Farah's Wings

The story of my great aunt is a family legend. Her mother was also a legend- though maybe of a different kind. Their stories, regardless, are connected, like the root and the flower, and to know one it is necessary to know the other.

My great-aunt’s mother was born down in South Carolina, where she lived in a small cabin with a great big family of farmers. Descendants of slaves who had lived on plantations not too far away, the land had become ingrained upon the family; their blood was as close to the earth as the rain water, and the flesh of their ancestors was buried in the fields. Their pain was etched onto the landscape, yet so were their triumphs and victories- as major or minor as they were. This natural, familial affinity, however, failed to make an impression upon the youngest child of the household. Her name was Liberty, and at the young age of seven she had already decided to free herself from bare feet, dirt roads, cramped cabins, empty pockets and pigeon supper. She was going to be a city girl if it killed her.

Above all else, Liberty was determined- if not stubborn. Despite the mockery and faithlessness of her town she worked in fields, in the homes of the well-off and even in the country store until she had saved up enough to move herself all the way up north to New York City. She had cousins there, she maintained, who would take her in and lift her up with angelic, urban hands and pull her out of the mud.

Liberty did indeed make it to New York. Unfortunately her cousins turned out to be either dead, broke or nonexistent- but she soon fell in with an elderly hairdresser who (to her amazement) owned her very own beauty parlor. They bonded over a shared southern heritage, as well as a ruthless sense of practicality, and it was not long after their meeting before Liberty was her apprentice. Liberty’s mentor admired her deft hand and artistic vision, as well as her charisma and work ethic. When her protector passed, the shop was left to her.

Of course Liberty was not satisfied. Her drive for success was a force of nature; it tore down obstacle after obstacle and in their place built up monuments like the temples of Egypt- testaments to her divine grace. She opened a new building with the profits of the first, and then another, and another. She created a whole chain of them, each given the name “Liberty’s Little Beauty Parlor”; there seemed to be one in every neighborhood.

Liberty accomplished all of this by the age of twenty-six.

The popularity of her parlors was due to her vision. Within their tiny walls was a sanctuary where all women were made to feel welcome, beautiful, powerful and free; free from the burdens of a society which demanded their beauty but insisted on their ugliness, free from the constrictions of race and of sex- if only for a few hours.

Then she met a man, one who respected and admired her, and she had a child. And another, and another. The littlest girl, Farah, was my great-Aunt.

Farah’s older sister and brother were “model children”, respectful and well-behaved, with good-hearts and an ear for their mother’s wisdom.

Farah was trouble.

Neither her mother or her father could relate to her, nor could any of her siblings.

Farah liked to dance to jazz in her room. She loved to play ball with the boys, to climb trees and converse with pigeons, squirrels and all their ilk. She enjoyed books filled with fairy-tales and fantastic pictures. She, in the opinion of her tutors and teachers, loved to waste her time with childish and boyish games and shirk doing anything of importance. What primarily caused her mother anguish, however, was that for all her artistic ability Farah had no interest in the family business- or even in city life.

She longed for dirt roads and country.

And, naturally, this created conflict.

Farah the ungrateful one! Dirty, unladylike, wild and savage! Never on time for anything and always with her clothes torn and stained by dirt. “What’s your future?” her mother would ask. If she couldn’t do well in school, if she didn’t take to the family business or at least find a nice man, what was there ahead but poverty and spinsterhood?

To all these questions and more, Farah never answered. She just hung her head, kept her mouth shut, and, if one was available, glanced out the window.

Windows! Of all things that held a place in her young heart few compared to windows. No matter what prison she was in, she could always count on a window and her imagination to provide an escape. They offered visions of freedom, of pigeons and sparrows and bluejays wheeling about, at liberty in a sky that was beautiful to her in its infinity.

Second in rank among those things dear to her soul were the tales told by her mother’s patrons. They brought with them to the parlors all the narratives that had taken up residence in the city: the gossip and local legends, family histories and tall tales and ghost stories and all the treasures folks would gift if somebody would listen. One was loved by her in particular.

It was told by a woman named Aunt Nancy (no relation) specifically to Farah, and it was her favorite. Their dialogue would go something like this:

“But, could they really fly, Nancy?”

“Of course! You’re Aunt Nancy don’t lie. These things are true. Some of them slaves, new from Africa, knew how to do it. There were certain conditions though.”

“What conditions?” Farah would ask in earnest, though she had heard the list countless times.

“Well,” Nancy would reply, patiently, “Ya need hope. It’s of prime importance. The sort of wild hope that overpowers good sense and turns you crazy. Maybe the word ain’t hope, maybe it’s faith.”

“Ok, got that. What’s next?”

“Well then you gotta pray.”

“To God?”

“Yeah, God and all his good servants and the good people who don’ died. Your kinfolk waitin’ up in heaven. They fly close to earth when they feel that good faith and help lift you up.”

“Is that it?”

“No, you gotta have the right words. Certain spells and charms outta heathen Africa. Without the right words you ain’t ever gonna fly, and that’s the truth.”

“What are the words?”

At this Aunt Nancy would smile that way old folks do when they’re playing you the way a cat would a mouse, only gentler. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

Well, Farah did get older and so did Nancy, who died.

She never told her the words. Still, the story stayed with Farah, nestled in a small and private chamber of her heart that was nevertheless important; a hiding place where she kept her treasures safe.

Farah grew like a sunflower at first, shooting up right toward the sun all steady and straight, bursting with bright smiles and laughter. Yet age carries with it responsibility and concern. Her mother’s words began to wilt her. She listened more closely to the women as they talked about their lives in the parlor, and observed them as they went about their business in the street. She eavesdropped as they complained of their husbands, or their work at this factory or another for ungodly hours, of cramped apartments and housework and lazy husbands and crying children. She listened to their dreams of ease, the gossip about the black elites, the middle class and their dazzling gowns and necklaces of pearls. She listened too as they raged for the romances that had been offered to them in their youth by lusty young men- only to later fail to materialize.

Farah didn’t know what she wanted, really, but it wasn’t glamor or wealth or any sort of man or anything at all, she began to understand, that could be offered by the city. More and more it was only windows, or her imagination, that brought her happiness. She became quieter, and closed off, the wild thing who once ran the streets with the boys becoming something sad, a penned creature.

When her school years had ended her mother gave her a choice: “The business or marriage! Choose one.”

Farah once more had no response but silence.

In her mind possibilities twisted and turned, but they all ended with no answer, or in suicide.

Then, one day, while she was looking out the window, she noticed a man. Sharply dressed, handsome and (this was essential) with a kind look upon his face. Farah hopped up and ran outside to say a hello and make conversation under some pretense or another (the actual dialogue has been lost to family folklore).

The man of course saw through her pretense- but he didn’t mind. They talked. And he came by the next day to talk too.

What did they speak on, during those long summer days and nights? Sometimes poetry. Sometimes the cinema. Sometimes favorite books, or the way water looked like way out in the ocean, so grand and infinite, or how nice it was to take walks in the park in the middle of a weekday when it was empty, or what it felt like to watch a bird fly so effortlessly and free above them.

This is what was important about him to Farah. What was important to Liberty was that the man was of good standing and wealth- which meant (and this also essential) that Farah would be taken care of. For all her dashed expectations, what mattered to Liberty most was her poor daughter’s welfare, and that she would never have to eat pigeon soup. She had just not expected her daughter to be so lucky.

So for once, mother and daughter were in accord. Farah and her love courted through the summer, and into the fall, and in winter it was decided that come spring they were to be married.

One afternoon Farah and her fiancé were sitting on his porch, overlooking a park, and drinking a wine that tasted of summer and long fields of flowers. “Love,” she asked, “if you could have anything in the world, what would it be?”

Her fiancé glanced at her and gave the same kind smile that had melted her when she first spied him from the window. “You, of course.”

“Oh! That’s sweet of you, but you spoiled the game. Okay, for us. If you could secure one thing in the world, for us, just one thing but anything, what would it be?”

Her fiancé grew thoughtful and bit his lip. Then his eyes flashed and he exclaimed, “Why! Exactly what we’re about to have. A life together. Here, in this apartment. You won’t have to go into that business you hate, you can stay here and paint and write poems and watch after our children, who will all be wonderful because they’ll take after you. And I’ll never get angry or upset, well maybe a little, but not too much you know? Because no one can stay mad at an angel, of course. And we’ll live here forever and never want, because what could we want but each other? The city will be our Eden!”

“Quite poetic,” replied Farah, and she smiled. But inside, her heart shattered into little pieces. She knew that wasn’t what the secret places in her heart desired.

She had woken up from her dream.

The waking world, it turns out, was dull and cold.

That evening, after her fiancé dropped her back home, Farah retreated into her room.

For three weeks she did not leave it. Her fiancé’s pleading was of no avail. Her parents believed that Farah would wait until they slept to use the toilet and get her meals, but they never caught her doing either. The fridge seemed untouched every morning, and the restroom exactly how they left it the night before.

Concerned, they resorted to bringing meals to her bedroom. Sometimes the food was gone later on in the day, sometimes it wasn’t. They hoped she was eating it, and not just feeding it to the birds on her windowsill.

The days passed and her family’s worry became real dread. Rumors spread around their nook of the city like roaches and Farah’s sudden disappearance became hot gossip, even in the parlors. When her mother caught her patrons whispering about her daughter, her own heart wilted little by little. A week passed, and another, but on the third week she returned.

In the dead of night, Farah quietly but firmly opened her door. She strode down to the lavatory. There she went into the sink, took out a pair of scissors, and proceeded to cut off all of her hair. It fell like autumn leaves. She swept it up so as to not create a mess.

She then went back into her room, gathered up all her possessions and sorted them into various containers and boxes which she found around her home. Her clothing, her jewelry, her paints, her books, her old childhood toys; all was packed. These boxes and containers, with a deftness and a stealth that seemed to defy physical reality, she placed along the street in front of her apartment.

She hoped, it was supposed, that they’d be put to good use.

One thing remained; the first book Farah ever read by herself, a little anthology of bedtime stories and fairy tales that had comforted her in the earliest times her memory could reach. This she kept and held to her chest.

She then climbed out onto the fire-escape and from there, the roof. They say she sat there the whole night, waiting.

According to the legend, it was a new moon.

Perhaps that is significant.

The hours continued, one after another, until the first birds began their calls.

Then Farah rose from where she was sitting, tilted her head up toward the moonless sky, and began to sing.

It was only then that her neighbors noticed her.

Typically during such an event there would be a lot of “shut the hell up” and “go the hell to sleep” from their opened windows, yet tonight no such protests were forthcoming.

A crowd did gather, but it’s glue was awe. No one had ever heard Farah sing before, and by all accounts it was a thing of beauty.

Her voice started out deep, then rose and rose until it was as light as air.

She sang of slave ships, of being tied down in chains and staring up at the ever broadening sky from damp and dirty decks.

She sang of plantations, of hot, unbearable days picking tobacco and cotton and watching the birds as they flew overhead.

She sang of overseers and whips, of crying families torn apart at auctions. She sang of night flights, and of following maps of stars that shone forth from the hand of God. She sang of cabins and crumbling schoolhouses, of crosses burning on front lawns and churches, of ghosts in white robes and the dreams of children.

She sang of city streets, of gambling houses and pick-pockets, pimps, prostitutes and dealers, teachers, preachers and little kids playing games on warm, Friday afternoons.

What was most remarkable about the song, perhaps, was that it had no words.

Yet everyone knew what it meant.

Her voice filled up her street, and the one after that, and the one after that, until the whole neighborhood was there, along with her mother, her father and her brother and sister, swaying, laughing, crying, dancing. It was a festival, a holy day, and the whole neighborhood forgot that poor Farah was out there in the cold, on the roof, singing in her nightgown.

Well, they say as soon as the first of the sun’s light touched the tip of the horizon, Farah stopped singing and they remembered the truth. They say the look in her eye was neither one of happiness or sadness, but of determination distilled down to its finest essence. The world was quiet and yet filled with sound; it was as if her song had finally reached its climax.

Farah jumped. Her mother, father, sister and brother screamed. The crowd gasped.

But Farah did not fall.

Unburdened by her things, unburdened entirely from everything, free of even hair and shoes, carrying nothing but a book of children’s stories, Farah rose. In fact she never came down, but kept rising until she was like a dot in the sky, and then she shot across it, towards the East, and was never seen again.