Rachel's Blue. Zakes Mda
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so. He even dusts the furniture, a thing that no one ever did at the Centre. When Nana Moira needs some ingredients for her culinary masterpieces he volunteers to drive to Wal-Mart in the city in his Pontiac, a distance of more than twenty miles. And he always returns promptly with the right stuff. Soon Nana Moira becomes dependent on him, and misses him on the days he doesn’t come.
He has no obligation to be at the Centre at all, but he is there on most days of the week. Sometimes there is no work for him, so he just sits at the long tables and gossips with the quilting women. Once in a while Rachel is there and joins in the gossip. Thanks to Jason, the new quilting women are beginning to open up to her, to realise that she is not such a snooty person after all. She, on the other hand, betrays a tinge of jealousy when they hover over Jason and hold on to every word he utters.
People notice that whenever Genesis stops over at the Centre Jason does not show up. There is some estrangement between the two, and Genesis no longer visits as much as he did because he feels betrayed by Nana Moira. Exactly what she feared. But there is nothing she can do about it because Jason is a grown man who is entitled to make his own decisions. Also, he is a positive presence at the Centre.
In any event, Nana Moira feels Genesis should not be so pissed off with everyone because the boy still minds the cheese stall at the farmers’ market for him on Saturdays, and even on some Wednesdays. But Genesis expects more than just minding a stall from his son. He wants him to learn the trade and be part of the family business. He thought Jason – whom he insists on calling Revelation – had returned from Yellow Springs precisely because the world had given him a few hard lessons about life, and that now he would be more serious and be an upright citizen; he would not be afraid to face his responsibilities like a man. Especially now that he has been baptised into the church of his ancestors, who are known in history as hard workers who helped to build America into what it is today.
“But all he does is sit here yap-yapping with the women,” says Genesis on one of his visits to the Centre.
“He don’t only yap-yap,” says Nana Moira. “He helps a lot here. And he’s learning plenty of stuff.”
“What can anyone learn yap-yapping with women?”
“What can anyone learn from women? You talk like you didn’t come from a vagina.”
This disarms Genesis and he breaks out laughing.
“I didn’t,” he says. “Caesarean.”
“Same difference. You lived in some woman’s innards.”
The quilting women are scandalised. People in these parts don’t call things like that by their names. Plus Genesis is too young to be talking such stuff with Nana Moira. He could easily be the age of Rachel’s late pops. But he is enjoying the exchange with Nana Moira and even forgets that he is angry with his son.
The original reason Jason took up the volunteer offer was that he was going to be closer to Rachel. He hoped this would give them the opportunity to rehearse and busk together. But now he genuinely loves working here and enjoys the company, not only of the regular quilters, but of a variety of people from Jensen Township and from neighbouring townships such as Rome, Ames, Dover and Canaan. Sometimes storytellers descend from the hills and come out of the Wayne Forest to enjoy Nana Moira’s “special occasion” dinners and tell their tall tales to the joy of everyone, and to Nana Moira’s cackling laughter. Special occasions are not only limited to Thanksgiving or Fourth of July or Valentine’s Day. Nana Moira has a knack of coming up with a special occasion off the top of her head and starts cooking. Sometimes it is something that people can recognise, such as Saint Patrick’s Day or Mother’s Day, but at other times it is an obscure anniversary – the first time she set her eyes on Robbie Boucher, for instance.
It bothers Jason that Rachel is usually somewhere else instead of enjoying his company at the Jensen Community Centre. But he is biding his time. She will learn to appreciate him. And together they will create beautiful sounds that will haunt her soul and make her dream of him in the middle of the night as she sleeps in her room.
Fridays are his blissful moments because that’s when she bakes bread to sell at the farmers’ market the following day. She spends the whole day in the kitchen at the Centre, and he helps her knead the dough, or he runs some errands to town in case she needs some more hickory nuts or flour or whatever else she uses in her recipes. They talk about the old days and laugh a lot. And they promise each other that soon they will start rehearsing and playing together. They giggle and guffaw and tease each other and chase each other around the tables and use the kitchen stools and lids of pots as shields when they blast each other with flour. Then they clean up the mess quickly before Nana Moira discovers it.
Nana Moira always keeps out of the kitchen on those days. She has indeed taken a shine to Jason, and she tells her granddaughter so. “I hope sweet Jesus will open your eyes one day and you’ll see that this is a good man He has delivered right to your doorstep.”
But Rachel has many other interests and, according to Nana Moira, takes Jason for granted. If she is not out there doing Appalachia Active stuff such as demonstrating at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources offices on East State Street to stop a well on the land of Mrs Mayle, an eighty-four-year-old in Rome Township who does not want it on her property, she is visiting with Schuyler – that crippled Schuyler, according to Nana Moira – and driving her to physiotherapy or to her community service work at an old age home in the city.
On Fridays when the baking resumes Rachel does seem to reciprocate Jason’s romantic – some may say amorous – attention. At least that’s what he thinks. That’s what Nana Moira thinks too, and she is ecstatic about it while it lasts. That’s what the gossiping women of the Jensen Township Quilting Circle think as well, and they ask themselves behind Nana Moira’s back why good things always fall in the laps of those who do not deserve them, those who fail to appreciate them.
One weekend Rachel goes to the Action Camp where she meets Skye Riley and things happen.
The camp is held in Stewart in an old building that used to be a school but is now used for various community purposes. Different workshop sessions are going on at the same time in the classrooms, and Skye takes the initiative to look for Rachel until he finds her at the “Fracking 101 Workshop” where participants are learning how gas is extracted using horizontal hydraulic drilling technology. The content is at a much greater depth than at the Arts West meeting. From then on he is with her that whole day, accompanying her even to sessions he would not otherwise have attended; he has heard it all and seen it all.
Rachel is grateful for his company. She would have been quite lonely here without Schuyler; most of the participants are much older people. Skye is with her when she attends the session on “Injection Wells” where they explore what happens to all the toxic frack waste, the dangers of injection wells and how Ohio has become a dumping ground for the waste. Just to be with her, he even attends those sessions that deal with topics he detests, such as one on “Exhausting Administrative Remedies” where Rachel and the other participants learn what bases to cover before resorting to direct action. Skye tells Rachel during the lunch break that it was a session of appeasement, just like the one titled “Strategic Legal Defence”, which explored ways to use court cases to further campaign goals.
“We are tired of playing by the rules of the establishment,” says Skye, using a term that was fashionable in the heyday of demonstrations and sit-ins in those giddy years that baby boomers like to boast about.
Skye is in his element when he facilitates his own workshop on “Strategic Direct Action”. He makes the session great fun by letting participants play games and role-play scenarios based on his own experiences in West Virginia. “The cops can be a real drag,” he says, and teaches the workshop what to expect from law enforcement and how to de-escalate dangerous situations. All the while his emphasis is on defiant action.
“They can’t arrest us all,” he says. “They can’t kill all of us.”
At first Rachel is a bit shy about making a fool of herself playing some of the games in front of Skye Riley. But soon she gets into the spirit of things, especially when Skye himself