I Will Go With You

By ZA Rhena Richards

The author ZA! Rhena Richards remembered, quiet, and solemn times in her life, where her thoughts and focus became clear, as the global pandemic COVID-19 of 2020 ransacked and took hostage all rigorous lives, all lifestyles, and the comforts of "normalcy," but this time, something was very different. She realized she had a purpose and needed to respond.

The quiet of her became peaceful, and she took comfort in seeking this in remembrance.--a sullen, tender-aged child sat alone on the veranda of her grandmother's house. As she pined for her mother daily, she gazed into the light blue sky. All of the occupants were inside. She heard a clear audible voice, "Where are you from? What is your name?" She does not answer, but she heard the questions.

Returning to the veranda, the following morning, she hears the same clear voice again, ask, "Where are you from? What is your name?" She hears the questions, and again she does not answer, but this time she begins to immediately reflect on the questions, even throughout the night where the windows were open and the house fan span, circulating heat across her skin as the mosquitoes feasted on it.

Stooping to sit on the veranda on the new, born, morning, the same voice repeated the questions. Finally responding. She said, "I don't know" (in her head).

The soft wind-like voice said, "Go and ask her with the skirt on."

"I'm scared," she said, "they don't like me."

The clear voice said, "I will go with you. Pull, tug on her skirt." The sullen tender-aged child went inside and looked for her with the skirt and pulled it and asked, "Where am I from? What's my name?"

A warm, smiling caramel-colored face embedded with alabaster eyes, shone down, and told her.

The little girl walked back outside, poised herself on the steps, and said, "America, Rhena. I want to go to America. My Mommy is there. How do I get there?" In her head the little girl asked and finally smiled.

The still, quiet voice said, "I will go with you."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637109854

Book preview

Truly Yours, My Pearl

Now, 2020

Truly Yours,

I am starting this letter with this: I will call you beloved. Please answer to this—this is the call. In April of 2020, they said to America, and me an American in it, Welcome in COVID-19 a virus. Let it into your hearts and minds. Give it your space. It’s on TV, watch it! Let it in and let it…rest. Introduce it to your families, your loved ones, and your friends. Let it sit at your tables and eat, not your food, but you.

I thought, Wait a minute. This is an unwelcome houseguest, and this is a public service announcement. It is August. I am still out of work and have spent what I didn’t want to spend. Thank God for unemployment, with no lines; times have changed, haven’t they, though.

Remember when we romped and played outside in the hot summer sun, and sweat ran down the backs of our thighs and legs, and when we fell and got a cut and couldn’t wait to pick the scab off and show it to our friends. Do you remember Hula Hoops, Big Wheels, Roller Skates, and Ker-Bangers (long and short, regular, and glow in the dark), and you practiced long and hard to hear the clacks that would last. And your forearms got black and blue? And no one at school asked you, not even your teacher asked you, What happened to you?

It all seemed so simple then, or was it simpler then? One stationary house phone in our house, with the really, long cord that went all over the house, on a long leash like a dog, and when the cord ran down, we took it outside and played jump rope—Double Dutch. And if you needed to call the police, you needed to run home and not call 911. No, you had to dial the O, for the op-er-a-tor.

And when the sun showers came, you knew they only lasted five to ten minutes; you stood inside for a little bit, watching out, and if it got too dark, your day of play was turned off. And as a child, this was a great halt. The year 2020 is a great halt.

Remember when you had to go to the store, but you went to your friend’s house first to ask them to go with you and how your heart fell when they said, No, I can’t…go. And right before you left the house, the radio was on, and you heard your favorite song; you lingered at the front door or stuck your head to the radio, waiting for your favorite song to finish because you never knew when you would ever hear it again. Here we are.

You had your own keys before you were a teen or a double, digited, aged, old, anything, and you thought fights were physical and didn’t know what emotional or mental was. And you kept secrets…the things you promised never to forget, for what? Because your