From Sorrow Songs.

From Sorrow Songs

   I. Portrait in Baptist Pose

      "I told Jesus it would be alright
      if He changed my name ...

      "and He told me that I would go hungry
      if He changed my name."

   Jolly, Charlie Beard, church deacon, Mason,
   fastidious in British plumes and sword,
   gracefully paraded Atlanta Sundays
   on the soles of his small dark feet,
   shiny leather high tops buckled and laced.
   Loved toffee, butterscotch and creme,
   married a sweet chiffon confection,
   peachy young daughter of Georgia teachers,
   for her charm, grace and affection;
   she liked to sit the porch and read
   Romance books & church mags ev'ry week.
   Charlie schooled to 4th grade, she commenced
   8th, both born in the good-bad times
   after the State of Georgia Reconstruction,
   him in 1886, her in 1891.

   How she ironed his shirt defines love.
   Sunny Sadie Mae sewed and cooked, ribboned
   hats to fancy, kept the house spit-polish clean,
   stretched window curtains, 35 cents each,
   good pocket money in a week
   to count dollar coins to seventeen
   for laundry work and such.
   All day wash, all day iron,
   wash day Monday, Tuesday iron.
   So proud was she of her name, home, man,
   she wanted to do more and said,
   "I don't have enough hands."

   Charlie adored but left his mama,
   a half-Negro gemstone Georgia Cherokee
   full-blooded bodied woman, whose
   given name was love. Harriet Love Beard.
   Charlie's anthracite father, a merchant
   who carted coal and wood by mule,
   wakened Charlie many a child night
   to sit by him in patched pants on the seat,
   haul and hawk tired bags and corded bundles.
   Charlie Beard eyed the sky each dawn
   and with sure hand scissored the cotton clouds,
   a fine white-coated barber he'd become,
   clientele elite, the bone-white china men in town.

   Sadie at sixteen could fish a good catch,
   figured her dreams in the wish book
   could come true; wanted to marry
   so she could have a right nice family,
   bore six of her own, two lived, one boy--
   daughter graduated college, son high school.
   "Ask anyone about their stock:
   two shelves of canned goods over the sink,
   one back behind the stove,
   butter beans and string, ham and hominy,
   potato pie too rich, too sweet to eat,"
   no mention of Depression.
   I know this to be true.
   Sadie's last child, James, my father,
   told my daughter Abby so.

   Fish sold by pound, weighed by word,
   and good's not always pretty.

   II. Sister
      "Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile ..."

   Mamie Lee could sit on her hair,
   wore frilly frocks with flounces and pelisses,
   pinafores, a size 3 1/2 shoe,
   slept in a truckle bed.
   Of an evening in dead time,
   tree swing or porch glider
   to sip the evening's cool,
   a breathless need for air.
   High strung, high yellow,
   wouldn't eat no black folks' food.

   Skin flushed, so sticky hot that night,
   she dabbed and lightly fanned
   a scented hankie, sky so clear
   the cloudless stars seemed cold.
   White suit slow-strolled the porch front by,
   turned again and spoke.
   "Evenin' back atcha," lowering her eyes.
   She didn't mean to flirt
   but, so young, giggled, tickled.
   Rode shoe-fly from Savannah to Augusta,
   ground divided not the sky,
   boarded house on tenant ground.
   Baby's uncle raised her.

   Women of the church, they called Sister,
   Sister Reed Sis Jones Sister O'Dell
   Sadie Mae called Mamie Lee, Sister.
   Say Mamie Lee insisted
   Sadie Mae call her Sister.
   Sister be too young be called MamaMotherMom.
   Never cradled or cuddled, nudged or tucked,
   never blew smoke in, to soothe her baby's ear,
   furrowed fields turned to barley and wheat.

   Bessie say she stayed with Sadie some
   In Atlanta 'til '31--Bessie Swans,
   Sadie Mae's first cousin.
   Say, "Sadie had to walk far so far see Sister
   'for she died in the crazy house in Augusta."
   She say, "Mamie Lee had Jim Crowed on the Atchison
   up on to Chicago, and she and Marie Barnes
   owned Club de Lisa there but Marie
   Barnes stole her house and prop'ty
   takin' care of Mamie's business."
   She'd penny paid her $800 life insurance
   policy but debts all that was left in the estate.
   Mamie's second husband, Rev'ren Davis,
   molasses dark and sweet,
   but she cottoned to high yellow,
   upped and married Mr. Murray,
   a Indian farmer what had billy goats,
   cows and clabber, plums and peaches.
   Some time back Mamie finished college,
   Paine, in Augusta, taught there too.
   And the Douglas Restaurant sat down
   the street from Mamie's House of Beauty
   what had plenty bidness, don'cha know.

   Cousin Bessie say, "Bessie (Smith)
   sho' could tear a tune to tatters." She hum herself
   a little 'n sang a bit'a 'Young Woman's Blues'--
   "'I'm a good woman, I can get plenty mens ...'"
   Then say, "Sadie wadn't much on church
   but didn't allow no devil in,
   called the stream ran by her house baptismal.
   Her neighbors names?--now let me see,
   Oh yeah, Miz Taylor and Miz Moon.
   Yeah, Mamie Lee was downright pretty--
   died Mamie Lee Fields Swans Davis Murray."

   Mamie Lee, she born a Fields.
   Family had prop'ty in Millen and Macon
   and a piano in the parlor. Mamie Lee
   claimed her people was always free,
   they kin never worked no fields.
   Now, that might could be a story but

   Fields folks colorstruck for sure,
   them Fields married dicty, Swans 'n 'em and such.
   Mamie Fields' first husband tall
   straight hair good looking
   light-skinned teacher man wore a tie.
   Swan flew by name of John.
   Never, not known ever to had less than
   500 worth of dollars in his pocket,
   found roadside in a ditch, stone dead.
   Some say John Swans' Sadie's daddy,
   others say they know better.
   John Swans plucked bass guitar pizzicato,
   his muscles strenuous sinews of sound.

   III. What Nobody Else Don't Want Somebody Else Does

   John Swans brother had a name'a Fair.
   Fair Swans' father first name Man.

   Man Swans had a son name John.
   Man Swans other son he name Man.

   Man Swans might could had a son name Cut.
   Fair Swans taught at Morris Brown.

   Fair Swans' daughter go by name of Bessie,
   (called Cousin Bessie by Mamie Lee).

   John Swans might'a had a outside child
   But Sadie Mae Fields called John Swans "Daddy."

   When John Swans died her uncle, Fair,
   Raised poor little Sadie Mae up after.

   Mamie Lee never had a son.
   Sister never did call her daughter, "Daughter."

Carolyn Beard Whitlow's poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Callaloo, among other journals. She is a professor of English at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.