Sew-Wear
(Sow?-Where?: We must sow. Where there is ground.)
Season One
Episode 5: Regaining Your Power Is In Fact A Solitary Activity
Prologue:
(Sarah W. Certainty looks on from her ‘scrapbook’ with a determination not to let her forehead be crinkled by the ‘projections of time’. There are recordings, good recordings, of the people that care about Sarah, ready for play to be pushed on the control display. Resist those temptations to bask in the warmth of the support these people showed because you returned the proper respect to their prodding. People for instance like her Mother, Sparklett Stone, Mother Sayer, Sarah’s righthand Uoherbhai which all of these fine women have driven their positive energy her way.
Now. This is where Sarah must force herself to keep the support she gets focused. Discipline Sarah voices to herself. Discipline. Mother Sayer stated that discipline is not just in mastering her physical acts towards stated goals. Discipline is also wrestling that ‘tongue’ to not ‘blow up’ the offers of help she needs to continue to be successful at her endeavors designing clothes that not just cover the body, but display what’s going on in the mind as well. A stray word with bad body language can explode a rocket on a launchpad just as easily.
Sarah wants to get off the ground and catch some of those widely discussed strong wind currents that can change weather patterns. So to speak. That’s why she has decided to force choices on people she thinks would be good in the ‘expressive garment industry’ on a case by case basis. What did Mother Sayer tell her? ‘Child. You can start a business you know will have people coming to you ‘biting’ like crazy trying to figure out the next style and trend. Alternatively. Waiting on people to put the ‘noodles and sauce’ together will find you out of business’.
Sarah remembers chuckling at Mother Sayer trying to make it all racial with her ‘noodles and sauce’ analogy. Sarah got the message anyway. ‘Keep it steppin’!
I’m steppin Mother Sayer.).
Sarah W. Certainty: (Janea has showed out here at Sew-Wear. I need to check out where this is going. What she intends to do with herself.). Janea. I must say you are moving right along here at Sew-Wear. I must say. I was focused on Hedgie Fletts when I came to New York. I wasn’t even thinking about anything or anybody else. Bless my soul. I made an impression on you that made you come all this way. I want to have lunch with you. Are you free today?
Janea: Sure. Of course. No need to twist my arm. I love a free lunch.
Sarah W. Certainty: (Oh, she’s been talking to Mother Sayer about how to handle me? Always toss an ethnic slur about Black people in the air and see if she moves to catch it. Let it hit the ground. Or confronts.). Hey. My people love a free lunch too. Just that, usually somebody gets shot before the waiter brings the check.
Janea: Oh, that’s a good one Ms. Sarah.
Sarah W. Certainty: Just Sarah. I love the caution, but I’m a member of an ethnic group that still gets portrayed as gangsters as well. More loved. Still gangsters in how America chooses to see us.
Janea: I would love to be thought of as your sister as well Sarah.
Sarah W. Certainty: I would love for us to have the same ‘work’ Mother.
Janea: (Janea just laughs. She says to herself looks like we’ll be getting along.). Where do we go now?
———————————-A Place to Talk———————————-
(Sarah W. Certainty and Janea end up at a Panera Bread. The menu is decent and not too expensive. Besides. They both wanted someplace where the aesthetics were quieting which makes the food go down a little easier. Sarah and Janea settle into a table near a side door after they order their food.).
Janea: What are we going to talk about Sarah? Do you have another target in mind? I mean somebody who doesn’t know they have talent or someone who knows they have talent just that they don’t have any way of making their passions a reality?
Sarah W. Certainty: I have some names in mind. I want us to compare lists. We’ll decide on who to go after for sure back at the office. I want to just talk to you about why did you risk everything coming to Kentucky?
Janea: I came because of you. Let me say it another way. When you came into the college that day looking for Hedgy I took a shot at ‘waving’ you off. You listened. Right there is where I knew I needed to throw everything I had at you. A ‘Hail Mary’ people call it.
Sarah W. Certainty: How did you know I wasn’t an asshole?
Janea: I didn’t know. I hoped. Something some old Black folks taught me that I obviously couldn’t shake the dust off my feet from.
Sarah W. Certainty: ‘Shake the dust off your feet’?
Janea: Yeah. I’m from New York, but my people came from Mississippi. I’ve learned it doesn’t matter what’s on the birth certificate. You’re still a descendent of the South. The South has it’s ways of survival and family for Black folks. No matter what the ‘press’ in this country try to separate us, talking like ‘belonging’ has been our ‘crutch’.
Sarah W. Certainty: I’m listening as I’m eating my broccoli soup.
Janea: (Janea chose a tuna fish sandwich because it was light and healthy). Yes. Belonging to us means we have somebody to lean on. I know leaning on other people has also been corrupted in our community as well by listening ‘OUTSIDE’ our ‘walls’.
Sarah W. Certainty: Yes. I’ve noticed. Black folks show don’t like trusting too many people that don’t look like them.
Janea: You’ve noticed? Aren’t Italians the same way?
Sarah W. Certainty: Yes. Again we like to check the ‘reception’ too much by ‘whacking’ people that let other people listen in without permission.
Janea: You’re funny. Listen. My problem has been that I lay my trust down with the wrong Black people. Mainly one Black man.
Sarah W. Certainty: This one Black man would be the father of your two children?
Janea: Yes. I entangled too many parts of my life together that I missed or intentionally ignored what kind of man I was messing with.
Sarah W. Certainty: Well. How did you get out of it?
Janea: I didn’t until I actually had that conversation with Mother Sayer. Remember she said she would talk with me again at a later time?
Sarah W. Certainty: I do.
Janea: She crystalized it for me in practical terms that I could consume without difficulty. (Janea waves off Sarah so she could finish her point.). Mother Sayer told me that I allowed my carnal mind, my flesh, to make decisions for me.
Sarah W. Certainty: Like that? Just like that? She told you that fucking is what got your ass in trouble?
Janea: Yes. She said it just like that. Mother Sayer says she got a friend that told her something simple a long time ago. I quote. ‘What do dicks and pussies get? Fucked! If that’s all you got sister or brother, you don’t have shit cause anybody can do that. Dogs can do that’. End quote.
Sarah W. Certainty: Wow. Mother Sayer has a way with ‘gold earrings’ of wisdom.
Janea: She does. I stopped my ‘pine for’ that man right then and there. She didn’t stop there with her wisdom. She laid a retelling of Black American history in her way on me too. She said to me. Do you know why Black people were the one ‘race’ of people continually sought after for the slave trade? What about Black people that made them so valuable? What human qualities made Black people so resilient, strong and durable for back breaking physical labor?
Sarah W. Certainty: What? What did she say?
Janea: She gave a composite answer that said, ‘Black people have shown a Godlike ability to not only survive over thousands of years of cruelty, torture and malice. Black people are responsible for laying the solid foundations that America firmly sits atop. Even as she lauds over her accomplishments never acknowledging the people that made those financial endeavors a reality’.
Sarah W. Certainty: That shit is deep.
Janea: Yes. Tell me about it. Mother Sayer said that her father Abelman Sayer was not a clown just running around sticking his dick into whatever pussy he could. Her father spent his ‘time’ wisely finding out answers to questions no one wanted to get out there in the public sphere. Her life would bring more answers. Mother Sayer said she would ‘make sure of it’!
Sarah W. Certainty: How did America gain such a foothold financially when America was basically this country of backwoods ignoramus shitkicking inbred scumbags?
Janea: Well. That’s quite a statement. True though. Now. As Mother Sayer said, ‘You can complete plenty of massive undertakings when you have free labor. Not just free labor. The strongest free labor ever known to humanity’! The resilience of Black people saw America through all her periods and gave her what she has today. No doubt!
Sarah W. Certainty: And Mother Sayer made sure you stopped any self-loathing right?
Janea: Yes she did. I never knew that a ‘gathering’ what Mother Sayer called it, can heal. I just thought that words hurt people. I didn’t know they could heal people too.
Sarah W. Certainty: Yes. She is like that. Amazing how a foggy mind can be cleared when the right people care about you. People you never thought you’d crave to be under their arms. Literally.
Janea: Ah. I see she has laid her ‘blackness’ on you thick too.
Sarah W. Certainty: And I’m dam sho glad she did.
Janea: You are funny.
Epilogue:
(Sarah and Janea finished their lunch in much laughter and friendship that let go of a lot of defenses at least between them. Sarah is glad that she could talk to Mother Sayer. Women need to know there are women on their side. All that competition against each other when you’re trying to make a way for yourself is necessary to a point. Sarah knows that sometimes it is good to have allies. Allies that can give you a heads up when a left hook is coming to floor you.
Sarah knows success can be small if you don’t have a ‘legacy’. Thinking that what you know must be kept to yourself is counterproductive to say it mildly. It prevents you from noticing who you need to teach, mentor and support. That’s how you grow as a person. What? Sarah starts thinking about all living things on this Earth.
Mother Sayer told her about the ‘Almug’ tree and how its’ properties were a perfect example of how human beings can mimic what thrives in nature. Almug trees so prominently covered in the Holy Bible producing such soulful instruments that increased the spiritually of the hearers that were close and far away.
Associations are not harmless. That’s the first admonition to take to heart. Regaining your power also means reconnecting the lines back to where your power ‘first’ came from. The family you know or the family you create or the family you’re made a part of. Thank you Mother Sayer.).


