I’D LIKE TO FREE BLACK EXPLORATION

Below is an excerpt of Rasheena Fountain's forthcoming book, Starfish Blues: A Memoir. It will be released through Climate Conscious Collabs Press on April 22 and is available for preorder .

“The lure of the arctic is tugging at my heart. To me the trail is calling! The old trail, the trail that is always new.”

— Matthew Henson, author of A Negro Explorer at the North Pole

My grandfather Robert Brookins in his home on the West Side of Chicago

I could feel Granddad wanted me to imagine life beyond Austin and the West Side that I had come to know. I felt this in the quality time he spent with me, allowing me to put hair barrettes and balls in his thinning, dark brown and grey hair. I felt this when he made me runny eggs, or the times he took me by myself to his side of the family’s houses on the South and West Sides, or on bank runs with him. In the times eating peanuts from the Peanut Man off Eisenhower Expressway as V103 hits and dusties played from the speakers in his cigarette-scented, blue Buick LeSabre. Now as a mother, I realize he probably saw time with me and all his grandkids as an escape, from the systems, from the troubles in Austin, from painful pasts. Faith is often my escape—an opportunity to create worlds together without the limitations we face in the world. Granddad was an involved grandfather. He cooked and cleaned and never saw me as an interruption, even when I interrupted his beer drinking time with him and his buddies in the alley for quarters to buy chips and candy. I knew where to find him, and he had no problem taking me with him.

I think we were all looking for an escape or a way to a better version of freedom. As a child, I hid myself under a tough exterior, a persona I had perfected by the time I stepped into Nash. And when you’re hiding or needing an escape, small windows sustain you and keep you from vanishing. For some reason, the photos of Henson and his story of braving the cold, icy terrain stuck with me. He has been one of the windows I’ve kept open throughout my life. I guess Black exploration is the answer to the question: How did you make it through all that? 

I believe nature shows with David Attenborough’s voiceovers were a window for Granddad. Sitting with him on that lime-green, suede couch watching nature shows in our living room are joyful memories in our house on the West Side in the 90s. Attenborough’s voice became an invitation to join Granddad in glimpses of freedom. We’d transport ourselves to greener pastures, landscapes with animals running wild, so far away from where we sat as two dreamers in a concrete jungle.

Everyone knows nature shows was Granddad’s thing. He had that genuine joy in his eyes when he watched the screen with the animal sounds and Attenborough’s voice coming out of it. When I joined him, we celebrated these faraway places. Then, I became interested in how animals could teach us about ourselves, about the world, and about the beauty out there. Within the worlds of the screen, I could watch a lion pride feed and defend their young. I learned that bears ate spawning salmon from rushing rivers and scavenged for wild berries and searched for insects in rocky rubble. Attenborough told us so much. I would dream of someday seeing the big mountains covered in snow and the glaciers unspoiled. But the more I watched, the more I also had internalized that the freedom on the screen was unreachable for me, and that the wilderness was for other people. I desperately wanted freedom, though. Did he too? 

I’ve had a dream of visiting Alaska and Australia since childhood. I imagine that Attenborough and Granddad have something to do with this dream. I didn’t realize that what I saw on the nature shows were, in part, fiction. The voiceovers and carefully curated shots hid the violence beyond the predators capturing prey, the lions chasing and attacking gazelles. I now know about the violence that Indigenous people faced on their land, in the beautiful places I thought were free, and in places that I’ve called home. As I now revisit these memories with Granddad, I hope to undo much of my socialization, the myths like Manifest Destiny or wildernesses untouched, that would later make me chase freedom in wild places. The mistake was believing that the wilderness provided an escape for us, that somehow getting away would rid our minds and bodies of the oppression that I could so clearly see and feel, even as a child. Still, in those moments with Granddad, I could remember that there was more than what I saw around me on the West Side—deeper connections and wider possibilities. Now, though, I see through the fiction and know better, so Attenborough’s voice has faded into the background in my memories. I’m trading in Attenborough’s voice for Granddad’s. I remember my time with him as I try to find my own way to freedom.

“This is what we ate in Down South,” or “Now you might think looks funny to you, but its good, try it,” Granddad would say. My food memories with Granddad take me to places. We’d eat Southern cuisine that I hadn’t eaten with Mama and Dad. Saltines with sardines. Pickled pig feet. Hog head cheese. Liver cheese. Fish heads. See, the food was just a door to one of Granddad’s stories. I would watch Granddad get lost in those times, time traveling by taste. I’d join him there. He held control over what he shared, however: It was only happy times. And I’m okay with that. Originally from Yazoo County, Mississippi, he was part of the Great Migration like Grandma. He had joy when he remembered times there, or maybe he chose to remember the happier times. He honored traditions of his past with food, and he was intentional in making sure I knew these ways.

The question that I’ve encountered from environmentalists is how to get Black people into nature or how to get us to care about the environment. The assumption of the question is that there need be convincing and excludes forced migrations, land theft, and enslavement. Through writing, I want to appreciate the lengths that Granddad and Grandma took to maintain their connections to their southern culture, even after their migrations.

Grandma’s thing was gardening; Granddad loved fish. I never saw him go fishing, but he ate fish all the time. Fish would be the dish while he drank Old Milwaukee with his buddies in the backyard and alley behind our house: catfish, perch, buffalo, and other varieties. Going to the fish market on Chicago Avenue was as close as I got to live freshwater fish in our neighborhood. Granddad coulda just went to a restaurant to get fish, and he did that too. But he stayed at the fish market, and we often went together. The fishy smell would greet us. I’d see the catfish swimming in small metal tanks filled with water, and Granddad would point to a specific fish to take home. The fish he chose would then be plucked from the tank and placed on a counter, still flopping and fighting for its freedom. The clerk would pull out a big, thick club, striking the catfish to turn flops silent. And typically, we’d take it home for Grandma to cover it in cornmeal, fill the skillet with lard, and fry it up. I never thought about the gutting part until Granddad showed me that process.

“I want to teach you how to gut a fish,” Granddad said that time we turned the kitchen into a fish slaughterhouse. That one summer day is so vivid in my memory. The fish was wrapped in white paper, the paper that corner stores use for cold cuts, American cheese slices, and hog head cheese. Unwrapped, the fish’s eyes stared back up at me, and fishy perfume took over Grandma’s kitchen.

The kitchen smelled like Lake Michigan and swimming in its waters as dead fish floated around me. It smelled like the lakefront nights as winds rocked sailboats and caressed my neck, when I stared across the lake into the endless, dark blue sky. Granddad showed me that the knife was for cutting and removing the flaky scales from the fish corpse. Removing the scales was like removing the burnt from overdone toast, the fish armor scattered across the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper that covered the table. When Granddad prompted, I enjoyed cutting through fish flesh. I took the sharp knife, mimicking him, chopping off the fish head, digging the knife in a straight line down the fish belly as red and yellow guck oozed onto my hands and the newspaper. I put my hands inside of the fish, removing the guts the way he showed me.

Gutting the fish was exciting. Knowing my food, even violently, has since been an aspiration for me. I often think about how unnatural getting meats and produce packaged so neatly from the grocery stores is. I enjoy watching hunters on nature shows gutting their kill and appreciating the animal whose life feeds them. I long for the time I have more opportunities to take part in my own food consumption, through gardening and hunting. I think about how Granddad had such a connection with his foods and how he went extra miles to enjoy some of the food ways that were harder to enjoy once he migrated north. I mourn food intimacy. I want to know where my food comes from, to be connected to the rituals with my ancestors, and to acknowledge the sacrifices of the beings that give their life for my freedom. We have learned to take so many lives for granted, without acknowledging the sacrifices. 

Where there’s Black joy and laughter, there’s often sacrifice. I am reminded of the sacrifices and roads to laughter when I think about what it took for Granddad to be a homeowner with middle-class income in Austin. Spending time with him gave me glimpses into his pursuit of freedom and the sacrifices before Chicago. As a child, I didn’t realize Granddad’s journey, that he and Grandma were among the many Black people who moved north to the West Side of Chicago for opportunity and safety during the Great Migration. The photos in our West Side home were other quiet glimpses into the past, too. A circle-framed photo of Granddad’s mother and father hung on the wall in the living room near the fancy couches with plastic covers. This photo was a time portal, two worlds colliding. My great-grandmother’s smile parts her big, round cheeks; her skin is noticeably very light. Gramps, my great-grandfather, is next to her; he looks happy and favors Granddad. His skin is noticeably darker than my great-grandmother’s. The portrait has a filter that makes the photo look ghostly. I wonder what these photos meant to Granddad as he made a life with Grandma in Chicago. I have so many questions for Granddad that I never thought to ask. I still look for clues.

An oral history in my family is that my great-great-grandmother was left a big, white house Down South. Granddad’s side of the family was former slaves in Yazoo County, Mississippi. Somehow, the slave owners left my ancestors, former slaves, a house. “That’s why Granddad got that money. When they tore down the house, he started getting checks from all of that oil they found on the land,” Mama often recounts. Those photographs have become hauntings, complicated moments staring back at me. I’d much prefer Granddad’s narrations to images in my memory; his stories could move, help me travel, and remove the silence.

Starfish Blues: A Memoir will be released through Climate Conscious Collabs Press on April 22 and is available for preorder .