Asenath and the Origin of Nappy Hair: Being a Collection of Tales Gathered and Extracted from the Epic Stanzas of Asenath and Our Song of Songs

By Carolivia Herron

Volume 1 of the 2 volume novel, Asenath and Our Song of Songs, shares scenes from the life of Shirah Shulamit Ojero, an African American Jewish girl and woman, growing up in Washington, DC. Shirah reexamines and affirms her Judaic ancestry, becomes a graduate student studying epic poetry at the University of Pen Forest, and in the process of writin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Street to Street Epic Publications
• Release date: Nov 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781938609220

Carolivia Herron

Carolivia Herron is an African American Jewish author, educator and publisher living in Washington, DC. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania and has held professorial appointments at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, California State University, Chico, and the College of William and Mary. Most recently she has been the Distinguished Visiting Scholar of Project Humanities at Arizona State University. Carolivia Herron has won writing awards and commendations from Be'chol Lashon, Kulanu, Parenting Magazine Reading Magic, Marian Vanett Ridgway Awards, the Patterson Poetry Center, the Elizabeth Stone Memorial Award, and the Exceptional women in the Arts Award from Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. Dr. Herron publishes and promotes the writings of Jews of Color internationally including books by the Igbo of Nigeria, the Lemba of Zimbabwe, and the Beta Israel of Ethiopia and Israel. She directs the EpicCentering the National Mall project which connects the work of young local writers with our national epic as expressed in exhibits on the National Mall. Carolivia is a writer with the Pen-Faulkner Writers In Schools program, and is an active member of Tifereth Israel Congregation of Washington, DC.

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This book, Asenath and the Origin of Nappy Hair: Being a Collection of Tales Gathered and Extracted from the Epic Stanzas of Asenath and Our Song of Songs is published by Street to Street Epic Publications, Washington, DC.

It is extracted from the novel, Asenath and Our Song of Songs, by Carolivia Herron, under contract to Random House.

Text copyright © 2014 by Carolivia Herron

Cover photograph © 2014 by Georgia Carol Johnson Herron

Cover designed by Jackie Urbanovic JackieUrbanovic.com

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Street to Street Epic Publications, Washington, DC.

www.carolivia.com

StreetToStreet.org

www.EpicCenterStories.org

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Herron, Carolivia.

Asenath and the Origin of Nappy Hair

Being a Collection of Tales

Gathered and Extracted

From the Epic Stanzas

Of Asenath and Our Song of Songs

Summary: Shirah Shulamit Ojero, an African American Jewish Graduate Student at the University of Pen Forest, discovers that her extravagantly nappy hair, eight circles per inch of hair, has connected her conceptually and biologically with the nappy haired ancient Egyptian priestess, Asenath, daughter of Poti-pherah, and eventually the wife of Joseph, son of Israel. In reaching toward each other, Shirah sailing toward the past, Asenath walking toward the future, they tell the lovesong of the human race, the love of freedom. Asenath and the Origin of Nappy Hair tells half of the story. The full text, Asenath and Our Song of Songs, will tell the full story.

ISBN 978-1-938609-21-3

In Memoriam

Carlos Fuentes

The Waterman, the Cicerone,

the Fountain

Now, are you that that fountain who spreads abroad so wide a river of speech? O honor and light of other novelists, may my long study and great love that impelled me to explore your volumes, avail me in the poiesis of this, my song.

As adapted from Dante, La Divina Commedia

For My Academy

Public Schools of Washington, DC

Neval Thomas Elementary School

Woodson Junior High School

Paul Junior High School

Spingarn Senior High School

Coolidge Senior High School

Vox School of Languages

Eastern Baptist College / Eastern College /

Eastern University

Villanova University

The University of Pennsylvania

Harvard University

Mount Holyoke College

California State University, Chico

Howard University

The American University

Georgetown University

The Catholic University of America

The Folger Shakespeare Library

The University of the District of Columbia

The University of Maryland

The University of Turku, Suomi, Finland

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

The Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College

The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

The Smithsonian Institution

National Museum of American Art

Anacostia Community Museum

Beinecke Library of Yale University

The University of Lubumbashi, Zaïre

The University of Kinshasa, Zaïre

Marien N’Gouabi Université de Brazzaville, Kongo

Carleton College

The University of Massachusetts, Boston

Brandeis University

Harvard Divinity School

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Binghamton University

Hollins University

Grinnell College

Children’s Studio School

Montgomery College

The College of William and Mary

Jewish Study Center of Washington, DC

Havurah Institute

Hebrew College of Brookline / Newton, Massachusetts

St. Johns College of Annapolis

Ruppin Academic Center, Israel

Kibbutzim College of Education,

Tel Aviv, Israel

The Learning Community International School

Arizona State University at Tempe

Epigram

The fact that something is true is never the reason for saying it.

Barbara Herrnstein Smith

The fact that something is not true is never the reason for not saying it.

The Epicentress

Contents

Prologue

Okay, dear reader, I was stillborn. Yes, I know it’s impossible, I know you don’t believe it, but it’s true. I was cast aside by the doctors and nurses at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, DC. The date was July 22, 1947. My mother said, Why isn’t my baby crying. I’ve been here all week and every time a baby is born there’s been crying. The nurse said, Be quiet, or you may never hear her cry. The nurse had tears, don’t blame her for cruelty. My mother silenced. Wondering if I would live. Wondering if I was already dead. Wondering while they cut some tumor out of her and she tore up the sheets at Freedmen’s Hospital. The sheets were old anyhow. She searched for a hole in the sheet with her finger. And waited. When the pain came she would drag her finger down from the hole, tearing the sheet into rags. The nurse said, We’re going to start charging you for the sheets. I had just a little body then. The doctor held me upside down and knocked me around a bit. Nothing. My mother had a bad tumor. The tumor had been between me unborn and the world. When I came out I tore the tumor. My mother was bleeding to death. They couldn’t use anesthesia. Pain. Dangerous. Everything was dangerous that day. I came out tearing the tumor but didn’t breathe. My mother tore the sheets while I tore the tumor. Back beat to no avail. Blue. Would not breathe. To hell with breathing. Makes sense to me. They gave up on me and turned to save my mother. They stuck me in an incubator and turned away. My mother in pain as they stopped her bleeding. In the mist of the pain my mother heard the nurse again. Doctor, look! They all turned to look. I went from blue to beige brown. I breathed in. I never should have done it. Here is the story of how it happened. I wrote this story for you. This is the Book Unknown In Heaven.

Listen.

Cluster 1: You

Cluster 1 Argument

Okay, respected reader, so I told you I would explain to you how this happened, how I ended up breathing alive on earth when I didn’t want to. I’ll tell you, but you should know that even I didn’t know at first. I started figuring it out when I was eleven years old, so that’s where I’m starting. It’s hard for me to tell you things in order because I have trouble thinking things in order. Still, I can give you some hints to remember as you listen. I call just about everybody, you. Don’t get confused. Don’t think it’s always the same person I’m talking to just because I say, you. The person I’m talking to changes, and sometimes the I who’s speaking changes as well. Right now the I is Shirah Shulamit Ojero, but you can’t expect me to be the narrator all the time. Sometimes it’s a different I saying you to a different you. I try to keep it straight, but it tangles. Don’t worry. When it’s really tangled I put these little asterisks in for you, like this.

* * *

See? If I notice in time that I’ve changed the you or the I, I put in these asterisks. Sometimes I don’t notice fast enough and nothing’s there to tell you I’ve changed the you or the I. I apologize for that dear reader, please be patient, you just have to stick with the story, I hope you will. I think it’s pretty good. When I was eleven years old John Milton met me, yeah, the poet. He was floating around invisible in Kann’s bookstore downtown at 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue and he helped me to find his book at the Carnegie Library. Right here in Washington City, and he saw me. I’m telling you the truth.

Listen.

Chapter 1: Look Homeward, Angel

¹

You step down on the tile floor of Kann’s basement bookstore and awaken me. I hear the clack of your shoes and the whispering thoughts you speak softly within. What is past is prologue.² Before you stepped down, before you crossed Pennsylvania Avenue to Seventh and E Streets, you read those words on the Archives building. Now you bring the words downstairs. You, a young girl alive, walking toward an old dead poet, me, where I lounge along a shelf with my leather covered book, Paradise Lost.

It is cool and deep here. I lean out from my shelf and look at you, curious. I see the big puffs of hair on both sides of your head. Can you hear me? What do you call your hair? It’s so puffy and full. Nappy? It’s the nappiest hair in the world you say? I’m glad you can hear me and answer my questions. Eleven years old and your name is Shirah Shulamit Ojero. My name is John Milton.

It’s not easy to see me. The bookstore clerk doesn’t know that I’m here. And even you don’t know that you and I are speaking together. I’ve known other poets with hair like yours. Phillis Wheatley has your hair. What? Yes, so you know Phillis. Sometimes Phillis and I walk together beside the Ocean of Light. Have you been there? Have you dipped your hands in the silvery water? I was with Phillis when she died in Boston. We talk together and once we sailed across the Atlantic from England. I like to hear Phillis thinking. She hears me when I’m thinking too. We meander by the Ocean of Light together, picking up our favorite orange seashells. We talk about Boston. She told me once that her hair is African hair. I don’t think she knows that word, nappy.³

When you look up I see deeply into your black flecked brown eyes. Sad eyes. I hover beside my dark maroon book all in leather and gold. Your eyes linger, you glance along the books beside me on the top shelf before you turn and walk to the children’s section. You have $7.00 in your pocket.

As I look inside your head I see more than the Archives Building, I see the city that lives beyond this bookstore, up the bannisters and stairs. You stood on the corner of Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and looked around at Washington City. Even as you remember it, even so I see it within you, yes, I see through your eyes. Your sweeping vision starts in the east at the long avenue of stores and government buildings, travels to the Capitol Building, wide and tall and rounded with the Statue of Freedom looking toward the sun in the eastern mid-heaven, then slopes southward to the pink marble of the National Gallery of Art, touching the Archives Building before urging west toward the Old Post Office Building, Federal Triangle. But your eyes return to the Archives, framed by the Mall and Smithsonian Buildings in the background. All right. Everything. In the bright summerlight panorama. You bring this light with you in your descent to the bookstore, into this shadow of words. Books. Seeking.

What made you give that look midway between the journey from Pennsylvania Avenue to this bookstore? Why did you stop, turn, and give Washington City that wide look of peace before you descended? Shalom Aleichem. Peace to all of you. The green grocer taught you those words. Shalom Aleichem. The words arise in your head along with the face of Mr. Kohen leaning toward you with a ripe tomato. Still safe. Still beautiful. You think you are describing Washington in your mind but you are blessing it. You do not know. Yes, you look into the heart of the city and give it a blessing, as if somehow you were Washington’s guardian, its angel, looking homeward.

Chapter 2: Past Prologue

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Words still murmur inside your head. We hold . . . That’s inside the Archives, on the parchment. They don’t carve that part on the outside.

Even as you stand near me, adjusting to the shade of the bookstore, your remembering eyes are filled with the massive building.

I think the Archives building is Athena’s temple, it looks like the Parthenon in my myth book, the Parthenon built up and completed again.

What is Past is Prologue. Carved along the top edge of the Archives Building. Well that’s Shakespeare talking right there. I read that in my father’s Shakespeare book. Shakespeare has his own library all to himself down by the Library of Congress. The Folger Shakespeare Library. I wish I could read in there. One day I’ll go way inside. Not just in the front part but way inside, beyond the velvet ropes and the picture of Ariel. Ariel means Jerusalem, but Shakespeare makes it mean an elf or a pixie type of spirit. Names get so mixed up and changed.

Archives of the United States of America. Ark - hives. Arch - hives. When I was little I used to say it both ways to see how it worked. Ark - hives. Arch - hives. What does the word Prologue mean up on that building? You asked your mother once when you were a little girl as the two of you sat down on the bus. And the bus driver put on the brakes in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Are you sure she’s not five years old yet? How come she’s reading? Are you sure you’re not trying to cheat the D. C. Transit bus company out of a token?

Bus driver I declare she’s not in kindergarten yet.

And then your mother whispered to you, Can you read the words softly to yourself? And the lady in the seat in front of you looked back at you and shook her head and grunted. Umh umh umh. What did that mean? Why did she grunt at you like that? She grunted like she wanted to say something. Did she think your family was poor. She wanted to say something that’s true but she didn’t want to say it out loud. Did she think your family was really, really poor? Maybe you were poor, but still, you weren’t in kindergarten yet. Your mother didn’t have to pay your fare. My mother wasn’t cheating. Prologue means words or a statement that comes before something else, like in the front of a book or before a play starts. Your mother and father have enough money for an extra fare most of the time, but why should they pay it since you are not even five years old? That’s what you thought back then. Now you’re eleven.

Chapter 3: Story Caught

The Bobbsey Twins in the Country. Why don’t you buy that one? The Prince and the Pauper. You could buy that one. Or this one. The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore. Understood Betsy. The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat. You know that’s got to be a good one. Eight Cousins. The Bobbsey Twins in Washington. Pick one. Favorite Poems, Old and New, Selected for Boys and Girls. Choose!

But when you pick something to read, could you please pick something that lasts longer than the bus ride? Will these books last long enough? Is it worth it to buy one of them? You’ll finish it too fast. I should walk up to Carnegie Library and get lots of books.

And your head droops. Those two puffs of hair above your ears go up as your eyes go down. As I look at you I wonder if you know the meaning of your name. I reach into your head. Yes, you know. Shirah is song. And Shulamit, shalom, is peace. Your name is a Song of Peace. But you certainly are not peace.

Who are all these people, these echoing voices, living inside your head? Are they your companions? Is that why you like books about twins? I see your Portfolio here, clusters of voices above your right ear and near the crown of your head. Some are murmuring to you on the left side of your skull, and some have settled near your eyes. They tremble with speech and words. I see them.

And I hear them whispering together, waiting to see what book you will choose. Ah, they come from stories you have read. I can tell.

Here comes a memory bubbling up, you are story caught inside it, still, as if a standing sleep has seized you. You were six years old.

The DC Transit street car curved from Seventh and K winding toward North Capitol Street with clang and spark, it jogged you between the window and your mother as you sat reading with two thick books lying on your lap. Books thick enough to last you until you got home to Mayfair and beyond. Word hunger, expectation, and quiet joy surrounded you while the city’s life receded with its thick loud air.

All you wanted was to have an unread book to read that night at home. It could not happen, you read them too fast. The street car stopped in front of the Government Printing Office, where you looked up to smile toward the Post Office. Your father worked there during the night, for you. In order to care for you by day while your mother was teaching he worked at the Post Office by night.

As the bus left the stop, crossing over North Capitol, you looked directly south at the Capitol Building, right through the high curves of the arches you saw sunlight shining through the parapets — you called them parapets — from the other side, blue and marble light shining through. Are they parapets? I don’t know. — What’s a parapet? A parapet is a word from books for something high and beautiful made of stone with ridges and ledges. You used that word for the dome of the Capitol, arches of marble. Beautiful, yes beautiful parapets. Who cares what the word parapet means really? If I don’t look it up in a dictionary for a while I can keep using it the way I want.

All those people from all over the United States think that this wonderful Capitol Building here in Washington City belongs to all of them, and you don’t mind, they can use it. They can visit it. They can enjoy it. But they are just visitors, this is YOUR city. You like it that everybody from everywhere uses it. But it belongs to you, you, you, you and isn’t your city beautiful, beautiful, Oh isn’t your city just BEAUTIFUL!!!

As the bus turned from Massachusetts Avenue into H Street you returned to reading your books.

But then trouble came upon you. The books! You had already finished reading one. And the other, if you didn’t slow down, would be finished before you crossed the Anacostia River. You slowed down, you paced yourself, you counted in the air between the paragraphs, you tried to read just one page every block. It didn’t work. Your eyes raced through the words unheeding, helpless in the face of story, caught.

Glee filled the realm of storytellers who make their home behind your eyes. The storytellers hovered and giggled and did not care that you had nothing new left to read at home. Glee and teasing. Did you think you could resist us? They gloated. Your heart faltered, your head dipped, drooped, you glanced up. Sigh. Already there was the Langston Neighborhood on Benning Road. Already there was Spingarn High School and Brown Junior High and Charles Young Elementary and Phelps Vocational, and the Benning golf course. Already you could see the Anacostia River and there on the other side of the bridge was River Terrace and the Potomac Electric Power Company with your elementary school, Neval Thomas, way back beyond a field, framed by the poles and wires of electricity.

That’s Mayfair, where you lived then, and where you still live now.

You placed your finger in the book two pages from the end. If you could force yourself not to read for these last few blocks you would have two pages to read when you got home.

Sad eyes, sad, sad. And your mother looked over at you as you looked out at the Anacostia River.

What’s the matter, now? I thought you picked out two books you really liked. Why did you stop reading? What in the world is the matter?

Well, I did pick out two good books and I enjoy reading them, but, but . . . .

But what?

It’s just that I’m almost through reading the last one and if I don’t stop reading now I’ll have nothing new to read when I get home.

What? I do declare! Do you mean you have just about finished the books I just bought you?

Yes, I only have two pages left. I’m trying to save them until I get home.

Umph, umph, umph, I hope you don’t think I can afford to buy you two books a day! I paid a dollar a piece for those books.

Your mother looked down at you. As soon as we get home we’re going to get in the car and go to the Langston Branch Library where you’ll get a library card. Your father will be rested by then so he can drive us. With a library card you can take out a lot of books all the time.

And the world’s weight fell from you. You finished reading the last pages of the last book. By nightfall you had a library card and all the books you could carry.

Chapter 4: The StorySong of Bear-Wolf’s March to the Library

You tremble away from the memory of your first library card and consider. If you spend your $7.00 on a book now, you’ll be done with it by evening. Plus, you won’t even have any lunch, and you won’t have money to come back to Kann’s for another week, a whole week with nothing to read. Don’t buy a book that won’t last a week, or even three days. No. March up Seventh Street and get books from the Library. A stack of books from the library lasts. Don’t buy a book here at Kann’s. Become Bear-Wolf, the fantastic hero who subdued the demon of deep murky waters, and march forth.⁴

Your mother told you about Bear-Wolf when she was combing your bushy fuzzy tangled hair. And your father said, yes, my little Bear-Wolf, your hair is thick and full and strong and nappy because all the ideas inside twist and turn and rise in circles so much that your skull can’t hold them in so they poke out through your head in beautiful naps, joyful and smart. That’s why you figure things out. Become Bear-Wolf and march up the hill, march off to find your books.

And thus you leave Kann’s basement bookstore, Seventh and E, and step toward Carnegie Library, Seventh and K. I, John Milton, am the witness as you turn your back on Pennsylvania Avenue and march up Seventh Street hill.

You pass Lansburg’s Department Store but what good is that since they don’t even have a book section.

You pass me, John Milton, a second time as I cling to the awning of a used bookstore that displays another copy of my book in a window.

You pass the Woolworth’s where you can buy really good hot dogs and where one day they finally let you sit at the counter to eat a grilled cheese sandwich. You look neither to the left nor to the right.

You pass Hecht’s Department Store on the other side of Seventh Street. Hecht’s would never think of having a book-store inside.

You pass the classic Greek office building on the left.

Your mind is firm within you.

You pass me, John Milton, a third time, as I peer through the window of another used bookstore.

You pass Chinatown with all its color and faraway scents. You don’t turn your head.

You pass me, John Milton, a fourth time, it must be Old Milton Week on Seventh Street, all the bookstores are displaying my book.

You stand in front of Hahn’s Shoe Store and look across at the Carnegie Library at Seventh and K Streets.

You cross K Street and stand in front of the library, looking upward.

Chapter 5: Versity

Carnegie Library. Carved in heavy stone high above the semicircle of stone landings and benches you read. A VNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE. Why does the U have a point at the bottom like a V? You puzzle over it yet again.

It must have something to do with the letter double-u W. Double-u is actually a double-v, two vees stuck together. If a double-u -W -is really a double-vee, maybe there was a time when a single-u was a single-v. So the words are not really A VERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE like I used to say it. I used to think it was talking about poetry in Washington. A Verse City, Washington City, you see, maybe there was a time when people spelled city with an ess instead of a cee, and everybody went around the city - sity - speaking verses, poetry. The word can’t be ADVERSITY with the D fallen out. Nobody would carve the word Adversity above a beautiful city like Washington, and anyway there are too many extra letters for the word to be Adversity. No. I finally figured it out, it’s a University For the People. A school of the universe. And the V is really U.

You look at the people sitting, leaning, brooding, on their stone benches. Are you whispering to them silently? Do you know that someone put a University here for all of us? I wish I could see it. It could be hidden inside somewhere. I wonder why I never see anybody else stop and read the words before they go in. I stop here every time to read them, do they know a university is here? I never see anyone looking. Maybe one day I’ll find the secret university inside.

Beyond the dark doors carved words are in gold rather than stone, Homer, that’s one of the words. You read and turn, stepping up the marble stairs to the Children’s Room on the second floor. You can only take ten books at a time. I, John Milton, watch as you choose. I want to lead you to my books but they don’t put my books in the Children’s Room.

How can I get you to find my book? I sit in one of the tall windows, watching. Then Mrs. Raymond, the librarian, looks at you too and I glance into her head. Surprise! She knows me. Maybe that’s why I feel comfortable lounging around her library room, but she doesn’t mention me to you. I try to ooze into her head every time she looks at you but she just shudders and shakes her head and pushes me out. She doesn’t know how to associate the two of us. John Milton and a little Negro girl. Impossible. That’s what she says to herself. I wonder if she even knows about Phillis Wheatley. I’ll check. Hmm. Yes, she does, but not very much. You know more about her than Mrs. Raymond because your mother told you about her. You think about Phillis in wisps of thought. Phillis called herself an African but you and this Mrs. Raymond, this librarian, call her a Negro, the same category you use for yourself. I am glad that you’ve already heard about Phillis Wheatley. Phillis read my poetry when she was just a girl, and when she died as a woman she had my book Paradise Lost in her arms, but no one has told you that.

Mrs. Raymond keeps thinking about you and looking at you, but you don’t notice. You don’t notice people a lot. I look inside your head for more information about Mrs. Raymond. White. Ah. That’s your mother’s voice echoing in your head. Your mother calls this Mrs. Raymond librarian a good white librarian. "Certainly, Mrs. Ojero, Shirah can stay here and read alone