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On hot summer nights growing up in Antelope, Missouri, the elders would gather all us children for storytelling. We would lie on our backs, looking up at the dark sky and its twinkling lights, and listen to stories that took us to other worlds of magic and music, enchanted places like Antelope. The next morning, I would open my notebook and find that I had written a poem, or two about those worlds. My best friend Rufus would compose a song based on what he saw and heard. Sometimes he and I would collaborate. Guided by the elders, Rufus and I developed our “gifts,” as they were called, into adulthood. We were taught to use our gifts as medicine for “we” and not for the selfish gain of “me,” but in the summer of 1982, I rejected all that in exchange for the “good life.” I left for New York, where my special eye for spotting writers with gifts like mine landed me a job as an executive editor at one of the top publishing houses in the world. But if the source of my own talent were revealed, I would have immediately been ousted. There was no place for Antelope’s magic in my new life. I even changed my name from Jamel to James. Eventually I started calling myself Jim.
Except for denying my roots, mine was truly a lush life: a high-rise apartment in Manhattan, exclusive dinner engagements, and summer white parties with men who thought I was exotic and exceptional—and I believed them. I had plenty of muscle to blend in and enough melanin to stand out amongst the better boys of P-town. Still I remained painfully invisible. My best friend from Antelope, Rufus Anderson, was an internationally known musician who visited me when he came to New York for gigs. Rufus wanted nothing to do with my New York crew. He thought we were tragic: people who from the outside seemed to have everything but whose insides had been eroded by the “good life.” I loved Rufus. He was like the lover I wished I was worthy of. He knew I loved him, but he had no idea how much I resented his freedom. Rufus lived as if he came into the world free, understood that, and refused to forget it. “I play music, not boxes and categories,” he used to say. “You can’t find freedom in a box.”
Rufus and I grew up together as children in Antelope’s Sunbeams, a youth ensemble of singers, dancers, poets, and musicians. As children of the civil rights movement we marched alongside our elders, boasted of our newfound race consciousness, then spent the 1970s and 1980s disassociating ourselves from the very workers whose sacrifices formed the ground on which we stood. But we were determined to succeed where we “thought” they failed. It never occurred to us that words like “success” and “failure” were but mere illusions. We were constantly climbing and striving at the cost of everything and everyone. Several members from our little group of Sunbeams exemplified this. Michael became a prominent entertainment attorney, brokering some of the biggest deals in Hollywood. Sherice became a senior advisor in the Reagan administration. Larry pastors a church with several thousand members in Atlanta. Success was the mask we wore—except Rufus.
Not that Rufus was without his own accomplishments. He was a renowned gospel musician with Grammy nominations in gospel, jazz, and classical. Rufus traveled the world but he and his lover, Bunchie maintained their commitment to arts and education programs in public schools in the Midwest.
Rufus stood out in other ways, too. Around six feet five, with a long neck, long arms, and long fingers, Rufus looked lanky, but he was cool, with a “bad negro” kind of swag that got Black men killed in Mississippi. His glasses, with their straight line across the brow, framed his reddish face in such a way that resembled his idol, Brother Malcolm X.
Rufus and I hung out during his last visit to New York, and as usual we laughed, cried, and drank until the sun came up. When he told me he had HIV, I felt hurt by the news but wasn’t surprised. It was 1989, and Bunchie had died one year earlier from the same thing. Rufus seemed healthy, even happy. Plus, his grip on Antelope’s wisdom was as strong as ever as he explained how the stigma of HIV could kill you before the disease itself would. Rufus thought AIDS said more about the society than it did the person living with it.
“Listen, mane,” he said, “niggers have lived with some of everything: pressure, sugar, ol’ arthur brothers, Big C, little c. We ain’t never shamed somebody ‘cause they blood got a hold of something it couldn’t shake.”
“Well,” I had said proudly, “you know I’m here for you but I don’t have it!”
He shook his head, leaned toward me and said, “I be a good goddamn, Jamel! Them corporate crackers sure have done a number on you.” He sat up in his chair. “Don’t you know everybody’s got something? Ain’t a drop of innocent blood anywhere in the world. And if you talkin’ ‘bout America?” Rufus took a sip of his drink, stood up and started pacing. “This place was born in a blood bath.”
My living room was becoming his pulpit, I his congregation.
“It’s got blood at the root, blood on the money and blood on the pews.
Blood on the good book, blood on the morning news. Blood in the boardroom, where you make them publishing deals, and blood in the bedroom, where you make them other deals. Don’t get me wrong, we’re more than just blood, we’re also love, and spirit. That’s material too. But you ought to know, blood don’t determine how we live or how we die.”
He chuckled, knocked back the last swig of his vodka/tonic and let out a long, “Ahhhhhhhh.” I stood up, and we walked toward each other. He gave me a holy kiss on my forehead. We looked each other tearfully in the eye and he told me, “You’re beautiful mane, and I see you. You ain’t invisible to me. Don’t you ever forget that.” I began to cry, and he kissed me right on my cheek where the tears had fallen. We held hands, walking toward the door. He turned, and as usual, we bid each other farewell in the Antelope way: “By and by, brother, by and by.”
After that conversation I was so confused, I wasn’t able to sleep for several nights. I had felt a sense of pride for not having “it,” until Rufus told me about his status, which then made me feel guilty for having survived “it.” When I finally drifted off to sleep one night, I saw Rufus. He was sobbing hard, sitting at the foot of Big Maple, the tallest tree in Antelope just off the banks of the river. Rufus and Bunchie loved to tell the story of how, as teenagers, they would make love for hours on top of Big Maple’s roots, which grew above ground. Cherubim and seraphim, with their lute and lyre serenaded them in their passions. Each climax was matched by a celestial crescendo. They usually recalled those memories together, blushing and giggling, taking pleasure in how it made others aroused. But tonight, I saw a dark spirit lead Rufus from the tree into the water. I wanted to warn Rufus but felt paralyzed until the next morning, when I woke up trembling in a pool of sweat. After I fumbled for the phone I called him, and was so relieved when he answered. He told me he wasn’t asleep but was making ready to be with Bunchie—for good. I begged him not to do anything of the sort. To my own surprise, I reminded him of Antelope’s creed regarding the undead: “Rufus, have you forgotten to trust the rules? You can’t disturb Bunchie’s travel through the land of spirit. He’ll send a sign once he arrives.”
“Life hurts so bad without Bunchie,” he sobbed, and I sobbed with him. I think he needed to say that to me, to someone, for while he seemed healthy and happy, we had all forgotten that he was also human. After expressing his hurt, he sobered up and thanked me for calling. Before hanging up he said, “If you ever take the risk, you’ll come to know what I know: Love is driven by our strongest convictions and our sharpest contradictions.”
I had a meeting with the marketing department and needed to be sharp, so I tried to get more sleep. The moment I fell back asleep, the vision returned. This time I saw a woman walking on the water toward Rufus. Her eyes were made of sapphire. A braided crown of gold and purple hair stood atop her head like a tower to the sky. She had a golden moon and star etched around her left eye that twinkled when she smiled at Rufus. Her eyes grew brighter when she set her gaze on the dark spirit, forcing it to dissipate. Then she looked at Rufus. He smiled as her glow became warmer, drawing him closer toward her. With only a few feet between them, she extended her arms, palms up, facing upward, and began to sing in a light, sweet, high-pitched voice:
When the sun and the moon kiss goodnight Eternal love will reunite
The circle breaks, but never forever
Light a candle at the door, keep each other together
As soon as she finished her song, a tall crystal fountain lowered from the sky, causing the woman’s entire body to radiate with blue sapphire. Rufus paused to watch her transformation, then immediately he tried to move toward her. She motioned to the water around Rufus, sending a spray of water his way, causing him to fall backward. She lowered her hands and the water became still. As soon as Rufus fell and his back crashed against the water, I woke up with a pounding headache, the bed soaked with urine. I called him immediately but there was no answer. I was just about to jump in the shower when my mother called me with the news. They found Rufus’ body lying next to a pile of rocks near the river.
I booked a flight to St. Louis right away so I could secure the details for his crossing ceremony climate. After Bunchie passed, Rufus fixed his own business. He left me detailed instructions for his crossing ceremony, much of it based on Antelope’s death rites.
As the plane took off for St. Louis, I recalled the time when the world of Antelope was first made. Rufus was right. It wasn’t blood that made our people who they were. They worked at being a people. It took a lot of planting and plowing, and they never perfected it. But they decided, if they were gonna survive what was before them, they would have to trust what they knew, and not what they saw or what they heard. Those elders in Antelope always told us:
dare to sow your seeds in the desert
watch the tiny puddles of hope sprout up out of the sand Those who sow the seeds of hope
can see a tree of life
in the valley of death
Every child of Antelope learned the story:
Following Andrew Jackson’s forced removal of Indians from Alabama, a maroon tribe of Ashanti, Yoruba, and Igbo wandered through the wilderness of Mississippi. Forsaken somewhere and unwelcomed everywhere, the fugitives searched for a promised land spoken of by a prophet from the future. They couldn’t decipher all of his words, but they recognized his vision. He said he would meet them in their own sovereign garden, which he called the promised land. There, they would sow the seeds they kept hidden in the hair of the women during their imprisonment on the ship. The eldest among the fugitives was a priestess who was named Morning because Ashari, the goddess of the sky, descended at dawn to bless her birth. Morning communed with water spirits and led the tribe down the dark river until one evening, as the setting sun bisected the water perfectly, the river sang to them a covenant:
look no more for promise land you are canaan, canaan is you
continue along the river for six moons antelope will greet you at the seventh
sun,
call that place Antelope, world between worlds
there, make miracles with your heads, hearts, and hands never betray each other, never
forsake we
you are canaan, canaan is you beware the men of the frontier,
they hunt you, shame you,
eat your souls and feed you your own flesh
live by the covenant, no permanent harm come to you you are each other’s medicine
never betray each other, never forsake we for you are canaan, canaan is you
The Antelopians emerged from the water, burning with fire and gratitude. The gods had not forsaken them. They followed the moon as instructed and, at the seventh sun, in a grove in the middle of Missouri they encountered a snowy mist of blue crystals. As they stood there in awe, crying and laughing, rubbing the crystals with their fingers, they heard beyond the trees an echo of marching feet. The trees parted and a procession of six antelope welcomed them. The tribe offered up rounds of rhythm, song, and dance to the Sun God, becoming one with the spirit of the antelope. The Sun God smiled back at them with a rainbow. Morning let out several shrieks, and her body jerked back and forth as she pulled the rainbow down, pushing it into the earth. Blue streaks of light formed a cross over a circle in the air around them. They were caught up by the force of the circle, like little wheels in the middle of a big wheel. The colors from the rainbow made an instant garden around them: pastel tulips and lilies, bold-colored succulents, and tall birds of paradise grew around them. Morning felt the river pulling her toward Big Maple. She knelt before it and anointed the tree’s roots, which, hearing her voice, glowed with sepia shades. She finished, raised herself up, and summoned the tribe.
“Gather ‘round children. Quickly now.”
With the energy of the circle still in their bodies, they danced and sang as they made their way down to the tree. After she placed her hand on the forehead of every individual, Morning offered a collective blessing: “I bless you gathered here, and I bless all those to come. Blessed be the souls who came before us. From generation to generation. There is no separation in divine creation. The holiness of us. We are each other’s medicine.”
This harvest and these words were passed down for decades to come in Antelope, so we would always remember that, before we entered the body, we were there—prayed for, paid for, and wholly enough.
Rufus’ instructions to me were clear, “Jamel, the crossing must be held beneath Big Maple. That’s where Bunchie and I kissed for the first time. See Cantoria. She will know what to do.” Cantoria was Morning’s last living descendant, and Antelope’s library. I speculate she was at least 95 years old.
After the plane landed, I took a taxi from Lambert International to Antelope. When I arrived at Cantoria’s house, I hadn’t even knocked before she opened the door, dressed in white from head to toe. She stood akimbo, silver locks of hair sprouting from the top of her head wrap. Bracelets rattled on her wrist when she lifted her pipe to take a puff.
“I’ve been waiting for you ever since I heard,” she said in a bass voice that could rival any man’s. She took me in her arms and rocked me, “Come now,” she said, as she guided me through the narrow hallway of the small shotgun of a house.
Faint music came from the rear of the house. Each room along the hallway had a little altar with candles, flowers, pictures, food and water. We arrived in the kitchen, where the table had been prepared with a small vanilla candle and two tea cups facing each other. When I realized what the music was I froze: A tiny record player in the corner was playing Dorothy Love-Coates and the Gospel Harmonettes—Rufus’ favorite gospel artist— singing Get away Jordan, I want to cross over to see my Lord.
Cantoria looked at me from head to toe and said, “Don’t just stand there, sit down.” I sat at the table and watched her, bouncing and swaying, singing and smiling, grinding jasmine tea leaves and ginger root.
“Yessssuh” she grinned, with an irresistible sparkle from her golden-crowned tooth. “I was there when she put that song over. We were at the Shrine Auditorium in 1955. It was a fundraiser for Mr. A. Phillip Randolph and the Pullman Porters. A bunch of gospel greats were there: Rev. James Cleveland, the Caravans, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, and Brother Joe May—the Thunderbolt of the Midwest. A lot of us from Antelope were there. You talkin’ bout a time. Baby, you ought to been there.”
The little record player continued to spin, begging for attention, but she ignored it, and began to interpret the visions I had about Rufus and the sapphire woman.
“That was Ya-Ya you saw, or Morning, as you know her,” she explained. “After
Morning crossed over, she became our sea goddess.” She paused, and looked toward the ceiling with her hand on her hip.
A soft breeze blew through the house and mixed with the steam in our tea cups. The faces of Rufus, Bunchie, and countless others were revealed in the vapors, smiling at me. I smiled back, but then began to cough, hard, with a sharp ache in my heart. Cantoria came around and rubbed my back.
“Let it hurt. It’s gonna hurt some before it heals, she said.”
The coughing and pain slowly subsided, and an indescribable joy began to fill me up. I sipped more tea, while she wiped the sweat on my forehead,
“So that was Morning—I mean, Ya-Ya—singing to Rufus?”
“Yes, who do you think told mercy to keep him from drowning? You know the story: The river kept the tribe safe from harm, then sang the covenant to them just before they left Mississippi.”
I sat back in my chair, and told her I saw a dark spirit leading Rufus into the water.
“That was the angel of despair. He preys on the sadness of the water. But Rufus
was not the first of us to die from despair in that water. To watch the light in the eyes of another go dark is to live with a death that kills the witness, slowly. Having sat by the bedside of so many, Rufus saw many eyes go dark. He carried their sorrow until he could bear it no longer. But know this, Jamel,” she said firmly, slamming the dishes in the sink. She turned the water on, turned around, looked at me and finished,
“When you feel despair — and you will!”, “You can feel despair but you can’t feed it. You hear me?” She wiped the table, the tone of her voice softened and she reminded me,
“Rufus’ love was still burning out on that water, and when that love met YaYa’s light, it ignited a flame that turned that dark spirit into a shadow, made him lose his power.”
She wiped her hands on her wash cloth and reached for my hand, “it’s time, son.”
I took her hand and stood. “Yeah, I know.” I was due to meet the elders in an hour. Cantoria walked me down the hallway to the door, handing me the white cassock required by Antelope’s death rites for preparing a corpse.
At the tiny chapel beneath the sanctuary of Antelope’s First Assembly Temple, the elders were huddled in a corner of the room, washing their hands. Rufus’ body lay on a long redwood table with a white cotton sheet draped over every part except his head. A large basin was next to the table. I joined them and they all washed my hands and anointed my forehead.
At the table, the eldest among us opened the Book of Names, held it out over the basin, and read the names of Antelope’s ancestry, going back to their first arrival. As he read, a stream of water poured from the pages and into the basin. I smiled when I heard the sound of that water, whimsical and ethereal, the kind of wonder I often witnessed in Antelope as a child. When the vessel was half full, beams of sunlight filled the little chapel, reflecting off the copper skirt of the basin. We slowly lifted Rufus’ body and placed it into the basin, where we bathed him in water mixed with hemp and lavender oils. When we finished, we massaged his skin with frankincense. We wrapped his body in a burial robe made from palm leaves and embroidered with geometric designs, then placed him in an ebony coffin with a glass lid. Rufus’ body would lie in the sanctuary until morning.
***
The next day at sunrise, I met the water women at the river to prepare the raft to transport Rufus’ body. When I arrived, they were shaking their rain sticks, moaning and humming as they placed various white objects around the sides of the raft that would hold the coffin. When they placed a bronze mask at the head of the raft, a blue midst rose from the water. It was confirmed: the same river that delivered the tribe to Antelope was ready to take Rufus home.
When I arrived at First Assembly Temple for the first part of Rufus’ crossing, the sanctuary was empty except for Rufus’ body, which lay on a platform down front and center. I felt as if all the Black saints in the windows had been waiting for me and now they were looking down upon me. Light from the sun beamed down onto the coffin and pulled me to the altar right in front of the body. Suddenly everything went dark and I fell on my knees. I was swarmed by spirits: Faces I tried to forget. Many voices speaking at the same time. I had looked away for so long, but here it was, looking back at me. All the destruction and death this disease had wrought.
I cried and cried, feeling so helpless. I was praying for it all to go away when I heard a voice, Rufus’ voice. I opened my eyes only to see him still lying there. The voice wasn’t coming from his body but from some other place.
“The storm is passing over. It has to. This suffering is not forever,” the voice said. With that, I rose. I had come home to that holy medicine that could only be found at the root, in the heart, head, and hands of the elders. I have no idea how long I stayed down there, but when I finally turned around, the place was packed.
Cantoria led the procession of elders, clergy, family, and drummers from the back of the church. The women elders sprinkled water as they walked and chanted one of our dark hymns of mysterious meter. When she reached midway of the center aisle Cantoria stopped, her staff in her right hand, lifted her head to the sky and cried, “Ya-Ya!” before leading us:
Yonder there, the world was made, the land we call sweet home. The sky and sea, the earth and we, his soul now free to roam.
All who knew the song stood and joined her, along with legions of singers not seen but heard, some from the clouds, others from the earth below. The singing had a cosmic echo, and this was the sound that Rufus exuded in everything he did. At first, our international guests stood reverently and listened, but soon they lent their voices to the mass chorus.
Tributes from symphonies and musicians had poured in from across the world. But none of these tributes spoke to the legacy of Rufus like the one from the Midwest Teachers Union. The MTU’s resolution was read by two brown-skinned women with shaven heads. They wore khaki uniforms with bold accessories. When the two women reached the podium, they joined hands and asked the MTU to stand. It was something to behold. The men in black suits, white shirts and dark string ties, the women in black dresses and pearls. The most dignified Black proletariat on this side of the Jordan rose like a regiment in salute of its general. The two women read their poetic resolution and then directed the union members to sing the anthem Rufus composed when he was 15 years old:
our labor, our dignity,
our righteous cause of liberty for all to learn and all to teach,
for ALL to thrive and live in peace for justice’s sake – equality
we work, we love, we strive for justice’s sake – equality the
labor of our lives
Rufus’ funeral would not have been complete without a selection from the Sunbeams. I joined a group reunited from across generations to sing the medley Rufus arranged for the occasion. We opened with an excerpt from a requiem by Johannes Brahms: They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Then came a solo from Antelope’s eunuch, Simone Monroe. The dark brilliance of Simone’s voice soared like an eagle over Abyssinia: Oh Glory, there is room enough in paradise to have a home in glory, which was Rufus’ favorite spiritual. We closed the medley with Everybody Will Be Happy Over There, a swinging hot number that used to open the annual Singer’s Meeting concert in St. Louis.
The crowd rose with a standing ovation. A visiting clergyman dressed in colorful African garb took this opportunity to approach the lectern. With his kufi tilted to the side of his wide head, he looked quite holy. I moved closer, and was shocked when I recognized him. I couldn’t remember if he was from St. Louis, or Kansas City, but I remembered his name: Rev. Goode. Rufus called him the “Levitical Demon” because he recited the same passages from Leviticus at all the funerals of our friends who died of AIDS. I walked quickly toward the pulpit, determined that he would not perform his usual perversion.
Rev. Goode put his half-moon glasses up to his eyes, stood at the lectern and opened his tattered Bible. “Please stand for the word of God,” he commanded.
Cantoria and I locked eyes. I could read her mind: He would not sow seeds of poison on the sacred ground of Antelope. She jerked her body, and danced her way down the center the aisle while unleashing several shrieks, just as Morning did at the first harvest. I signaled to the elders to remove everyone from the sanctuary. Once all the attendees were outside we returned to the sanctuary where Cantoria was still dancing and singing with a slight giggle in her voice. The elders made a circle around her, singing, clapping, joining her song.
A buzzing sound was in the air, harmonizing with Cantoria’s melody. I looked around for the source and finally saw it: a gnat circling Rev. Goode’s head. He slapped his face trying to swat it. He even talked back to it. The gnat moved faster and faster, giggling at Rev. Goode’s frustration. As soon as Rev. Goode opens his wide mouth and looks at the ceiling the gnat swooped into the clergy’s mouth. He grabbed his throat and fell to his knees.
The floor trembled beneath us as he coughed up all the mustard-colored hatred he preached over the years. He cried like an infant being snatched from the breasts of its mother.
The elders walked toward him with their hands stretched out, speaking in their secret tongue. The floor began to calm but he shook with fear, his bright clothing drenched with sweat.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The elders looked upon him with pity as he cried. I was not moved. I felt as if the deaths of all those he condemned were being avenged. This traitor was now bowing before the body of a gay man he had come to sentence to hell. Yet, his apology seemed to be enough for the elders. They made the sign of the cross and started to walk away from him until he asked them, “Wait, please.”
When they paused he said, “Every word I ever spoke against gay people was a cover for my own sexual transgressions. Endless prayer lines and exorcisms in the secret closets of my fellow clerics made me hate this body for its incurable thorn of lust.” These were the most honest words he had spoken in years.
The elders did not seem at all surprised at his confession. Perhaps they knew there was more to his story—Rufus always did. A chief musician of the church, Rufus had a front row seat to the inner lives of clergy.
Hunched over and heaving, barely able to catch his breath, Rev. Goode asked,
“Can you forgive me?”
Cantoria was the first to extend a hand of mercy to him. “Rise,” she told him, softly. “Forgiveness is not ours to give. You must go to the graves of those you condemned. Ask them to forgive you, and then appeal to their families, especially their lovers.”
She motioned to the male elders to pick up the coffin and the female elders stood behind them. As I watched Cantoria and the elders extend mercy to this preacher, whom I still despised, I began to realize that he and I were not as far apart as I wanted to believe. I had been completely aware of what was happening to my friends and I did nothing. I took refuge in thinking, “I don’t have it.”
In the procession Rev. Goode carried the coffin on the opposite side of me. I was hoping there was some energy left in that coffin that could heal me. It looked like Rev. Goode was hoping the same thing.
Cantoria lined out our parting hymn:
before this time another year I may be dead and gone
I’ll let you know before I go Lord, what shall become of me
Once outside the church, I realized I had completely lost all sense of time. The sun was smiling on the procession. We placed the coffin on the raft that the women had made, and pushed it gently into the water, the mask guiding it down stream. A melodious hum was coming up from the river, welcoming his body. I watched Rufus’ body for as far as I could, the sun glaring in my eyes.
The elders walked away slowly. Rev. Goode followed behind them. I think they knew I needed time alone. I stood on the banks of our Jordan, until it seemed that Rufus had become one with the sea of all souls. But then, I saw a ship in that water, resting beneath a cloud of blue midst. I smiled and waved, By and by Rufus. By and by, brother.
Here, I thought I was doing Rufus a favor by carrying out the details of his crossing. But the truth is, in requiring this of me, Rufus planted the seeds of grace that would allow me to come home to myself. The medicine of “we” is more powerful than the pleasures of “me.”
