Friends in a Harlem Bar

Dear Diary:

We perch on barstools. A young man in a baseball cap approaches.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Pearl,” my friend purrs in her Southern drawl.

The man glances at her neck. “How come you’re not wearin’ one, then?”

She flutters a hand to her chest and leans in. “Honey, I don’t need no pearl. I am the Pearl.”

He walks away and I smile. My friend is a Texas transplant who survived the segregated South of the 1950s. She’s lived in West Harlem for more years than I’ve been alive and, boy, has she seen changes. I’m certain the sass she packs has remained a constant and it’s what moved me to call her my “Harlem Mama” in the Christmas card I sent.

The clock strikes 2 a.m. My roommate and I each grab an arm of our Southern belle and escort her out of the bar. It’s begun to rain and we huddle close together. We slosh down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, two white girls sandwiching a former Black Panther.

“Girls,” she says, “I’m going to tell you what my mama never told me. You are sitting on a gold mine and you don’t let anyone take that away from you.”

She knows her value and wants us to recognize ours. Black gold or white, it shimmers the same on foggy city streets.

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