The Government of Nature

Scrapple

39 Scrapple It was cousin Alvin who stole the liquor, slipped down Aunt Mabie’s steps on the ice, fresh from jail for some small crime. Alvin liked to make us laugh while he took the liquor or other things we did not see, in Aunt Mabie’s with her floors polished, wood she polished on her hands and knees until they were truth itself and slippery enough to trick you, Aunt Mabie who loved her Calvert Extra and loved the bright inside of family, the way we come connected in webs, born in clusters of promises, dotted with spots that mark our place in the karma of good times, good times in the long ribbon of being colored I learned when colored had just given way to Negro and Negro was leaving us because blackness chased it out of the house, made it slip on the ice, fall down and spill N-e-g-r-o all over the sidewalk until we were proud in a new avenue of pride, as thick as the scrapple on Saturday morning with King syrup, in the good times, between the strikes and layoffs at the mills when work was too slack, and Pop sat around pretending not to worry, not to let the stream of sweat he wiped from his head be anything except the natural way of things, keeping his habits, the paper in his chair by the window, the radio with the Orioles, with Earl Weaver the screamer and Frank Robinson the gentle black man, keeping his habits, Mama keeping hers, the WSID gospel in the mornings, dusting the encyclopedias she got from the A&P, collecting the secrets of neighbors, holding 40 marriages together, putting golden silence on children who took the wrong turns, broke the laws of getting up and getting down on your knees. These brittle things we call memories rise up, like the aroma of scrapple, beauty and ugliness, life’s mix where the hard and painful things from folk who know no boundaries live beside the bright eyes that look into each other, searching their pupils for paths to prayer. ...