Excerpts:For Addie Mae Have you heard the one about
the shivering lives, the never to be borne daughters and sons --Lucille Clifton, “Alabama 9/15/63” I thought to name a daughter after you, to throw all tradition to the wind and pay tribute to what was lost: a white child with the name of a brown girl killed six years before I was born. A few letters strung together as a token gesture, to say: we are not all that way. I too was born in Alabama, but in 1969, and into a white, working-class family that still bought segregation, into tradition that spit at Malcolm, into a region that could not see King’s dream. Years have passed since you and three other little girls have been gone, and who remembers? I thought to name my daughter after you, to offer a name to the universe as a signal, as a way to remind us how far we might travel in only a few years. But, you see, I have no daughter and none on the way. There are too many bombs in churches, men dragging men behind trucks, obscenities carved into car hoods to bring a child here. I thought to name myself fearless. I thought to stand up shouting. I think of your sweet round face hidden under bricks and dust. There must be something that I can offer. There must be some way to mend. |
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Unloadfor Charles the dishwasher, and every plate is a metaphor: I remember which sink in which town gave me that chip or crack; the tiny glass cup from my great aunt given before she died when she was cleaning out her cabinets, a perfect size for dipping sauces; pasta bowls from your sister that are an eass shape for black beans with cheese; forks we stood in the aisles and compared with every other boxed set. We never use the silver from our wedding gifts. I admire the cups that have made all fourteen of our moves with us, the ones we used in college before we were too snooty for Tupperware and all things plastic, and I stack those right beside the new metal bottles that make us feel somehow earth-friendly. When I put away the cake pan, the one I found for your birthday cake, I place it more gently than needed for a metal frame. It has held, after all, the silly sugar metaphors of one person’s attempt to please another. |