A few weeks back I walked into the Chinese store.

In there were people I could connect with. They came from church and were hungry. I too had come from church and was hungry.

In there was a feisty and older southern black lady who when she ordered knew she didn’t want chicken. I had chicken all week she kept saying, I want something different. Silently I agreed with her, I too had eaten chicken most of that week.

From her declaring what she ate the entire week, I felt a deeper connection. Eating chicken all week can mean many things but  among them it probably would mean you are from a poor black background where chicken was on the menu constantly, so much so that as you go older you ordered chicken unconsciously.

When she sat across from me, she started to talk to me as if we knew one another already. While she spoke, I realized that she was like my pastor, Bishop Green, in many ways.

She grew up in segregated Georgia on a farm picking beans, watermelon, cotton and other foods with her family on a farm that they did not own and eventually moved to the north for a better life.

I usually would see Sister Felton in my neighborhood and wish her a good day. Now, because of the Chinese store, we are acquainted with each other.