I have memorized.
I'll do this one.
This is a piece I wrote for my son Jordan, right?
I wrote it-- well, I wrote it to tell him some Halloween tales--
that kind of stuff--
about where I grew up.
A sort of incident that happened there.
The deity-- the Orisha Oya is the deity of the graveyard
and of the winds in the Yoruba religion of Ifa.
And she's a spooky woman.
And there's a lot of spooky women around.
Those of us who've grown up in the urban parts of America,
I don't know, you guys probably have this out here too.
You always got that one or two people
in the neighborhood who something's just not quite
right, you know what I mean?
And there's all these stories that you
don't want to mess with them because something's not
quite right.
This is a story based upon this woman and this is a true story
and she was not quite right.
It's called "Oya."
"Lightning web walking a graveyard.
Wind sepulcher where storms are born.
Cats around here say she one of the few folks left
in the hood who came up from the South.
Say she from Mississippi, or Georgia,
or something like that.
Say she used to be a preacher woman, a real fire
and brimstone bride of Jesus.
Say she had the touch.
They say one Sunday night at this
used to be church, she used to pastor at,
that she was doing some healing and rebuking of demons,
and that's when something got in her.
No, y'all ain't heard me.
Something got into her.
That's when her left eye went blood red
and she just walked right out the church.
Never came back.
Never spoke another word.
Just about everybody who remembers that day now is gone
and the few left won't even tell nobody her name.
It's like they all made some pact with each other
not to speak about her except to tell
the young bloods to stay as far away from her as possible.
When she come down the street mumbling to herself, pushing
that shopping cart with all them old bottles,
doll heads, and all them rats all up in it,
everybody just get out of her way.
Me, I get my black ass on the other side of the street.
They say if she even look at you with that blood eye of hers,
it means something coming for your ass
by the end of the week.
I mean, cats that ain't got no respect for their mamas
don't even look cross-eyed in her direction.
Laugh if you want to, but all I know is this,
there was this one thug cat T-Bone,
this brother from around the projects, right?
Tried to show his ass one day in front of his boys.
Said, he don't get no fuck by some old dry bitch
with no teeth, one eye, and a shopping cart full of everybody
shit.
Well, next day we saw this cripple rat
walking down the street toward the Jets, right?
So we followed it just to see where it was going,
because that's what kids do.
Man, you know that thing dragged itself all the way to T-Bone,
and his mama and them building.
Walked up seven flights of stairs
and died right in front of their crib.
Coincidence?
My ass.
For the next few days we saw T-Bone,
we told him Yo man, you need to go talk to that old lady
and apologize, man.
That rat was a bad sign that she had put something on you.
He just laughed and said, man, to hell with y'all.
Man, I don't believe in that old spook and demon shit.
Well, two days later T-Bone fell out the window
of his mom's apartment.
He was laying behind that building
in that vacant lot for five hours before Trey found him.
And when he found him his spine was broken-- was shattered.
His jaw was broken, and his bottom lip
looked like something had been nibbling at it.
Well, you'd have thought that brother would have died.
And I believe that if it had been an act of God
he would have, but nah.
Now, he cripple from the neck down.
Can't talk too good and going to be
that way the rest of his life.
Every now and then, you can see his mama
rolling him around in that old squeaky wheel chair.
Him looking like a cadaver on wheels, drooling on himself,
and mumbling something about graves and mercy."
[APPLAUSE]
You want to do another one?
I'll do another one.
Yeah, man.