—Bessie Smith I had never qualified at a meeting. I had seen others do it—tried to hear them and not to hear them—but I was terrified to make that leap. Now Emmie thought I should make that leap. I hadn’t even been sober a month. I wasn’t qualified to qualify. Nonetheless, one day I went to a meeting in my little white church and the slated speaker did not appear. “Who needs to speak?” asked the secretary of the meeting. My hand went up as if without my conscious knowledge. “I do!” my sane mind blurted out. And before I knew it, I was sitting at the shaky trestle table before the whole group, spewing out my story to the smoky room. Can I even remember what I said? Qualifying at a meeting is like childbirth, like falling in love, like The Land of Fuck. It is hard to remember what you did there, said there, cried there. The words tumble out, burst between your lips—and somehow, without your knowing what transpired, your whole life is altered. “I was born in a trunk in a silversmith’s shop on Eighth Street,”
