FLOODESIGN

On Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett Till was lynched by two white supremacists in Money, Miss. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, held an open casket funeral to make visible the violence enacted upon her young son. Till's murder is widely regarded as an early catalyst for the civil rights movement as it exposed, on a national scale, the brutality of the Jim Crow South. "A Knowing Place, Part I" is written in honor of Mrs. Till-Mobley — educator, activist and mother. I. Stood The Mother Grieving. Stood The Mother Grieving As Her Only Son Was Slain. Stood The Mother Grieving As His Body Was Pulled From The Tallahatchie River. Stood The Mother Grieving As She Prepared His Body For Funeral Services. The Mother stood grieving as she dared us to look upon his mutilated face. And in her grief, there was profound rage and tenderness and foresight. The Mother wanted the world to see what it had done to her baby. How fascinating to know that grief and strength might be two sides of the same coin. That in a moment of terrible sorrow — when your body moves slowly, limbs outstretched grasping for solace, when heartache pierces, when you collapse to the floor in silence, back arched, a wail sitting on your lips — that there might also exist the fervent resolution to persevere. Did the Mother know, as she stood grieving, that she would awaken a new season? As Demeter retrieved Persephone, bringing with her new fruit, so too did the Mother's retrieval of her son's body usher forth a call for justice, galvanizing a people. In Inbal Oshman's "M Stabat Mater," there is a moment when the four dancers take a knee at the front of the stage. Their left forearms rest on their left knees. Their right arms rise into fists behind their heads. They have come to this pause after feverish movement in which they circle in place continuously, their arms over their heads. The pace slows gradually until one dancer rolls up the cloth covering her legs. The others follow suit. They walk to the edge of the stage and kneel. I want to linger on this moment of clarity, this attempt to reject elements of pathos. I want to know what carries a person to calm from fury and what must be done as one slips between the two states. The dancers soon collapse to the floor. Slowly they begin to cover their arms and legs in a red liquid that signifies blood. How did the Mother traverse this chasm? Oshman is preoccupied with the vastness of motherhood. She could not know that, despite the breadth of her performance, I remain stuck in a single moment far beyond the choreographer's immediate artistic concerns — yet intimately connected to the story she tells. What is it to recognize a thing even if you have not yet taken part in the thing? What I mean is this: Black motherhood is as joyous as it is precarious in this nation. I know this because I have paid attention to our records. I have watched history show itself again and again. I have watched black mothers shout in rage and march forward as the goddess Kali, prepared to fight the demons of this land, only to return home in defeat. Surely the Mother saw something that I cannot yet see, something that I cannot yet know. That we must rinse the blood from our bodies and begin anew, even if we still carry the grief. A KNOWING PLACE BY JESSICA LYNNE www.peakperfs.org 55

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