Precious and Frederick Get Married
By Fred Owens
We decided on Saturday, September 1, 1997 as the date. That was our plan, but it was not in our plan for Princess Dianna to die in a car crash the day before. This tragic news rocketed through Africa, for Dianna was a beloved figure. Many a humble home had her framed photo on the wall in an honored spot, next to a photo of Reggae star Bob Marley. People were devastated about this unexpected death. And it would have been selfish for the bridal couple to exclaim "What about our coming joy tomorrow?" Spirits were dampened but we took it as no bad omen, for each day has its own story and our story would be told on September 1.
The owl was a different matter. We heard it softly cooing in the pepper tree in the front yard on the evening of the big day. "Look, Precious, an owl in our tree, how wonderful, what a good sign!" She looked at me with astonishment. Speechless with fear. "They are witches. They are bad luck. We must chase the owl away." But I refused to just switch sides on this matter. Immediately I saw the problem -- where we see owls as symbol of power and wisdom, Africans see them as dangerous bad luck, bewitched and devilish. I quickly suggested an agreement. "I think owls are a good sign for our marriage and you see them as trouble. Let's agree with both. We'll have wisdom and we'll have trouble too." I was pleased with myself for this solution, but I could see that Precious was already bored with the idea, just too much witchcraft in her life anyway, bad spirits. My view indicated that we had a choice, to welcome the owl or not. Her view was fatal. There is no choice, the owl is here and it is bad.
Do you think we could have talked this over? Do you think we talked over anything? The fifty cousins would descend on our house tomorrow, all happy and ready to party. I had nobody but myself, if you could picture the groom's side of the aisle. Just Mr. Jones, standing for me. And we had Joseph, the waiter at the Palace Hotel, who introduced Precious and me to each other. He got this whole thing started so he took a master seat, on a crate, in the shade of the guava tree in the back yard, near the fire where the goat was roasting. Did I have doubts about all this? I had no compelling reason to get married. We already lived together harmoniously. But I wanted the full catastrophe, to be chained up forever with a wild full-blooded African woman, a most dangerous creature. We would fight to the death, or love each other until death do us part. Somehow death seemed to be involved.
That evening, Precious was busy with wedding stuff. I didn't ask, but I think it meant a lot to her, to be honored by her family, as first among the fifty cousins, to wear the pearls and lace and gauzy veils of a proper bride. Tanti, the maid of honor, had been over earlier in the day, helping to clean the house and she worked on Precious's hair. My unspoken instructions were to get out of the way and not ask stupid questions. But the cake was already out on the dining table on a cake stand and covered by a veil to fend off flies. We could not store beers on ice because we had no ice or coolers to hold it. Instead, we would send boys over to the Plumtree bottle store, to buy many cold bottles as needed.
All was well that last evening, and instead of watching TV from the couch, I stepped out into the back yard for star gazing and quiet contemplation. Bulawayo had a half-million residents, but most of the housing was lit with 25-watt bulbs which did not overwhelm the natural stars of southern Africa. Many stars, and quiet sounds. Mr. Dhlwayu, my next door neighbor, was putting his car tools away. I bid him good night and looked forward to his attendance at the reception. Then I paced back and forth by the garden, viewing the rows of strawberries and the tomatoes in cages.And looked up. There was something about the starlit African sky that made all the suffering worthwhile. I mean the suffering of the African people, a land of constant decades-long civil war, a land of ignorance and disease and hopeless poverty. Why could they not develop their country and become prosperous and democratic like us? Why were they taken in slavery, and then overwhelmed by colonial powers, and now, in 1997, ruled by heartless dictators? But they had those stars and that sky. They had nothing but that sky. God it was vast.
Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, I had the usual interest in black culture, which is to say, I liked the music. Motown, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles. One summer in high school, Doug Serwich and I got tickets to see James Brown playing at Soldier Field. This was adventuresome. Over 25,000 fans came to this show and I believed Doug and I were the only white boys in the crowd. The music was electric. No one sat down from first note to last. James Brown was over the top like I had never imagined....
Another time we went to the Arie Crown theater downtown, seating 3,000 fans, for Ray Charles. That was cool. But what really blew me away, may have planted the seed in fact that got me to Africa, was when the Raylettes strutted on stage. They were so big and power-packed, big hair, big everything. Forbidden fruit. Not for me. My world was white. I lived in a prosperous leafy suburb. I had a drawer full of nice sweaters and a seersucker sport coat in the closet to wear on hot summer evenings. And I was progressive and modern in my developing views on race. I was not going to be like my father, who some times spoke his prejudice against black people. But I have to put a word in for my Dad here. Yes, he had a bad attitude, but he never expected his children to adopt his views. He grew up poor in St. Louis and he had to fight with black kids on his way to school and fight them again on the way home. And my Dad's whole life was about getting out of that neighborhood and getting to the leafy suburb where he raised five kids, all with nice sweaters, all bound for college, and all ready to correct his language at the dinner table.
My older brother and I went to the civil rights marches in Chicago that summer of 1966. We walked along side Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King. My mom approved, but my Dad was furious. It was like that everywhere in Chicago that summer, an argument in every kitchen.
But it felt awkward. I didn't really know any black people. My high school was all white. The neighborhood and the parish church was all white. There was a prosperous black family in Kenilworth that I had heard about. Otherwise it was Benny the cleaning lady and LC the mechanic at the Shell Station who would go buy us six-packs of Country club malt liquor for drunken binges. Why did I ever drink such swill? But I didn't have any black friends.. It was awkward, but I already said that. I left it at that. My father's way was overcome and so we moved on. And I loved the music.
But I never dated black girls. Or sought them out. All my fantasies were about white women. It never occurred to me otherwise. I looked at Playboy magazine. All white. Except I did have a thing for Nancy Wilson, the jazz singer. I bought her album just so I could look at her photo on the cover.
I went to college. I got to know some black fellows from Jamaica. They were nice guys and really good at Ping Pong. I went out West after college and lived for 25 years next to a Reservation and got pretty involved with Native American people. Later, I moved to Boston for six years and joined a Jewish study group. Why Jews? Well, why not? They became good friends. And it wasn't awkward.
But I never got to know any black people. I mean, it's not like I had a check list, but still, when my mother died in 1996 and I went back to Chicago to straighten up her affairs -- that's when I started to think about this.
Any reasonable single man, who had buried his mother, had sent his two kids off to college, paid off his debts, and still had some coin left from the estate -- that reasonable man would have booked a flight to Jamaica, to idle in the shade of a palm tree, smoking doobies and sipping rum in the company of a very beautiful Jamaican lady. I could have done that for six weeks and come refreshed and enlightened.
But no, I had to go all the way to Africa, to Zimbabwe, to meet and marry a totally fearsome African woman named Precious. That was more than taking the plunge, that was taking on a hurricane from the Third World. No baby steps for me, but whole hog. I was enjoying the calm starlit African evening in the back yard of my house -- rented, but still very much mine. I had somehow transferred my life and existence half way round the world to cast my lot with a woman who I did not really even understand. So of course I married her. Because I didn't want her to get away.
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