I'm just gonna sift through these here pictures a bit longer to see if anything
jumps out at me. Jesus knows my body's a vehicle for the Holy Ghost or
any other kind of somethin' we cain't actually see but can get right up on ya
and change your whole life. I never know what or when some creature from
the other side gonna need me to get somewhere or tell somebody somethin'.
That's why I keep those bottles hangin' round my porch, sometimes I want
just a little warnin' if a body fr om the other side or a African borned soul needs to speak through me. Hard on a body to be in this world and the next world, goin' back n for that a stone's throw, like I ain't got enough to do. Oh, I found me somethin' to be right proud of. Wish time didn't make sucha brittleness in my bones and these here pictures. Life ain't like that, not really. Well, got fits and starts, but memories don't break off at the edges, crack up the middle leavin' scars where they weren't none. Pictures sure nough do damage to a body's recollections, even though I could see how sometimes they
help me go back quicker to what's no more, yet close as breath. So, I guess I'ma do my best to handle em more gentle. Cause this one right here got a big markin' comin down Blanche's face, like a knife been took to her. My
chirren may have lived some full and dangerous lives, but that you cain't tell
by lookin'. Real seein' is a art, but like everythin' else you got to have a gift .
This is Blanche with her beloved Roswell Sr. A woman dressed in lace that
fine and coiffed just like somethin' from a New Orleans magazine don't have
no knife scar down her face. Look at my Blanche! Did so well for herself!
Though Roswell was a mite older than what I woulda picked, they's benefits
to taking up with a man what's settled. Got everybody in Charleston respectin'
the ground he walks on. There is somethin' could be said for that.
Oh my, cain't hide fr om the gaze of a sorrow-filled child. It shouldn't be
but it is, my sweet Juliet with that Willie, Willie Chisolm to be exact. He
didn't mean her no harm in the beginning, but the Lord's got a way of undoin'
deceit. I tried to tell my chile that, but she trusted in guile, not the
truth. I know I couldn'ta laid up next to a man so all the time angry with
me, hurt and wild with suspicions, while my lil one, Eudora, was there in
the next room, never imagining her presence was like a venom nobody took
the time to stop fr om poisoning... Oh, Juliet, however could you believe
gainst the truth so much, or want the lie to be the truth so much, you'd write
"Eudora is Happiness" neath that child's face. A Ma can set her eyes on only
so much pain in her chirren, then comes time to do somethin' else. Leave em
in the Lord's hands. Ask the ancestors for guidance. Tend to what I got
cookin' in the kitchen. That works most of the time for me. Fussin' with my
pots, turnin' down the fires.
Betty cupped her hand and swept a fistful of soil from Julius's grave
into her purple satin pouch, tied it closed, and tucked it into her bosom.
Then she slowly gathered up the pictures, inspecting them carefully to
make sure nothing that didn't belong in there was there and wrapping
the album back up in the cloth. With head held high she gazed at the
headstone of Julius Mayfield, for whom she still held both an indignant
passion and mightily felt connection. Then off she sauntered toward the
shouts of her granddaughter, whom she had left shouting in the first
place. Betty shook her head, chuckling about how a body could shout
about the same thing with the same words for so long when it didn't
bring an answer. Finally, Betty yelled back, "Heah I'ma comin'. Put your
bonnet on. I'ma comin' to ya now."
* * *
"Good Gracious, Nana! Where on the earth have you been? Don't
you know we've got to get a move on or the ferry'll go right on without
us? All this packing I've done, all this planning up to this very minute,
and off you go without so much as a how-de-do." Eudora was vexed.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
Full Story
