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The Masked Woman Momma is a big-boned woman, stands five-nine with a head full of used-to-be auburn hair. Black Irish. Years ago she wore a conservative bun. When loose it shimmied like oil, was dense as swamp marsh, was the extent of her extravagance. After her mother died she cared for the brothers, worked herself through school, married Daddy. I just loved him. Race didn't enter the equation, only age. She weighed the 30-year-fault & concluded she loved him enough to lose him. I have questioned her trying to ferret out some rabble-rousing. She was too old to be a hippie. Still, some act must account for us. Political? NOJI wasnJt political. At five when I asked, "When will the dirt wash off my skin?" she searched out the best public school in Detroit. Of Roper City & Country Day I remember only how white the children were, the bubbled domes of classrooms, saying goodbye to no one in particular. 8 This photo was taken in Alabama, Daddy's folks surrounding us, their black skins withered. Their storied music is lost to me. I was too young. Just a bright Black baby under a southern sky, extending Momma's hip. When I ask why the Afro wig & Curtis Mayfield sunglasses, she sighs sweet breath on my face, That~ just how it was. I didn't always wear it. In the car . .. well . .. silence and memory snatch at her eyes . . . down there, Daddy drove upfront & I rode in back with you, hidden. This is all she'll say. I take it greedily. When friends see the photo, colored folk flanking a light-skinned Cleopatra Jones. "Who's that pretty, light-skinned lady holding you?" they ask. My mother. She's my mother, I say. Isn't she striking. 9 ...

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