Transcendent Kingdom

by Yaa Gyasi

I had gotten the switch only once before, the day I’d whispered “damn” into the silent sanctuary of the First Assemblies. The word had echoed through that holiest of holies; the echo found my mother; my mother found the switch.

If I’ve thought of my mother as callous, and many times I have, then it is important to remind myself what a callus is: the hardened tissue that forms over a wound. And what a wound my father leaving was.

The thing I will never forget is that people were watching us do all of this. It was the middle of a workday and there were people out in that park drinking coffee, taking their smoke breaks, and no one lifted a finger. They just watched us with some curiosity. We were three black people in distress. Nothing to see.

There was little interest in these ideas back then because there was, there is, little interest in the lives of black people.