Open Mic
Kalani parked her car in the only available parking spot, which was a block away from
Makeba’s Café. This was the sweet part of Brooklyn, Black owned, even with the constant
gentrification, and she cherished seeing her brown and black people; living, owning, celebrating,
and patronizing shops, boutiques, restaurants, and mom and pop businesses.
She strolled past an African restaurant she had gone to a few times and let the delicious
aromas wrap around her like Saran wrap as they wafted through the thick summer air.
She lovingly remembered the delectable taste of their jollof rice, egusi stew with fufu, that didn’t
disappoint.
“Fix your crown,” Kalani reminded herself like her sister Sula would have.
She took in a deep breath and exhaled, slowly to steady herself, longing for Sula to be there
with her, walking arm in arm, like a big sister and a little sister. She knew if Sula was there, at
the Open Mic, she’d be the one to stand up and snap her fingers the most passionately when she
finished reading her poems.
Today was Saturday though, and it was one of Sula’s busiest days as a loctician. She had
clients back-to-back sometimes until the wee hours of the morning, coming into her Bedford
Stuyvesant brownstone where she had set up her salon on the first floor.
Kalani knew Sula would be there in spirit, just like the ancestors, as she always said about
anything for which one needed spiritual sustenance. And although her heart was in her chest as
she got closer to the cafe, Kalani knew her inspiring words, imprinted in her from so many late
night conversations when Kalani had a bout of anxiety, would give her the nerve to do the Open
Mic solo.
She owed everything to Sula for sharing her poetry in the first place.
“Sister Kalani, you have to stop hiding that gift of yours under a rock,” Sula gently scolded
her one day as she retwisted her locs.
Kalani had brought her notebook with her to write as Sula did her hair and when Sula asked
her what she was writing, saying she’s nosey like that, Kalani told her it was poetry. And then
since no other clients were there, she read it:
“I am not a chess player,
I do not know about,
Kings, Queens, Rooks, Bishops, Knights and Pawns,
but I wonder when he mutes his voice,
if I am a pawn in the human sense in this game he plays,
so, I watch in quietude hoping to learn the basics,
of his strategic moves,
knowing one day soon,
when he smiles thinking he’s overpowered me,
taken away my joy and broken my spirit,
I will say, “Checkmate!”
Sula held her hands up over her head and shook her head.
“You see that quote over my desk by Audre Lorde. For all of the weeks you’ve been coming
here, I’m sure you know it by heart by now. But let me be like a pesty fly buzzing near your ear,
and just remind you and the people way in the back, lest you forget,” she said.
Sula stopped for a moment to rub the excess lemongrass oil she was using in Kalani’s hair on
her apron, stood in front of her, and repeated the quote.
“When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes
less and less important whether I am afraid.”
“Now take that in, Sister Kalani,” Sula said before going back to retwisting her hair. “I was
led to put that sign up not just for me, but because one day this beautiful woman was going to
walk into my salon, ready to shake off all of that muck and pain she’d been carrying around for
far too long, to map a new path that would be less thorny. And I would talk her through the
process, something she was scared to do but knew she must. We’d pray together and I’d call on
the ancestors, asking for their wisdom and their healing hands to encircle her before I cut off the
hair she had stopped loving and nurturing because she had stopped loving and nurturing herself.
And this woman would not just become my client, she would become my sister and friend, and I,
my sister’s keeper who encouraged her to live her life in every color of the rainbow.”
Kalani couldn’t hold back her tears that day as Sula attended to her soul. Sula offered her a
Kleenex to let her know she didn’t have to. She was special in that way, the way she knew what
others needed before they even spoke.
Kalani had met Sula at the library where she worked as a Program and Outreach Services
Librarian. Sula had come in one afternoon with her four-year daughter Sera, and Kalani
couldn’t help but stare at them both, so stunning with skin that seemed as if it was dipped in the
richest dark chocolate. They were a beautiful black painting in motion as Kalani trailed them
with her eyes until Sula caught her staring, smiled and came over to where she was standing.
“Hello, my name is Sula. That’s my four-year-old daughter Sera,” she said pointing to the
gorgeous little girl who had happily settled on a caterpillar pillow in the children’s area with a
book.
“I just moved to Brooklyn a few months ago,” she said. “I’m looking for some
programs I can sign her up for and was wondering if you have any here.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Kalani,” Kalani said skipping the formalities. “And yes, we have a lot
of programs, ongoing and seasonal for her age group I’m sure she’d enjoy.”
“Well, sign her up for them all,” Sula said laughing, letting Kalani know Sera was
probably a bundle of energy when she was home.
Sula’s laughter was so full on that day. Kalani envied that for her own joy and laughter had
shriveled up like a raisin that past year after the death of her mother, and a break-up. Each day
was a day of pretense, just getting by. But being around children did help somewhat. You
couldn’t help but be pulled into their miniature world and its fairy-tales.
That day Sula signed Sera up for story hour and an arts and crafts class that met once a week.
One Sera started coming, she and Sula started having hushed conversations nearby, keeping their
jumping in when the instructor needed an extra pair of hands.
Sula was an open book when it came to her life even though Kalani didn’t divulge
much of hers. She was single, like Kalani, and had left North Carolina to move to Brooklyn after
her mother passed away after a long illness. She just started talking to her father after years of
estrangement for the sake of her daughter so she could have a grandfather in her life, and the
Bedford Stuyvesant brownstone she lived in belonged to her well to do paternal grandmother,
who left it to her as part of her inheritance which Sula thought she did out of guilt because she
stopped being a part of her life once her father left her and her mother. And she was a loctician,
becoming one after leaving her corporate job.
Kalani had always wanted locs. She had made up her mind to get them before her mother
passed but once that happened, grief and depression crept through her very soul and she hardly
ran a comb through her hair. She’d manage to look presentable enough to go to work but she’d
throw on a head wrap for work or to run errands.
One day while Sula was at the library with Sera, as if she knew, she asked, “What are you
hiding Kalani? What is keeping you in the prison of your own making?”
Kalani couldn’t answer then. If she did, she knew her dam would burst.
And even though Sula wasn’t talking about her hair, she took her headwrap off to show
her matted hair, hair that was heartbroken just as she was.
“Please come to my house on your day off,” Sula said taking her hand. “And then we’ll talk,”
On her day off Kalani drove to Sula’s house. When she walked inside her brownstone
she was overtaken with peace. From her artwork which included artwork by a painter well
known to Kalani, Annie Lee, to the neo soul music playing, to the earthy fragrance of
lemongrass, all of it cushioned Kalani like her mother’s plump brown arms once did.
Sera was upstairs playing, her tiny feet bounding across the hardwood floors, her voice
singing her favorite cartoon character songs. Sula had set out a platter of cheese and crackers and
fruit and poured them a glass of white wine. They sat down on her floor pillows and like water
pouring from a faucet, Kalani let her story and pain spill out like a split open bag of seed.
“I lost my mother last year,” Kalani said feeling the gut-wrenching pain still bubbling in
her gut. “And right after that my boyfriend and I broke up because he couldn’t deal with my
sadness. He didn’t understand that if I let go of the most cherished person so a part of me; it felt
like betrayal…betrayal of my mother’s fervent,” Kalani said.
“I understand Kalani,” Sula said. “My mother…Lord, I miss her so and each day I sometimes
find myself picking up the phone to call her. Grieving is a long process, sometimes you never
really stop. But you do learn to walk through it, to find first small pockets of joy and then larger
pockets and create your own bittersweet music to dance to.”
Kalani knew Sula was right. And that day after discussing life, they discussed hair, And
Kalani made the decision to start her loc journey knowing it was a tiny step towards her healing.
Her pain was intertwined in her hair and Sula would help her untangle it, patiently weave love
back into her hair, and her soul.
She did that each time she entered Sula’s house to get her locs retwisted, her scars scabbed
over and began to heal. They ate and they drank afterwards and danced to Mereba’s song
“Beretta” and Cleo Sol’s song “Butterfly,” with Sera always joining in. And they became sisters,
Sula being the eldest who nudged her stray from the shadows and spread her wings.
Kalani started writing poetry again too and revisiting ones in her notebooks that she had
tucked away in the back of her drawer, written as tears fell on the pages, about losing her mother
and the man who she thought she would be her partner. After she shared that one poem and
then many more with Sula, Sula handed her a flyer from one of her clients who had Open Mic at
Makeba’s Café on Saturdays.
“It’s your time to shine,” Sula told her.
Kalani pulled open the glass door leading into Makeba’s Café. Her palms were clammy but
her resolve to not bend in anxiety was strong, like a mighty oak tree.
Jill Scott was blasting inside. She couldn’t help but bob her head to the music and smile and
acknowledge the other women there, some with open notebooks in front of them next to their
mugs of tea or lattes or glasses of wine. They offered the same I see you sister, in return.
She felt welcome and protected. Just as she did in Sula’s home.
“Your poems are the truth sister Kalani,” Sula had texted her that morning. “Let them be your
Testimony as they touch some other sister and help her move from that place you were once in.
Let your newfound poetry sisters encircle you, just like the ancestors,” she added with a heart
emoji.
Kalani took a deep breath in, and exhaled. She was ready.
Jeanine DeHoney
has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and online. Her writing has been published in Essence magazine, Beautiful Black magazine, Today’s Black Woman magazine, Mused - BellaOnline, Wow: Women on Writing, mothering.com, Timbuktu, The Write Place at the Write Time, Mutha magazine, Literary Mama, Metro Fiction, Underwater New York, Jerry Jazz Musician, Brain, Child magazine, Rigorous magazine, Spoken Black Girl Publishing, and four Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. She was the 2014 winner of the Brooklyn Arts & Film Festival's Nonfiction Contest, and a 2020 semi-finalist. Ms.DeHoney was first place winner for the 2022 Colorism Healing Writing Contest essay which will be published in an upcoming anthology and was selected to be part of the -“When We Exhale” anthology being published by Black Freighter Press in Fall 2022 and an anthology being published by Black Lawrence Press entitled - "Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels," also being published in Fall of 2022.