12. Renza Mensah #3
I carried all the shit we had won back to the car first, then we walked over to the museum together. I ain’t know what the hell I was about to see ‘cause museums wasn’t really my thing, but once we got inside, even I had to admit, some of this shit was hard.
One room had me and Sha’Nelle slowin’ down soon as we walked in that muthafucka. The whole exhibit was Black art, but it wasn’t no regular portraits hangin’ on white walls.
The first piece took up damn near the whole side of the room, and from where we stood, it looked like this big ass paintin’ of a Black woman underwater with her eyes closed and her braids floatin’ all around her.
When we got closer, I realized the shit wasn’t completely painted.
Her braids was real hair sealed under layers of clear glass, and inside every braid was tiny pieces of handwritten letters, birth certificates, recipes, newspaper clippin’s and old pictures of Black families.
The water around her was made out of thousands of pieces of blue and clear glass, and depending on where we stood, different faces started showin’ up under it.
I moved a lil’ to the left and saw a woman holdin’ a baby.
When I stepped to the right, she disappeared and this old man sittin’ on some porch showed up in the same damn spot.
“Wait,” Sha’Nelle said as she grabbed my arm. “Move back over there.”
I stepped back where I was, and she moved with me until the woman and baby came back into view.
“Oh my God,” she murmured, starin’ at it. “That is beautiful.”
I looked at the piece again. “Yeah, this shit different.”
The next part of the exhibit opened up into this big ass room, and the first thing that caught my attention was the ceilin’.
Hundreds of long pieces of fabric hung from that muthafucka in different shades of red, purple, blue, green and gold, but they wasn’t just hangin’ straight down.
They twisted through the room in these long ass waves that made it look like the whole ceilin’ was movin’ even though none of that shit was.
Sha’Nelle tilted her head back while we walked underneath it. “This is beautiful.”
“Yeah, they did they shit with this,” I said as I looked up too.
In the middle of the room was this big ass sculpture of two hands, and I ain’t even know what it was made out of until we got closer. Thousands of tiny pieces of metal had been shaped into fingerprints, and every fingerprint had a name pressed into it.
The hands was damn near twice my height, reachin’ toward each other without actually touchin’.
Sha’Nelle walked around one side while I went around the other, and when we met again, she was readin’ the plaque beside it.
“They collected fingerprints from Black people in forty different countries,” she told me.
I looked back at the hands. “All them muthafuckas?”
“Yeah,” she said, smilin’. “Every piece on there came from somebody.”
I nodded, impressed as hell. “That’s hard.”
Sha’Nelle nodded and reached for my hand as we kept movin’.
The next piece had a whole section to itself. They had taken this huge block of white marble and carved a Black woman into it from her shoulders up. She had her eyes closed, her face was smooth as hell and her hair rose damn near ten feet above her head in these thick twists.
Every twist turned into somethin’ different toward the top.
Sha’Nelle started circlin’ it, so I followed her.
“How the hell they carved all this into one piece?” I asked.
“I’on know,” she said while lookin’ up. “Look at the back.”
I stepped around with her and saw this long staircase carved through the woman’s hair. Tiny people was walkin’ up it, and the higher they got, the more the clothes on the figures changed.
“Okay, this my favorite,” Sha’Nelle said.
I shook my head. “You said that shit about the last room.”
“I changed my mind,” she replied.
I wrapped my arm around her waist and stood here with her for a lil’ while before we moved on.
Further back, the whole wall was covered with these big ass circles that looked almost like planets.
Every one of ‘em had been made from somethin’ different.
One was carved out of dark wood with cities cut deep into it.
One had pieces of sheet music worked through it, and another had numbers, equations and drawin’s from Black inventors and scientists written all across the surface.
By the time we made it into the last room, I understood why Sha’Nelle wanted to come in. The entire floor was covered by one big ass map of the world, except the continents had been built out of books. Thousands of them muthafuckas too.
It was novels, medical books, poetry, history, science, architecture, music, law and all kinda shit written by Black people from everywhere.
The books had been stacked and shaped until they made continents, mountains and coastlines.
Some was old as hell with worn covers, and others looked brand new.
Sha’Nelle walked around the edge slow readin’ titles whenever she recognized one.
I came up behind her and put my hands around her waist. “You finna have us in this muthafucka till they close.”
She smiled and leaned back against me. “You ready to go?”
“Nah,” I told her as I kissed the side of her head. “Look at yo’ shit.”
That made her smile even harder before she reached down and laid her hands over mine.
I stood here with her while she kept lookin’, and every now and then she would point somethin’ out to me or pull me toward another part she wanted to see.
By then, I was fuckin’ with the museum too, but I liked seein’ Sha’Nelle enjoy herself more than anything.
She had been smilin’ damn near the whole time we was in here, and every time she reached for my hand without thinkin’ about it, I closed mine around hers and kept movin’ with her.
By the time we finally started makin’ our way toward the exit, she had this soft lil’ smile sittin’ on her face.
I looked down at her. “You had fun?”
She nodded. “I did. I really liked that.”
I squeezed her hand. “Good.”
She leaned into my side while we kept walkin’, and I wrapped my arm around her before kissin’ the top of her head.
We had barely made it down the block when a horse and carriage came rollin’ up beside us. I looked over at it ‘cause I ain’t know Greystone had shit like this, but the driver slowed down and asked if we wanted a ride through Midtown.
I looked at the carriage and then at his ass.
“This all this is, right?” I asked him. “A damn carriage ride?”
The driver nodded. “That’s it. We go around the district and bring you right back here.”
I stared at him another second before noddin’. “A’ight.”
Sha’Nelle looked at me as I walked her toward it. “Why you look at that man like he was tryna kidnap us?”
“I don’t know that nigga,” I told her while keepin’ my eyes on him.
“He drivin’ a horse, Renza.”
I cut my eyes toward her. “And I still don’t know that nigga.”
I had my shit on my hip anyway, so this nigga was stupid if he was on bullshit.
I ain’t care how harmless the setup looked or how many people was around.
A nigga could be drivin’ a horse, pushin’ a stroller or sellin’ damn lemonade, and I was still gon’ pay attention to who the fuck was around me and Sha’Nelle.
That came natural to me, especially when I had her with me.
I reached for her hand and helped her step in the carriage, then climbed in right behind her without takin’ my attention completely off the driver. Once I was seated beside ‘Nelle, I adjusted my shirt over the gun at my waist and looked around before finally settlin’ back.
Sha’Nelle glanced down at my hip, then back up at me with that look she always gave me when she knew exactly what kind of time I was on.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her into me. “What?”
“Nothin’,” she said, but that lil’ smile on her face told me she already knew.
I kissed the side of her head and looked back toward the street as the carriage started movin’.