8
DAUGHTERS, SISTERS AND MOTHERS
Introduction
So much of the lives of families seems to be built on letting go; departures and transformations, changes through growth and changes by death.
Emily Dickinson’s letters dealing with her father’s death are infused with as much a sense of transformation as of loss. Each of the pieces shifts in tone about midway, as her perspective changes and she samples a broader vision—of idealized gardens, “Home,” and immortality itself.
For the former slave, “Puss,” the recollection of her mother’s last day on earth is one glorious captured moment, full of pride, respect, and the fighting spirit that is her legacy. Lucille Clifton’s Memoir is an even richer statement of family history and Black pride, funny and scary at the same time, pivoting around her father’s tall tale of seduction, murder, and punishment. There is a marvelous opportunity here to play Daddy, to take on some elements of his speech or behavior, and then to drop it all for the personal commentary that follows.
In The Warriors the two Native American sisters share memories of their Uncle Ralphie in an easy, reassuring manner that scarcely prepares the listener for the magnitude of the lesson they have learned from him, making this selection especially effective as a teaching tool.
Wintermelons, Marian Yee’s good-bye to her Chinese heritage and her mother, is a curious mix of memory, hard tactile detail, and estrangement. Recollections of lovemaking contrast with images of gardening, rendered immediate through repeated references to palms of hands. And Karen Wolman’s Jewish mother in Telling Mom is an expert at “parental density.” How aware is she really?
The forms by which mothers communicate with their young children are inventive and, by necessity, most often entertaining. I have chosen to include a selection of what I believe are lesser known anonymous rhymes and proverbs from the Victorian collection, Pinafore Palace, to be used not only as recitations for children, but also as refreshing transitional pieces for adult presentations, even for auditions. They tend to be disarmingly artless and wise, and most are so broadly lyrical that they inspire a degree of fun and flamboyance uncommon in most other types of monologue material. Some, like I had a little pony and Solomon Grundy are mostly about sounds and repetitions. Others present games or paradoxes, sometimes—as with Three children sliding on the ice—involving unexpected hints of darkness. The simplest and grandest is Our Mother, a lovely salute to the natural mother of us all. Other poems for children that share many of these qualities include Christina Rossetti’s Who has seen the Wind, a teasing quiz; Abbie Farwell Brown’s punning Learning to Play; and Eliza Lee Follen’s The New Moon, a nursery rhyme that achieves a scale to which, unfortunately, only children usually aspire.
Dinah Craik’s Philip, My King is an adoring anthem to her baby boy, projecting an exemplary life as well loved of woman, a leader among men, and spiritually triumphant, while Mirra Lokhvitskaya’s My Sky takes a gentler, more mystical approach to the same subject.
One of the few pioneer women to become literate, Jane Cannary Hickock looked up words in her dictionary in order to write to her daughter. Her unposted letters—she arranged to have them given to Janey only after her own death—are a treasure trove for monologue hunters, filled with the concerns, observations, feelings, and facts that give a true sense of time and place, shot through with dramatic pathos. They are a great story, nothing short of mythic, and each installment is all the more riveting for being true.
Emily Dickinson Father Does Not Live with Us Now
We were eating our supper the fifteenth of June, and Austin came in. He had a despatch in his hand, and I saw by his face we were all lost, though I didn’t know how. He said that father was very sick, and he and Vinnie must go. The train had already gone. While horses were dressing, news came that he was dead. Father does not live with us now—he lives in a new house. Though it was built in an hour it is better than this. He hasn’t any garden because he moved after gardens were made, so we take him the best flowers, and if we only knew he knew, perhaps we could stop crying.
The Last Afternoon that My Father Lived
The last Afternoon that my Father lived, though with no premonition—I preferred to be with him, and invented an absence for Mother, Vinnie being asleep. He seemed peculiarly pleased as I oftenest stayed with myself, and remarked as the Afternoon withdrew, he “would like it not to end.” His pleasure almost embarrassed me and my Brother coming—I suggested they walk. Next morning I woke him for the train—and saw him no more. His Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists. I am glad there is Immortality—but would have tested it mysetf—before intrusting him.
Home is so far from Home, since my Father died.
Anonymous Oral Testimony of a Former Slave
My mother was the smartest black woman in Eden. She was as quick as a flash of lightning, and whatever she did could not be done better. She could do anything. She cooked, washed, ironed, spun, nursed and labored in the field. She made as good a field hand as she did a cook. I have heard Master Jennings say to his wife, “Fannie has her faults, but she can outwork any nigger in the country. I’d bet my life on that.”
The one doctrine of my mother’s teaching which was branded upon my senses was that I should never let anyone abuse me. “I’ll kill you, gal, if you don’t stand up for yourself,” she would say. “Fight, and if you can’t fight, kick; if you can’t kick, then bite.” Ma was generally willing to work, but if she didn’t feel like doing something, none could make her do it. At least, the Jennings couldn’t make, or didn’t make her.
On the day my mother died, she called pa and said ... “Go tell Master Jennings to come in, and get all the slaves too.”
Pa went and returned in five minutes with old master.
“Fannie, are you any worse?” said old master.
“No, no, Master Jennings, no worse. But I’m going to leave you at eight o’clock.”
“Where are you going, Fannie,” Master Jennings asked as if he didn’t know that ma was talking about dying.
Ma shook her head slowly and answered, “I’m going where there ain’t no fighting and cussing and damning.”
“Is there anything that you want me to do for you, Fannie?”
Ma told him that she reckoned there wasn’t much of anything that anybody could do for her now. “But I would like for you to take Puss ... she always called me Puss ... and hire her out among ladies, so she can be raised right. She will never be any good here, Master Jennings.”
A funny look came over Master Jennings’ face, and he bowed his head up and down. All the hands had come in and were standing around with him.
My mother died just about eight o’clock.
Lucille Clifton from Generations: A Memoir
“Harvey Nichols was a white man,” my Daddy would say, “who come South after the war to make money. He brought his wife and family down and bought himself a house and everything. And it was close to the Sale place and all the slaves had stayed there after emancipation because they said the Sales was good people, but they had just changed their last name to Sayle so people would know the difference. And this Harvey Nichols saw Lucy and wanted her and I say she must have wanted him too because like I told you, Lue, she was mean and didn’t do nothing she didn’t want to do and nobody could force her because she was Mammy Ca‘line’s child and everybody round there respected Mammy Ca’line so much. And her daughter Lucy had this baby boy by this Connecticut Yankee named Harvey Nichols. They named the baby Gene Sayle. He was my Daddy, Lue. Your own grandfather and Mammy Ca’line’s grandson. But oh, Lue, he was born with a withered arm.
“Yes, Lord, he was born with a withered arm and when he was still just a baby Lucy waited by the crossroad one night for Harvey Nichols to come to her and when he rode up on a white horse, she cocked up a rifle she had stole and shot him off his horse and killed him, Lue. And she didn’t run away, she didn’t run away, she waited right there by the body with the rifle in her hand till the horse coming back empty-saddled to the stable brought a mob to see what had become of Harvey Nichols. And when they got to the crossroad they found Lucy standing there with the rifle in her hand. And they didn’t lynch her, Lue, cause she was Mammy Ca‘line’s child, and from Dahomey women. That’s what I believe. Mammy Ca’line got one of the lawyer Sale family to defend her daughter, cause they was all lawyers and preachers in that family. They had a legal trial and Lucy was found guilty. And hanged. Mammy Ca‘line took the baby boy Genie and raised him and never let him forget who he was. I used to ask her sometime, Mammy, was you scared back then bout Granma Lucy? And she would look right at me and say ‘I’m scared for you, mister, that’s all.’ She always called me mister. She said I was Mister Sayle. And Lue, I always was.”
And Lucy was hanged. Was hanged, the lady whose name they gave me like a gift had her neck pulled up by a rope until the neck broke and I can see Mammy Ca’line standing straight as a soldier in green Virginia apart from the crowd of silent Black folk and white folk watching them and not the wooden frame swinging her child. And their shame making distance between them and her a real thing. And I know she made no sound but her mind closed around the picture like a frame and I know that her child made no sound and I turn in my chair and arch my back and make this sound for my two mothers and all Dahomey women.
Later I would ask my father for proof. Where are the records, Daddy? I would ask. The time may not be right and it may just be a family legend or something. Somebody somewhere knows, he would say. And I would be dissatisfied and fuss with Fred about fact and proof and history until he told me one day not to worry, that even the lies are true. In history, even the lies are true.
And there would be days when we young Sayles would be trying to dance and sing in the house and Sammy would miss a step and not be able to keep up the music and he would look over in the corner of the room and holler “Damn Harvey Nichols.” And we would laugh.
Anna Lee Walters from The Warriors
Momma reported to me that the funeral was well attended by the Pawnee people. Uncle Ralph and I had said our farewells years earlier. Momma told me that someone there had spoken well of Uncle Ralph before they put him in the ground. It was said that “Ralphie came from a fine family, an old line of warriors.”
Ten years later, Sister and I visited briefly at Momma’s and Dad’s home. We had been separated by hundreds of miles for all that time. As we sat under Momma’s flowering mimosa trees, I made a confession to Sister. I said, “Sometimes I wish that Uncle Ralph were here. I’m a grown woman but I still miss him after all these years.”
Sister nodded her head in agreement. I continued. “He knew so many things. He knew why the sun pours its liquid all over us and why it must do just that. He knew why babes and insects crawl. He knew that we must live beautifully or not live at all.”
Sister’s eyes were thoughtful, but she waited to speak while I went on. “To live beautifully from day to day is a battle all the way. The things that he knew are so beautiful. And to feel and know that kind of beauty is the reason that we should live at all. Uncle Ralph said so. But now, there is no one who knows what that beauty is or any of the other things that he knew.”
Sister pushed back smoky gray wisps of her dark hair. “You do,” she pronounced. “And I do, too.”
“Why do you suppose he left us like that?” I asked.
“It couldn’t be helped,” Sister said. “There was a battle on.”
“I wanted to be one of his warriors,” I said with an embarrassed half-smile.
She leaned over and patted my hand. “You are,” she said. Then she stood and placed one hand on her bosom and one hand on my arm. “We’ll carry on,” she said.
I touched her hand resting on my arm. I said, “Sister, tell me again. What is the battle for?”
She looked down toward the fence where a hobo was coming through. We waved at him.
“Beauty,” she said to me. “Our battle is for beauty. It’s what Uncle Ralph fought for, too. He often said that everyone else just wanted to go to the Moon. But remember, Sister, you and I done been there. Don’t forget, after all, we’re children of the stars.”
Marian Yee Wintermelons
Why are you standing there, Mother,
alone in the garden?
What is there behind the shy palms
of leaves that glow like white
wings in the moonlight? Come to bed—
these are only your melons.
Every summer you’ve planted wintermelons,
fussing there as if you were their mother,
smoothing the stems into their beds.
I’ve thought of you in your garden
when I was alone in distant places
and had only the wind to hold between my palms.
Once you held out your calloused palms
and talked of working among the rows of melons
grown at home in China. Here, where all is foreign
do you remember your own mother
as she bent to whisper charms over her garden?
You’ve kept those whispers—I’ve heard you listening.
Those words are in movement,
though today you sift bonemeal between your palms
and spread lime around your garden:
your words bring forth the melons.
Yet we haven’t spoken much for years.
When I told you that I loved a foreign
man, you said that I was foreign
too. The first time I went to bed
with him, I wondered what you would say,
whether you knew the touch of palms
upon your breasts. Have you known
all along of this hidden garden?
Though I’ve left behind your garden
to discover things still new
to me, I always return to your melons
shaped in moonlight, round, imbedded
in their net of vines. Let me rest my palm
here a little longer. Tomorrow I am leaving, Mother.
Karen Dale Wolman from Telling Mom
“Ma, the reason I called—”
“Your cousin Joanna will be calling you soon. She wants you to be one of the bridesmaids.”
... I listen to her with half an ear, wondering exactly how I’m going to tell her: Ma, I’m in love with Renee, Ma, I’m gay, Ma, can I bring my girlfriend home for Sunday dinner?
None of them seem right, so I stall.
“The wedding’s not for eight months, but there’s a lot of work to be done. You have to try on dresses, go for fittings. Do you want to bring a date with you?”
I go for the opening. “You remember Renee who I keep talking about, Ma?” Renee sticks her head out of the bedroom and gives me a thumbs up and a bright smile. I fall in love all over again every time I see that smile.
“The writer, you mean? The one who does magazine articles?”
“Yes. That’s her.” I am surprised she remembers, surprised that she had listened so closely when I talked about Renee.
“We’re living together now. Renee moved in with me.” I hold my breath, waiting for the fireworks.
“I never did like the idea of you living alone in the city. Your rent is so high, maybe now you’ll be able to save some money.”
I never imagined that she wouldn’t understand. Mom has always been very astute, very quick to grasp what hasn’t been said.
I try again. “We’re sharing the bedroom.” Still no reaction. “Mom, she’s very important to me.”
“Good, good. Is she a nice girl? I never did like your friend Wendy. She seemed like trouble right from the beginning.
Wendy hasn’t been mentioned in years. Does Mom know that she was my first girlfriend in high school?
“Renee’s not like Wendy, Mom. You’ll like her.” Renee is still standing in the doorway, questioning me with her eyebrows. I shrug. I’m not sure if Mom understands.
Before I know it, Mom’s back to talking about the family. I can’t let her do this. I’ll never get the nerve to tell her again.
“I haven’t finished telling you about Renee yet.” I take a deep breath and oxygen blasts the words across the wires. “Ma, I love Renee.”
“That’s good. She sounds like a nice girl. You’ll have to bring her to dinner one night.”
I hold the phone between my shoulder and my chin as I shrug at my mother’s incomprehension.
“Does she like brisket or should I make chicken? So many people won’t eat red meat these days I never know what to cook for company.”
“Ma, it doesn’t matter what you cook. It’s not important.” “You don’t want your mother to make a good impression on your friend?”
Why this time do the subtleties of my words escape her? When I try purposely to be vague she cuts right to the point, but this time, when I need for her to know, she refuses to understand.
“Does she like salad?”
“Mom, stop talking about food. Can’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Renee is my girlfriend. We’re lovers. I’m gay.”
She doesn’t even pause for air. “So,” the words come across the wire, bridging the miles and the years, “is she Jewish?”
“Ma,” I say, before hanging up, “make the brisket.”
Kate Douglas Wiggins and Nora Archibald Smith, editors from Pinafore Palace
I had a little pony,
His name was Dapple-gray,
I lent him to a lady,
To ride a mile away;
She whipped him, she lashed him,
She rode him through the mire;
I would not lend my pony now
For all the lady’s hire.
Six little mice sat down to spin,
Pussy passed by, and she peeped in.
“What are you at, my little men?”
“Making coats for gentlemen.”
“Shall I come in and bite off your threads?”
“No, no, Miss Pussy, you’ll snip off our heads.”
“Oh, no, I’ll not, I’ll help you to spin.”
“That may be so, but you don’t come in!”
Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea,
Silver buckles on his knee;
He’ll come back and marry me,
Pretty Bobby Shaftoe.
Bobby Shaftoe’s fat and fair,
Combing down his yellow hair;
He’s my love for evermair,
Pretty Bobby Shaftoe.
I’ll tell you a story
About Mary Morey,
And now my story’s begun.
I’ll tell you another
About her brother,
And now my story’s done.
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday.
Buried on Sunday,
This is the end
Of Solomon Grundy!
Three children sliding on the ice
Upon a summer’s day,
As it fell out they all fell in,
The rest they ran away.
Now had these children been at home,
Or sliding on dry ground,
Ten thousand pounds to one penny
They had not all been drowned.
Ye parents all, that children have,
And ye that eke have none,
If you would keep them from the grave,
Pray make them stay at home.
The man in the wilderness asked me,
How many strawberries grew in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good,
As many as red herrings grew in the wood.
If all the world were apple-pie,
And all the sea were ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What would we have for drink?
I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg, and a golden pear.
The King of Spain’s daughter came to visit me,
And all was because of my little nut tree.
I skipped over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds of the air, they couldn’t catch me.
If you sneeze on Monday, you sneeze for danger,
Sneeze on a Tuesday, kiss a stranger;
Sneeze on a Wednesday, sneeze for a letter;
Sneeze on a Thursday, something better;
Sneeze on a Friday, sneeze for sorrow;
Sneeze on a Saturday, joy tomorrow.
When the wind is in the east,
‘Tis good for neither man nor beast;
When the wind is in the north,
The skillful fisher goes not forth;
When the wind is in the south,
It blows the bait in the fishes’ mouth;
When the wind is in the west,
Then ’tis at the very best.
Girls and boys, come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day;
Leave your supper and leave your sleep,
And come with your playfellows into the street.
Come with a whoop, come with a call,
Come with a good will or not at all.
Up the ladder and down the wall,
A halfpenny roll will serve us all.
You find milk, and I’ll find flour,
And we’ll have a pudding in half an hour.
Hundreds of stars in the pretty sky,
Hundreds of shells on the shore together,
Hundreds of birds that go singing by,
Hundreds of birds in the sunny weather,
Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
But only one mother the wide world over.
Christina Rossetti Who Has Seen the Wind?
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is pass
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Abbie Farwell Brown Learning to Play
Upon a tall piano stool
I have to sit and play
A stupid finger exercise
For half an hour a day.
They call it “playing,” but to me
It’s not a bit of fun.
I play when I am out of doors,
Where I can jump and run.
But Mother says the little birds
Who sing so nicely now,
Had first to learn, and practice too,
All sitting on a bough.
And maybe if I practice hard,
Like them, I too, some day,
Shall make the pretty music sound;
Then I shall call it “play.”
Eliza Lee Follen The New Moon
Dear mother, how pretty
The moon looks tonight!
She was never so cunning before;
Her little two horns
Are so sharp and so bright,
I hope she’ll not grow any more.
If I were up there
With you and my friends,
I’d rock on it nicely, you see;
I’d sit in the middle
And hold by both ends;
O, what a bright candle ’twould be!
I would call to the stars
To keep out of the way,
Lest we should rock over their toes,
And there I would rock
Till the dawn of the day,
And see where the pretty moon goes.
And there we would stay
In the beautiful skies,
And through the bright clouds we would roam;
We would see the sun set
And see the sun rise,
And on the next rainbow come home.
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Philip, My King
Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my king!
Round whom the enshadowing purple lies
Of babyhood’s royal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand
With love’s invisible sceptre laden;
I am thine Esther to command
Till thou shalt find a queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my king.
On the day when thou goest a-wooing,
Philip, my king!
When some beautiful lips ’gin suing,
And some gentle heart’s bars undoing
Thou dost enter, love-crown’d, and there
Sittest love-glorified. Rule kindly,
Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair,
For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,
Philip, my king.
Up from thy sweet mouth—up to thy brow,
Philip, my king!
The spirit that here lies sleeping now
May rise like a giant and make men bow
As to one heaven-chosen among his peers.
My Saul, than thy brethren taller and fairer,
Let me behold thee in future years!
Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
Philip, my king.
—A wreath not of gold, but palm. One day,
Philip, my king!
Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way
Thorny and cruel and cold and grey:
Rebels within thee, and foes without,
Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious,
Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout,
As thou sit’st at the feet of God victorious,
“Philip, the king!”
Mirra Lokhvitskaya My Sky
The sky and all the delights of the sky I see
In my child’s sweet face—and I cannot tear my eyes
away ...
Innocent angel, by chance fallen to the earth,
How much happiness you’ve brought! Child, how dear you
are to me!
The wind gusts and your curls flicker with gold,
They glisten ’round your dear tiny head like a halo,
You’re just like a little cloud, drenched by the light of dawn,
Pure like the forest lily-of-the-valley—May’s charming
bloom!
With a gentle caress your deep blue eyes
Look into my soul and seem like the color of the sky,
Darkening for an instant before a spring storm ...
I contemplate the sky in your gaze, child!
Where is that land of which our fairy tales murmur?
I’d carry you in my arms to that wondrous realm,
Silently, barefoot on sharp stones would I walk,
If only to spare you—the thorns of earth’s path!
God! When You sent me a child, You opened the sky for
me!
My mind was cleansed of vain, petty desires!
Into my breast You breathed new, mysterious powers!
In my burning heart You kindled—the flame of immortal
love!
Jane Cannary Hickok from Calamity Jane’s Letters to Her Daughter
May 30 O Janey I did hate to come back here. Why couldnt I have stayed with you & Daddy Jim? Why didnt he ask me to stay? I was so in hope that he would but darling your mother is a misfit in a home like you have—or what can be wrong? I had such a lovely time there. Why cant I ever be anybody worthwhile. I likely will end up in the poor house in my old age. I am so discouraged. One consolation I shall always know you are alright & I thank God for your Daddy Jim. I gave him $10000 to use for your education. There will be more in that old gambling tent for me when Luck again comes my way. I met Abbott on the street. He asked me for the price of a meal. I gave him my last 50 cents. My pocket book looked so empty where only such a short while ago there could have been counted thousands that I tossed it out in the street. Abbott promised me a job in Deadwood so I’m hitting the trail to that place soon. I’ll never forget that party & will always think of you when I got my first glimpse of you that day when your Daddy Jim called you in to meet me & when you asked me why I cried & I told you that you reminded me of a little girl I once knew & I told you of how she sailed away on a big ship & never came back to me & you said “my Daddy Jim & I sail on big ships to across the ocean lots of times. Once Mammy Ross & I went with him to Singapore, that’s in China you know & we gave the beggar children American gold, poor little starved things. Their clothes were all rags & I could see their ribs sticking out & their hands were like little bird claws & their faces looked just like a starved kitten Daddy Jims sailors found below in the steerage. I couldnt eat my dinner that night. They made me feel sick for their eyes were poked out.”
Then your Daddy Jim left us alone, remember Janey & you told me about the women on your Daddys ship & you mocked them makin eyes at him. 0, you were so comical then & when I asked you where your mother was & You said “My mother is dead. She died a long’ time ago. She was Mother Helen O‘Neil” & I said “0, I see” & then it was that I held you close Janey & it seemed for one moment I was back again with you in those terrible heart breaking days in Yellow Stone Valley faceing life without your own Father a future black & tragic for you darling. Then your Daddy Jim came. I know God sent him to me. & there I was in Omaha & watched the train carrying you away & then that letter from Helen O’Neil telling me you had gone out of my life forever for they had gone to England. I thought that was the end & that I would never see you again & there I was in your house in Virginia with you in my arms. You were such a little lady, darling, & I have never seen a little girl with so many pretty dresses. 0 I shall always remember when I looked back after I got in the cab & saw your Daddy Jim take you by the hand & you both waved goodby til the horses turned the corner shutting you from my sight. It will be years so many of them before I will ever see you again. Be good to Mammy Ross. She is so nice to you. That is what I wanted to tell you but didnt. There will never be for you the awful lonliness of empty years ahead Janey never as long as you have Mammy Ross & your Daddy Jim. How I wish I could say I had seen those countries where he has taken you. I hope you will think of me sometimes & of the things I told you so you would remember the woman your Daddy Jim called Jane & of the man I told you about we called Wild Bill Hickok, & you said “what a funny name” & when I showed you his picture you said “he isnt handsome like my Daddy Jim.” There is nothing in this world quite so wonderful as the faith a child has in one they love. When you said your prayer that night to me you added “God bless Jane Hickok & that man who was shot in the back wherever he is. Bless him because Jane loved him.” I wondered how you knew that I loved him.
Good Night little girl & may God keep you from all harm.
