The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

by Dawnie Walton

Oh. Okay, then. That’s why Mama left. That’s what the South was like for me. Sweet on the first taste, but something gone sour underneath. It’ll try to trick you, now—the sugarberries and the quiet and those lovely spread-out houses. But after that day with Auntie Rose, I could smell the rotten too.

I believe in myself above all. [Pointing to her heart] 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 that some of us are naturally stronger, better equipped to deal with the bullshit than others, and that’s the same as saying that some people are taller than others. Just fact, no judgment. And for those who are going through the tough times and don’t have that kind of strength inside them already? Well, that’s all right, because trust me: It can be learned. You just have to copy the right people, and the rest falls in place.

They all approached me in the church, with their sad smiles and handshakes, to tell me how beautiful and talented Mum had been, to tell me how proud she would be. I’m looking at them, at these faces wobbling through my tears, and I’m thinking, Who are you people? How come you didn’t come visit when she was alive?

Ooh, chile, those early days of me and the wigs! Looking like a vinyl record had melted on top of my head.

“But Opal herself… Opal hasn’t even told me that she loved him. She’ll describe the trim on the sleeve of the dress she wore the first time in the studio, but clams up when I ask what she thought of my father when she met him.” “Well, now. A sleeve doesn’t have much complication to it.”

The beginnings of any new thing are so lovely.

And after every gig it was guaranteed one of these fools would come up to me and raise a fist and say, “Power to the people,” or call me “sister” or something else that would let me know nothing—not the music, not the funny little banter, not even the clothes—was more worthy of comment than my being Black.

Rock and roll wasn’t nothing but a step away from the blues, but the whites acted like it was their brand-new bag and then had the nerve to cut most of us out when the money started rolling in. So we were like, Well, fuck it—that’s yours now, and this is mine, and don’t nobody have no business crossing lines. 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.

Nev used to play at being different, but I don’t know if he ever understood what being different really means. That the regular people like to beat back what’s different, because it scares them half to death.

Had I been too candid? Simply by relaying my own American story, did they think I was playing a race card? I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how I’d lost the room, but somehow I’d done just that. And it was imperative that I get it back.

But then the cartoon starts to pull away from reality, from the three dimensions that make you a human…. And when the laughs run out, you can’t suddenly ask in the middle of the show, What happened? What you mean, What happened? That’s the monster you made.

And that right there is very typical of white people—won’t do what’s right till they’re directly affected.

I refuse to discuss and critique it how people like to, because it is not a piece of art. There was no intention on our parts to end up that way, stuck forever in a moment of great distress. And people think time gives them the right to switch up the lens, to romanticize a thing and make up meaning from it. But no matter how much time passes, one year or forty-five, it will always hurt to hear people—brilliant people, people who I like and support!—describe this moment of that night as fascinating or political or inspiring or provocative.

Why are you so deeply invested in proving I’m scared? Does a Black person showing they’re scared make you feel safer? I suggest you sit back and interrogate that.

We were screaming and jumping up and down, three o’clock in the morning. The people back home had been protesting, and the protesting put pressure on the representatives [in Congress], and the representatives put pressure on ol’ Tricky Dick to get his butt up out the White House. I know a lot of people say it was a dark day for America, but isn’t that democracy working? Wasn’t that a glimmer of hope that truth could check power, and isn’t hope the entire point? The reason any of us raise our fists and run our mouths? The reason we dare to imagine a “better” exists?

Yeah, a lot of her shit is challenging to listen to. I can’t say every song on Weird O. is a bop—but that shit is vibrating high on some other frequency, right? When you talk about challenging to absorb, so is Bob Dylan’s whiny ass, in my opinion, and that fucking Ulysses book I had to read in college. Nigga, what? But aren’t we supposed to be better and smarter because of the challenging art that makes us uncomfortable? Isn’t the culture better for it? Or does that only apply when heterosexual cisgender white men do the challenging? [As her companions snap their fingers behind her] You see what I’m saying, sis?