Notes from a Sharecropper's Daughter

AS LONG AS MAMA KNEW THAT SHE had me, had given birth to me, I still had my mother. Her words and her spirit could continue to be my foundation. Dementia on hold. I walked through the door of Mama's apartment, a one-bedroom on the seventh and top floor of a senior citizens building in Brooklyn. The seniors there called it the penthouse floor, a likely place for Mama, who sat upright in her burgundy recliner facing the door. A small, sturdy frame, shrinking with age, moist cinnamon skin, preserved well with Vaseline petroleum jelly. She was of the generation of Black women who wore wigs every day, escaping the rituals demanded to maintain kinky, curly Black hair. Mama was what we called a proper lady, although she discreetly dipped snuff every day, Railroad Mills, blue-and-white label. At the time many women in the rural South dipped snuff, a small ball of powdered tobacco tucked in her right jaw. Mama sat with a Maxwell House coffee can to spit in near her chair. She washed it out first thing every morning. Even with dementia, she dressed every day in a cotton print house dress, a brunette wig, Ella Fitzgerald style, and a little red lipstick.

“Hey, how you doing? What you up to?” I asked as I entered. She looked up and smiled as I entered but did not say anything. I moved in closer. “Do you know my name?”

Mama looked up at me. “I can't call your name right now, but I do know that I had you.” I took a deep breath; I wanted to hug her, but she was not the hugging type. I feared that one day she would not know me, that she would be with me in body, not the familiar spirit that had given me such strength to do all that I had done.

I smiled. “Well, since you have claimed me, I can tell you my name is Mary, your sixth child, and your baby girl.” I sat on the arm of her chair, throwing my legs over her lap. “Don't you want to show your baby some love?”

“Well, I hate you,” she replied, pushing me away with seemingly newfound strength. She stuck her tongue out at