Sassafras, Cypress, & Indigo
by Ntozake Shange

When there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.

Indigo seldom spoke. There was a moon in her mouth. Holding a moon in her mouth kept her laughing. Whenever her mother tried to pull the moss off her head, or clip the roses round her thighs, Indigo was laughing. "Mama, if you pull 'em off, they'll just grow back. I've got earth blood, filled up with the Geechees long gone, and the sea."

Sitting among her dolls, Indigo looked mad. As a small child, she stuffed socks with red beans, raw rice, sawdust or palm leaves. Tied ribbons made necks, so they could have heads and torsos. Then eyes from carefully chosen buttons or threads, hair from yarns specially dyed by her sisters and her mama, dresses of the finest silk patches, linen shoes and cotton underskirts, satin mitts or gloves embroidered with the delight of a child's hand. These creatures were still her companions, keeping pace with her changes, her moods and dreams, as no one else could. Indigo heard them talking to her in her sleep. Sometimes when someone else was talking, Indigo excused herself—her dolls were calling for her. There was much to do. Black people needed so many things. That's why Indigo didn't tell her mama what all she discussed with her friends. It had nothing to do with Jesus. Nothing at all. Even her mama knew that, and she would shake her head the way folks do when they hear bad news, murmuring, "Something's got hold to my child, I swear. She's got too much South in her."

The South in her, the land and salt-winds, moved her through Charleston's streets as if she were a mobile sapling, with the gait of a well-loved colored woman whose lover was the horizon in any direction. Indigo imagined tough winding branches growing from her braids, deep green leaves rustling her ears, doves and macaws flirting above the nests they'd fashioned in the secret, protected niches way high up in her headdress. When she wore this Carolinian costume, she knew the cobblestone streets were really polished oyster shells, covered with pine needles and cotton flowers. She made herself, the world, from all that she came from. She looked around her at the wharf. If there was nobody there but white folks, she made them black folks. In the grocery, if the white folks were buying up all the fresh collards and okra, she made them disappear and put the produce on the vegetable wagons that went round to the Colored. There wasn't enough for Indigo in the world she'd been born to, so she made up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.

© 1982 Ntozake Shange, First Published by St. Martin's Press