BRIGIT'S FLAME WEEK 1 ENTRY- SEPT - MUD
What’s In a Name?
“Mudunique!”
Oh, how she hated the name.
The horribly constructed monstrosity of an excuse for a girl’s name, had to be the worst name ever.
Or at the very least, if not number one on the list, surely it would be one of the top ten worst in the whole world.
How could a person with even the least bit of God given sense name their child Mudunique?
Why not Charminena? Or Mucousette? Or for that matter --Toe Jam or Square Head. Or any other completely insulting and demeaning horrible concoction.
“Mud!”
Her hideous nickname.
“Comin!” she yelled a bit more disrespectfully than she ought to. Maybe her grand wouldn’t notice.
Long legs got her up the front steps and were able to keep her upright as she nearly stumbled over the petite matriarch standing inside the front doorway, who was already frowning at her.
“Don’t you sass me, child.” Her grandmamma had missed her calling. Should have worked with the voice analysis division of the FBI or CIA. Because she could detect and qualify an intention or emotion from the most innocently spoken sentence.
Of course, even if she had wanted to - the older black woman born in 1908 certainly would have had some trouble getting a government job.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Mudunique offered a genuine apology.
“I called you in here because…cause I…hmm I… child, now you got me forgettin’ why I called you.“ Her frown deepened and the tiny woman put her hands on her narrow hips and then slowly lifted up a finger with an accusation. “Do you see what you did?”
Mudunique, feigning contriteness, hung her head, hiding the smile that would surely have earned her some more scolding.
Her grandmother forgot a lot of stuff. Where her glasses were…utility bills that came in the mail went missing all the time. Crisp twenty dollar bills she’d put away for safe keeping apparently sprouted invisible little legs. That is, if Mud were to accept her grandmother’s explanation of how they got from the place she’d put them to some new secret location.
The elder’s eyesight was terrible, but swore she could see clear across the street and down the block. Maybe it was the eyes in the back of her head that were 20/20. Oddly enough, the woman had a keen sense of knowing exactly when Mudunique was anywhere near what her Grams called -“one of those knuckleheaded boys from around the way.” Or maybe it was some acute sense of smell, or perhaps some clandestine investigative skill that would have brought her through the ranks quickly if she had been able to get that job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“You need me to get something Grandma?” she asked.
“Oh… that’s right, baby…I need you to go to the garden and get some green to-“
“Tomatoes?” she guessed. The unmistakable wonderful smell of bacon was all around them. And the only time her Grams fried bacon at supper time was if she was going to fry onions and green tomatoes in the bacon grease-or make succotash. And if she was making succotash, Mud would have known it by then. Because she would have been in the kitchen for the last few hours-- washing, cutting, and dicing fresh vegetables instead of in a dark corner of a garage a few houses down, kissing Jarrell. The new boy on the block, two years her senior, had very exploratory hands.
The elder, heading for the kitchen, waved crooked fingers for her to follow. “Here take this bowl with you,” she said.
Before Mud could grab for it, the older woman admonished her, “-slow down, child, You’re always tryin’ to rush through everything. You need to slow down, hear me?”
Mud gingerly slid her hands around the sides of the big glass dish. Her grandma’s piercing stare studying her.
“Mudunique. you need to go slow, girl.” Her grandmother's voice got soft and solemn. “Life-- it don’t wait for you to fix your mistakes. Not when I was young or when your mom found out she was pregnant and went and got a job cleaning offices downtown instead of finishin’ her schooling.”
Well, at some point in between then and now, Mudunique’s mom had decided, being a junkie was a much more rewarding life experience.
“Why do we have to talk about her, Grams? I thought you were making supper, and I got …”
“You just take a seat right there.” Her grandmother pointed to one of the bright blue vinyl kitchen chairs. “Sit.”
Mud slumped into it and waited. Not too happy about the when-I-was-a-child-litany that she was sure was coming.
“Your mama--she had big dreams and losing them-well, that right out killed her spirit, and that’s why she got mixed up with that heroin.”
They rarely talked about the mother who had dropped off a baby girl for a Thanksgiving Day visit and never came back for her.
“When I was younger…” the old woman continued.
Oh, Mudunique sighed inwardly. Here we go…
“…we didn’t have no right or power to decide what our dreams were gonna be. That’s just the way things were. But I had some good things in my life and I thank the Lord for the man he gave me and for this house…and your mother. Even though she has been a handful…”
They shared a smile at the understatement and the humor in it.
“Mud, you’re old enough now to hear it all. So, I’m gonna tell you.”
Recognizing this was going to be a very different kind of talk, even though she remained slouched in her chair, Mud had stilled her poor attempt at being a rebellious teen, so that she could listen to the older woman who had been her sole care-giver. Truth be told, Mud thought of the eighty year old as her mother.
“A person…has gotta know where they come from in order to get where they’re goin’. So, what is it you want to know, baby? About your mama and what happened to her? Go on, you can ask me anything.”
A lot of questions to ask flew through her head like a flock of low flying pigeons-- but the one that rushed like the wind out of her mouth was, “Why did she name me Mudunique?”
Here grandmother’s aged and glassy eyes widened.
“It’s a stupid name.” Mud added to justify the validity of her inquiry.
“Well, it’s a good question. It was partly cuz, honey, when you were born you were all reddish brown-like fresh dirt. The kind that’s deep under ground. And, ahh…partly cuz your mama was high as the moon when she finally decided the name to put on your birth certificate.”
“Oh, great,” she groaned. ”No surprise there.”
“Shush, now…I’m gonna tell the whole story. So you best listen”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When your mama was a little girl, they had this famous preacher - a big strapping handsome man to visit our town. He preached on that story in the Bible where Jesus comes across a blind man, and The Lord, he spits on the ground and mixes in the dirt. And he takes that mud to put on the eyes of the blind man. And just like a miracle---that man could see. Your mama, she was only six, but she never forgot that story. And she asked me to read it to her all time. Now, I don’t know how she got to fixating on it--but she did. And I’ll tell you, every time it rained--that child would run outside. Find herself the biggest puddle of mud she could-and jump right in it. And, she’d come running inside yellin’ Mama look what Lord did. I couldn’t’ even scold her for messing up her clothes or tracking dirt in the house. I didn’t know why it meant so much to her until the day you were born.”
“So that’s why she named me Mud. Because of some Bible story?”
“Well, not exactly. When she told me what she was gonna put on that ‘certificate, I tried to stop her. She wanted to just name you Mud. But I told her if she did, I’d move heaven and earth and have her sent away to one of those sanitariums-and then hire me a lawyer and get it changed.”
“So you both came up with Mudunique as a compromise?” She knew it sounded sarcastic, but the older woman didn’t seem to care.
“You see, Mud, after all those years out there in those streets, your mother was shamed for what she had done with her life. She told me, givin' birth to you was just like God’s rain fallin’ from heaven. That you were a covering over her, and her multitude of sins. And she said, looking at herself through you was the biggest joy she ever had. Every bad thing she done -- canceled out. That you were a declaration of the greatness inside of her and by giving birth to you was proof that she had made something in this world outside of misery. I understood what she was trying to do, but I told her it wasn’t fair to name a pretty little baby like you ‘Mud’. So that’s when she tried to make it prettier… and added unique to it. Your mama said, Well then, I’ll make it Mudunique-cuz there ain’t never, ever gonna be anything on earth that’ll be as good as this baby girl.”
Mud let tears flood over and spill down her cheeks and she looked up to see her grandma was crying too. They both laughed at the other’s sentimental nature. And she got up to hug the tiny woman. The tight squeeze earned her a swat to the butt and her old woman screwed up her face and asked, “So Mudunique-what are you doin with those boys out there? Cuz your mom, even if she ain’t here, is expected you to do great things in this world.”
Her face flushed with embarrassment.
“Grandma- I won’t get in any trouble.” Trouble was the proper word for getting pregnant. “And I promise, I’m gonna go on to college and then maybe Law school or something else just as big. I won’t let you down-or mama.”
“She loves you baby, she’s just not strong enough to defeat all the demons that’s after her. I still believe one day she’ll will though.”
“I hope so Gram.”
“Now,” her Grandmam sniffed, handing off the big glass bowl one more time.
“Tomatoes!” They said in unison, laughing out loud together.
Mudunique headed outside and before making in through the screen door the older woman yelled out. “And don’t’ go tramplin’ through my greens and cucumbers...”
“Yes, maam!” she giggled as she let the door slam shut behind her.
She stopped to think about everything she had just learned.
“Mudunique.” She said the name with confidence-as if formally introducing herself to the world. And for the first time ever, the name didn’t feel like a ten ton weight pinning her to the ground. Instead, it felt like two wings on either side of her-lifting her spirit high up over the fenced in yard. And into the land of possibilities and wonders.
Then she remembered something.
It was one of those perfectly timed ‘more than coincidence’-coincidences. Earlier that day in school, her literature class had been studying 'Romeo and Juliet'. The question their teacher had wrote on the blackboard for group discussion was-- “What’s In a Name?”
She had cringed at the sight of the hand-written scrawl on the blackboard and felt like disappearing underneath her desk or becoming invisible, whichever one was the quickest exit out. Mud was nearly panicked over the thought of having to look at the snickering faces of the other kids in the class while she tried to defend the disjointed letters of the alphabet that had been jumbled together as a tag for her.
Her terrified expression must have made her favorite teacher skip over her and luckily the bell had rung before she’d had been called upon.
If on tomorrow though, her teacher did ask her to address the topic, Mud certainly would have a few things to say.
She would suggest, that maybe a name was more than the sum of its parts…or the way it rolled off the tongue or the way it reverberated in the human ear.
Maybe the true test of a name was in it’s power to inspire… to acknowledge your presence in the world. And to connect us to something bigger than ourselves. A name, could tell the story of person’s past and their future…and carry the love and hope of former generations into the brand new day.
The true dinstinction of a name was all about the intention of the heart that made it - the one that created it .
"Mud-u-nique," she said the name out loud again. Listening to the character of each syllable.
And for the first time ever she felt like it belonged to her and she to it.
It covered her…told the world who she was and what she was going to be.
Her chest swelled with pride for it.
"Mud, Are you gonna stand there all day…daydreamin’?" her grandmother winked at her through a hole in the screen door.
Mudunique grinned back and said, “Guess there’s plenty time for daydreamin’ isn’t there, Gram?”
“That’s right, baby."
(fini)