Cocoon of Sound

THE FIRST MEMORY OF MY LIFE is suffused with Black art. I was young, three perhaps, and I was standing on a balcony in an airport, en route from California to visit family in Mississippi; an adult I was not familiar with was standing next to me, shepherding me to my flight. In some recollections, this figure is my aunt Butch, my father’s aunt. In others, it is a pale, faceless male flight steward, escorting me from one airplane to another. But the infallible puzzle piece of the memory is this: Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” sounding over the airport speakers, looping and smooth, his words flung into the air with a kind of joy that hooked me in the small bones of my chest and tugged. I was moved.