“…or maybe I’m finally aware that my early years in Alabama are not — and never were — a liability”

Scott baker
Swann Covered Bridge, near Cleveland, Ala., was built in the 1930s

I remember the the wailing lights of sirens caressing the early morning stones of my Crown Heights apartment and the sobs of families losing loved ones muffed by orders to shelter in place. I remember the rides from Eastern Parkway to Atlantic Barclays Center to prep to-go butcher orders on an empty train car, or maybe there would be a nurse clutching her rosary with eyes glazed over with 5 hours of restless sleep after a 36 hour shift trying to save lives.

The pandemic changed us all. I missed home most of all. I missed Alabama, my woods, the red dirt roads, and the Conecuh sausage. My family’s always been a mess. There’s a reason why I did everything to be over 1500 miles away from therm. But, they were in Texas and my Grandparents, before they passed, lived in Alabama. My grandparent’s farm was the only place I felt safe. 

Southern identity, especially when you’re from a place like Alabama is a strange mix of of nostalgia and PTSD. You hear the cries of four little Black girls in their Sunday best burned to death in a Birmingham church. You look at the early morning fog caressing a lake over a rudely made bridge, the iron clay soil caressing the copper-colored flowing creek, smelling the wafting aroma of your just-too-bitter morning coffee. You think of your cousin who dropped dead from an embolism at her job as a TSA agent, just as she had passed the LSATs with ambitions of a law degree and a career with the State Department fighting to save women from domestic violence. You pet the head of a skittish lead nanny goat before the herd trots over budding red clover headed for somewhere in a 98º field for shade, water, and an afternoon snack of brambles and hay. 

Scott Bakers’ images present us with this sense, and for my country ass, making my best way amid the city’s various welfare systems; with a family that neither quite wants nor understands me but finds itself jealous of what I have achieved and frightened that I — the black sheep — might ever surpass them. I see these images, beginning with a covered bridge and at the end I’m comforted by the lilting play of light at the bottom at the image beckoning me onward towards the promise of better days. 

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