Dear Girl
A letter to the body that gives and is never expected to take
A Guyanese family begins and ends with a mother. Tenement yard mother. Coolie mother. Negro mother. Mother who cooks. Mother who cleans. Mother who bathes her brown little children. She lathers their hair with a cake of Blue Soap, fingernails digging into scalps, scrubbing away days of lice, sun, and dirt. Mother never recoils. Her children can never be so dirty in her eyes. Mother empties the poseys of worms that pass through their infected bodies. She says, bend yahself as she cleans them, so that their hands never touch their body’s own waste. Under the wire lines — with sweat trailing down temples, teeth biting down on plastic clothes-clips, and bleach wrinkling her fingertips — Mother bows and stands against the land, hanging clothes day after day. Her voice is sugah-sweet on quiet days. Mother sings — Hear Auntie Bess, Market Women, Shetira, and Janey Girl. But when you are far, her voice cracks the shells of the tamarinds hanging on the tree. Mother becomes violent. You cry from the sting of her hands until you sleep a sound, dreamless sleep. Is fuh you own good, she says. Everything a mother does is for her children’s own good. You’ve seen a mother slap her children. You’ve seen a mother burn their skin. She says they never learn. Why don’t they learn? Stop crying, running, and calling after her, tenement mothers…
