My Grandmother Called Me A Fool in Egypt

Beginning in the early 1980s, my parents began leading an annual two week study tour to KMT, the original name for Egypt.

My father was intentional about calling it a study tour, never a vacation. Inspired by his mentor, Dr. Ben Jochannan, he believed that the birthplace of civilization should be experienced through its primary sources, the temples, monuments, and artifacts themselves, not only through books.

My mother believed other people would want to make that journey with him. She found Henderson Tours in Atlanta and began working with its representative, Moses Hananiah, to make the tours possible.

My parents never wanted to make money from the trips. Other than the cost of their own travel and what was owed to the travel agency, they wanted the price kept as low as possible so that as many people as possible could go.

The days were filled with visits to historical sites. The evenings became classrooms where my father and others lectured about what we had seen. It was serious and demanding, but it became a pilgrimage that drew people from across the country and, eventually, members of our own family.

It was in that setting, with my grandmother Jess beside me, that one of my favorite family stories unfolded.

The summer of 1990 was supposed to be one long celebration.

I had graduated from Morehouse College in May. My sister Trish was getting married in a grand African themed wedding. I had learned during my graduation ceremony that I was the family member who would be joining my parents on their trip to Kemet. After that, I would be leaving for Washington, DC, to begin law school at Georgetown University.

Picture all that joy stacked up in a row.

A diploma.

A wedding.

A trip to Kemet.

Then law school in a whole new city.

Now picture a hand coming down and flattening the entire stack.

That hand was the death of my grandfather, my mother’s father, Elmer Dudley Morrison. He died of a heart attack just weeks after my college graduation.

This was not in any of our plans.

Certainly not mine.

Grandpa and I had a special relationship. He called often to talk to me about what was happening in my life. He had decided to miss my graduation from Morehouse so that he could come to Georgia for Trish’s wedding and then travel with me to Washington to help me move into my first apartment for law school.

He was especially excited about going to Washington as the grandfather of a grandson who was starting at Georgetown. Union Station was right down the street, and he had passed through that station many times when he worked as a chair car attendant on the railroad.

He was more excited than I was.

I could already picture him standing beside me in Washington, shoulders up, proud.

My grandmother had already come to Atlanta to help with the wedding preparations when Grandpa died unexpectedly. Suddenly, everyone was trying to rethink our plans, with all that new grief surrounding the joy we had been expecting.

We had learned from a neighbor that Grandpa had been taken to the hospital. Only Ma and I were home, so I began calling hospitals until I finally reached someone who knew what had happened.

“I’m calling about a family member named Elmer Morrison,” I said. “We’re in Georgia, and we were told he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Can you tell me if he is there?”

My mother stood a short distance behind me in the kitchen.

“What is your relationship to Mr. Morrison?” the woman asked.

“He is my grandfather,” I answered nervously.

“I’m sorry to inform you, but Mr. Elmer Morrison passed away today.”

I was in shock, but all I could think about was my mother standing behind me.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “We will be back in touch with you.”

When I turned around, my mother turned away from me and continued doing whatever she had been doing in the kitchen.

I walked downstairs to call my father in private. I begged him to come home quickly because I was too afraid to break the news to my mother.

When I think about that moment now, I remember knowing that my mother already knew what the woman at the hospital had told me, even though I had not said a word.

After Grandpa died, my parents decided that Nana should come with us to Kemet.

They did not want to leave her behind in Atlanta while we traveled. They did not know whether she would ever return to Denver, but at that moment, they wanted her close as she began the rest of her life without her husband.

I thought taking her with us was the perfect decision.

Still, I worried about her.

She was small and frail. Her health was a patchwork of old injuries and a pacemaker that had not worked properly in years. I had never seen her cry the way she cried after learning that Grandpa had died.

But my parents wanted her near, so I kept my concerns to myself and told myself everything would be fine.

Everything was fine until we reached John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and prepared to board our direct flight to Cairo.

Near our gate, our large group buzzed with anticipation. As travelers began arriving from across the country, my heart started beating faster.

You could feel it in the air. Everybody was a little too loud. Everybody was already halfway to Africa in their minds.

Moses, our Palestinian tour leader, was tall and booming, a drill sergeant with a heart. Over all the noise, he began announcing the room assignments for the trip.

Then he called our names.

“Jessica Morrison and Hakim Hilliard, you’ll be sharing a room.”

I froze.

I was twenty two years old, about to see Kemet for the first time and possibly meet my own Nubian wife, and now I would be sharing a room with my grandmother.

For two weeks.

Moses shrugged and pointed toward my mother as the person responsible for the room assignment.

Ma was doubled over with laughter.

Thanks, Ma.

Jess, tiny but completely unbothered, smiled and said, “Oh, goody! I just love my grandson!”

I thought about appealing to Pop for help, but the grin on his face told me that he had been in on the plan too.

Now, Jess was a contradiction in the best possible way.

She had a sharp tongue inside a small, wiry body. She was tough as nails but quick to laugh.

Her given name was Jessie, after her father, who went by Jess. Jess was also what my grandfather called her.

My siblings and I had always called her Nan or Nana, but on that trip I decided to begin calling her Jess, in honor of the relationship she had shared with Grandpa.

I thought she might enjoy continuing to hear the name he had called her.

By appearance, you might have thought she was the sweet and quiet grandmother type.

You would have been wrong.

She called me “fool” so often that I thought I might eventually have to remind myself not to introduce myself by that name.

There was no negotiating with Jess.

She was always right, and she always referred to “they,” or what “they” had said, to support her opinions.

“They said you shouldn’t be doing that,” she would say, rolling her eyes.

“Who is ‘they,’ Jess?” I would ask.

“Shut up and listen, fool!”

“They” were the imaginary experts Jess summoned whenever she needed to win an argument. They were her invisible council, always ready with a fact, a warning, or a conclusion that only she could access.

Had Jess been a lawyer presenting “they” as evidence in a courtroom, the judge would have thrown her off the case before the trial started.

But in Jess’s world, “they” were always right.

And so was she.

ALWAYS.

The thirteen hour flight to Cairo felt like a party. Students, teachers, artists, politicians, and families were all united by the thrill of returning to the source. People passed snacks, told stories, and laughed across the aisles.

When we landed, the heat hit like a wall.

I mean, it HIT you.

It was heavy, dry, and alive. It was the kind of heat that made you understand why everything had been built out of stone.

I stayed close to Jess and watched every step she took. I was determined to protect her the way Grandpa would have wanted.

At the Mena House Hotel, in the shadow of the Great Pyramid, Moses handed out room keys and shouted instructions.

The hotel felt like a palace. It had carved doors, marble floors, and pyramids rising outside the windows like another set of watchful elders.

You could pull back the curtain, and there they were.

Bigger than anything you had imagined.

Somehow closer than you expected.

Jess and I made our way to our room, her leaning on me while I carried her bags, her purse, my bags, and everything else.

Before we settled in, I begged her not to call me “boy,” “niggah,” or “fool” in front of the young women on the trip. I was already certain to lose some cool points once they learned that I was sharing a room with my grandmother.

All I kept saying to myself was:

I have TWO WEEKS here with her.

Two whole weeks.

On our first day in Kemet, I tried to use Jess as an excuse to avoid climbing through the narrow tunnel that led into the center of the Great Pyramid.

I do not do tight spaces.

I already knew I would not enjoy crawling through a tight space inside an ancient tomb.

So I played my best card.

“Jess, I’ll wait out here with you,” I said. “It’s hot. It’s crowded.”

Then I added, very matter of factly, “I’ll just stay outside and keep you company.”

She looked at me as though I were the most despicable child she had ever encountered, then marched directly toward the passageway.

“Am I going to have to deal with this the whole trip?” she shouted, loudly enough for half the group to hear. “You need to grow up, fool! These Africans won’t want to talk to you if you act like a regular niggah from back home!”

“JESS!” I yelled. “You CAN’T talk like that!”

The people on the tour were already laughing as this tiny old woman berated me in front of everyone.

She did not care about my nerves.

She did not care about my pride.

She called me out, and I had no choice but to follow her inside.

Into the dark.

Into the tight.

Jess’s orders.

But the craziness was just beginning.

After a full day of touring, Jess was exhausted. She decided to skip Pop’s lecture that evening, so I walked her across the hotel grounds to our room.

I made sure she was comfortable and did not need anything. Then, for the first time all day, I was free.

Before I left, I watched her shuffle directly into the bathroom.

When I returned a couple of hours later, that was when the comedy began.

From behind the bathroom door, just as I entered the room, she shouted:

“Why don’t you give me your panties so I can wash them while I’m in the shower?”

I blinked.

I looked at the door.

I looked at the ceiling.

Then I looked at the door again.

“Jess, I’m a man,” I said. “I have underwear, not panties. And I packed enough for the whole trip!”

She opened the bathroom door just far enough to glare at me with one eye.

“They say these people will take things out of your luggage. But go on and be a fool and see what happens.”

There they were again.

They.

Her invisible experts.

Always available.

Always backing her up.

I gave up.

There was no winning an argument with Jess, especially when “they” were involved.

I handed her a pair of my underwear.

What was I supposed to do, argue with a seventy something year old woman through a bathroom door in Cairo?

After she finished, I went into the bathroom to take my own shower.

That was when I saw it.

A black bra was hanging from the shower rod.

It was huge.

Unmistakable.

Taking up real estate like it paid for the room.

It was not my favorite sight, and I did not understand why she had left it in the shower when she knew I was going in there.

“Jess, did you mean to leave your bra in here?” I called.

“Niggah, don’t worry about my bra!” she shouted back. “Just wash your behind and leave your panties in there so I can wash them when you come out.”

“Jess! Please! Stop calling them panties!”

Fortunately, by the time I left the bathroom and reached my bed, Jess was already asleep.

The next evening, after my father’s lecture, everyone returned to their rooms for the night.

Jess and I walked back to ours, and I was looking forward to getting some sleep.

I collapsed facedown on the bed, exhausted from walking through the hot sun all day.

Jess walked past me and stepped onto the balcony.

Just as I began to doze off, she stormed back into the room and began frantically digging through her suitcase.

“Where is my damn bra?!”

I sat up.

“What?

What are you talking about?”

“My BRA! I can’t find my black bra. I left it right here!”

She pointed toward the top of her suitcase.

Then she began throwing everything out.

Clothes landed on the bed.

Clothes landed on the chair.

Clothes landed on me.

Every surface in that room got a shirt.

Then she grabbed the telephone and called the front desk, convinced that the housekeeper had stolen her bra.

She was frantic.

I begged her to calm down and stop speaking so loudly.

“You all came in here and took my bra!” she shouted into the telephone. “It’s a black bra, and it’s not here!”

Then she screamed, “Speak English! Don’t play with me if you want us to come back to this hotel again!”

Jess paced the room with her arms folded, muttering about how “they” had warned her that something like this would happen.

You could see the gears turning in her head.

This was personal now.

“I saw that lady looking at my clothes too long,” she said. “I knew I should’ve hidden that bra.”

“What lady?” I asked, knowing there WAS NO LADY she had seen looking at her clothes.

She was determined to get somebody fired.

When the front desk called back, she snapped, “You find out who took my bra! I want to speak to your manager.”

“Jess, do you really think somebody stole your bra?” I asked.

She glared at me.

“I told you what ‘they’ said. These people don’t play! That was probably all she could get her hands on before we came back.”

A few minutes later, someone knocked on our door.

Moses stood in the hallway looking tired. He had the expression of a man who had seen a lot in his life, but perhaps not this.

He pulled me into the hallway, out of Jess’s sight.

“Hakim, is your grandmother certain her bra was stolen?” he asked quietly. “This is a Muslim country. The housekeeper could lose her job, or worse. Please be certain before we accuse anyone.”

Once I understood how serious the consequences could be, I knew I had to calm Jess down.

I promised Moses that I would handle it.

I just had no idea how.

“Why don’t we get some rest tonight and look again tomorrow?” I told her. “If we can’t find the bra, I’ll go with you and file a formal complaint.”

She accepted the plan, but only grudgingly.

I was lying to her.

By then, I would have said almost anything to get her to go to sleep.

We had to be awake by six o’clock the next morning.

I prayed that she would forget the whole thing by morning.

But THAT prayer did not come true.

Jess did not forget anything.

She went to bed fuming, determined to solve the crime.

I stayed awake worrying about the consequences and imagining an international incident over a brassiere.

I looked underneath the beds.

I searched behind the furniture.

I walked into the hallway.

I peeked around the laundry area.

I even went outside near the pool and looked around for any sign of a black bra.

In desperation, I searched inside Jess’s purse.

I felt ridiculous.

I also felt guilty.

But I was desperate to prevent an innocent housekeeper from losing her job because of Jess and her invisible experts.

Nothing.

Not a strap.

Not a clasp.

Nothing.

The next morning, Jess was awake before me.

Still muttering.

Still on the case.

As she turned away from me to change her top, I saw it.

It was unmistakable.

THE BLACK BRA.

Right there on her chest.

On her body.

The entire time.

She had spent the whole night accusing someone of stealing a bra that she was wearing.

“Wait a minute,” I said, sitting up. “Jess, is that your black bra? The one you thought was stolen?”

She looked into the mirror.

She paused for a few seconds, almost as though she had just noticed it herself.

Then she shrugged and continued getting dressed as if nothing unusual had happened.

It was as if I had asked her about the weather.

“Jess, seriously,” I said. “Is that the bra you were looking for all night? You’ve been wearing it the whole time?”

She stared at her reflection, then turned toward me as calmly as she could.

“Listen, niggah,” she said. “You just put on some clean panties and get ready. Your grandfather and I had a way we arranged things when we traveled, and I’m not trying to be in here with you and your panties if you’re not going to wash them.”

She never admitted that she had been wrong.

Not for a second.

Not a flicker.

The bra had been on her body the entire time she accused the hotel staff of stealing it.

And somehow it was now MY fault because my panties were not clean.

During our two weeks in Egypt, Jess called me so many names that I nearly forgot my own.

Every night ended with a tongue lashing.

Every morning began with another battle over my “panties.”

If she saw me talking to any young women on the trip and I stepped away, I could hear her talking about me.

One evening, a young woman approached me during dinner.

“Your grandmother said the cutest thing to me,” she said.

I held my breath.

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘You need to get to know my grandson. He’s going places!’ Then she walked away.”

I found Jess shortly afterward, sitting beside my mother.

I needed proof.

“Jess, someone told me you gave me a compliment today. She said you told her I was going places. Did you really say that?”

Jess did not hesitate.

“I hope you brushed your teeth before you had that conversation, because your breath stinks!”

She never gave me a break.

That was the rhythm of the trip.

Lashing.

Panties.

Pyramids.

Lashing.

Panties.

Pyramids.

But in between all of that, we saw wonders.

We traveled along the Nile. We visited Nubian villages and stood before the Great Sphinx.

We attended a Nubian wedding beneath the stars.

Jess watched me swim in the Nile.

She laughed at my fear of camels.

She tried to talk to every bride we saw.

Whenever she spotted a bride, she lit up. She asked questions and offered advice that nobody had requested.

She had lost her own husband only thirty days earlier, yet there she was, coaching newlyweds through marriage using broken words and hand gestures across a courtyard.

Jess grew older, and I found myself growing much closer to her.

She never stopped being tough, but when I remember her now, what I remember most is how completely I was loved by her.

If you had asked me before that trip, I would have chosen any roommate other than Jess.

When I learned that we had been assigned to the same room, I dreaded the entire arrangement.

She was a fragile woman who had lost her husband unexpectedly only thirty days earlier.

Yet she carried herself as though she were the largest person in every room.

Her voice was larger than life.

Her will was larger than life.

Even her black bra was larger than life.

Looking back now, my fondest memories of that trip are not the pyramids or even the history lessons.

They are the nonsense with Jess.

Her stubbornness.

Her laughter.

Her insults.

Her invisible council of experts.

Her fierce love.

And that damn black bra.

It is strange how the things we once dreaded can become the stories we hold closest.

I feared that sharing a room with Jess would ruin my first journey to Egypt. Instead, those two weeks became one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

She had just lost the man who called her Jess. Perhaps, without fully understanding it at the time, I began using his name for her because some part of me knew that she needed to keep hearing it.

And now that she is gone, I need to keep saying it.

JESS.

I wish Asa could have known her.

Not simply through a photograph or a name on a family tree, but as I knew her.

Tiny and indestructible.

Suspicious of everybody.

Supported by the unquestionable authority of “they.”

Calling me a fool in one breath and telling a young woman that her grandson was going places in the next.

I wish Asa could hear that voice.

I wish she could watch Jess take over a room.

I wish she could feel the love that was hidden inside every insult, every warning, every tongue lashing, and every demand that I hand over my “panties.”

But perhaps this is one of the ways the people we love remain with us.

We remember them completely.

We do not clean them up or make them perfect simply because they are gone.

We remember their sharp tongues.

We remember their stubbornness.

We remember the ridiculous arguments, the embarrassing moments, and the laughter that caught us by surprise.

Then we tell their stories.

We tell them so carefully and with so much love that a child born years later can sit beside them in a hotel room in Cairo.

She can hear them shouting through the bathroom door.

She can follow them inside the Great Pyramid.

She can see that black bra hanging from the shower rod as clearly as we did.

That is what I can give Asa now.

Not merely the knowledge that she once had a great grandmother named Jessica Morrison,

but the chance to know JESS.

Panties.

Pyramids.

Black bras.

And all.

Because sometimes the people we miss most return to us through laughter.

And sometimes, when a story is told with enough love, a child can remember someone she never had the chance to meet