Tayari's Blog: Al "Grits" Green

I can’t even remember the first time I heard the story about the black woman who got so mad with the the legendary Al Green that she slung a pot of bubbling hot grits, swinging it so the grits, burning like lava, reached all up and down his back and below. A woman scorned is bad enough, but a black woman scorned will bring the devil right to your door. Some people say that she was mad because he didn’t want her and others swear he wanted her all right, but it was just that he wanted a lot of other women too and despite the face that Al wasn’t the best looking man in the world, not a pretty crooner like Sam Cook, but even still with a voice like that, he got his share. And this woman, this grit -throwing woman, she couldn’t understand the way things worked. She confused about her place in the world. Black women, they say. You know how they are. That woman, she burned Al Green up so bad, that he stopped singing the baby-making music that everybody—black people, white people, everybody—the music that put everybody in the mood for love. He put all that behind him thanks to a crazy black woman that ruined it for everybody. With those hot grits she put the fear of God in the man and now’s he’s a reverend. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

She’s famous now, this woman. Twenty-years later her story is repeated with a sick mixture of admiration, awe and disgust. She’s almost as famous as he is, but the thing is that everybody remembers what she did, but who out there can tell you her name?

My mother knows for sure that the lady’s first name was Mary. Mama didn’t catch her last name—later, the Atlanta Journal Constitution indentified her Sandford, but Jet magazine called her Gordon—but all agreed her first name was Mary. She told my mother she was visiting Atlanta for a few days in order to attend and AME usher board convention. Even before she noticed Mary’s cross pendant—simple, the jewelry equivalent of two sticks tied together—Mama could tell that the woman was saved. Even after what happened next, Mama said she never doubted that Mary had come to Jesus. The truly saved don’t have to go around talking about it; they just have this quietness abut them. They know where they’re going; they don’t have anything to worry about.

Mary came in late on a Tuesday evening, walking in at 7:30 when Mama was finishing up her last customer of the night. As a matter of fact, mama was untying her apron and switching off the gar under the irons when Mary crossed the threshold, looking like a kindergarten teacher at the end of a long day. She wore a pink pants suit, stylish but mama could tell from looking at top-stitching on the pockets that she had sewn it herself. Her blouse was stained with what looked like mustard, her thumb and middle finger were stained blue like she had been writing with a fountain pen. Her face showed just the remnant of make up—red around the edges of her lips and eyeliner that has slipped down. Despite everything, she was just still. Mama said she will never forget that face, smooth as a brown egg, no lines or crinkles like she had never laughed or cried in her whole entire life.

This was not a good night for a late customer. My mama wasn’t all that steady on her feet as this was her first full week of work after her gall bladder operation. These days they can do the whole thing with lasers and only make a little hole in your belly button, but in 1974, the doctors had to cut you open, straight down the middle, gutted you like a fish. Mama was laid up for three weeks and during this time, Grandma Bunny came down to see about her. When Mary came into the shop, Grandma Bunny was only two days gone back to Macon. Although I was dozing in my playpen in the corner of the shop, Mama knew I wouldn’t sleep forever. Besides, her stitches hurt.

“Do you take walk-ins?” Mary asked. “I know you are likely closing up, but maybe you can find it in your heart to help me?”

Halloween was three weeks away; the dogwoods blazed red in the front yard, but the weather had cooled only slightly. Maybe it because the question sounded like something out of a book, or maybe it was just simple as the lady saying her name was Mary, but something put my mother in the mind of Christmas.

“I’m not well, but I might could help you,” my mother said. “Depending on what you need.”

“I’ll tip you good,” Mary said, sitting in the chair like my mother had already said yes. She pulled half a dozen bobby pins out of her scrawny bun and unwrapped a red rubber band that came away clotted with hair. “Thank you. And God bless you.”

Mama got Mary into the shampoo bowl and half her hair lay down straight and docile under the faucet. That’s what happens when you have been getting hard presses for more than twenty years. Some of the kink just gets lost.

“Can I talk to you?” Mary asked my mother.
“Of course,” Mama said. “Nobody in here but us.”
“I’m leaving my husband,” she said. “We’re not equally yoked.”

Mary, like my mother, had married young, but of course not as young as my mother-- nobody married as young as my mama.

Mama didn’t say anything one way or another. She just combed through Mary’s half-nappy hair, sectioning it off and plaiting it up to dry.
“The bible says you got to have a mate that’s your equal. Y’all have to both love the Lord in the same way.” Mary’s voice was calm and steady.

It was October, so Mama had the door propped to let the breeze in. She could smell burning leaves. “You have children?”

Mary said she had two. They would be all right with their father. The Lord, she said, had called her to another man. They were going to minister together. This new man was going to take some working on, some praying over, but the Lord was inside him. She could feel it burning through his skin. My mama, to this day, has never been with anyone but my father, so she didn’t know first hand what Mary was talking about when she was comparing the touches of these men in her life, but she could imagine it. This new boyfriend, Mary said, he had God in him. “You ever touch the hand of a preacher that is truly saved? That has healing in his hands? You know how it’s like he empties out your body and just fills you up with spirit?”

Mama nodded her head because she had met a preacher like that years ago when she was still a girl in Macon. This was just after the baby boy died and she was wandering around looking for somewhere to go. This preacher that touched my mother was a child, a little girl, black as the ace of spades with nurse’s cap pinned over her short hair. My mother was walking by, struggling with a basket of white people’s laundry when this girl-preacher grabbed her by the arm; Mama felt herself hollowed out and filled with light. The little girl preacher held a white leather bible in her dark hand. “Will you pray with me, sister?”

My mama said she didn’t have time, although she was warm from the child’s touch.

“Are white people’s dirty drawers more important than your soul, sister? Come to me,” the little girl said. “Get on your knees with me.”

My mother looked over her shoulder. They were standing in front of the colored high school where Raleigh and James were in class. Mama could imagine the Home Ec teacher looking at her out of the window and seeing her kneeling in the street with this pickaninny preacher and the basket of laundry beside her. “I can’t,” Mama said. “I just can’t.”

The little girl said, “That’s pride. Give me your hand, Sister. You vanity is your burden. Lay it down. Let me touch your soul.”

My mama extended her hand, greedy for another dose of that touch. The child squeezed my mother’s hand.

“You don’t have to get on your knees. He can touch your heart while you are on your own two feet.”

My mama says her legs just gave out under her and she was on her knees in the road and that little girl stroked my mama’s face and talked to Jesus while my mama sobbed. “Ask the Lord to take care of my baby,” Mama begged the girl.

“He’ll take care of you too,” the girl said and with every caress of her tiny hands my mother felt her spirit mend.

“Yes,” my mama told Mary. “I have been touched by anointed preacher. Just one time.”

“This man I got,” Mary said. “The Lord is working through him. He sings. No matter what he’s singing he’s got God in him. People come to see him and start crying. They think his crooning about love between a man and a woman, worldly love, but what he’s doing is making them feel the Lord. He’s a miracle. We are going to build a ministry together.”

In my playpen, I woke up and started fretting, holding my arms up because I loved to be held. “Could you get her for me,” Mama asked Mary. “I’ve been operated on. I can’t lift her.”

“Where’s your husband?” Mary asked walking over to me.

“If she won’t let you hold her,” Mama said. “Don’t be hurt. Sometimes she doesn’t cotton to new people.”

“I love children,” Mary said. “I have three. Two girls, a boy. I miss them. But you got to do what the Lord calls you to do.” She reached for me and I held out my arms and cradled my head on her shoulder. “Such a big girl,” Mary said to me. “How old are you?”

“Three,” I said.

The story is that I just sat on her lap the whole rest of the time. I didn’t cry, I didn’t ask for food or anything. I reached up a few times and fondled her earlobes.

After Mama finished pressing Mary’s hair, she smoothed it with a board bristle brush. Mary’s fine hair crackled with static; ghost strands stood up on their own and danced.

“It’s not just lust when we’re together,” Mary twisted in the chair and searched my mother’s face.
Mama said, “I know.”

Mary didn’t want the curls combed out, since she was going to have to ride the bus to Memphis and she needed her hair to be fresh when she got there. She took Mama’s address, writing the street number of a folded index card pulled from the bottom of her purse. “I am going to write to you when I get everything set up. You’ll have to come to meet him. You need to feel that healing touch again. My man is true,” she said. “True as the word.”

When she was done, Mama didn’t even want to take her money, so Mary tucked the twenty dollar bill in the little pocket of my dress. Mama didn’t notice because of all the commotion I caused when Mary tried to leave. She set me down and made her headed toward the door and I threw a fit. “Don’t go,” I said over and over. Mama, embarrassed, tried to explain that I was all riled up because of her surgery and because Grandma Bunny had just left. It had made me clingy. Mary picked me up and kissed my face. “Jesus loves you. Do you know that?” she said to me. She patted me on the back while I watched my mother from over Mary’s shoulder, holding on so hard that Mama felt a little jealous.

Just then, Daddy walked in through the open door with Raleigh close behind carrying a bucket of chicken.

“W-what’s going on here,” he said, reaching for me. He had to pull me away because I refused unhook my arms. “L-let the baby go.” He yanked so hard that I started to cry.

Mama was embarrassed. “There’s nothing wrong,” she said. “She was just helping me out, since I can’t lift the baby yet.”

“Good Bye, Laverne,” Mary said. “Don’t let this trouble you none. I’ll be seeing you again.”

When the door clapped shut behind her, my daddy leased to kiss my face, but pulled himself back as a shock hurt his lip.

* * * *

They fought over it, my parents did. Mama complained at the dinner table, trying to eat the chicken Daddy and Raleigh had brought. “You just don’t want me to have a friend,” Mama said. “Why did you treat her like that?”

“You didn’t see her face,” Daddy said. “There was something wild in her face.”

Mama wiped her eyes with the cheap paper napkin from the chicken place. “I need to take a pill. My stitches are hurting me.”

Raleigh got up to find her a glass of water.
Daddy said, “You can’t take codeine on an empty stomach. Eat your dinner.”
“The doctor said no fried foods. I told you that.”
“I’m sorry Verne,” Daddy said. “Do you want me to fix you a sandwich?”
“I just hate the way you treated her,” Mama said. “How often do I get to have a friend?”

About three weeks later, Daddy came home early the next Wednesday. He walked into the shop while my mama was trying to do three heads at once. Somebody was holding me, but Daddy didn’t play them any mind.

“Laverne, can I talk to you for a second?” he said.

My mama wasn’t in the middle of any chemical procedures so she went outside and sat with Daddy in the Towncar. “What is it? Is Miss Bunny okay? Raleigh?”

“Nothing like that,” he said. “I was just wondering. That woman that came in late that night? The one in the pink.”
“Mary,” Mama said. “Mary was her name.”
“I saw her picture in Jet,” Daddy said, handing my mother the folded back page. “She was the one that threw hot grits on Al Green. I told you she was crazy.”

Mama looked at the article, tracing the words, moving her lips as she read what happened in Memphis just one night after Mary left our shop.

“What did he do to her?” Mama said.
“What did he do to her? She threw a pot of hot grits on the man when he was getting out the bathtub and you want to know what he did to her?”
“Oh Mary,” Mama said.
“Black women,” Daddy said. “Y’all know y’all is crazy when you don’t get your way.”
“Oh Mary,” Mama said again. “Oh girl.”