“Thanksgiving counts,” she added. “Whether people treat it that way or not.”
The music filled the apartment, warm and full, moving through speakers she had positioned at an angle she had measured more times than she would admit. The apartment wasn’t large, but the sound was, because she had made it that way. I grew up knowing that the size of what you felt in a space had less to do with the square footage and more to do with the care someone had taken with it.
She mouthed the words as Diana sang, her lips moving in time, the two of them sharing the space withoutcompeting. From the kitchen came the steady rhythm of Auntie Rhonda working, the oven door, the spoon against the bottom of a pot, the quiet authority of someone who didn’t need to be watched to know she was doing it right. My mother listened to all of it without looking like she was listening, like she was always taking in more than she let on.
“Come here,” she said, without looking back.
I got up, because when Celeste James told you to come here, you didn’t ask why. She took my hand and pulled me to standing, those two inches she had on me doing just enough to make her feel like she was still looking down when she needed to.
“Close your eyes.”
I did.
“Listen.”
“I am listening.”
“Not like that,” she said, giving my hand a small squeeze. “Listen with everything. Feel what the space is doing.”
So I stood there with my eyes closed and let it all come in. Diana Ross in the speakers, smooth and sure. Auntie Rhonda in the kitchen, building something that carried through the walls. The wind pressing lightly against the windows. The familiar scent of the apartment grounding me in a way that I never had words for but would have known anywhere. And underneath all of it, something else. Not a sound, exactly. A feeling. The way the space held us.
“The room,” I said quietly.
“The room,” she repeated, squeezing my hand. “That’s the work, baby. I don’t play music at people. I make spaces feel right.”
She said it the way she said most things about music, not as theory but as practice, the same way she did when she was behind the decks, headphones tipped to one ear, watching a floor until it gave her what she needed.
“The music is just how I get there.”
I didn’t know it then, but that was the first time she handed it to me plain.
“You have this,” she said, turning just enough to look at me. “You walk into a place and you know what it needs before anybody says a word. I watch you do it.”
I let out a small breath, eyes still closed. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
“You will,” she said, easy, like there was no question. “A space will be ready, and you’ll know.”
Back then, I thought she was talking about music. Now I know she was talking about everything that comes with it. What you build. Whom you build it with. Whom you leave space for without saying it out loud.
She lifted the needle and set it back at the beginning.
“Some things you don’t rush,” she said. “The turkey. The record. The thing you’re scared to step into.”
She looked at me over her shoulder with that look that meant she saw more than I had said.
“The thing you’re scared of most.”
I didn’t ask her what she meant. I already knew.
Auntie Rhonda came out of the kitchen wiping her hands, taking in the scene with the patience of someone who had accepted that this was just how things went.
“The turkey is done, Celeste.”
“Five more minutes.”
“It has been done for ten minutes while you’ve been back here restarting Diana Ross.”
“I was saying something to my daughter.”
