Albert's Story, Part 1: Gordian Knot
Great-Grandfather Fray was a white man. He went to another Virginia county to get Grandpa
Albert (his own mixed son) a wife. He wanted
a dark-skin woman because Grandpa looked
white.
—Aunt Edna
Old Man Fray always matched his mules
precisely like fitted pieces of a puzzle.
The horses at the mill were perfect pairs.
So it was not too far for him to travel
from his valley over blue mountains
to a distant Virginia county
where Randolph slaves were darker,
with molasses-colored Songhai skin,
African kinked hair and mahogany eyes.
He wanted to untie the weave
of the Gordian Knot, complicated
tangle he had created, with the issue
of silk-haired Albert, his son,
too fair to hide among the varied blacks.
The journey was apology or shame.
But cut or unwoven, the knotted
weave leaves kinks too deep
to hide or smooth away. Great-Grandma
Rhoda, the woman Old Man Fray found,
opulent with African genes, richly colored
the complex threads of our generations.
Copyright Credit: Constance Quarterman Bridges, "Albert's Story, Part 1: Gordian Knot" from Lions Don’t Eat Us. Copyright © 2006 by Constance Quarterman Bridges. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.
Source: Lions Don't Eat Us (Graywolf Press, 2006)