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Prue / Mammie Doll 148

Ida was a part of this psycho-babble clique. But she
wasn’t into drinking coffee — more into the Chamomile tea set,
worried about good health. Into keep her skin fresh. Cinnamon-
red. She wasn’t into the makeup wars, a no-frills sister, all
natural on an October 1988 morning. She didn’t want to talk
about Faulkner, Malcolm, Picasso, or the Holocaust. She wasn’t
ready yet, just wanted to talk about people she knew. Everyday
war crimes. Her frizzy brown, black hair long, wild, wonderful,
soft, pulled back with a rubber band. Lee jeans older than her,
thigh-high moccasin boots. Covered up in a hand-made pink knit
V- neck sweater. Over the top, a short sleeve made-in-Indonesia
blue blouse. Small 14K gold earrings. Navy blue pea coat
hooked down with a large shoulder cowhide purse. If you
emptied it out, you would find her world of red-cinnamon lip
gloss, nail file, pocket calculator, Maxi-thin shields, Visa tapped-
out credit card, five bucks for some gas for her Volkswagen
Sirocco, 1985, New York Times style section, phone book, wallet,
family pictures, Tic-Tacs breath mints all covered by an Essence
magazine.

College ghosts all around. Split your throat over mid-term
grades on top of the roof of the Watkins Science Building.
Everyday war crimes. Eyewitness News from a lesbian
professor’s lips. They were all slaves marching to a tower bell,
for an eight-thirty class. French-Lick, watched Larry Bird play
God on the basketball court. Him Tarzan. She damn sure wasn’t
Jane. Some books wrapped in her arms, History of the Civil War,
1812 War, Africa Slave Trade. Come get your nigger. France on
Five Dollars a Day. Bullshit . French Men and the Wild Things
They Do, by Justin Watts. Damn. Was it going to snow again?

Over her head the frozen moon was still out.
She watched it while her friends spoke in eastern,
southern dialects on the art of kicking boyfriends in the ass,
grades, hot and cold professors taking peeks up their skirts,
movies they saw on cable that stunk, like The Last Picture Show.
The ongoing saga of Michael Jackson’s face lifts, Bill Crosby’s
phony family show, dresses bought, borrowed, stolen from sisters
and mothers. Ancient dreams of summer. Laughing, drinking
your time away while reading Cher’s voodoo secrets of staying
young in the sun. More collagen anyone?
Vicki Carew asked, “Did you get some last night, Ida?”
Ida was going to tell her to jump in the Mileston Lake, but
gave her a break. “Still a virgin and counting.”
Molly Toye got frisky. “Ida, if Ham get too hot for you . .
. you just send him over to my dorm.” She winked. “Room
three.”

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Josie Whitfield slapped her five. “I tell you, girllll. Ida,
how long you going to keep him hangin?”

Ida was in no rush. “If he wants yaw, he can have yaw.
But he ain’t getting this easy. Huh.” She rolled her eyes from
them and wrapped her scarf around her face.

Rosemary Buttons got in their shit. “Ya leave Ida alone.”
She stuck a finger in their faces. “Horny bitches. Betta get
something on yaw mind, like those midterms.” She turned back,
kept stepping along beside Ida up the sloping hill.

Ida didn’t care about them laughing. She was there to get
an education, not a fucking. She looked back up at the moon,
thought of reading Hemingway and making love to her man.

J’ai lu Hemingway hier soir
Je veux couché avec Hamilton Bishop
She planted the seeds of lust away. “Watch this,
Rosemary.” She threw her books down, gathered snow into a
ball. She started throwing them at Vicki, Molly and Josie.
Snowballs came back, hitting her in the chest and back.
“Ahhhh!”
She picked up her books, running away from the
onslaught. She ran up the stairs, through the doors into a low
lighted hall, into students of book praying silence.
Faces never met in Lloyd Coward Hall, never smiled,
touched, cared. No one in your path. Silent storms. Intellectual
lights of ancient, hidden myths passed down from student to
student.
She unbuttoned her coat.
Just hang in Ida. Don’t let go of your strength, that sense
of humor you got from your grandmother. Focus, never look at
anyone in the eyes when you pass. Become robotic, unfeeling —
Droid. rules one and two. Never speak, never say good morning.
Under their breaths you know what they say. Some smile back,
but you know what they say. Paranoid, sweet silence. She was
special. She was black under the silence in Lloyd Coward Hall.
Old men hung on walls, not staring at anyone, hands in place to
keep their world special. Untouched by black hands. Dead
chiefs trembled from the New York Ojibwa tribe in these halls,
their names never spoken, their land stolen, people frozen. Souls
drifting over campus lands. She kept walking past others and
went upstairs in silence.
She remembered, as a little girl, coming home crying.
Her mother told her, “Don’t come in here crying. . . . Get back
out of there and fight.” She picked her chin up. “Hold your head
high in silence and fight them back. Fight them back.”
She got to the floor and opened the door to room 305.
French lesson hangover.

Prue / Mammie Doll 150

Professor Rainpel, a hairless ape man, pointed his dagger-
like finger to students. His stomach hung past his life, and he had
mutton-chop whiskers. He rolled his ‘R’s from valentine lips.

A class of fifty to sixty.
Just two blacks — she and a dude from Pakistan, but you
couldn’t count him, you understand. Continued lost silences.
White bread, Wonder Bread. Geeked up on microwaves. Born
from the bowels of junk food, junk art, junk clothes, baggy look.
Junk TV Brady Bunch kids, nothing but Dead Heads. TV black
people getting locked up.
Garbage zone.
French literature for the ages: Moliere, Voltaire, Dear,
Dear Victor. Ugly cushioned men in white powdered wigs.
Handmade bottles of crap. So far around the world. Ida joined
up with the sophisticated ladies: Lena, Billie, Carmen, Ella,
Diana, Sade on a good day.
She twisted nervously in her seat.
Blonde-haired girls in front of her giggled at the world.
Ida pretended not to see the fallout. She jotted down some notes,
displayed inches of the world, peeled away the skin from her arm.
She observed the teeth marks and hickey marks of man, killing
babies for culture.
She watched Mr. Rainpel sneeze. He wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand, made a joke about eating dog food.
She thought it was the truth. Intellectual asshole. Come and
gone. Replaced by another intellectual asshole. His zipper
undone for the girls on the second row. Fart from his cracked
lips. He paraded to say, “Molier died on stage.” With his zipper
undone?
Misanthropic, irreverent man.
His throat should have been cut open as he passed around
the tests. Tie undone, sweat slid from his neck.
She wrote down her answers.
French theater, alive, dead in our society. Religious hypo-
crisy . . . check under Dr. Billy Graham’s skirt. God in everyday
affairs. Rob the poor, keep feeding the rich. Starve babies from
high moral grounds. Henry XIV furniture, check out the
Chippendale dancers next week at the Jungle Bar and Grille,
don’t miss Chaplin at the Bijou Thursday night. She didn’t want
to go back to the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth century. Not
with the intellectual assholes. She just wanted a good grade.
God was in her consomé. Took a bite of chocolate
souffle. She studied the blackboard, prayed over jumbled pieces
of questions. Shit like Revolution, Evolution, Napoleonic Wars,
Style, Roman Catholicism. Dictate, punctuate — all to build you

Prue / Mammie Doll 151
up for the guillotine.

Prue / Mammie Doll 152

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

6:40 a.m. Saturday morning.

The driver for the Sugar Bay Bus Lines sped off from the

church parking lot carrying away a cadre of women for a buying,

eating, gambling binge straight to Atlantic City. Alma had a seat

in the middle on the right hand side. She unwrapped her scarf

from her wool coat and set down her red and blue knit shopping

bag right by her snow covered galoshes. The bag was full of

chicken, potato salad, evening gowns, leather pumps and soft

sneakers to walk around the casinos in, a bottle of J and B scotch,

some liniment for old stiff hands, if they thought about acting up

on her again. She peeked in the bag, making sure she hadn’t

forgotten the bingo chips.

Faces of the ages, crooked bodies with not much steam

left. Decades long past. New hip replacements rode with the

bumps. Pacemakers tick-ticked. Vicks salve in the air, with

some heavy duty hairdos going around. Wigs and toad stool tops.

Thick colorful sweaters, wool blend, kept the chills out of those

bones. “Hey, driver keep the heat up.”

Raisin bran faces, smooth-wrinkled rivers, turned off

their worries regarding grandchildren, sons and daughters. Just

followed the white, broken stripe to the blackjack tables. Some

took a little snort for that arthritis. Ain’t got time for dead

husbands now. Gots ta’ check out a stage show. Elvis

impersonators. Lionel Hampton might show up? Might see

another dried up fart of a man. Lord knows, you had your feel of

them.

THE MOST WANTED GRANDMOTHERS IN THE

WORLD:

Hattie James Ruth Davis Vera Johnson

Katie Clay Pearl Jackson Faye Lee

Elvira Gershwin Opal Johnson Zoe Holmes

Lulu Jenkins Sara Lincoln Beatrice Potts

Lily Ball Earlene Max Barbara Davis

Eartha Burton Mary Shackelford Tessie Coles

Hunched, caned, and cute. Creaking bodies had time for

some poker in the back. Some stared out windows for a little

breathing room. Some went to have a smoke in the bathroom.

The ride gave them some emerald-branch views of family farms

and moo cows. The bus honked, slowed down around, passed

trucks, hamburger stops. Under soft tissue cold skies. Jerked,

Prue / Mammie Doll 153

exhaust puffs kept moving steadily down I-91 past some Civil
War graves. Hells Angel bikers waved knives at them. Hills
moved along, moved along the ride. All of them were glad to get
out from Saturday morning duty of ironing, reading, church
meetings, watching their grandkids, seeing the doctor for a shot
of swine flu, counting their Social Security checks for next
month. How were they going to spend it?

They filled up on hot chocolate, shop talk about gardens,
preachers sleeping with young girls in the congregation, money
off the top of the bingo game. Who was going to take care of the
Sunday Christmas dinners, funerals, weddings, babies crying,
always crying for their grandmothers? The daughters couldn’t
handle their own kids. Passed some decaf around, some instant
bowl of oatmeal. New glasses for that glaucoma, fading eyes of a
generation. Aloof, satisfied with it, just nothing to worry about
much anymore.

Alma sat by false teeth, Elvira Gershwin, a friend of
almost twenty years. You could tell she was on the bus, because
whenever she ate her dentures would sound like a hundred people
clapping. She had the window seat.

Alma ate and talked to her, looking over the top of her
pearl-framed glasses she had since ’55. She refused to get the
frames changed to something more up-to-date. “Um um. I can
still make up a batch of potato salad.” She chewed down her last
fork full.

“Have some more. . . . We got about three hours before
we get to them slot machines,” Elvira said.

“No. No, dis here’s enough for me right now. . . .” She
folded up the paper plate and shoved it down in a grocery bag
used for trash. She cleaned off her plastic fork with a napkin and
slapped it across her lips. “Ohhhhh, I’m getting sleepy.” She
picked up her can of orange soda to wash down the salad in her
mouth.

Elvira snacked on a Ritz cracker. “You didn’t get your
rest last night?” She took a bite. “You knew we were leaving
early.”

“Just couldn’t sleep. . . . Too much on my mind, I guess. .
. .”

Elvira balled her napkin up. “Ahhhh, must be this trip.”
She slapped crumbs off her lap. “Gambling can do that . . . get
you all excited, thinking you going to win lots of money.”

Alma fluffed up her seat pillow. “Hell, life’s a gamble if I
wake up every morning.”

Elvira poked a finger at the window. “I see they doing
some construction on the highway.”

Prue / Mammie Doll 154

Alma pushed her seat back. “They always digging up
some hole . . . then the next thing you know, they filling it back
up.”

“Alma, how Ruby doing?” Elvira asked.
Diesel trucks rolled by, splashing up old mud mixed with
last week’s snowfall.
“She’s doing all right . . . still at McKay’s.” Her voice
got stronger; some of that pride came over her. “She’s the
manager of the lingerie department now.” She stuck her feet up
on the foot rest.
“That’s good. She’s been there quite awhile.” She pulled
a blanket over her legs, rested back with Alma.
“Vi, she ain’t going nowhere. . . . They treat her good.”
“Huh, those white folks, they must be scared of her.”
Alma agreed. “If that’s what it takes. . . . Sometimes you
got to threaten people with lawsuits in order to keep them off
your back. Huh, Ruby didn’t do all that marching and singing for
nothing in the sixties.” She shook her head and peeked around
proudly. “How’s your daughter Tracey doing?”
“She just got remarried. . . .”
Alma leaned up. “What? That’s nice.”
“Alma, this is her third marriage.” Elvira rolled her eyes
back to the highway as they came up on the toll booth.
“Well, how many children she got?”
“Two. One by each husband.” She stuck her hand down
in the bag, took out a can of beer, pulled the top on a twelve
ounce Colt .45.
Alma lifted her sweater up to her neck. “Only thing you
can do is just wish her the best. Am I right?”
“You right as usual, Alma.” She sipped. “Just don’t want
to see her hurt no more.” She stared at Alma’s face, whose eyes
were closed. But she was listening to her.
Alma cracked open an eye. “She’s a grown woman . . .
with a mind and a pussy of her own. . . . You just make sure you
there for her and those kids if something goes wrong in this third
marriage.”
More farms, cars, trucks passed. A patch of white sun
came in the window, sprinkling their faces, making them blink
away from the morning.
“I’m always there for her and my grandchildren,” Vi said.
“But she needs to know you ain’t got to marry him to fuck ’im.”
Alma scratched her hair on this one. “You got problems
with this new husband?”
Elvira finished her beer. “I don’t like the way he talks
about her. . . . He don’t like her hair, he don’t like her dresses, he
don’t like her friends and damn, I know he don’t like me.” The

Prue / Mammie Doll 155

sides of her mouth went down, like something sour got on her
tongue.

Alma patted her hand. “As long as he don’t mistreat her
and those kids, you ain’t got much to do about it.”

Elvira raised her head, stuck the can in the bag. “Ha ha.
You sound like you been watching too much Oprah.”

“I do?” Alma said. “Hell, it’s just plain common sense. . .
. You don’t need some shrink to tell you dat.” She winked at her
friend. “Ha.” She patted her head pillow up some more, let the
road and the ride take her away from this mess they call love.

Brakes squealing and trucks backfiring made the trip
unrestful. Her friends laughed, and some of them took out the
Monopoly game, shot dice across Boardwalk. Alma looked out
the window at more moo cows grazing out on the dead cold earth.

***
Resort International:
Descending from sky-high hotel rooms, ladies from the
church done up in leopard print earrings in day-to-dinner
Soutache embroidery, their frumpy-tucked busts pushed into
elasticized pants suits, with woven crepe fishtail backs. They
showed off their sweetheart necklines in trimmed white lace.
Alma had on a blue double-breasted peplum jacket, whipped
together with a straight white skirt, her favorite gold-plated drop
earrings under her long grey-lion mane of hair. She wasn’t that
fancy. Didn’t forget her Sunday, going-to-church-shouting
manners. Didn’t want them to talk, you know. Dropping from
elevators about seven after a cat nap and shower.
Crass hucksters in top hats, ties and tails welcomed the
women through glass doors. Inside, it was a two-football-field-
sized, red and gold fountained, carpeted den. Showtime: Jackie
Mason headlining in all his Yiddish feathers.
Garden variety faces dug in wallets and purses for money.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, cash flowed into the
slot machines. Jingling coins, drinks, tipping, pinching
waitresses for more quarters. Power men sipped champagne from
France, sticking out diamond covered pinkie rings just to let you
know, “We from Texas. Yeeeee haaaaa.” With their cowboy
hats sticking back, counting oil cash from their hands.
Shoulders covered in furs, these women weren’t looking
at anyone but the gold watches on their wrists. Hot flying dice
rolled. Wheels spun, spun, spun your pants off. The wheel
never stopped. Drunks cried in their soda water, shouting to the
devil: God bless the poker chips.
Alma got ready to go to work. Bucket in hand, topped to
the rim with quarters, she scooted up in front of the dancing lights
of the slot machine. She closed her eyes, said a little prayer.

Prue / Mammie Doll 156

Elvira was on her right side, Vera Johnson to her left.
Others were all in deep rows, right in front of the machines,
twisting down the stick for their American riches.

Alma snatched down the arm. Berries, bananas, oranges,
cherries flipped up and around, coming to a dead halt. Not a
match. Damn. She pulled again, let her roll. Damn. She
checked her watch — almost eleven. She peeked over to her
friend.

Vi nudged her. “Alma, you betta stop looking at me and
keep pulling. Ha ha ha.” She moved her chair closer to the
machine, reflecting on the suspicious glow in Alma’s face. “You
not meeting him here, are you?”

Alma couldn’t hide her anticipation. “Yeah, I’m meeting
him here.”

Vi looked away and whispered, “You want me to cover
for you?”

Alma crossed her fingers. “Pleassse.”
Vi reassured her, “It’s okay. . . . I’ll just tell the rest of
them that you was tired and went to bed. ” She gave her a sly
grin. “I been keeping this secret for a longggg. time.” She
slipped a quarter in. “Just let me know when you are leaving,”
reminding her, “And don’t miss the bus in the morning.”
“Yes, mommie..” Alma gave her a hug. “Thanks, Vi.”
She went back to her machine and peeped around in the crowd
for him.
Vi rubbed her palms together. “Come on, money.” She
grabbed the lever down, watched the fruit jumping around.
Bells went off. Ding a ling a ling a ling a ling a ling!
Elvira jumped from her seat. “Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! I
won! I won!”
She stuck her bucket under the falling silver dollars.
“Ohhhhh, my God! Ohhhhh, my God! Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhh!”
The money kept coming.
People stampeded, pushing Alma back from her friend.
More buckets came. Elvira had hit the big one. Then she saw
him, it was time.
She squeezed between the shoulders and made her way
towards the elevator. When it opened, she hit the penthouse
button. It was just her in a flying compartment of smokey
mirrors. She checked her hair and lipstick, swiped her skirt
down. Her heart was beating faster.
It stopped.
She went to her left, down a gold-carpeted corridor past
some guests. She didn’t pay attention to them. They tried not to
look at her. Two soft knocks on PH #5.

Prue / Mammie Doll 157

Judge Marston opened the door. He pulled her in,
grabbed her up in his arms. He kicked the door closed.

A penthouse of red roses in a pink vase — glass tables,
champagne chilling in ice. A fire coming to life from the
fireplace, long windows overlooking the city of white lights. She
rested her head on his shoulder as he led her to pink silk sheets.

He lowered her down into the cloud soft pillows. He
regrouped to become familiar with those eyes that gave him a
home to rest, a home to love again.

Prue / Mammie Doll 158

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Roger, I can’t have lunch with you. . . . Me and Ida are
going to meet Mama at Rossie’s Restaurant.” Ruby was on the
phone, sticking her toes out of her tight high heels, then back in.

Detective Corey wanted to see his favorite woman. He
was pissed over not seeing her last weekend. “Sounds
important.” He flipped through pages of fingerprints with a
magnifying glass.

“I don’t know. . . . She just likes to have us around
sometimes.” She studied the spring inventory list and purchase
orders spread out on the desk. “Ha! After lunch is over she’ll be
tired of us.”

“I’ll never get tired of you.” He wanted her to hear that he
always would love her. He would always care.

“You betta not. Ha ha,” playfully warning him. She
flipped her computer screen off and stood up with the phone still
dangling.

He needed a boost. “I’ll call you later.” He rubbed his
eyes.

She knew this could mean two or three in the morning.
“Okay.”

“Tell your mother I said hi.”
“I will. Bye, baby.”
“Bye.”
She hung up the phone and stuck her earrings on. He
hung up, dialed again. “Hey, Sarge. How ’bout lunch?” He
rested back in his chair. “I’m buying.”
Ruby got her coat on, picked her purse from under her
desk and left. She checked with her secretary, who was buried in
a dictionary. “Ruth.”
Ruth’s hazel eyes came up from the pages. “Uh, yes, Ms.
Price?”
She slipped the list in the in-basket. “I’m going to lunch
now, see you about one.”
Ruth picked the list up. “Okay, Ms. Price.”
Ruby went through the store. She patted some of the
customers she knew on the backs, but kept moving on and out the
front door. She was glad to get away from the bras, panty hose
sale.
She drove off from the back parking lot in her 1987
Toyota Corolla, midnight blue. It was a cold November day,

Prue / Mammie Doll 159

making her feel a part of a dead man’s coffin under six inches of
snow. Yellow lights blinked and a cop waved her on by. So
cold, she turned her car heat gauge up to three. She drove
through a bunch of urban space junk — office buildings, more car
dealerships, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken joints, Baskin
Robbins ice cream stores, Toys R Us. No birth-control parties
around here. Dance clubs sprouting up to shake your thing.
Dope peddlers on the corners — gold teeth, gold chains, dead
lives. Young black boys, whores, AIDS, fags, transvestites did
their Manhattan stroll up Main Street. Hi-tech bullshit, all the
way to an integrated moon base landing.

It was so cold, it could freeze a dead man’s toes. She
turned the radio on, AM by the p.m. Some of that George Duke-
Boogie Train stuff was on. Damn. Where was Miles? She
flipped to Placido Domingo shitting his guts out from Lincoln
Center. Arias got her by green lights. People kept walking. She
ought to run their asses over. Ah, the hell with it. She just went
on by, wasn’t going to do nobody a favor today.

Noisy corridors.
Pelican-beaked waiters, second-hand guess patrons.
Cupid gold statues spitting out water from arrows. Landscape
paintings of Venetian forests adorned the walls. In the middle of
this Medici dynasty, Ruby’s wine started to taste like piss. “Ma,
you going to do what?”
Frigid conditions didn’t make Alma stutter. “I said, I’m
going to marry Judge Marston.”
“Grandma, that’s cool.” Ida was delighted and gave her a
tight squeeze. “Go on, old lady!”
Alma patted Ida’s hands. “Thank you, baby.” She looked
across to her daughter. “I see you not right with this.”
Frozen, stunned, Ruby slipped her hands down in her lap.
“Noooo, but you deserve the right to be happy.” She played with
her pearls and took another drink before she choked.
“That’s fair enough.” Alma sipped her mineral water.
“Um, uh, the judge will be sending his car for us this Saturday . .
. so that the families can meet.”
Ruby couldn’t lift her gaze from the basket of bread.
“That’s fine with me.”
Alma had to cut off the trouble quick. “Child, look at
me.”
Ruby confronted her. “Okay . . . I’m looking at you,
Ma.”
Alma leaned closer and stared her down. “If I told you
once . . . I told you a thousand times . . . don’t ever forget to
hold your head up and respect people. Now, you too old for this,
but you don’t walk in my shoes.”

Prue / Mammie Doll 160

Ruby raised a sharp eyebrow up. “Respect?”
Alma rose forth and balled her fist. “You damn right.
Let’s get real, now. . . . men . . . and I mean good ones . . . in
my life and yours have gone and died . . . and my mama didn’t
raise a fool. You got to snatch life by its balls and shake it to
make it what you want of it. Now, you can play all that slave-
master, African, black, colored-line shit all you want . . . but
don’t play head games with my life or your daughter’s . . . or put
it in a book. You just remember, when love comes at you, Ruby,
you ain’t going to know who it’s going to be or what country or
color their ass is. ” She straightened up. “I’m almost seventy . . .
getting ready to up and die. Ha! I’m gonna spend my last days in
a big, pretty garden.”
Ida said, “Ma, lighten up.”
Ruby motioned a hand up. “Okay. Okay.” She left her
chair and went over to her mother.
Alma stood and faced her, grabbed her up in her arms.
Both cried in the middle of the crowd. Didn’t give a damn.
Didn’t care.
Alma patted her face. “You still my baby.”
They sat down, clutching hands.
Ruby laughed over her wine. “I’m sorry, Ma. . . . I’m
sorry.” She picked up her glass. “A toast to a mother who I love
so, so much.”
The three women brought their glasses together. A waiter
came over to ask, “Would the three beautiful models from New
York like to order now?”
Alma picked up her napkin. “Yes, we like to order now.”
She winked over to her granddaughter just as mischievous as an
elf from the Marston Estate forests.

***
FOREIGN LANDS:
Ruby wanted to take Roger’s .38 police special and shoot
up everything in the goddamn place. But she was cool, she was
cool.
But in her mother’s eyes, triumph just seeped from her
face as she finally took her rightful place — head of the
household of the Marston Estates. She glowed with lion mother
pride as she stood with the judge in front of the smoldering blue
and yellow flames in the fireplace. She became the harbinger of
the Jefferson destiny.
Ruby came upon a world of woodcuts and engravings,
smug qualities, cutout sculptures, open spaces, the non-smelling
world of a child’s dream — her doll house come true. Tight
lipped people came to her with trays of canapés, champagne and
strawberries.

Prue / Mammie Doll 161

Alma hugged Ruby and Ida.
Ruby met Judge Edward T. Marston in the raised-ceiling
living room, French Provincial sofas and chairs, not vulgar or
offensive. French doors led to the dining room that overlooked
the sprawling winter lands.
He was a tall, frail man with shocking white hair — a
Mark Twain look-alike. His eyes still frozen in blue and time, a
light not about to fade out, he wore a burgundy turtleneck under a
gold button blazer. Pipe in hand he stayed always close to Alma.
Whenever he addressed her mother, warmth came to his cheeks.
You saw she gave him life in a cold world of law and the family
coat of arms. This stood over the top of the fireplace in grey and
black stone — a horse head, crossed swords, the eagle and the
dove on opposite sides of a shield of white and blue that went
with the colors of the room.
Today, when Judge Marston saw Ruby for the first time,
all he could concentrate on were those big pretty almond eyes of
Indian and African ancestry. Statuesque, she was nothing but
legs to show off a mosaic printed skirt and long African print
shawl coming over her shoulder in colors of yellow and black
diagrams. “It’s finally good to meet you, Ruby. . . . I’ve just seen
pictures of you as a baby.”
They shook hands.
She turned around. “My daughter, Ida.”
He shook her hand. “Ah, beauty runs in the family.” He
went to Alma and placed an arm over her shoulder, kissed her on
the cheek.
Minutes later, Gayla and Gary entered.
The judge slipped his pipe from his lips. “Um, uh, I want
you to meet my daughter and son.”
Alma pulled them by the hands. “Gayla and Gary, here’s
my daughter and grandaughter, Ruby and Ida.”
They all shook hands. It was an awkward moment that
should have happened over twenty years ago. But there was no
need to say why. They all just got their champagne glasses, stood
around nervously laughing, feeling the chains getting looser and
looser.
Alma pointed a finger at Gayla and Gary. “I hope you
two been out of trouble?”
Gayla held Ida’s hand. She saw the cornrows falling over
the warm face of a college student, eyes kind of nervous at the
splendor of the mansion. “Don’t be nervous, Ida. This place is
just an old shack.”
Ida shook her head. “Ha ha ha. Ma, Gayla has a sense of
humor.”

Prue / Mammie Doll 162

Ruby said, “Gayla, Mama once told me she always did
have problems out of you.”

“I’ll say,” Judge Marston said. “She cost me a bundle
when she was in college.”

“Daddy, don’t talk about the past.”
“And Gary, you look just like your father,” Ruby told
him. She got closer and stared at his pepper and salt head of hair,
his thin, long nose hanging low towards his top lip.
He touched the side of his hair. “Noooo.” He nodded.
“Dad’s just trying to get younger.”
Ida jumped in. “Grandma will keep him just that. . . . ”
She bit into a strawberry, then dipped it in some chocolate on the
coffee table.
The judge relit his pipe. “Ha, she’s been doing that a lot
of years now.” He puffed the smoke out and in, went to her,
swiping smoke from his eyes. “You’re the best doctor I ever
had.”
She gazed up and rubbed his back. “Edward, stop.”
“Ida, I hear you’re majoring in French?” Gayla said.
“Oui.” Ida sat down on the couch. Sticking her
strawberry on a paper plate, she crossed her legs.
Gayla touched her hand. “Paris est si jolie au printemps.”
Ida looked at the big picture and said, “C’est pourquoi on
l’appele la ville des amoureux.”
Gayla wasn’t going to argue with that. “You’re right, Ida.
. . . I’m an addict for it. . . . Every time I go, I find a new
husband.”
Ruby sat down. “What’s going on?”
Ida rested back, smiling at Gayla. “Paris and springtime,
Ma. . . . Paris and springtime, that’s all.”
Judge Marston got the champagne bottle from the bucket
and refilled the glasses. “Excuse me, I’d like to make a toast.”
He held up his glass. “To the family who have given us time and
distance to be together, to worship, and cherish the rough seas of
the world. To have a new day . . . but patience was the key.
Guts from so many to fight the insanity while a new love came to
me and Alma in our twilight years.” He pecked her on the cheek.
“To three great women coming into my life, and my childrens’.
Although we have never met, many times I have heard the stories
of a proud, honest family battling these rough seas. I want us all
to listen to our hearts and not to the shouts in this world.” He
hugged Alma. “We are happy, and all we ask is . . . just give us
a chance.” He then slipped his arm through Alma’s and drank up
the pink champagne of love.
Ruby went to her mother. “You so lucky, Ma.”
Alma held her. “We all lucky, dear.”

Prue / Mammie Doll 163

All gathered around under the Marston coat of arms.
Beasts melted away in the yellow flames of the fireplace, letting
the couple enjoy their last days amongst a joy, a family with
strong threads of Africa and Europe.

Prue / Mammie Doll 164

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Puppet people dangled under soft, blue lights, guessing
over the mush of the day.

“Ida! Ida!”
She turned to see who was calling her in the cafeteria.
Hamilton charged her, delirious with newspaper in hand.
“Your . . . your grandmother.” His voice shivered, eyes spread
over his face, “Getting married to a Marston.”
Other students’ whispers got kind of loud. They stared at
her, nodding and pointing over their shoulders.
She moved up. “Surprised me too.” She kissed his
flustered, unshaven cheek. At the cashier she paid her two-fifty
for a salad and grilled cheese sandwich.
Taking off their coats, they sat across from each other.
Band members walked in, shoving with tubas and drums. Testing
the noise volume of the place, they started to blow some fight
songs in D Flat.
Hamilton read the article. “They’ll be getting married
Christmas Eve.”
Ida bit into her sandwich, noticing he was into gossip just
like the rest of the people in Mileston. “Um huh.” She flipped
through some pages of her calculus book. “So they won’t forget
their anniversary. . . . Now this is more for Judge Marston than
her, of course. . . . You know men.”
He swallowed this down. “It’s a great Cinderella story.”
“But Cinderella was white,” she said.
“Ha ha. That’s funny.” He opened up her carton of milk
and took a sip. “How you doing in that?”
She got flustered when he asked. “All right.” She roamed
some fingers over the pages. “I’ll take a C in it anytime.”
He looked at her large hoop earrings beside that chocolate
face of hers. “Can I help you with that?” He touched her hand
on her fork. “You know I’m going to be an engineer one of these
days.”
His baritone voice almost made her wilt like a lily on a hot
August day. “No, I better concentrate on my logarithms all by
my lonesome.”
“You drive me crazy when you talk like one of them
southern gals, Ida. Ummmmmm.” He wiped his tongue slowly
across his bottom lip.

Prue / Mammie Doll 165

“You drive me crazy too, Ham.” She held his hand,
forgot about calculus and the band behind her.

But a shrill scream woke her up from the dreamy man
across table holding her hand. “Idaaaaa! Idaaaaaa! Have you
seen this shit?”

“What?” She looked up from the table into Molly Toye’s
face, then back down — on her plate a school newspaper:

BUDGET CUTS. MILESTON COLLEGE HITS BLACK
STUDIES PROGRAMS

She pulled it up. “Where you get this?”
Molly threw her coat off and sat down. “Somebody was
passing them outside the door.” She smiled at Hamilton. “Hey,
Ham.” But she was still pissed. “Just like ’em to cut the niggers
first.”
Ida saw the frown in Hamilton’s face. Doors of a
students’ home closed on their toes. Nobody gave a fuck about
them. Molly’s face barking to the sky. Eyes that used to smile
were now swollen, betrayed. Cut the niggers first. They ain’t
shit. We need money for our people. Fuck dem niggers. Let
them go somewhere else if they want to learn about their people.
They aren’t shit. Fuck them.
They came in chains under the boat. Nigger. Nigger.
Nigger. Write it on trees. Catch a nigger, catch a thief. . . .
Lynch ’em. They learned enough. Sons and daughters of slaves.
Massa’s chittlins. Cut their balls off, stick them in their mouths.
Make sure they don’t get to our white women. Nigger. Nigger.
Nigger. They’re here on some Affirmative Action Mo Jo Plan
anyway. Shit. Let Michael Jackson get them a job singing and
dancing. Hell, we gave them Oprah. They can’t write; they can’t
read. Stupid! Dumb! Lazy nigger! Mutherfucker! I got a hole
for you to dig — your grave. What the fuck is Black Studies
anyway? That’s not an academic discipline — not like French
history. Close them niggers down, kick the door in. They don’t
own shit and damn sure too busy laughing all the time.
Dancing that Soul Train shit.
What is this thing called Black English? All they know is
the Boogaloo. Doesn’t sound like the King’s English to me.
All around Ida, faces laughed and giggled, chatted about
going to the Hamptons, looking for men to fuck for the weekend
in their daddy’s mansion, in mother’s Mercedes Benz. Oh, I
forgot, they don’t get AIDS. She sipped her milk, trying to tune
out Toye’s crying song. She was still wagging the newspaper in
her face. Yaw, ain’t shit. Go on, do a dance for me. But
whatever you do . . . get the hell out of here.
Fashionable accommodations of oak and fir trees
shrubbed amongst the brick triangle paths hid her from the

Prue / Mammie Doll 166

problems. Never really detailing the exploitation of color that
could end in a tragic bullfight.

Three generations past the world of lynchings, whippings
and running from the Klan. FAMILIES FOR SALE, stick a sign on
their chests, disrupt a kingdom. Divorced from the cream, dessert
of a country, all built on strong backs.

She stabbed at a tomato, pieces of lettuce and a dream.
More band trumpets blew in her ears. She couldn’t hear Toye
gasping for air, breath.

One last sip from the milk carton.
While her mother and grandmother tried to give her
something they never had. Blame cannot come from the many,
but from the few. So the Good Book said . . . but she must
continue on. She felt the fear, the fear of so many. So many
folks died for her to be in this cafeteria. So many bones rested
under cold, black stone.
She gathered her coat, books and purse, not smiling ever
again at Hamilton and that face charged with electricity. Fire
came and never left his cheeks. Their burdens didn’t end at the
college gates. They involved, revolved around a world of books
that were unlawful for her to read not so many years ago.
She walked away through the tables of music, eating,
shitting out jokes from so many faces. They were dealing with
their own little worlds that had nothing to do with her.
Sunlight slid between the fingers of leaves. A subway of
black students infected the grass knolls and pressed on the stairs
of Graham Hall. Bitter, cheap flavors dissected, hollered out the
names of the president of this academic compound. “Surrender in
peace,” some signaled. “Give us back our classes!” Promises
surrendered from scriptures. Allowing bundled-up faculty to see
the nature of the students’ anger. A bridge, a song had them
stand up and clap at others from a bullhorn, pointing to the
president’s lair.

LANCASTER IS A PIG! HERE PIGGY, PIGGY!
HELLLLLL NOOOOO, WEEEEE WON’T
GOOOOOO!
HELLLLLL NOOOOO, WEEEEEEEE WON’T
GOOO!
DON’T CUT BLACK STUDIES!
CUT LANCASTER!
CUT LANCASTER!
CUT LANCASTER!”
Ida tightened her grip on Hamilton. No need to be afraid.
Friends were all around. Sisters and brothers felt, shouted,
“What’s it’s all about?” Assaulted before, during and after
classes. In front of the building Vicki Carew, Josie Whitfield,

Prue / Mammie Doll 167

Rosemary Buttons, May Patterson, Fred James, Donald Tracks,
Gil Byrd, and Charlie Brett. And not all Black — Ted Macco,
Cindy Bredloaf, John Popko, Skye Jacks, Brooke Nixs, Rita
Nino, and Chip Tate.

Vendors still sold their hot dogs with hot relish, canned
Cokes. Blondes flew by not caring; some on bicycles kept
pedaling as if to fly away from the crime; some security cops
stayed on the outer edge of the crowd, not worried, just bored.

Joggers pale view ran through the campus, and the voice
of a student blasted from the bullhorn:

“WE MUST MEET WITH PRESIDENT LANCASTER AND HIS
LACKEYS WHO DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT US! WE MUST LET HIM
KNOW, WE MUST LET HIM KNOW THAT WE ARE THE SONS AND
DAUGHTERS OF THIS GREAT LAND, OF THIS GREAT AMERICA!
THAT’S NOT — THAT’S NOT GOING TO TAKE ANY MORE, ANY MORE
OF THEIR RACIST POLICIES AT THIS CAMPUS! LANCASTER!
LANCASTER! DO YOU HEAR US? DO YOU HEAR US?”

Ida stuck a piece of gum in her mouth and chewed to just
swallow down the excitement in her stomach. Eager faces were
all around, mouths open wide with the horn of sound. Rainbow
cold, frost faces tied up in November winds.

She spotted other students going by, not stopping, trying
to deflate the grand scheme of missing classes.

Overcoated professors stood on the platform bunched
together. Only five black faculty had been admitted to such high
positions — all ghosts, still trying to remember the tools of the
sixties. Scientific chaos spewed from grey-haired men hung on a
cross long ago. Enemies of the people, the dark men from the
shadows kept watch over all this, but went to sleep with Reagan
at the conference table, one day to rise again to cut off the heads.

She lost Hamilton in the crowd.
Arms pumped into windmills. More speakers got up and
stared at the president’s building across the way between two
strong white Greek columns.
A tap on her shoulder. “Ida.”
She turned. “Vicki.” Over her shoulder were Molly, Josie
and May. “I notice yaw in this mess too.”
They surrounded her, shielding each other as the madness
got louder. Shouts, dictates rising, rising. Somebody had got up
on the stage, zipped his pants down, mooning the president. He
left sticking one finger up.
Molly said, “I see your boyfriend over there.”
“Where?” Ida tiptoed through the heads and shoulders,
then back over across to the president’s offices.
He and some more students waved a red handkerchief.
“Why is he doing that, Vicki?” Ida asked.

Prue / Mammie Doll 168

Before she could answer, students started running that
way. Some almost knocked her down. She felt her arm being
pulled by Molly. “Come on, girl.”

Ida started running with the herd of people towards the
sparkling white columns. Puffing with books in hand she
hollered with the rest of them, “Lancaster must go! Lancaster
must go! Lancaster must go!” Her shoulders were getting hit by
others alongside her. Molly was still with her. Vicki, May, Josie
were in front of her.

Hamilton and Gil Byrd banged on the door until John
Popko stuck a toe up to the door knob, kicking it down. Chants
rang out from all their voices, over one hundred students.
“YYYYEEEEAAAAHHHH! YYYYEEEAAAHHHH!
HHHHAAAAA! LANCASTER! LANCASTER!
LANCASTER!”

The security guards were outnumbered. But the men kept
swinging their batons at the students until they were beaten back
out of the building with rocks and bottles coming at their faces.

Others ran from office to office breaking down doors,
pushing clerks out of the windows of the first floor. Defiantly
searching. “Lancaster! Oh, Lancaster! Lancaster! Oh, where is
our dear, dear president?”

Flashes of a moment: Ida was and wasn’t a part of this
mob. She was in the middle of the taking of this building.
Everywhere she stepped were turned-over desks, tables,
computers, file cabinets, trash cans emptied over the floors. She
rested back against the wall near the bursar’s office, trying to
steady her heart of fear. My God! My God! She couldn’t take it
back. It wasn’t a dream, although she wished it to be, to drown
out the hollering of students stripping computers from their
sockets.

She got off the wall and wrestled with some of the girls to
just get an old woman away from their sharp fingernails. “Let.
her go!” She slapped one of the girls. “Get the hell off this
woman!”

The woman got up off the floor and dodged some of their
feet in time to get out of the door without her coat or purse.

Ida then spotted Molly and Josie scaling up the marble
staircase. People were screaming, with bricks and rocks in their
hands. When she got up the stairs she could see through the mass
of bodies, President Lancaster, his hands up over his face, trying
to block the blows coming at him. A student grabbed him by the
necktie and held a broken bottle under his fat, shaking neck.

Students started clapping. “LET’S TALK! LET’S
TALK! LET’S TALK! LET’S TALK! LET’S TALK!”
Protestors jumped around, pounding their fists in the air from this

Prue / Mammie Doll 169
tense standoff.

Prue / Mammie Doll 170

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Sketches of Spain” by Brother Miles was piped in from a
small FM radio. In the middle of play were two cups of hot
chocolate, tuna fish sandwiches, chips, pickles, carrot sticks.

Small bites of love.
Crumbs dropped down on the spring inventory lists.
Memories of a kiss lingered as a motive to forget the apple-
shaped world.
Ruby leaned on the edge of her desk in front of Roger
Corey and gave him some of her private lunch time with the door
closed. She scooted up, swung one leg over the other, letting him
have a peek up to her pink panties, smell the riches of her
kingdom and his. Tasting a pickle, she made that crunchy noise
while he gawked up the rivers of legs. Her blue skirt with the
back zip, back slit.
“Ohhhhh, baby. I love your tuna fish sandwiches.”
She sipped her hot chocolate. “Ha! I know what you like
and it isn’t tuna fish.” She sat her cup down. “Besides, it comes
from a can.”
He moved around in the swivel chair and shook his head
at her, smelling the perfume from afar. He bit into his sandwich.
She teased him with a pat on his head. “Poor, poor
Roger.” Uncrossing her legs, she leaned back on both arms,
waiting for him to finish choking on sightseeing up her skirt. He
was a dog, but he was her dog — well trained by now.
He would never stop asking her this question: “Ruby,
baby, when we going to do that thing your mother’s doing?”
She swung her legs. “Shhh. It’s the Pied Piper.” Her
mind roamed to the trumpet and Roger. He was a dangerous man
sitting in front of her legs. He wanted her name on a piece of
paper. Deservedly so, he was the only one who could possess her
after the death of her husband.
Put in the lowest bid. When he came back from the war,
he was a wreck — pieces broken up like the American
automobile. Both used up from this TV war. About every night
round six, he fought in it, she drowned in it.
An incredible man, he refused to fall down by this
landscape’s bigotry. He was spit at for a homecoming present;
tired, lost, spent from killing mothers and children. She was
there for him, lost, spent and grieving over a dead man. Years of

Prue / Mammie Doll 171

a ticking clock went by. He gave her and Ida his time to know
what a father would have been. Without the dressing.

He was a street man.
Flakes of grey in his hair, captive to human sacrifice, a
brave, reluctant fool. He never talked to her about the ass
kickings he had out there, about the pushers, prostitutes, hit men,
run of the mill hard heads who could take your life for a dime or
a quarter. He had grey, dark bags under his eyes and bullet
grazings across his cheek and chin.
She was his toy.
Miles’ trumpet stopped. “Roger, honey, what’s the beef?”
Her mischievous smile eluded this tragic, hungry figure. “When
Ida finishes, then we’ll start. . . . Just two more years.” She
leaned down, kissing him over his face and neck. Let him lick
the inside palms of her hand.
Long legs of a Spiderwoman. Beautiful to touch, deadly
to love. She had captured him long ago. Slipping her high heel
off, he kissed her toes, slipping his fingers up her calves as she
went back further on the desk, spilling hot chocolate over the
spring inventory lists. He was trapped in her bewitching, large
brown eyes. Kissed the sky, making him want to die right there,
right then, during lunch. She had strangled him to sleep in her
silk, spun web on a Fourth of July. He would surely die if he
tried to break away.
Love overturned in her face. Only the grey light from the
day gave off a moving frame of melancholy. Jazz from a piano
gave him some notes. Moving up from his chair, between her
legs, exhausted in her arms, mouth open.
Never mind. Marriage could wait whenever he was
entrapped in this flame, whenever he suffocated in the lingering
straps of her bra. Unbuttoned to taste mint, candy chocolates.
Patience, kindness, lust and a hard on. Music, music, music from
the deep. He had lent her her first jazz record to get her away
from James Brown. Herbie Mann at Whiskey a Go.Go. Ever
since that day she had been his, making her whole, alive,
raunchy.
A direct hit from his beeper.
Lifting her from his fingers, he said, “Shit.” She backed
off from him as he tugged at the small monitor and checked the
number. “I’m sorry, Ruby. . . . Damn.” He looked under papers
for the phone. As he dialed, he zipped up, buttoned up.
Frustrated, he got loud. “Detective Corey here.” Pushing
his shirt down in his pants with one hand, he listened.
“Detective Corey, this is Captain Savage. We have a
hostage situation at Mileston College.”
“What?” He reached out, touched Ruby’s hand.

Prue / Mammie Doll 172

“Affirmative. Students have taken over just one of the
buildings. So get your tail between your legs.” He hung up.

Ruby pinched his butt.
“Ouch.” He slapped her fingers away and grabbed her
around the waist. “Ruby, I think you betta call home.”
Buttoning up her jacket, “Why?”
“Just see if Ida’s home.” He backed away from her face
and shrugged, “That’s what the call was about. . . .”
“Huh?” She tried to read his blank stare.
Roger pulled his ear. “Ah, some students have taken over
one of the buildings at the college.” He touched her face.
“Nothing to be alarmed about.” He left her arms and plucked his
sport coat from the chair. Backed up from a woman and tuna fish
sandwiches. He grabbed the knob. “Just, just call. . . .” He
turned, leaving the door open.

Radio Interruption:
“This bulletin has just come into our newsroom. A radical
black group has taken over buildings at Mileston College. This is
all we have at this time. . . . Please stay tuned.”
The clock on the wall read almost one-thirty. She lifted
the phone up, touchtoned her home number, nervously tapping a
foot to the next tune.
Let it ring.
Alma picked it up. “Hello.”
“Ma.”
“Ruby.”
“Yeah, it’s me, Ma.” She stuck one of her leopard-print
button earrings on her left ear. “I didn’t think you’d be at home.”
“I still live here,” Alma reminded her. “I’m not married
yet. Huh.” She was boxing up some sheets from her hope chest
at the foot of her bed. “I’m gettin’ some things straightened out
around here before the big day.” She gazed around at the ugly
pink wall of carnations and sparrows. “Is everything okay?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Ruby said. “I’m calling to find out
if Ida’s home from school.”
Alma stuck a hand on her hip. “No, baby, she’s not home
yet.”
“Damn.” Ruby rubbed a finger across her bottom lip. She
spotted Roger’s handkerchief on the desk and wiped up chocolate
with it.
“Ruby, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t want to get her mother worried. “It could be
nothing, but some of the students are acting up at the college.”
Her voice lowered, not wanting to get excited. “She’s probably
on her way home right now.”

Prue / Mammie Doll 173

Alma went to the window. “She’s probably at the library
or somewhere studying up a storm.” She peeked out. “I’ll call
you as soon as she gets here.”

“Okay, Ma, see you later.” She hung up, went to her
window and stared down to watch the ant people in the block.

Variety stores owned by Koreans clung tight to the
corners. Barbecue joints smoked up some ribs. Eddie’s Car
Dealership, Betty’s Third World Boutique, Bobby’s Barbershop,
Jake’s Liquor Store. You had over five of these in the
neighborhood: KOOLS, MARLBORO MAN, SALEMS —
cigarette billboards. Urban removal programs in a new brick
building down the street. The old, the young, men, women,
mothers pushing babies, still. Police sirens, still. Homeless old
men sold copper and aluminum cans. Drunks barked out,
begging for a dime or a quarter. “I gots to buy some of that Mad
Dog wine.” Black blondes aimed for a deer to kill. Pocohantas
Johnson just needed twenty. “Shit, make it fifteen. . . . I got
babies to feed.”

B & B’s Supermarket had burned down twice. After
Martin Luther got his. Quiet volcano slept amongst the hues of
Africa. Sharp dressers strolled down the avenue buying, selling
watches and rings, Liberation patches. Necklaces of Nefertiti,
our Nubian Queen. “Buy it with your welfare check. I take food
stamps too.”

A light rain zoomed in, zoomed out.
Nobody ran. They all just took what came next from the
clouds. She couldn’t work; the worry was clouding her mind.
She became a clock watcher, and it was not even two yet. She hit
the intercom button to her secretary.
“Bring me another inventory list.”
“Yes, Ms. Price. . . . I’ll be right there.”
Ruby paced. A voice that sounded like a harp — it was
Mr. B. calming her with “I’m just a Prisoner of Love.”

***
Back in her hope chest, Alma filtered through a case
history. Witness to a dying planet, testimony of a woman:
Stretched lace bras, camisoles, wedding towels, sheets, blouses
from the silkworm, gold jewelry in corner boxes, evening-thin
pantyhose that Ida gave her for her fiftieth birthday.
She still kept Sonny’s military patches. Her sister had left
her some nice bras, strapless. Their graves were together. He
was still in her teardrops, still there. Years never took him from
her. Ruby looked so much like him. Defiant, particular about the
way things went down about shit. Traces of a wild flaw. All
over skin color.
She turned on the small portable color TV on her dresser.

Prue / Mammie Doll 174

Signs of a daytime story.
All My Children:
Erica was pledging her love to a violent man. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Hop in bed. Just to let him go at the end of doing his
business. To another woman. To another whore, just like her.
Alma folded away her garters.
Newsbreak:
A horse-toothed woman with dental floss blinded the
viewer. Honey blonde, eyes bugged out, she sounded off.
“Mileston College is under siege by angry students
protesting the cutting of classes and programs. There is also a
hostage situation at the Waller T. Waldron Office Building on the
campus.”
Alma squinted at the tube. She moved closer to look for
Ida’s face. All she could see were just cake batter, candy store
faces cussing out the world, hands and fingers going up, broken
doors and windows. Not a sign of a lost granddaughter.
“Please stay tuned for further details at five.”
CUTTING BACK:
Tad Martin threw a punch at Adam Chandler.
Alma went back to her chest. She let the pillow cases,
soft sheets, panties cross through her fingers. She lifted them,
smelled the lemon sweet black men who had flowed in and out of
her life. Days of scrubbing over, she was satisfied to have found,
under all that dirt, a nice man.

Prue / Mammie Doll 175

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Days in heaven are full of folly.
Barricaded doors on the Mileston College campus woke
the place up to a late after-thought surrounded by police cars.
A verdict of coverage played to the bespectacled eyes,
bearded faces of Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, fraternity, sorority
house monsters taking over America’s favorite show. Refinance,
catch a real crook, Watergate Nine. But God, please, no! Don’t
lock up my child.
It was serious people.
Up the marble staircase, Ida wasn’t Alice in Wonderland
anymore. President Lancaster had been wiping his bruised face
with bandage ice. His eyes were fixed on the young lions. Half-
blind, he spoke up . . .louder, louder. “Forty-point-five percent. of
the assets of this college is being eaten up by the principal of
short-term loans.” He counted off on his fingers, “Faculty, staff,
rebuilding labs, research foundations. The library academic
computer system has to be constantly updated.” His arms went
out with the ice in his hand. “This is no way to change the system
by keeping me here.” He pointed at all of them. “Out that window
are men with guns.” He dabbed his forehead with the dripping
ice. “But. this is no game . . . not in this office.” He gritted his
teeth, wincing from a numb face. “Dammit, it’s about the bottom
line.”
Grumbling came back. “Cut the blacks first, right?”
Lancaster stripped his tie off. “No! No, it’s about the
least-used courses.” He shook his head, nervously faint. “How
many students in here are majoring in Black Studies?” His lips
got dry as he searched for the hands. None went up. “I see.” He
shook his finger at the rainbow faces around him that wanted to
spit at him. “It was a new idea . . . but give me credit for trying. I
argue not that Black Studies is an academic discipline. But in the
eyes of America,” he shook his finger at all of them, “this country
is still blind.” He rubbed his forehead and face, mopped his
cracked lip.
Ida heard the silence. She pushed through the shoulders,
pointing at the fat jowly man. “Bullshit.”
People got back.
Lancaster looked at the woman with her eyes of malice,
hair of Medusa. “Bullshit?”

Prue / Mammie Doll 176

She got up in his face. “You, of all people, are a damn
fraud.” She scolded him like he was her child. “This campus is
about us.” She turned back to the crowd and watched Hamilton
hold back up his stick. “Each and everyone of us in here.” Ida
went back to the president. “I am sick and tired of that
establishment bullshit. We are living in a racist-free, low calorie
nightmare . . . subtle . . . but still there.” She shook her head in
his puffer-fish face. “And you, President Lancaster, are
continuing the party speech.”

The students’ voices cheered. “THAT’S RIGHT! THAT’S
RIGHT! THAT’S RIGHT!” Sticks and stones in their hands, they
jumped around him.

The voices died down.
Ida came back at the crippled man. “If just one student on
this campus wants to major in that program . . . you, white man,
owe it to them.” She nodded at his face, a face that was a part of
what she had to fight in this world . . . a face of blind ignorance.
He conveyed sincerity with his words. “You cannot do
this by violent means.”
The phone rang in the center of the hundred students. No
one rushed to pick it up. Just silence and the noise of the police
knocking on the door.
May Patterson flailed up to answer him back. “You son of
a bitch!” She stuck a hand up from the crowd. “This country was
built out of violence. Pointing at his face, she said, “We are only
fulfilling the prophecy of this great land.”
The phone kept ringing.
Until John Popko picked it up. “The president’s office.”
He looked around at the smiling faces of his fellow students.
“How can I help you?” He pushed his blond hair from his eyes.
“This is Detective Corey. . . . I’d like to know how can I
help you.” Roger took the bullhorn from one of his men and
stood at his car, surrounded by faculty, students and parents. A
yellow strip kept the crowd from the front door. He waited,
gazing up to the president’s window.
“Well, I’d just like for you to know, Officer Corey . . . the
president is fine,. the students are fine.” John felt some pats on
the shoulder. “We just want what is owed to us. . . .”
Cold breaths came from the crowds. Reporters’ vans
drove up behind the people, and their occupants extended blue
faces and mikes out to interview for campus opinions.
Roger asked, “And that is?”
Popko’s voice sprang back. “Don’t touch Black Studies.”
Roger grinned. He didn’t want to get into some high-
minded debate with Einstein Junior. “Now, son, I have nothing to

Prue / Mammie Doll 177

do with that. All I know is, you got a man hostage in there and we
want him released.”

John played with his authority. “Then, kind sir, get me
somebody on the phone who does, or we drop this pig out on his
head.”

Student voices in the background chanted, “YEAH!
YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!”

Corey warned his cops back. “Okay, I’ll do that . . . but in
the meantime let me speak to President Lancaster.” It was cold as
he peered up to the window. He saw Ida sticking her head out of
the broken window, her fist above her head. Memories of the
sixties flashed back to him and the day he met her mother. “Shit.”

“Uh, hello.” President Lancaster was tired, and his leg
hurt. He was mad at the lazy security guards for allowing these
Indians to knock down his door. He licked his lips. “Huh.”

“Sir, this is Detective Corey. I’m right under your
window. How you holding up?” Roger wanted the students to
stop screaming all around him. He had some men on horses push
them back.

“Just a little shaken, but I’m okay.”
“Sir, you know their demands. . . . We can stall till the
rain falls. . . . But it’s your move, sir. . . .”
The president looked around at the faces of fear, all on the
line now — maybe not ever graduating, many the first to find, to
discover that pot of gold from generations of poverty,
degradation, in the eyes of the girls, boys. Young adults
trembling, but brave enough to make that statement. These were
his students, not terrorists. “I need to talk to Vice President
Finetti.”
“Hold on.” Roger took the car phone from his ear and
motioned for the chancellor to come from behind the yellow strip.
A cold question came from his breath. “Yes? How can I
help?” The chancellor pushed his glasses back off his nose,
shivering.
“Chancellor Thornton, is the vice president on campus?”
Roger studied the man with the terrified blue eyes.
“Dammit, he just left for Florida this morning.” He took
the phone. “Sir, the vice president has gone out of town. . . .”
Lancaster rubbed his forehead and lips. “That’s right.
Damn.”
“How you doing, President Lancaster?”
He rubbed his bad knee. “I wish I was in Florida right
now. . . . We got to get him back here to sign the edict to not to
eliminate the Black Studies program.”
The students heard this. “AAALLL RIGHT!
YYYYEEEAAAHHH! YYYEEEEE HAAAAAA!

Prue / Mammie Doll 178

John snatched the phone. “Until then, nobody leaves.” He
hung it up.

“YEEEEAAAAHHHHH! YYYYYEEEEAAAAHHHH!”
He and others jumped on the desk dancing.

Prue / Mammie Doll 179

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Sleepy heads trickled down, too tired to finish the pizzas
and warm Coca Cola sent by the Board of Trustees. Such a small
consolation prize. Camel back, popsicle spoons hugged, humped,
adrift down the side of walls, halls, bathroom stalls. Just us mice.
Wandered around talking, singing, peeping from dark views at
police cars. Sharing a strength not to give up, not to give in. At
the lost hours of twelve midnight.

Ida bedded down with other girlfriends in a circle.
She yawned, half-awake. All butts on coats, guarding the
door of the lion. Heads rested in front of Lancaster’s office.
Feather snores sang from couch pillows. Covered by Army,
bomber jackets, last Christmas’s knitted scarfs gently held their
heads.
Dreamed up all night.
From the door she looked in at him. Just like the rest of
them, a round pudgy man asleep on the hard carpeted floor, over
and under borrowed winter coats from their backs. Quiet giggles
swirled about him as he snored.
Hamilton and just a few others watched over their
president. Light rock emanated from a radio, letting loose colors
from Chicago. A horn and angel-shaking voice from the lead
roamed around corners.
Two planes hung on a runway waiting to fly off. Shifting
shadows were bound to subside for tonight, stuck in traffic as
clock watchers nodded off to nowhere.

***
DAUGHTERS OF THE CIRCLE:
Ida’s friends were of a breed as close as the rivers but as
far apart as the seas. All had come through the takeover of the
president’s office shaken from a dream, but reminded of the
reasons. They were friends in a place hidden from the world,
arms linked, now sleepy, to wait their fate by others.
Vicki Carew was from Georgia. She was smart, sassy,
witty, had a thing for white boys. Golden ram child with reddish
brown hair and black, deep eyes that roamed and felt the world
shake when she slapped the hell out of a white secretary that day.
She was going to be a doctor — to save the world, bring babies
and mothers back to life from God’s hands. To go back to the
ghettoes of Georgia and teach young mothers about birth control,

Prue / Mammie Doll 180

to preach out against AIDS, heroin, alcohol — all the things that
killed her father.

Loud Molly Toye was an air breeze that ruffled a dead
bird’s feathers. A Chinese-eyed girl from Oakland California, she
was a dark chocolate woman with a round moon face. She was
into Chaucer and telling tales about her grandma, a young woman
who missed her boyfriend, mother and sisters, who wanted to
defend the weak, the people from around the corners. She sold,
stole, scammed, and killed for money. All in the cauldron
together, using the law as a whip on the white man’s back, to beat
him till he saw blood. She wanted to make him scream, holler to
the sky, bring the crooked cop to justice, put him in a cage with
the rest of the brothers and feed them to the lions.

With cinnamon toast features, Josie Whitfield was a quiet,
sleepy volcano. She had eyes that spoke millions and a sassy,
sharp tongue that would tell you where to go in a minute. She
was raised around five brothers, a math major, retro physics
woman with spiked hair. She would one day be a hard, crusty,
half dead professor herself in the academic arena. But under the
dusty, shadowy smile she was an angel looking over a flock of
sheep, protective with all things, especially her brothers, who
were dying in Chicago, one at a time.

Into the arts we weave an articulate speaker with large
sexy lips, a big-hipped mama with small breasts — Rosemary. A
soft-spoken, brown sugar gal. Such a gifted actress, she would
put Ruby Dee to shame one of these days. A dancer, fashion
designer, all woman coming from southern Maryland. She wore
clothes, robes and hats from Africa. Out of this darkness she had
a thing for the Ibibio man. When she finished with college, you
would find her in New York — off Broadway, maybe at the Papp
Theater, doing Shakespearean sonnets from the sounds of
blackness.

Distinguished Lena Horne look-alike, May had a mulatto
heritage; she was a Louisiana woman with an added dash of
Choctaw. With a smoldering fire that would never go out, she
was an education major who would take her books back to the
bayou children and teach them about the world of geography and
all the colors in it. A practical joker, she was into scrambling up
shoe laces, slapping a message on your back, hitting you in the
face with Jello and corny jokes. She even set up scheduled
pillow fight contests. She kept you loose when exams rolled
around and had a thing for the blue collar man. Corn husker skin
black men were her thing.

Daughters of the circle lay around speaking softly, gently
caressing the day of the takeover, trying to bring it all down,
trying to bring it all in.

Prue / Mammie Doll 181

Molly said, “Are we fools for doing this crazy shit?” She
combed her hair back as if to pull out the filth of the day.

Ida leaned up off her arms. “Don’t you think it’s too late
to ask that question? . . . You was the first to run.”

Rosemary looked at the faces in the circle. “There’s a
rumor going around the campus.”

Ida wanted to hear some gossip. “Girl, what’s the
rumor?” She was bored, didn’t want to think about her ma or her
nice feather bed.

“I hear they calling us the Mileston Hundred.” She
slapped Molly’s hand. “Huh! We all going to jail now.”

“Shit, it was worth it,” Vicki said. “These crackers think
they can get away with anything.” She rolled her eyes and
pushed her coat up under her chin, rubbed her sore butt.

Josie yawned under the half-shadow-lit hall. “Yaw shut
up.” She stuck her chin up off her sweater. “Seem to me, ya did
enough yapping today.” As she pulled her coat over her head,
she chewed on a piece of pizza crust.

“Ha ha ha.” Vicki laughed at her. “You eating free pizza .
. . since you kicked Lancaster in the ass when you came through
that door.” She pointed in the office. “Ha ha ha.”

May flung a new book down on the floor. “Fifteen
thousand down the goddamn drain.”

“We’ll be washing dishes the rest of our life . . . trying to
get out of this shit,” Ida told them as she checked out a broken
nail and bit it off.

Rosemary buttoned up her pink sweater. “Honey, if we
get kicked out I’m going to have to dance my way all the way
back to Maryland to pay these loans off.” She smiled up from the
floor as some people walked around.

“Child, the day our black asses came out our mothers . . .
our legacy was all about sacrifice,” Molly said with her hand
waving up to a silent church gospel tune.

Ida picked up her can. “We in the same boat, just like our
fathers and great-grandfathers before us.” She took a sip of
Coke. “Shit, nothing’s ever going to change. . . .”

Conviction came from Vicki’s mouth. “But you better
believe, we got one thing going for us here, today.”

Josie uncovered. “That’s what?”
“Just us,” Vicki told her with a cold shiver going through
her shoulders. She ducked under the mound of coats.
They all agreed.
Praising the power in numbers. Standing together arm in
arm. Setting up barricades, ready to take on baton and tear gas
blows.

Prue / Mammie Doll 182

Molly turned to Ida. “How long you think we going to be
here?” She got into a fetal position on the floor under her parka.

“As long as it takes,” Ida answered. “We aren’t some cult
they think they can shine some light on.” She stretched out her
legs. “Just remember . . . if any of you are ready to leave before
the vice president gets back,” pausing to look at their faces, “the
door is always open.”

May’s voice became willowy, tense. “How long you
think he can hold up before screaming for the SWAT team?” She
balled up like a kitten in her trench coat. “To shoot us.”

“Not long.” Josie came from under her coat. “But if a
can of tear gas comes through that window . . . I’ll be the first to
push him out of the window.”

Ida gave them a little saying. “Like my mother always
says . . . if you’re going to die, it betta be for something.”

Some more people went around the circle.
Rosemary checked her watch. “Damn! I can’t sleep.”
She started itching on the hard floor. “Well, he learned his
lessons today.”
“What’s that?” Vicki asked.
“Not to fuck with the Sesame Street generation.” They
laughed at her as she ducked under her coat.
May threw her knitted cap at her. “Child, you full of shit.
Ha ha ha ha ahhhhh.” She rubbed some tears from her eyes.
“Ahhhhh.”
Other students down the hall lifted their heads up. This
quieted them down from a day that just seemed to have exploded
in their faces.
“The thing that’s saved us for three hundred years hasn’t
been a psychiatrist’s couch,” Rosemary said solemnly. “All we
ever needed was a good dance beat.”
“Hey, it saved my life,” Ida said. “They don’t give us the
luxury of cracking up.”
Softly, just for them to hear, “It’s going to be all right,”
May told them, snuggling under her coats.
Amongst the whispers, Ida told them, “The struggle must
go on. . . .” She put her head down and covered up, to let her
dreams come.

***
Dead morning sun.
Empty mud-brown horizon, dressed up by homeless
campus trees. Helicopter wings fluttered above them all. Awake.
Awake to roaming roast coffee smells next to the president’s
office.
Stiff necks, shrieks came out of the windows at the cops
down below.