NOVEL EXCERPT
Mecca: In My Head
They stay picking at me. Been doing it my whole life. You know how I mean. You ever seen the neighborhood bois posted up three strong on the block? Any more and they rollin too deep for my blood. Sissie say they always rollin deep but her bougie ass don’t know nothing. She ain’t no better. I clocked that picture she keep in her wallet, cheesed up on the front stoop with David. Lemme find out big sis been playacting all that goodie-goodie shit. Just to make me look bad probably. Worse though is that face in the background. Familiar. Nobody she should know. Like I said, they stay picking at me. Her, mommy, all of them.
I can tolerate the crew, though, cause at least they’re real with it. Yeah, their only function is standing on somebody’s corner, holding up the air, poppin shit. But of that trio, I’m air. And I love anyone who holds me up heavenly like I deserve. Steady with the flyest names too. The ones with personality behind em, like they comin from straight off the continent instead of out they momma’s belly like everyone else in this world.
Bedbug Bri. Fro pick Frances. Tooth-pic Trev. Clearly, they don’t choose their own names. Those get handed down with a little petty and a lot of love. That’s the poppin shit part. And if someone happens to stroll through the hood who don’t belong. Or who ain’t paid proper respect. Well, of course the crew gon give more shit than lift. More pick than pet. It’s only fair. They ain’t friendly. They ain’t supposed to be.
But these folks I got in my head? They more than just unfriendly. They’re downright mean. And it ain’t about watchin the block either. It’s worse than that with my people. It’s me. I mean, no one’s heaven in the eyes of family. They know you too well. But to mine, I’m Hell.
The way they pick is a sight to behold. An artform. Bed bugs burrowing under soft flesh. Alopecia scabbing up my scalp. Afro-picking out my hair. Nails like claws, eczema-scratching at the prettiest fuchsia colored pock marks on my cheek. Behind my knees. In the crook of my elbow. Ever whispering sweet nothings while scraggle tooth biting at the back of my ear. I am masterfully accursed.
And I know what I did wrong. I grew up. Got a life, left. Dared to say ‘No.’ Now Sissie dead. Momma blamin me. Grandaddy got his gun. Baby tellin stories don’t make no sense. Everybody in their feelings bout what I need to be doing. And here I am steady trying to fix it all, but can’t, cause with all these voices shouting over each other who can hear the recipe? Maybe we’re all too broken. Or maybe I’m just not ready. Cause, really? I am Hell, though.
A lion rests between my thighs and he has five heads. One for each of my fuck ups. The beast of a man loves me anyway. I’m never sure if he rides me or I him but we make a good couple. Our oldest is the sweetest Chocolate Pit’ you ever saw. Her name’s Nina. I don’t always recognize myself, or her daddy, but I never forget my Nina. Babygirl is a wild one. Inquisitive and opinionated like her mother–some call us stubborn–but she’s so much fun. I couldn’t let her go if I tried.
The flames were hot the day she came. Me bristling in my cage, still a little scared to be Hell. Sissie was there. Sissie always there but she never talk no more. Not since she grew up and decided that death meant leaving me. Pick. She don’t know nothing no way. Doctor said I was just being extra. Everyone knows it takes nine months. Momma knew better.
Momma was almost nice that day. Helped me bear down and settle into the wave. Into the heat. Into the pain. She left, though, when she saw babygirl hadn’t come out human either. Bad enough having one dead daughter and another too feral to think. Pick. A living ghost of the two, for a granddaughter, was too much to bear. A walking reminder that maybe I’m not the only fuckup in the family.
I understand her reasons but I still don’t forgive her. Maybe we don’t forgive each other. Anyway. That was five years ago. Pick. No surprise. They like the idea of me but they love picking at me more.
No, we don’t. Don’t you tell that lie! You know you a lie. God gonna get you for that lie too. You betta quick call it back fo’-
Oh, Ma, please! Can’t you be quiet for a minute? God not gonna get me. Ain’t nothing worse than y’all anyway.
I ain’t ya momma. Don’t you call me that!
I know. Don’t you think I know my own mother? Jesus, y’all can blend, though. Sure got me scratchin like she do. I even try to think in peace and here y’all come talkin.
Watch your mouth, girl. I changed your diaper. You ain’t change mine. Changed your momma diaper too, so she can just watch her mouth next time she see me. [Beat]. You know she love you, right?
Yeah, Auntie.
Oh, so you do know who I am. Don’t I feel special!
Soon as you start talkin bout changing diapers, yeah, I know it’s you.
You think you funny. But did you hear me, though? I mean really hear me.
Yes, ma’am.
Liar. That’s why you Hell. But you gon learn today. She love you fierce. She just don’t know what to do with you is all.
That’s easy. Let me be.
You and me can’t even let ourselves be. You think she gon know how to do it?
You and me?
Oh, you thought I was just cured these days? Walkin round fancy free with my ass out on a beach somewhere?
I thought you were speaking in coherent sentences at least. You sound pretty sane to me.
Coherent sentences, huh? Well, ain’t you fancy. Nary a drawl nor split-tongue in sight.
I’m just saying.
That’s your problem. All say and no see. You ‘say’ we stay talkin. Stay pickin. Well, why ain’t you learned nothing yet?
I’m different from the rest.
Me too. I ain’t always human. I slip back and forth some days. But I make due with who show up.
Who showed up today?
Thought you knew me? See, you don’t listen.
Just answer the question.
Your momma say a dirty pigeon.
I didn’t ask what she say.
You ain’t gon hear me no way so it’ll do.
You so petty.
Pick.
#
Mecca: Better Company
I exist as a series of moods. Fog. Sunlight. Ocean waves spilling over shoreline. Good luck charm dangling from atlas. Axis. Cervix plus five. Rabbit’s foot resting between saggy breasts. Water in womb. Two-strand twist amniotic fluid. Bleach faded memory and rainbow. That last one’s my favorite. I like to think of myself as a nimbus of light floating high above. They say it’s not real. Another hallucination.
What does it mean that I only feel real when I’m not? That I only exist in the world as someone else’s bad day. Or good day. Or waking dream. What does it mean to live as a qualifier to wholeness?
“Hi Mecca, how are you feeling? You look good. Did you start the morning with one of our mood checks?” Dr. Gemia Clarke was lead psychologist at the New York State clinic where Mecca Stewart lived. She’d been watching the young woman sway back and forth, mumbling into her dining hall seat, for about twenty minutes. No food had been touched. Dr. Clarke wasn’t sure if Mecca even noticed the bowl of mixed fruit and oatmeal in front of her.
Sensing that distant observation from behind a glass wall wouldn’t accomplish the in-depth evaluation she sought, the doctor had set aside her notebook and clipboard. Maybe, a little person-to-person coaching would help ease the expectant mother out of whatever loop she’d slipped into. Gemia pulled up a chair to the round window-side table and sat opposite her patient. She positioned herself so Mecca wouldn’t see the metal tape recorder sticking up from her pocket, then waited.
This waiting was an increasingly familiar game they’d been playing, and it didn’t signal good things for the state of Mecca’s cognitive function.
You still in a funk over that picture? Now, who’s petty? I never met somebody so jealous of a measly picture they’d go this long holding a grudge.
Go away, Auntie. I’m not in the mood for your games.
“What did you say?” Dr. Clarke offered her full attention. “I’m not your aunt, Mecca.”
You play too much. Last time you wasn’t my momma. This time you not my aunt. So, who are you?
“I’m your doctor, Mecca. Remember?” Gemia spoke in a soothing, cautious tone. The girl’s switch from negative to positive markers had been swift. Too swift. It wouldn’t do to overwhelm her with too much stimuli.
Don’t change the subject. We talkin bout your demons not mine.
“We were talking about your mood. Are you okay?”
I’m fine except there you go with the demons and hellions again. Is that what you think of Bri? Why won’t y’all let us be?
Answer the question. You in a mood cause of that picture?
“Am I bothering you, Mecca? Or is there someone else?”
There’s always someone else. That’s the problem. Y’all hate who I chose for my family but I was never your first choice anyway.
You children know so much and so little at the same damn time. Why don’t you spell it out for me then, what it is you think you’ve got figured.
Gemia knew there was tension between Mecca’s family and her longtime partner, Bri. Whether disapproval or understandable distrust was less clear. The man had only visited twice in the six months since Mecca’s most recent in-patient stay. A fact that was also decidedly outside the purview of today’s wellness check. She changed the subject.
“I’m sorry you think I hate you, Mecca. I don’t. I don’t hate you or your family. But I’m not your aunt and it worries me that you think I could be.” She paused for Mecca to process these words, then continued. “Do I remind you of her? Your aunt?” Mecca glanced up from an intense focus tracing the abstract patterns on her skirt, the loose material of which draped her lap like a blanket, then stared across the table for a long moment. As the two women held each other’s gaze, something previously slack in Mecca’s face shifted, but the prolonged eye contact quickly became too much and she turned to look out the window.
I wasn’t your first choice, was I. It’s okay to tell me. I already saw it in that picture. I was never meant to lead this mission. That’s why she hates me. She wants her rightful place back.
That ain’t true and you know it.
If it ain’t true, why won’t she talk? She just stands there watching all the time.
Dr. Clarke shifted impatiently in her seat as Mecca’s accusing stare darted back from the window. She let out a deep sigh, “What are we doing, Mecca?” It always came back to this. The girl’s belief that she was on some kind of special mission. For a moment, Gemia had thought maybe she was just working her way back from a brief morning regression but Mecca had descended into speaking complete riddles now.
You ever thought, maybe, you ain’t much worth talking to?
“Who’s watching you? Who replaced you?” Dr. Clarke could see her patient becoming increasingly agitated, but grounding questions were doing little to cut through the fog. Mecca was staring wildly over the doctor’s left shoulder, gesturing toward an invisible person one could only guess stood somewhere between the snack machine and a plastic potted tree in the front corner of the room.
I think about it every day. I know I’m the backup to a dead girl. A more qualified dead girl, too, but that don’t stop the rest of y’all picking.
“So this is about Mali? The deceased person is your sister, right?” Dr. Clarke was grateful for the recorder in her pocket. She was struggling to keep up with the stream of characters to whom Mecca had made mention: an aunt, her mother, her late sister. At least one of them refused to speak to her.
So that’s what this is? You done decided to be sorry and die too?
I ain’t sorry. And I told you to shut up already. About Sissie, about all of it.
“Hold on. Your sister is dead but you’re not sorry? Let’s talk about that.”
Watch who you talking to little girl.
I just wish she’d forgive me already. Why won’t y’all forgive me? Please.
“I forgive you, Mecca. Why don’t we start over.” Dr. Clarke extended her hand across the table as a peace offering while silently reminding herself this was only a mood check. She didn’t need to understand every voice in the girl’s head – or every secret from her past.
Sure thing. I’m still waitin on you to say when.
I’m here ain’t I? What more do you want?
Gemia kept her arm extended but answered the question with one of her own, “Can you tell me what you’re feeling right now?” She got a surprise when Mecca suddenly locked in on the long-abandoned bowl of oatmeal and served herself a heaping spoonful before replying.
You’re not real.
“Excuse me?”
Agreed. What’s that got to do with you letting go this grudge?
I’m not real either. I exist as a mood.
“Okay, tell me about your mood.” Professionally speaking, Dr. Clarke tried not to get caught up in the absurdity of it all. Characters shifted, details changed. But it was the constant fixation on saving the world, or the known universal timeline or some other unexplored alternate reality, that never went away. None of it mattered except that Mecca believed it and her believing often led her to dangerous situations.
Fog, sunlight, ocean waves spilling over shoreline. But those ain’t really moods and none of this is real either.
Glad you finally getting round to where I started. Tell me again why you mad at something ain’t even real?
Dr. Clarke could tell she was getting nowhere, but she kept on. She couldn’t help thinking that somewhere in all the mess was a key to actually saving the girl from herself. “Sunlight’s not real? Not the ocean either? That’s so sad. How does that not break your heart, Mecca?”
I’m not mad. Not really. But why won’t she talk?
It ain’t time yet. You not ready.
“Mecca, look at me. Stop playing with your food and look me in the eye. We talked about this before, remember? The voices are bad. I know you miss your sister but hearing her voice is not a good thing. That’s why we our take medicine every day.” Gemia could feel herself growing frustrated even as she tried not to take Mecca’s waywardness personally. The girl couldn’t help that she was sick and of course she wouldn’t make direct eye contact while in the midst of an episode.
But I remember now. The face in the picture. Isn’t that enough?
Not yet. Be patient.
“What picture, Mecca? None of this makes any sense. There is no picture.” She wanted to shout at the girl, ‘Why isn’t my help enough?’ That was the real question. So many troubled patients like Mecca receiving the best care possible and none of it mattered. Wasn’t it enough to have quality meds and treatment facilities and options where others had none? To have someone like Dr. Clarke who genuinely cared where others didn’t. It occurred to Gemia that maybe this was the problem. She was becoming way too personally invested. It didn’t help that Mecca had heard nothing she said anyway, and was ranting even more as the doctor became increasingly irate. She needed to take a step back.
But it was you who showed him to me when all this started. A little younger, maybe. Rounder, chubbier cheeks. A baby face. But the eyes and nose are the same. It’s him, isn’t it? My good luck charm. Supposed to be part of my future, the family you said only I could save. So what’s he doing in a decades old picture from before we met?
“Mecca, we can’t keep going in circles like this.” Dr. Clarke watched Mecca lay her head on the cool surface of the table and almost wished she could do the same but there was no time for this gentle back and forth. If she couldn’t find a way to break the girl of this loop she was in, they’d be forced to increase her cog meds and she hated to do that so close to Mecca’s delivery date.
Then what you here for? Liar. Why won’t y’all go from me?
Well what do I know, I’m just the one punching the holes around here.
“Mecca, if I leave, what follows won’t be pleasant.” It appeared they were at a standoff. Gemia was almost ready to give up for the day and leave the girl to her own devices.
And I’m so sick of y’all punching holes in me like I’m not real. It hurts and I don’t want to hurt anymore.
“See, this is what frustrates me, Mecca. These moments when I can tell that you do know what’s happening to you. You understand what I’m saying so why won’t you work with me? Don’t you know girls like us don’t get so many second chances? Yours are about to run out.” But Mecca didn’t understand, nor could she see any of the things Dr. Clarke hoped would give her a sense of urgency.
If either of them could gaze for a moment through the other’s eyes, Mecca would have noticed the two medical technicians watching their tableau from behind the glass window and eagerly awaiting further instructions. Gemia would have noticed an unblinking little boy now standing next to the first invisible person Mecca had been gesturing towards at the front of the room. As things were, only one person could truly see all that was happening in the Our Lady of the Briar clinic dining hall.
I don’t think you seeing her.
My eyes work just fine. Why are you still here?
“I’m not concerned with your eyesight, Mecca.” Dr. Clarke scraped back her chair in frustration. “But that’s fine. I’ll leave you alone for now and maybe you’ll be in a better mood later.”
That’s not what I said. I mean really seeing her. You think you gon get a sister back or a daughter back or a sick infant back but you only gon get more trouble.
Go away, Auntie. For real this time. I won’t say it again.
Something snapped. Gemia was already beginning to walk away as Mecca uttered these last words and perhaps if it hadn’t been such a long week or if the girl hadn’t yet again called her ‘Auntie’- triggering all her vindictive spiteful paternalism - or any number of other impotent ifs, maybe she could explain exactly why she leaned back in close to Mecca’s left ear and hotly whispered what she did, “I see now why your mother took the other two away from you.”
Mecca blinked.
I told you to watch who you trusting in this place, little girl.
I told you to shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Dr. Clarke leapt back from the table as the girl began to slam her bare hands against the formica surface. “Okay, Mecca. Alright. I’m sorry for mentioning – I’m sorry for what I said. Just try to breathe, okay.”
Watch out. Another minute and she gon’ call him over here.
“You’ll hurt yourself if you keep banging like that, Mecca. I don’t want to see you hurt. I’ll be quiet now. I promise. But you need to breathe.” Gemia didn’t really think the heavily pregnant twenty-something would hurt her but she wasn’t going to take any chances either. She made a slight gesture toward the glass-enclosed tech station and the security cameras across the room.
Watch yourself. I see him just fine and he ain’t gon’ do shit.
The doctor started at Mecca’s words. The girl was still facing away from the security camera, gaze fixed on the personage of faux shrubbery in the opposite corner, but her words seemed to imply an awareness of the woman’s subtle call for backup.
You mean he ain’t gon do shit but what you keep begging for.
In the aftermath, it was hard to tell who moved first. The techs, Clozapine needles loaded, from inside their glass house. Or the boy from the picture, wide eyed and eager to please, with Mali walking slowly behind him. They all descended on the round corner table near the window, with Mecca repenting almost immediately. Frantically apologizing as if in prayer.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
In spite of her weak protestations, Mecca’s bruised hands were a blur of motion as the technicians tried to restrain her and she tried to fend them off. She successfully landed at least one punch before they managed to get the straps in place. She could see Mali’s lips part a tiny bit to allow the barest of whispers and she strained toward the sound. Prepared to receive manna for the first time in years. She’d been starved for it. Tears streamed down her face and cheeks.
Dr. Clarke knew this was the only choice but Gemia wished the girl would stop resisting. The hallucinated voice of Mecca’s aunt had gone silent finally, but with each hard grip from one of the technicians slamming her against the table or shoving a needle roughly into her arm there was a new voice now. A little boy’s voice.
Mwen apresye ou. Mwen apresye. Mwen apresye.
Mali’s mouth widened then, from whispered secret to gaping shout and further still to cavernous black hole suctioning the entire room toward her massive event horizon. Mecca willingly dove head first into her sister’s outer space. Recreating their own breached birth in reverse. Bracing herself for the string pluck earthquake of vocal chord vibrations, she plummeted onward ever faster and as she reached what should have been the pendulum shaped uvula of this magnificent place, there was the boy’s unblinking eyeball waiting to receive her. The blanket of Mali’s arms reached out to encircle her at the same moment her vision went dark.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
A blue-green and violet peacock feather floated back to her a brief, resigned, You welcome, baby.
Contributor Notes
Constance Collier-Mercado is an experimental writer, artist, and womanist culture worker committed to Black language and collective memory. Winner of the 2023 Toni Beauchamp Prize in Critical Art Writing and Finalist for the 2024 Inaugural Southern Prize in Literature, she has received Fellowships from South Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, MacDowell, The Stay at Nearview, Kimbilio, Jack Jones Literary Arts, and elsewhere.
Her writing has been published in Obsidian, A Gathering Together, Gulf Coast Journal, the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA) blog, Hennepin Review, Root Work Journal, The Believer, Kweli Journal, The Auburn Avenue, FIYAH Magazine, and via her substack, On Repetition and Revision. Constance lives and works in Southwest Atlanta where she is writing her first novel.
She is a Chicago-born, Bronx-raised granddaughter of Southern migrants from Mississippi and AfroCarolina. www.ConstanceSherese.com
