remembered speaking the word, but in a flash the thought fell on me so completely and so agreeably, it was as if I’d planned it.
I dug the bottle of aspirin from my pocket. I was going to take them all. I had no idea if they would kill me, but I hoped they would. But then the questions came: Would it hurt? How long would it take? Would my mother be sad? Would I go to hell for committing suicide? Heavy questions piling up like boots by a door.
Before I could form answers, one of my mother’s songs came to save me, one of the songs she sang when we were alone in the car on our drives to and from Ringgold, when I was drifting off to sleep or pretending to, staring out the window, catching fleeting glimpses of green-hooded mallards and white-tailed deer. She often said that she wished she were able to sing, and was disappointed when she realized that she lacked the gift. So she rarely sang.
But there in the car, out of earshot of everyone except me, she sang. She sang about run-around men and hold-tight women, about sticky-sweet love and salty-dry longing, about rest waiting up in the next life and the weight pressing down on this one—songs like the gospel standard “Please Be Patient with Me,” Mel and Tim’s blues classic “Starting All Over Again,” and Betty Wright’s R&B hit “Clean Up Woman.” They were the kinds of songs that dug down until they hit something soft and raw. They set the story of her life to a melody, and she sang them from an honest place with little regard for talent or judgment. With these songs she tapped into a more tender part of herself, one I rarely saw, one where she didn’t have to be stoic and phlegmatic, where she could release the tension that drew back her shoulders and acknowledge the desire that tickled her flesh, where she could accept the idea of frailty and entertain the possibility of tears. It was a place where she could just be beautifully human—Billie in the whole.
That was the gift.
And so there it was, not summoned and without warning, pushing its way through the crowd of questions, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” one of the songs my mother sang hard and true out of her heart and into a steering wheel, coming to save me.
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone.
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
I didn’t know why that song, of all things, came into my head, but I took it as a sign. I believed that God was trying to tell me something: that He would somehow make a way for me to survive, that I had to be brave and patient, that this was not my last night.
I swallowed two aspirin, flung myself back out onto the hardwood to the sound of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Shining Star,” and never thought about suicide again.
I decided that night that I would turn to God. Surely He could fix things.
My family wasn’t extremely religious, but we were observant and reverent. Every second and fourth Sunday, the preacher we shared with another church came to preach at ours. We sometimes went to church on those Sundays. Our church was Shiloh Baptist. It was my mother’s home church, located in Sparta, the now-defunct town that was once the parish seat, some twenty miles southeast of Gibsland and not far from Bienville, where my father now lived. The remaining community was now called Shiloh, after the church.
To get there we drove south, between two sweet potato farms set atop a hill, facing each other. They sold most of the roots wholesale, but we bought them retail, for pies, soufflés, chips, and candying. The farm on the west side of the road had a caged monkey at the entrance. I liked that farm. I would stare at the monkey, in awe of how familiar it looked, and yet how foreign it was. I thought about how much I would like to see it outside of its cage, but I was glad that it wasn’t.
Farther on, we passed over rolling, forested hills.
I dug the bottle of aspirin from my pocket. I was going to take them all. I had no idea if they would kill me, but I hoped they would. But then the questions came: Would it hurt? How long would it take? Would my mother be sad? Would I go to hell for committing suicide? Heavy questions piling up like boots by a door.
Before I could form answers, one of my mother’s songs came to save me, one of the songs she sang when we were alone in the car on our drives to and from Ringgold, when I was drifting off to sleep or pretending to, staring out the window, catching fleeting glimpses of green-hooded mallards and white-tailed deer. She often said that she wished she were able to sing, and was disappointed when she realized that she lacked the gift. So she rarely sang.
But there in the car, out of earshot of everyone except me, she sang. She sang about run-around men and hold-tight women, about sticky-sweet love and salty-dry longing, about rest waiting up in the next life and the weight pressing down on this one—songs like the gospel standard “Please Be Patient with Me,” Mel and Tim’s blues classic “Starting All Over Again,” and Betty Wright’s R&B hit “Clean Up Woman.” They were the kinds of songs that dug down until they hit something soft and raw. They set the story of her life to a melody, and she sang them from an honest place with little regard for talent or judgment. With these songs she tapped into a more tender part of herself, one I rarely saw, one where she didn’t have to be stoic and phlegmatic, where she could release the tension that drew back her shoulders and acknowledge the desire that tickled her flesh, where she could accept the idea of frailty and entertain the possibility of tears. It was a place where she could just be beautifully human—Billie in the whole.
That was the gift.
And so there it was, not summoned and without warning, pushing its way through the crowd of questions, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” one of the songs my mother sang hard and true out of her heart and into a steering wheel, coming to save me.
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone.
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
I didn’t know why that song, of all things, came into my head, but I took it as a sign. I believed that God was trying to tell me something: that He would somehow make a way for me to survive, that I had to be brave and patient, that this was not my last night.
I swallowed two aspirin, flung myself back out onto the hardwood to the sound of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Shining Star,” and never thought about suicide again.
I decided that night that I would turn to God. Surely He could fix things.
My family wasn’t extremely religious, but we were observant and reverent. Every second and fourth Sunday, the preacher we shared with another church came to preach at ours. We sometimes went to church on those Sundays. Our church was Shiloh Baptist. It was my mother’s home church, located in Sparta, the now-defunct town that was once the parish seat, some twenty miles southeast of Gibsland and not far from Bienville, where my father now lived. The remaining community was now called Shiloh, after the church.
To get there we drove south, between two sweet potato farms set atop a hill, facing each other. They sold most of the roots wholesale, but we bought them retail, for pies, soufflés, chips, and candying. The farm on the west side of the road had a caged monkey at the entrance. I liked that farm. I would stare at the monkey, in awe of how familiar it looked, and yet how foreign it was. I thought about how much I would like to see it outside of its cage, but I was glad that it wasn’t.
Farther on, we passed over rolling, forested hills.
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