"Khadi-jah"

Dear readers:  You will want to go back and review my post about "Bessie Davis Hudson" (April 30th, 2011) to understand this posting. Not all of the postings will be in sequence, so you may read about a Book Woman Club character in one meeting this week, and then the next posting may be about a different character that is attending a different Book Woman Club meeting!  I will try to not post about more than two Book Woman Club meetings at a time and will always give you information that will help you keep informed about the action...like what you are reading now!  Enjoy!

          "Where does she get off ordering me around!"  Khadi-jah fumed as she carried the tray of banana pudding into the room.  She rolled her eyes behind Miss Bessie's back, knowing that it was not a good idea to roll them in front of her!  Khadi-jah didn't like to admit that she was intimidated by this matriarch of the Book Woman Club, but she was.  It made her all the more angrier that she just couldn't seem to speak up for herself with this elder!  Khadi-jah began to hand out bowls of the warm banana pudding.  "Thank you sweetie!" said Miss Bessie smiled and winked at Khadi-jah as she took her bowl,  making Khadi-jah cringe inside.  Miss Bessie had just finished yelling at her and ordering her into the kitchen and was now calling her sweetie?  "She should have taken my side!" thought Khadi-jah, resentfully.  As she handed Glory "Amen" Johnson the last bowl of banana pudding, she had to stop herself from dumping the warm gooey mess into Miss Glory's lap!  Glory "Amen" Johnson seemed to sense Khadi-jah's thoughts. Miss Glory took the bowl from Khadi-jah and held it mid-air for a dramatic moment or two, while she stared, unsmiling, at Khadi-jah.  Miss Glory lowered the bowl into her lap, and continued to stare at Khadi-jah while she lifted a blind spoonful of the dessert to her mouth.  "Bitch!" Khadi-jah thought as she turned away.  Khadi-jah sat down hard in her chair.  "Sweetie," Khadi-jah turned to look at Bessie Davis Hudson, getting another smile and wink from the older woman. "You gonna eat some of Karen's banana pudding?  She really out did herself this time!" "No-thank-you-Miss-Bessie", Khadi-jah hurriedly mumbled.  "I don't eat sweets anymore.  Sugar weakens the brain and muddles your thinking."  Miss Bessie smiled and winked again as she lifted a pudding filled spoon to her lips.  Khadi-jah crossed her arms in front of her chest and mentally detached herself from the Book Woman Club meeting. Khadi-jah was angry!
          Khadi-jah was always angry! She couldn't remember a time when she wasn't angry.  She was angry at her mother and father for forcing her to spend her childhood in a white suburb and she was angry at the "nigger-calling" white kids that tormented her everyday at school!  She was angry at her turn-coat Republican older brother who thought he was white! She was angry at the United States for the way it had enslaved Africans and for how it continued to treat African-Americans like second-class citizens, despite having elected an African-American President!  She was angry at Glory "Amen" Johnson and her sanctimonious preaching about "Christianity being the only true religion", and angry at Miss Glory for constantly throwing her narrow views all up in Khadi-jah's face, like Khadi-jah was a heathen because she had converted to Islam!  And most of all, Khadi-jah was angry at herself because, try as she might, she could not stop herself from being so angry!!!
           Khadi-jah's anger made it hard for her to feel like she fit in anywhere.  She would join different groups, hoping to fit in.  She would at first be quiet, try listening instead of speaking, and she would carefully choose her words when she did decide to speak.  But then the heat would rise up in her.  Waves and waves of anger would wash over her, becoming a tidal force that she could not hold back!  Then she would find herself on her feet, sometimes a fist raised in the air, yelling and pontificating like a Baptist preacher trying to save doomed souls in hell! 
         Most of the time, after these episodes, Khadi-jah would not return to the group that she had "performed" in front of...too embarrassed to show her face again.  She hadn't been back to any of the meetings of the African-American Peoples Revolutionary Communist Party since she had delivered a 15 minute tirade about their lack of commitment to the plight of Woman Workers.  The members had voted against Khadi-jah's suggestion that they chain themselves to the dance polls, inside of a strip joint on the north-side of Syracuse, in order to show solidarity for the exploited workers of the exotic dance industry.  The Party members, instead, agreed to hold "teach-ins" to educate the public about the abuses of the industry.  They met Khadi-jah rant with silence, not one of them saying a word after her rant.  She remembered how she slowly sank down into her chair, her chin dragging painfully on the floor.  How she intently looked at the intricate henna design on the top of her African sandal-ed feet, unable to meet her fellow Comrades silent eyes.
          The Book Woman Club was the only organization that Khadi-jah had returned to over and over again despite, her dramatic, and more often than not, verbally abusive outbursts.  Because...while her mother and father refused to talk to her after a hate filled rant about their inadequate parenting skills and retarded understanding of how to raise an African-American child; while her brother didn't talk to her because he feared, that when she finally got arrested under the Patriot Act for her subversive talk against the government of the United States of America, that she would take him down with her and he would loose his job, his freedom and his Republican Party membership; and while the African-American Peoples Revolutionary Communist Party thought she was too radical in her thinking to be a part of their mission to shape the U.S. into a Utopian Communist society...Bessie Davis Hudson always called her "sweetie", and smiled and winked at her after one of her anger filled performances.
          Khadi-jah tuned into the meeting long enough to listen to Rose-Ann come up with still another excuse to explain why she could not offer her home for the next meeting.  Khadi-jah was about to offer her apartment, when Karen volunteered to hold the next meeting at her house.  Khadi-jah stood up saying, "Well, I have to get going.  I have a meeting to get to.  I'm helping to organize a candlelight vigil, to be held in front of city hall next Monday night, protesting the city school district lay-offs brought on by cuts in the budget made by the City of Syracuse Common Council.  I'm sure some of you will want to attend to show support for our children! They are our future!"  "See you next week, sweetie!" Bessie got up and gave Khadi-jah a big hug. Khadi-jah briefly held onto Bessie's circle of love, and then stepped back, embarrassed by this public display of affection.  But, Khadi-jah knew where she would be next Saturday afternoon at 1:00.  No protest could keep her from attending the next meeting of the Book Woman Club.