The Harlot at the Spigot

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• The Harlot at the Spigot
• Enkeshi Thom El-Amin (bio)

The Bottom was quite impressive. In the low-lying, foul-smelling, lined-with-shacks, barely standing neighborhood where hunger and laughter made imprints on postures, Black people in Knoxville made a home. Homes made of wood too sparse, so they got holes in them. The rooms damp but the rooms full. Rolling hills and rolling tides and rolling herds of pigs and cows and cattle. Prayers always going up in the Bottom on somebody's lips, no matter what time of the day. Praying to God, cursing God, mad at whoever is praying or cursing God. Generation after generation, memories never washed away, not then and not now.

And just as impressive as the place was, so too were its inhabitants. Remember down at the spigot? Every evening, buckets in hand fetching water, mud on ankles, fetching gossip? There was Henry, couldn't hardly find no job but was always down at that sanctified church whooping and hollering and shouting. Wille Bell sure couldn't stand it, but she loved him and he took care of her and all them kids. Then you had that one Negro police coming around asking questions, knowing good and well wasn't no answers. With too-big-for-him pants staring at everybody with them frog-like eyes, Dr. Brown came around sometimes. Nevermind him though, neighbors laughed at him, said if it's gon be a negro doctor, might as well not be a doctor at all. Can't forget the bully, mighta been called Big John or something like that, somebody said he killed at least two but probably three men.

And in the midst of mud and lust, Bessie always stood with shoes on her feet. Her brain was as big as her dreams, and her dreams kept her walking at night, kept her lonely in the daytime, kept her close to the Bottom. She was born in the Bottom, raised up in the Bottom, most of them were. But mothers rolled their eyes, whispered at each other when she came around. Father turned their heads, the minister damned them all to hell. Damned himself right along with them. And as they washed away the taste of yesterday's dinner, the teenage girls noticed Bessie's clean shoes. Tip tap, tip tap patting the dirt as she walked, she got some red ones and some white ones too. "She ain't washing no white lady clothes but she always got new shoes." Wonder where she got them from, wonder how many she got, wonder how they can get some. Ain't all God's children supposed to have shoes? [End Page 126]

Enkeshi Thom El-Amin

ENKESHI THOM EL-AMIN, a community sociologist, is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Agnes Scott College. Her current research examines and analyzes the contested experiences and meanings of urban Black space in Appalachia, a region conventionally represented as a domain of rural white poverty.

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