dear Mama

Dear Mama,

It’s Tuesday noon. Taylor hasn’t come home yet. The sun’s beating down on this metal roof something fierce. Taylor said she could get us some kind of green plastic roofing and build us some shade, but I told her we can’t have this place looking like anything other than a broken-down camper. She said “Yeah” and got real quiet like she does and then said, “Yeah, well, but that don’t mean we can’t cool it off on the inside, now does it?” She says she might know how to get us some power, at least hook up a fan and maybe that old cooler so we don’t have to keep hauling ice. Last night she went and borrowed us a battery from that wrecked Pontiac Firebird Jimmy just hauled in. Now she’s out getting some wiring, and, if I know Taylor, probably also stealing a book to tell her how to do it. You just don’t ever know with Taylor what she really knows and what she says she knows, but you can always count on her figuring something out.

I know, Mama, you don’t like her stealing. I know you think she’s nothing but trouble for me, but her and Jimmy and J. Edgar, they’re like my family now, at least in the flesh. But Mama, I worry about Jimmy. He’s doing good, all clean now, running his business.

But ever since he started hanging with the Panthers, working in that free breakfast program, the police have been all over this place. I don’t understand, Mama. When he was dealing dope, they left him alone, but now that he’s clean and doing something good, they’re here all the time, shaking him down, rousting his car, sitting across the street watching him. It scares me, Mama. And Jimmy, he can’t talk to you like I can, so I don’t even know how he gets by.

Mama, when you died, a hole opened up so big I just fell in, screaming, crying like a baby, and when you wouldn’t let me go with you, me and the world, we just turned each other inside out and now that hole is deep inside me, a screaming tear right where my heart’s supposed to be. I don’t know how to be in this world without you, Mama, and you won’t let me come be with you, so what am I supposed to do? I know the white girl’s trouble, Mama, you didn’t raise no fool, but she also saved my life. That girl’s got my back, and you know she treats me good. That white girl’d risk her life for me, Mama. I know, I know—if she don’t get me killed first.

Like that time she tried to teach me how to ride freight trains and I wouldn’t go with her up to Santa Barbara where she knew the yard, knew the bulls, knew the tracks. “There’s trains right here,” I said. “Why do we have to go up to Santa Barbara? You know that town’s crawling with white people.” And she said, “Yeah, well, I just ain’t never caught a train here before. But, hell, we can try.” And we watched and she asked the bums and we hid from the bulls and then this long silver train came sliding real slow down the tracks and Taylor said, “Okay, this is it, remember what I told you,” and we ran toward an empty boxcar with its door cracked open and I caught a good grip and swung myself up just like she said and a minute later she came tumbling in after me and the train picked up speed and we crawled up against some packing blankets and she turned and I leaned back into her, her legs gripping my hips, and the train was rumbling faster and faster and her arms were wrapped tight around my chest and the hole in my heart was filled with our laughter and for once the screams were silent.

Of course, then the blankets moved on the other side of the boxcar and we both jumped up with our knives, scaring the pants off some old orange-headed guy with a bottle and a nasty-looking beard. “Whatchu doing here?” Taylor hollered out, making her voice all low like she does when she is scared or wants to sound like a man.

“I’m sleeping, or trying to,” said the guy. “What are you two doing here?”

I watched Taylor relax her grip on the knife, lowering it back toward her boot. She knows how to read crazy white people better than I do, so I followed her lead. “We’re heading north,” she said. “Gonna jump just outside of Pajaro when the train slows down.” Then the man coughed and spit out his wine laughing and that’s how we found out not only were we not headed north, but we’d somehow hopped on the Grey Ghost, a train which the old guy said did not stop or slow till it got to Texas.

Now, Mama, I know you know what happened next, because I called your name more times in the next forty-eight hours than a girl should in a lifetime. Called it soft and low as we stood in the doorway watching the tough desert ground rush past in a night blur; called it screaming loud as we jumped into the dawn sky when the damn train finally slowed for a grade; called it cursing as we walked the ten miles toward what the old guy thought might be the direction of a town; and Mama, I called it in desperate prayer as we hid in corners, dumpsters, and finally curled inside a dryer of an all-night Laundromat, running from the three white town boys with baseball bats, chasing us down, calling, “Hey kitty, kitty, kitty, here pussy, pussy, pussy, hey nigger, nigger, nigger.”

Next morning Taylor snuck out to a café and talked a truck driver into giving us a ride out of there. Yeah, Mama, talking wasn’t all she did to convince him, but hey, she got us back home, didn’t she?

Anyway, I gotta go now, Mama. I hear J. Edgar barking and I think Taylor might be back. We’ll see if she can get that fan working, cool things off a little. Just give Taylor a chance, okay, Mama? You know she cares about me. You know there’s a lot worse out there. I know she’s a mess, Mama, but hey, like you always say, maybe that white girl like to get me killed, but she sure as hell ain’t gonna get me pregnant.