Category Archives: Childhood

Etiquette at Nana’s House

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Childhood, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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for Blanche Rice

this is dedicated to all the Black women riding on buses
and subways back
and forth to the MainLine, Haddonfield, N.J., Cherry Hill…
This is for the Black Back-Ups…
This is for my mama and your mama…
And the colored girls say
Do dodo do do…
 Kate Ruskin, The Black-Backups

The bell gave a sharp buzz in the pantry when Nana pressed a button
under the dining room table. In response, Blanche would come out
of the kitchen. She entered the dining room, her lips pressed into a question
and returned to deliver entrees for answers. Surrounded by porcelain plates
and heavy silverware, she was always in her eyelet-trimmed apron and green
uniform which reminded me of spinach. Before dessert, I’d escape
the dining room, return to the kitchen to help her with the undressing of dinner.

Miz Sanny Jane (she always prefaced her remarks with a swipe at the wisps
of her black hair blanching at herorehead). Mercy, mercy she’d exclaim.
She could see me standing there, in a happy place, complaining. Miz Sanny Jane, ain’t you go no worries bigger than that to cry about, girl? I knew hers were long enough to reach the sky. I knew they couldn’t be put in my pocket.
At dinner I carried the silver pitcher into the dining room and tried
not to spill her out. When she went into the garden

to cut grandfather’s peonies, I’d run to take her hand, plead with her
to go down to the brook with me, but, Mercy, mercy, Child, ain’t got no time.
I wanted to know why we couldn’t invite her to our house for dinner.
So what’s wrong with Negroes? A pause, Blanche is not like the others,
she knows her place, Nana said.

On Sundays, with her dark hands floured to kneed the dough, she pressed down hard. She cracked the fine eggs just so and scrambled her obligations into small clumps. I took them for love. She was my sidewise grandmother. But where
does she go by bus? When does she go to church if she comes to us on Sundays? And who takes care of her children while she takes care of us?
Does she have a husband? And who tends her garden and scrubs her floor?

Nana never answered. These questions left without a sound, left with Blanche
on the bus.

Published in Over A Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

 

 

An Alter Built By Way of Reparation

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Childhood, Over a Threshold of Roots

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Come here, girl, please forgive me for disregarding
your belongings over all these years.
Let me try to make amends.

I offer first this Crayola crayon that took the earth and spun
it into all the colors my fingers now know.
At first, purple dogs, pink cows and flaming yellow horses,
but then the tulips turned red, the leaves light green, and Mrs. Snyder
took your pictures up to show the first graders.

I offer next a steel-tipped pen which you used to spear
shapes from a black inkwell and string them out,
first as waves of letters on the page,
and then dumped them into a sea of words.

Here is your two-wheeler (with kick stand
and wicker basket) which allowed you to circle away,
peddle on past Carteret Street, beyond instructions to go
no further. More importantly, I offer you

this short wood stick to stir up deadly potions,
and, as a magic wand, full of electricity,
to command storms, conduct lightening and orchestrate
thunder.  Oh, Manager of the Wind, I remember you.

I offer you this dollhouse, the white colonial
one with the opening and closing green shutters,
and Beloved Belinda, your Aunt Jemima doll, who sang
gospel songs with you late on Sunday nights when you listened
to the forbidden Harlem radio stations. You were a benevolent
and unbiased mother.  You may be embarrassed,

but I’ve resurrected these chocolate cigarettes
with the realistic red tips and the doctor’s kit, (stethoscope,
bandages and all). Sucking on the cigarettes, I remember you as sooo
sophisticated, and you took the license (you will remember)
to explore the openings of friends and pets.

Nearby, I place the flexible flyer, the one
with the red metal steering bars.  I see you flying
down the hills when you did not know
what was being carried off.

You, Penny and Anne all thought you were fair
Norwegian children like those you read
about in Heroes Aplenty who carried on their sleds
their country’s gold out of Nazi reach.

Finally, I offer this snow shovel, a replica of Dad’s.
After snow fell for days, you shoveled
ground clouds into mounds,
formed them into igloo rooms.

Sitting inside snow kept you warm
a long time, if not forever.

Published in ReImagining, Edited by Nancy
J. Berneking, Issue 13, Novemer 1997, Minneapolis,
MN

Dear Barbara

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Childhood, Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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In memory of Barbara Jones, 1937-1943

On the sidewalks of Carteret Street we gathered chestnuts, broke
open their shells, cradled the shiny, firm nuts
in our T-shirts. Tomorrow we’d thread needles, carefully
work their points through outer skins,
through soft creamy pulp we couldn’t see,
pushing needles out the other side, stringing
each nut together. Chestnut by chestnut
our necklaces would form.

The news came the next evening, strung out
on the phone, first to my mother and then to me.
Barbara has died of an appendicitis.
I screamed so loud mother finally slapped me.

Mother and I waited at the door after ringing the bell.
She had no cause to tell me to be quiet now.
I stood silently at the edge of your satin-sinewy casket
shell.  In your first communion dress, Barbara,
you were so beautiful, but very still.

No trace of the fiery night you’d spent roasting
of burst appendix.  Your black hair shone—
someone must have washed it and brushed
a touch of pink on your china-white skin.
Your black eyelashes on your cheeks reminded me
of our dolls when we tipped them back to sleep.
Your smile like theirs now, too.

Remember how we used to take lit candles, drip
hot wax over our hands to make fine, thin gloves?
Your hand, so white,
is that what someone did to make them
like that now? They held
our rose bouquet ticketed for the earth.
The tag read;   Good-bye from Penny, Sandy, Anne.

Today I thought I’d write to tell you, my mother died,
and packing up in her attic I found the loose chestnuts,
dull brown, no longer shiny, yet firm in my hand.
My sons might have found a use for them,
if they’d been unearthed when they were young.  I’m not sure
I’ve ever told you about my sons.… have I, Barbara?

Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series

Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens Always Come to Some Bad End

13 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in Childhood, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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– one of my mother’s frequent admonitions

If whistling girls might escape aprons
like my mother wore
and large breasts like Jane Russell’s,
I thought I might practice more.
And Eva Braun hadn’t whistled enough
was my sneaking suspicion, dying
in that bunker with the evil one.

When I whistled, I pursed my lips
and tried to blow
air out so hard
that they never looked as soft
as the overblown ones
of Rita Hayworth.

I whistled and whistled. Summers
I slipped into jeans,
went bare-chested,
rode horses on Uncle Hap’s farm
where the sweet smell of hay,
like the horses themselves,
rushed out when the latch was lifted
and the barn door swung wide.
I galloped into a blaze
of restless dandelions.

When I noticed swelling
behind my nipples,
I upped the volume of my whistling,
but Mother told me, finally,
I had to wear a shirt.
I still held out a stubborn hope
that when I grew up I’d be free
to ride the mountain trails
where water rushed and changed, but
like me, kept its own sounds,
its own shape.

Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, by Sandra Sidman Larson, Pudding House Publications, Columbus, Ohio, 2003