Ma Ramon

Cave Canem: A Special Section

Ma Ramon would fall upon the floor feigning death at her children’s no’s when they were too grown to force the bending

M’ pa palé anglé, she’d say, no eenglees to tax collectors and those too dark to fall within her notice. She a grand lady of Abercrombie Street now the capital was under the Queen and not the rusted Republique. She did not believe in London, the pappy show that was the civil service, good jobs for brown faces behind a desk.

She believed in land. Her own mystical origins lay en la France, in red-haired green-eyed aristocrats escaping guillotines and egalité for seven mountains they would call their own and though she had to marry black for money she never forgot she was person of qualité.

She kept her parchment mother in lace and linen photographed herself with all her siblings maintained a piano in the parlor for butter-skinned suitors with Creole tongues to swirl the Castilian with dervish daughters petticoats twining with worsted knickers.

Eh ben,Lucretia, AlléEna, Oú çaJohn ViniVivi, Dansé, dansé, li beau, nuh?Mes belles enfants, my beautiful cream children.