The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

by Dawnie Walton

My chosen name—this hard-earned byline—cobbles together the first initial of my birth name, my favorite word as a child, and the Philadelphia street where the umber facade of my maternal grandmother’s row house decays, flake by flake.

“So you know I’m a professional busybody,” I said.

Everybody deserves to know where they come from.

but there was one Mrs. Dennis always kept on the table, and that was an old issue of Life that had Miss Dorothy Dandridge on the cover. Miss Dorothy had on her Carmen Jones outfit, the black and the red, with bare shoulders and a rose tucked into her curls and a look at the camera like… whew. Brow cocked up just so, and a flash in the eyes. I really liked her attitude. Her style. Maybe that was the first time I ever noticed anybody’s style, that the way you looked could make you into a different person, a character. So Dorothy was my favorite.

“A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” That’s Proverbs 14:30, the Good Book.

My faith still gives me joy, gives me life, and I take comfort in that, amen! I was blessed to have found my voice, literally, in that church—and it was a voice so strong I surprised myself.

That type of singing cannot be learned. That was the spirit hitting her, and that’s what I saw that first Sunday.

I believe I have always had a song, right here, to perform. I had an inner voice, and for a good portion of my life that voice was a lot smarter than me. It was more mature, and it was patient, and it was brave enough to tell me that despite what anybody else was saying, there was more for me out in the world and I deserved every single drop of it.

I’m just saying I was interested in anything that would let me express myself, and get me out of being stuck. I was gonna find a way, honey.

He needed to be pushed, needed to be surrounded by fresh sorts of influences that would take him unfamiliar places.

She was alien and outcast. She was the difference I wanted. She was Thomas’s girl on Kilimanjaro, and she was the one. Opal was the one.

I didn’t know a lot about New York except the things I saw secondhand. Harlem seemed to be a place where Negroes congregated but sometimes of their own volition, and it was a place that inspired so much creativity. So that’s where I wanted to stay—somewhere I could start my own personal renaissance.

I guess that’s when I knew my normal is to be abnormal.

we passed the time dreaming out loud, mostly. The beginnings of any new thing are so lovely.

“Opal Jewel?” [Wrinkling her nose] I asked him, “Isn’t that kinda redundant? Like saying ‘desk furniture’?” And he shrugged and laughed and said nah, it’s like an exclamation point. A reiteration. It makes it undeniable that’s what you are. So I said it a few times, and it sounded all right.

Anyone who says they’re color-blind is a damn lie. But there is plenty of time between what you see and what you say.

See, this is what I say about America—we always gotta be assigning shit, always labeling it and stuffing it in a box. Always dictating who’s allowed to own what. But end of the day, that don’t have nothing to do with the music, you dig? The music is fire and passion and soul, and however you express it is how you express it.

I get to play behind everybody and I love that, because can’t nobody figure me out. I get a lot of respect. Somebody like Hendrix, though, as visionary as he is, he has a hard time with us skinfolk. They look up at that stage, see all those white longhairs around my exceptional brother and they say, Aw, nah Not for us. Focusing on that when he can make that guitar holler, that’s a tragedy. But that’s what they assume, you know—This child is lost.

Giving up never did anything for anybody.

“Probably because giving up too much would ruin the effect,” Ben said.

The point is, if they ever said too much about what went into this moment, it wouldn’t be as evocative, would it? As it is, you or I can take any number of opinions we have about the Confederate flag, about politics’ place in art, about Opal and Nev’s careers separately, about, um… the victim….” He paused; I nodded for him to continue. “And we can project those ideas onto it.”

how it is that this rock-and-roll music could reach a sheltered Black girl like me, and make her feel not just seen and heard, but empowered?”

My armor was me, my best asset. It kept me protected in this world. A world that either hated me or just didn’t know what to do with me.