What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers’ time? In our great-grandmothers’ day?
It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.
— Alice Walker
My maternal grandmother’s name was Dorothy Chandler Collins. She was born on August 13, 1916. Ma, as we affectionately called her, birthed and raised 13 children, 3 boys, and 10 girls, and had the greenest fingers. Supporting herself and her children as a widow in 1961, she found subsistence in planting and harvesting crops in the fields of Dortches, Battleboro, and Red Oak, North Carolina. Her husband died of stomach cancer one month after their 13th child was born, and she never remarried. Along with raising a host of grandchildren, she found solace in planting her own gardens, the vivid colors and fragrant blooms providing a much-needed escape from her daily struggles.
In her renowned work “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” Alice Walker sheds light on the experiences of Black women, resonating deeply with my family history. Walker’s writings span over a hundred years, highlighting the artistic talents of Black mothers and grandmothers, often unseen and under appreciated. She scribes, “And I remember people coming to my mother’s yard to be given cuttings from her flowers; I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden. A garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity, that to this day people drive by our house in Georgia—perfect strangers and imperfect strangers—and ask to stand or walk among my mother’s art.” Additionally, she illustrated Black women who could find purpose and motivation in the midst of adversity. Through Alice Walker’s insights, Ma’s garden became illuminated in a new way for me. Walker enlightened me to the fact that the personal gardens she toiled in daily was significant for purposes beyond the provision of food and beauty.
***
To explore Alice Walker’s question: What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers’ time? With her artistic abilities, my grandmother had a special gift for coaxing flowers to grow by tapping into the world of sound and touch. Regrettably, when she had to relocate from Dortches to Red Oak, North Carolina, she had to leave her mouthwatering masterpiece behind. From that point forward, she never experienced the joy of cultivating her own vegetable garden. Her children and grandchildren she helped raise, grew older and left home. Wherever she went though, her flower bed trailed behind her, a colorful and sweet-smelling companion. Among a myriad of flowers, the Rose held a special place in her heart, serving as her confidant. With each passing year, still living independently in her 80s and 90s, she continued to adorn her two-bedroom apartment on Williford St. with beautiful flowers, both inside and outside.
Never having learned to drive, and no longer harvesting vegetables, Saturdays were time for my mother, sisters, and me, to grocery shop for her and discern her horticultural holiness. Her path to spirituality was akin to that of a gardener, carefully tending to the blooming moments in life. Her physical garden was a metaphorical representation of the inner garden she cultivated within herself. I’ve never seen my grandmother sin, until she became entangled in the throes of dementia. Oh, what it’s like to lose both a garden and your mind simultaneously. And in all of her loss, she never forgot scripture, or how to tap her feet to her favorite gospel songs.
A quiet woman with a pensive stare, gardening was not the only way my grandmother showed herself as an artist. What do you suppose a mother’s or grandmother’s prayers are? Her unwritten discourse with heaven felt exclusive, like a secret exhibition designed solely for an audience of one. Prayer emanated from Ma’s heart, filling the air with a sweet fragrance. A first class herb, ascending to the nose of God. Burning, dispensing and liberating—ignited by the proverbial mustard seed blossoming inside. Prophecy and intercession are unquestionably Black expressions and art. It could be quite haunting how anything she uttered came to pass. Death and life were in the power of her tongue.
When no one was looking, I wonder did her garden become one like Gethsemane? The way she expressed her creativity through flowers and prayers made me realize the immense burden she carried, but she still managed to overcome her personal Gethsemane. My mother said she’d never seen Ma cry. Not after the death of her husband, parents, or even some of her children. Did she know her husband was going to die of cancer? Her daughter too? Did she feel betrayed being left to raise 13 children on her own? As her children slept, what were her orisons? Did she abandon her will and arise as a new creature? I’m convinced she secretly wrung her tear-soaked pillow into her watering can. Though she was pressed like oil out of olives, God never extracted His hand from hers.
By reminiscing about my grandmother’s earthly gardens and envisioning her heavenly garden, I uncover the similarity between flowers and words: I think it blasphemes God, if in a field of the arts, you fail to give language its Blue-Eyed Grass, Hyacinths, Morning Glories, Violets and Wild Indigos. Plait together the foliage of praise for poetry. Purple is to prose as purple cloth is to righteous bodies. And at the tie that binds prose and poetry, flowers are more to language than splendor was to Solomon.
***
My soft-handed, plant-tending, plant-whispering, hymn-loving grandmother was 46 years old when she witnessed the early flowering of Dr. Martin Luther King’s newborn “I Have A Dream” speech, at Booker T. Washington High School gymnasium in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on November 27, 1962.
Many do not know of this historic splendorous fact that dresses our imperial city. As she sat in those bleachers and witnessed, I often wondered—what dreams of hers took root and sprouted up?—what dreams were inspired at that moment and refrained from her tongue until the stanza closing of her poetic life?
My dream for the life and legacy of my grandmother goes something like this: I have a dream that Ma is the grower of heaven’s husbandry. I’m even more certain that heaven has a garden that Ma brought to earth with her prayers. With us no longer, and having prepared the garden for her reception, God took Ma and orchestrated—
Dorothy, you lifted up thy voice like a tubular flower. From day to day, you sang aloud and spared not thy land from your gentle touch. You honored Big Daddy and Big Mama. You delighted in knowing thy ways around the kitchen, the loom, and every space you were needed in. You are such a woman that I have chosen; a woman that did not hide herself from her own flesh. A woman prearranged to rise.
Dorothy, you learned of Me. I am the stem, and you are the petals. With your long life, you have satisfied Me. With red roses, I have pacified you. I shall present to your descendants perennial perceptions of Me welcoming you into gates covered with lush foliage. Their dreams begotten on every rock and every mount.
I appoint you master gardener—a buried grandmother—a groundmother—to tend to Heaven’s husbandry. In your companionship, you shall whisper in psalms, hymns, and seasonal songs to every verde and sienna-colored substance. I command the one with the wilt of age to encourage the bloom of the bright-petaled buds and the seeds not yet grown in glory.
Though the grass withers, and the flowers fade, the green thumb that I have given thee, will remain verdant forever.
###
Edited by Non Fiction Editor, Ravynn K. Stringfield, Ph.D.
************
Are you a Black woman writer? We’re looking for short stories and personal essays to feature on our digital and print platforms. Click HERE to find out how to submit.
