Greenwood, Ms.

Me and my Auntie Nanny talking about missing Shipley’s Donuts over on Howard Street.

Missing it something fierce.

Greenwood got new government that year, and they shucked the Shipley’s out, and planted one of they own donut shops in, instead. All politics and policies. Colored people play time over, white people policing always.

Me and my Auntie Nanny talking ‘bout how bad it is, how they breeding more bland breads than baked goods.

‘Talking about white folks and they obsession with blandness, why they don’t like no flavor in nothing they do, or take out all the tasty in everything they get.

‘About white folks inherent fear of riling themselves up too much, scaredy-cat’ing their excitements into submission ever since they took us ‘way. 

This whole conversation got me smelling myself some.

Understand, I done got a lil grown, just a lil shy of 20, and now my Nanny get to talking with me like I’m less of the lil girl she raised, and more of a Grown Guh coming to be. Grown Guh like I’m one of her guhfriends. Like, I’m one of her guhfriends and I’m finally getting it.

“You remember the Balloon Fest, don’t you?” She asks.

“Oh, yeah. Why they stopped doing that?”

“You too young to know but guh, let me tell you. See, they had set up for Bobby Rush to perform that year. Lemme see…wanna say 2002. But them white folks didn’t know about Bobby. Now, you know about Bobby, and I know about Bobby, and the white folks who didn’t know about Bobby shoal was ‘bout to find out that day. So, there he was—Bobby and His Women. And Bobby don’t fool with no Slim and Prim Proper Women. No, Lord. Wherever Bobby go, you can bet he gone bring out some women ‘bout built well as a well-blown balloon. Just like the ones at the festival. So, there he was on stage—Bobby and His Women, they backsides faced to the bright white crowd. Bobby say, ‘Look at it! I say hot damn, look at it!’ ‘Say, ‘Oh, I hear hah talking to me.’ And guh, he put his mic right up to the curve of ha’tail, that tail waving like a heat’s handshake, mic up to them high-hipped, hen-pecked women in that hooker-heel Mississippi heat. Them white folks had a fit!”

Whew, I’m on the floor laughing down, boy.

Having a fit, myself.

Tickles talon’ing their way through my insides.

‘Can’t get a whole word out even if I wanted to.

“I mean, imagine that! White men looking at them big booty shaking Black women, and white women looking at they white men looking at them big booty shaking Black women, and even some white women looking at them big booty shaking Black women, and feeling all wrong for the right way it was making them feel. Bobby blew all them white folks ‘way from the Balloon Fest, and they banned that Black man from the whole state. Mmm! He ain’t been back since.”

Conversation is a keeping on at this point, dashes of diction, seasoning them sentences with more sentences, exclaiming her exemplary points with another thing 1, and another thing 2, and another thing 3.

And another thing 1. —

“Now Greenwood got a white woman for a mayor. Gathering us all around, getting rid of all she can, claiming it’s to keep our streets safe. Clean our streets up. Well, what we got to clean when we the ones that used to clean for them? Like we’un know how! And what we got to be safe from when they the ones we always had to worry about?”

And another thing 2. —

“Shipley’s used to be filled with nothing but Black folks, and Black women the most—making the sweets, and looking too sweet themselves, I suppose. Let’s see, now. I’d go in. I get my favorite. Two lemon-filled. Cupa coffee. Lemon never made it to the Cadillac ‘cause you know ain’ want nobody knowing with my diabetes, and all. Cupa coffee made it to the cup holder, though. Can’t get fussed at for coffee especially since I took it like my grandma took it—all black. No cream. No sugar. Help with the bowel movements, so it’s healthy some. Keep you from eating too much, too. That’s why in nursing homes, they always give the old folks they coffee after they eat. Never before. Give it to them then, and they ain’t gone want nothing else after. But yeah, I’d be walking out with my no donut left. My one cupa coffee. And there the white men be walking in for them sweets. Sweets with a plural s. Both kind can be taken to the lips, you know? Then they off. On they way to work. Or on they way back home. Getting a lil of that rile to last them a while from our streets, from our sweets. White men smiling a lil too much, and they white women catching on that it ain’t ‘cause of them. And naw, naw…they couldn’t be havin’ that. And come to think of it, Bobby wudn’t nothing but a reminder before they even knew they needed ‘minding. ‘Minding before they brought our Shipley’s down.”

And another thing 3. —

“Now you gone to they donut shop. And it’s the only donut shop in town. They ain’t letting nobody else put they bid in. No competition whatsoever. And it’s across the river on they side of the tracks, where we can’t afford to live, and they can afford to keep it that way. And inside the shop it’s all just…it’s all just—”

“Slim Prim Proper Women?” I want to say guess, but more so offer. Nanny had put it in the air earlier—the catch, to close out the conversation.

And Nanny get to looking at me like I’m less of the lil girl she raised, and more of a Grown Guh coming to be. Grown Guh like I’m one of her guhfriends. ‘Like, I’m one of her guhfriends, and I’m finally getting it.

And she say—

 “Yea…that’s right. That’s exactly right, Exie.”

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Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a writer, sewist, author and editor native to Blackhawk, Ms. She is a graduate of Mississippi Valley State University with a BA in English, and Mississippi University for Women with an MFA in Creative Writing.

She is an associate editor at Fractured Lit and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Loveliest Review.

Exodus has been published or has forthcoming work with Electric Lit, West Branch, Denver Quarterly, F(r)iction, BOOTH, CRAFT and more. She has been nominated for Best of The Net, Best MicroFiction, Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize. Her pieces “Chicken-Girls and Chicken-Ladies and All the Possibility of Pillowcases” and “It’s 5am-ish, and My Father Tells Me A Story From His Time in Singapore” were included in Best MicroFiction 2021 and 2022. Her piece “The Terrible Darling” was featured as a Wigleaf Top 50 2022 selection. She is the recipient of the 2022 “The Changing American South” fellowship at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Exodus also received a Mississippi Arts Commission Grant for an Individual Nonfiction Artist Fellowship in 2023. 

Exodus’ essay “When the World Was Ending We Wore the Cornrows, We Twisted Our Coils, and We Waited” was selected for Best American Essays 2024 as notable. 

Exodus is the author of a fiction chapbook—”Look at All The Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and The Bittersweet, Sweet and Bitter Loves”—which was published with Ethel Zine and Press in the Spring of 2023. Additionally, Exodus is the author of a debut collection of essays—”I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?” [a Mississippi Top (ten) Reads with The Clarion Ledger  debuting at #6], was published with ELJ Editions in the Summer of 2023. 

Her favorite color is green. 

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