Appalachian Review

bell was my friend for twelve years, and for the last nine of those we lived a few blocks from each other in Berea.

I keep thinking about the way bell made people belly-laugh. She wore a proud, mischievous smile after she had said something particularly something. She was incredibly blunt. But the longer I knew bell [End Page 34] the more I began to see it more as direct honesty and I respected that. Once she decided to have an impromptu dance party at her house—she loved dance parties—but when it reached a certain hour she shouted out, "Okay, party's over. Everybody leave!" In bell's way of thinking it was much kinder to let people know when she was tired than for her to sit there and be tired of them. Being around someone so incredibly honest sometimes requires a thick skin but I loved that I always knew where I stood with her.

bell loved dinner parties with people she liked. She always sat at the head of the table and told story after story. Through the course of the tales she often wept. I would guess that bell was moved to tears just about daily. The best people I know are this way. She felt everything very deeply. Anyone who has read her work is aware of this great empathy she carried to the point of it being painful to bear.

bell loved going to the movies and she particularly enjoyed the films of Pedro Almodóvar. When my husband and I saw Almodóvar's controversial film The Skin I Live In a few years ago with her, we went across the street to a restaurant where we drank wine and talked about it for three hours. To hear her talk about any movie was a lesson in how to observe, how to feel, how to experience a piece of art. She devoured art and her house was full of everyday kinds of art, framed photographs, towers of books, stacks of CDs. A bowl of oranges assembled beneath a painting of Frida Kahlo, a gathering of ceramic heads that she kept under the window in her living room to catch the morning light. She had chairs and tables painted in bright colors, especially red. She adored bright colors.

For awhile she and I attended the same church, where she listened intently to the sermon and always wanted the music to be more "lively". Sometimes after church we would [End Page 35] sit on my porch and analyze some of the scriptures or discuss Buddhism and Christianity. Or just gossip. I cherish those Sundays.

For a long stretch of the twelve years I knew bell, she wrote every day and perhaps even more monumentally, she read an entire book every day. She did not merely scan these books; she read them carefully. She took young writers and feminists and activists under her wing without much fanfare. She gave our work to others without telling us.

I'm focusing on all that was wonderful about bell here but she was also a human being. She was complicated and often contrary. Sometimes we disagreed about issues or people and even though I almost always deferred to her, I knew that bell would not respect me as her friend if I didn't let her know how I felt in these situations. Always she listened to me, she considered what I was saying, and she appreciated being challenged, even when it miffed her. I think nothing I know about her makes me respect her more than that.

When you went to bell's house sometimes you'd find a group of students there. She'd be leaned over on her couch because of the almost-constant pain she experienced for many years and they'd be sitting in the floor or a scattering of kitchen chairs. Other times you'd find people like Cornel West, Laverne Cox, Emma Watson, or Gloria Steinem drinking tea and discussing everything from fashion to Palestine to the latest Spike Lee film. She spoke to these celebrities the same way she spoke to the students, and to me, and everyone.

We often went out to eat together. Once we stopped at a little country cafe and she decided to go speak to every person seated there. She touched all of them—farmers and construction works and children—shaking their hands or patting their shoulders, and talked to them about her love of [End Page 36] cars or Goodwill shopping. When we sat down I laughed and said, "I swear, you must know everyone in this restaurant." She said she didn't know a single one of them. "But I wanted each one them to have to speak to a Black woman today."

She was so interesting and beautiful and magnificent. I loved the way bell used her hands. They floated before her sternly, elegantly, as she spoke in her steady, calm, yet forceful way. I think often of her hands in motion. I think of her voice, which was so soft for such a large presence. She often referred to herself as "a little country girl from the hills." She was proud of that, even though aspects of it held great pain. She was troubled by Kentucky but she also loved it fiercely. I think of that little girl often these days, about to burst with all of that intelligence and fierceness and bravery in the hills of Christian County, Kentucky.

The first time I met her she told me we were going to be friends, and we were. When I was with her, I always knew I was in the presence of a genius. I always felt loved when I was with her. And I loved her back. [End Page 37]