer occupies a space in the landing of the living.
While an enviable innocence to some,
Curtis knows all too well the truth of how the woman the two youngsters had
routinely referred to as "Mama" had seldom been one in any real sense
of the word. Dope, like a thief in the
night, who boldly returns by the light of day, had years ago snatched her away
from them and everyone else who'd tried to love her.
The girls make Curtis think of his own
little sister, Amanda, who’d barely been a year old when their mother had
passed. Less than a week after the
funeral, Amanda's daddy and some of his people had come and got her. Hit hard by the back-to-back losses, Curtis
had cried for weeks. But even more
devastating than either his baby sister's sudden whisking away or even his
mother's willful departure had been the fact that no one had ever bothered to
come for him.
Curtis's old room is where Mark has
been bunking. On easing open the door
and stepping inside, he finds the boy perched atop the cedar chest next to the
window. He is a tall, skinny kid with
the awkwardness of thirteen scrawled all over him like spray-painted graffiti.
"What's up?" Curtis says
when Mark finally pulls his frown from the window and turns his head in his
direction.
The boy is anything, but ready for
church--the bottom of his shoes are caked with dirt; an unknotted tie, like the
chain of a busted playground swing, dangles from his neck; his face could use a
good scrubbing and his hair is a black, matted field of uncombed naps. But what strikes Curtis most are the boy's
eyes, fixed, glazed and set back in hollow sockets, they are not unlike those
of a blind man whose sight, at some point, had been forcibly removed. Rather than extend a verbal greeting, the boy
nods and turns back toward the window.
Although it clings to the tip of his
tongue, like the taste of freshly-cut lemon, "You all right?" strikes
him as a stupid question. Curtis already
knows how the kid feels--the same way he had--like a dumped sack of garbage
with something horribly rotten on the inside.
He shoves his hands in his pockets
and wonders what Grandma Rose could have been thinking in assigning him such a
task. After a moment of coin-jiggling,
foot-shuffling and longing desperately to run back in the direction from which
he'd come, Curtis invites himself to a seat on the opposite end of the cedar
chest and joins the boy in his silent sulk out onto the world. Not so long ago, he had spent many an hour in
the very same spot, bottom buttressed to the worn wood and nose pressed against
the pane. The windowed nook had proven
an ideal one for eavesdropping, daydreaming or just pondering the complexities
of life.
He tries to get a feel for the boy's
take on the second story view--a view dominated in large part by the church
next door. A friend of the family once
commented on how overwhelming it must be to wake up every morning and go to bed
every night with a steeple staring down on you.
Overwhelming for whom? Certainly not Grandma Rose, who takes full
advantage of her proximity to the Lord's house.
Be it for Sunday school, eleven o'clock service, Monday night prayer vigil,
mid-week Bible study, choir rehearsal, or one of her various committee meetings,
she makes a point of walking through the doors of the church at least once
before the day is done.
Had it not been for Old Man Lamar,
Curtis knows chances are, he would have ended up a bonafide 'Dudley-Do-Right'
type or else, thoroughly ambivalent about donning the cloak of
discipleship. The Old Man had provided
him with the balance necessary to understand that doing the work of the church
and living for the Lord weren't always the same thing.
He couldn't help but feel that an
"Old Man Lamar" was really what Mark needed; someone with shoulders
big enough to lean on in hard times; someone who in twenty words or less could
tell the boy all he'd ever need to know.
In spite of his intimacy with death, what Curtis knew exceeded his
ability to articulate. Silence and
companionship were about all he felt capable of offering.
Besides, the boy didn't appear in
the mood for words, however profound, poetic or potentially life-altering. The thought took Curtis back to that first
conversation between him and his cousin Rodger.
He'd been sitting alone in the very
same room when his bowed head cousin had slunk in. "I-I-I'm sorry 'bout yo-yo-yo your
Mama," is what Rodger had finally sputtered after what must have been a
full minute of standing and sniffling.
"What the hell you got to be
sorry for?" is what a ten-year old Curtis had snapped back. "You didn't kill her, did you?"
A candy apple red Lexus pulls into
the church parking lot and Mark's dulled pupils suddenly flicker. He bolts forward, as if adhering to a drill
sergeant's "a-ten-hut," and bangs his forehead against the window
pane in the process.
"Look at him," Mark says
as the driver, dressed in a yellow pinstriped, grape juice colored, three piece
suit exits the car. "Son-of-a-bitch
really thinks he's somethin', don't he?"
Though they lean toward concurrence,
Curtis elects not to express his thoughts aloud. After all, the purple-clad SOB in question
just so happens to be Mark's father--Jared--or J.D. as he prefers to be called.
J.D’s wife and their three young
sons follow him out of the car. Not only
do the boys’ dark, shiny, moon-pie faces, mirror their dad’s, they’re dressed
just like him, too. In a leg-dragging strut
across the parking lot and up the church steps, they fall in behind him, like
soldiers, pledges or robots, one grinning, big bobbing head after the other.
At the parade’s end, Mark turns to
Curtis, and with his eyes ablaze says, “Ain’t you gon’ say nothin’?”
Curtis has half a mind to tell the
boy, “So, your Pop’s a jackass. Truth be
known, your Moms wasn’t a heck of a lot better.” But rather than voice a truth the child might
not be ready to handle, Curtis stares out the window and lets several seconds
pass before he stands and says, “Let’s go for a ride.”
April 23, 2013
Sunday Best by Lori D. Johnson (Short Story Excerpt)
Sunday Best
by Lori D. Johnson
Curtis
jiggles the loose change in his pockets as he struts up the tulip-lined
path. His suit is a blue Armani; his
shirt, white, wrinkle-free and French cuff bold and his tie, a crimson, Italian
silk foulard, bearing a blue diamond motif.
Something akin to glitter dances in the space between his Rolex-strapped
wrist and his brand new wingtips with the twenty dollar shine. He marches up
the porch steps, pushes open the front door and glides over the threshold,
chest puffed and grin wide. But rather
than extend her usual fawn, Grandma Rose whirls past him, as if he'd been
idling there all morning long, like a young barnyard rooster who can’t wait to
impress the sleeping hens with his ability to crow.
"Hey!" he says, grabbing
her on her re-entry. He plants a peck on
her cheek. "And a lovely morning to
you, too."
"Oh, I'm sorry,
sugar." She scrunches her lips and
returns his affection in double.
He nods toward the spread on the
dining room table. "I see I'm just in time for breakfast.”
Grandma Rose frowns and extends her
hand. "Help yourself. The twins
done already messed over all they could before running out of here, like
somethin' done bit 'em on the backside."
A round of bumping and squealing
lures her eyes and his toward the ceiling.
Her scowl deepens as she stomps over to the stairs and hollers up,
"All right ladies. Enough with the
nonsense. I'm leaving outta here in
exactly ten minutes. And I 'spect you
both to be ready. You hear me?"
A giggle-filled, "Yes
Ma'am," drifts down the staircase.
Curtis walks over to the table and
butters a piece of toast. “They're not
giving you problems are they?"
“The twins? Oh, they’re a handful, all right,"
Grandma Rose says upon her hurried approach to the dining room table. "But no more than would be expected
given the circumstances.”
He
nods and chews as the old woman scurries around him, scraping plates, fastening
tops on opened containers and shoving dirty utensils into the deep pockets of
her apron.
“But that brother of theirs, Mark, I
‘clare if he ain’t ‘bout to work my last nerve.
Take this morning, child’s stomach growling so loud I can hear it from
way across the hall. But will he come
down and eat? No-ooo! He claim he ain’t hungry.”
Upon surveying the hearty breakfast
of oatmeal, toast, cranberry juice, banana slices, raisins and the required
dose of castor oil, Curtis can hardly blame the boy for passing on the morning
offering.
"And all day yesterday,"
Rose continues. "He was 'round here
carrying on 'bout some ole tie. 'I
need me a tie. I ain't going to church tomorrow lessen I get
me a tie.' So what do I do? I takes the boy shopping. 'Course he ain't satisfied with just your
ordinary clip-on. No sir, he got to go
and get his heart set on one of these here fancy, one hundred percent silk,
wrap around numbers."
Ties? Thanks to his line of work, as well as
the generosity of both his late cousin Rodger and Grandma Rose, Curtis
owns tons of ties in every style, pattern and hue imaginable. How could she have possibly forgotten? "Why didn’t you just--" he starts.
"So silly me," she
says. "I go 'head and buy the fool
thing. But do you think he appreciates
it? No sir, he's sitting up in his room
this very minute talking 'bout he can't go 'cause the tie ain't right. I 'clare if his Mama wasn't gone and I wasn't
a Christian, Lord knows I'd be up there now strangling the holy spit out that
child."
Curtis is still stuck on the
ties. He'd only taken them at her
insistence. "I can't do nothing
with them," is what she'd told him.
"Besides Rodger would have wanted you to have them."
Again, he opens his mouth, only to
have the silver-haired woman wag a finger in his face. "Uh-uh," she says. "He ain't 'bout to make me lose my
religion. Hear me?" Instead waiting for Curtis’s response, she
smiles and lowers her finger to his lapel.
"Curtis baby," she says in a softer tone. "Why don't you go see if you can't talk
some sense to the boy? Being that you a
man, he'll probably listen to you."
"Aww Grandma!" Curtis
says, throwing up his hands. "Come
on, I don't even--"
She plants a kiss between his eyes,
pats him on the chest and says, "My, don't you look right smart today . .
. handsome too." In a wink, she's
off to the kitchen, where she sheds her apron before trotting back out and over
to the stairs again where she hollers up, "All right ladies. Grandma Rose is 'bout to grab her hat and get
up outta here. Unless you looking to get
left, you'd best be right behind me."
April 22, 2013
New Work!!! (A Short Story In Black Magnolias: A Literary Journal)
I’m pleased
and proud to announce that my short story “Sunday
Best” appears in the spring 2013 issue of Black Magnolias: A LiteraryJournal.
In addition
to my short story, “Sunday Best,” the scholarly and creative offerings of
professors, playwrights, filmmakers and talented poets, like my friend Margie
Shaheed, also grace the pages of the
spring 2013 issue of Black Magnolias.
If you’re
interested in reading my story, Margie’s poems, checking out some of the other
work in the journal or simply showing support for a worthy literary endeavor,
please consider purchasing the spring 2013 issue of Black Magnolias: A Literary Journal.
Also, at
some point, I will post an excerpt from my story, “Sunday Best.” So, check back
in later if you’re interested . . .
January 16, 2013
The Latest Q & A (Lori Johnson & The Sista Girl Book Club)
The SiSta Girl Book Club
Michelle and the ladies of the SiSta Girl Book Club always ask such great questions. Check out our most recent conversation in their Author's Spotlight . . .
SiSta Girl Book Club Q & A with Author Lori Johnson
November 2, 2012
A Bit Of Good News
Shout out to
all of you KINDLE owners! I’m happy to
report that you can now “preorder” A NATURAL WOMAN for a very reasonable $4.79 and it will be delivered to your
Kindle by December 4, 2012. If you own a
Kindle, I hope you’ll consider ordering a copy.
ALSO, for
those who still prefer paper copies, the mass market paperback edition of A
NATURAL WOMAN will be released online and in stores on December 4, 2012. If you’re interested, you can preorder the
mass market paperback today for $6.99
via Amazon.
As always, a
free excerpt of A NATURAL WOMAN is available on my website (www.lorijohnsonbooks.com). Thanks and spread the word!
July 25, 2012
Lifestyle Changes . . . A Little Goes A Long Way
Watching her cover her food with all of that salt, typically without even tasting the food first, truly grossed me out. But the truth is, I was once in the habit of “salting” certain foods without giving it a second thought. As a kid, before eating so much as a forkful of watermelon, I salted that bad boy. After all, that’s what everyone did, right? At the time, that was all I knew. It’s what I’d been taught.
Bad habits are hard to break—especially those we give so little thought to that they almost become second nature, like blinking or breathing I was grown and on my own before I realized that watermelon tastes great (better even) without salt. Once upon a time (not all that long ago), I would have automatically seasoned the omelet I prepared this morning with salt and pepper. But since I’m being more mindful about my health these days, I bypassed the salt altogether and just used a few dashes of pepper. And you know what? The omelet was so good, I didn’t even miss the salt. Now, when it comes to popcorn, I still have a long, long way to go . . . ;-)
November 5, 2011
Treasure Vs. Clutter: A Battle & A Balancing Act
The other day, I watched a cute clip of Anderson Cooper teasing his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, about the storage unit she rents. He obviously thinks the rental is a waste of money and full of useless junk. I know a little something about that. Last weekend, I stopped by my own rental storage unit. I'm determined to empty it, but it's a struggle.
I don't think I'm a packrat (or God-forbid, a hoarder) as much as I am a frugal, overly sentimental "curator." LOL. I mean really, who keeps old Sears Roebuck catalogs? Well, I have a couple, including the Holiday Wish Book from 1998. I also have a collection of Rolling Stone, Spin and other such mags with my boy Prince on the cover. Hey, I had it bad for Prince, back in the day. When the hubby suggested we trash the old microwave we'd packed away 5 years ago, my first thought was, well, maybe we could use it upstairs for popcorn and to heat water for coffee. In the end, I conceded it was probably time to let it go.
My books, I simply can't trash, even though I know I'll never read some of them ever again. Truly, it breaks my heart to see a book (even one I found less than enjoyable) in the garbage. I either have to find a place for them in the house or give them away.
What's really been difficult is letting go of my son's old toys, baby clothes, school projects, etc, but I'm starting to make a bit of progress in that area. Some items, specifically, anything torn, broken, stained, full of glitter, feathers, etc. or that makes me say, "What the heck is this?" I've actually thrown away. Also, after years of talking about it, I've finally completed one scrapbook and hope to start and finish a few more. But scrapbooking is a hobby I have to pursue with caution because it can easily become another source of clutter that requires, yikes, additional storage!
As much as my husband doesn't want to hear this, there are a few things I doubt I'll ever part with willingly. My grandmother's old porch glider, for instance. No, it doesn't glide any more. Yes, it's rusted in some areas and no, we don't even own a front porch big enough for it. But I'm keeping it. I'll happily scrape the rust, slap on a coat of paint and find a nice spot for it some place in the backyard.
That glider was one of the first things I'd see when we'd pull up to my grandparents' house. I'd dare say, most of my aunts and uncles and all of my first cousins on my dad's side of the family have, at some point, sat in that glider. The times that I sat there, laughing and joking with relatives, chatting with my M'Deah or just rocking and day-dreaming all by myself are too numerous to count. Call it hokey, or overly sentimental, if you want, but the truth is, whenever I look at the glider, I can't help but smile and think happy thoughts. The last time I checked, happiness didn't have a price or an expiration date. So, as long as my tendency to "curate" doesn't earn me a visit from the health department or an invitation to star on a reality series, I think I'm good . . .
May 6, 2011
Granny's Black Bag (an old essay / posted in honor of Mother's Day)
GRANNY'S BLACK BAG
by Lori D. Johnson
(first appeared in Relic Magazine / April 2006)
"Go and get my bag," is all my grandmother would have to say and off my brother and I would run, like a couple of gunshot prompted, racetrack hounds. Leave it to us to turn the bag's retrieval into a competition rivaling that of any canine pair's futile chase of an artificial hare. But we were children and this was, after all, in the days prior to the advent of the Internet, PlayStation, the Cartoon Network or even cable. And while our mindless pleasures were of the simpler sort, they offered rewards, seemingly beyond the imaginative abilities of today's youth.
And to the winner of our quick-footed quest to comply with our granny's "go-get" command, went the honor of making a big production of the task. Whoever reached the suit-cased sized receptacle first reveled in the opportunity to grab it by its straps and wrestle it into submission, as if an unruly rotweiller is what we had writhing in our midst, rather than a lady's black, imitation-leather handbag.
Indeed, a beast of a bag it was, and one that, for little kids like us, required a series of military-like "lift, swing and drag" maneuvers in order to move it from point A to point B. Seasoned troopers that we were, my brother and I knew all too well the risks involved, some of which included, but weren't limited to a subsequent loss of breath, use of limbs or permanent damage to any number of fingers or toes. Yet and still, come our turn to grapple with the grip and we'd be there with the quickness--grinning, groaning and occasionally hollering out, "What on earth do you have in this thing, anyway?!"
Not that our granny ever bothered to respond. Likewise, nor did we ever muster the courage to open the bag and brave too long a look within. The butt-beating such an act would have earned us would have hardly made the effort worthwhile. Besides, our contemplation of all that might dwell within the dark belly of the beast was half the fun.
Beyond a billfold, an address book, a rain scarf, some tissues, a pack of cigarettes and the occasional stick of gum, we never actually saw our grandmother pull anything out of her whale of a purse that might account for its stunning girth. That didn't stop us from teasing her about toting around bricks. Nor could we help but laugh at the thought of some unsuspecting thief's attempt to snatch the bag and run. Face down in the dirt is surely where he would have found himself, the weight of the beast, which we guess-timated to be a whopping ten pounds or more, having ultimately drug him there.
I, having always been the more imaginative type, suspected the durn thing was rigged. Something was in there, all right. Something that was just waiting for either me or my brother to poke an inquiring hand deep inside the musty folds and then boom!--the nosey culprit would be snatched in and never seen or heard from ever again.
With age and time came an increased awareness of all that my grandmother's work as a cook in those windowless eating and drinking establishments, most commonly referred to in the south as "cafes" entailed. Whenever I'd spy her lumbering up the driveway toward the end of another day's toil, big black bag swinging by her side, or else tucked firmly beneath her arm, I'd frequently find myself wondering if ole girl wasn't, in fact, packing a sizeable piece, as well as an extra box or two of ammunition.
What can't be denied is that the bag was my granny's near constant companion. If she made a trip to the bathroom, be it for business or pleasure, the bag went with her. Whenever she ventured out to hang the wash, the bag, more often than not, bummed a ride alongside the wet clothes piled high in her basket. Besides the cozy nest she'd made for it next to her favorite perch at the kitchen table, the bag claimed its very own resting place on the floor next to her bed. Outside of when she had her eyes closed, the only time ole girl's grip wasn't somewhere within her line of vision was when she'd determined it safe to leave it alone at her bedside--a determination that hinged heavily upon the house being empty of all belonging to the adult male persuasion.
My granny's implicit rule never to leave her grip unguarded in the company of men folk was one that for years knew no exceptions, whether kin or non-kin and even went as far as to include her own husband.
My poor grandfather had been home alone with his bag-coddling wife of sixty-some years the day her congestive heart condition necessitated an emergency call for help. Upon receiving word of the crisis, I'd race from my house to theirs and arrived just in time to accompany my ailing granny on the gurney ride out. The ole girl looked worst than I'd ever seen her. Her calves had swollen to twice their normal size and she barely had the strength required to draw a proper breath. But as the paramedics carted her down the backdoor steps and toward the waiting ambulance, my grandmother somehow summoned both the wherewithal and the necessary spit and wind to turn to me and bark, "Go back and get my bag!"
Had it not been for the seriousness of the situation, I no doubt would have laughed aloud. Instead, I did what I'd always done-- even though at the time I was an adult well into my thirties--I ran off and fetched it for her.
In the summer of 2002, I moved from Memphis, TN in order to join my husband who had accepted a job in Cleveland, Ohio. To be perfectly honest, the move was a painstakingly difficult one. Along with having to force my southern roots into midwestern soil, I had to accept that someone other than myself or my brother (whose military career had long taken him out of the competition) would have to see after my granny and her big black bag.
I flew back home to Memphis for the holidays in December of 2002 and got a chance to visit with my granny one last time before her death on Christmas day. In the days prior to her funeral, I found myself faced with the task of searching through the ole girl's grip for telephone numbers, important papers and the like.
The bag, which had already been plundered by persons both know and unknown, was but a mere shell of its former self. A thorough search of the bag's contents turned up no hidden monsters nor anything else that might have accounted for the heaviness I so fondly remembered. But shoved way down deep in one of the purse's inner folds, I did find one small, round, dark-brown object of interest.
No one I asked seemed to know for sure what to make of the durn thing, until I ran it past my granddad. He barely even glanced at the object before announcing with all of the assurance that having lived 85 years brings, "It's a buckeye. Some people carry them around for good luck."
I couldn't help but tilt my head toward the heavens and smile at what I knew to be a parting wink meant just for me.
I took both the bag and the buckeye back with me to Ohio. Every now and then I hear a whisper in my ear and I know it's her, still beckoning me. "Don't worry granny, I've got it," is what I've taken to telling her. "Rest assured that all of the things you held precious, whether inside or outside of your bag are safe with me."
