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FICTION Pride Cometh Before a Fall ROCHELLE LYNN HOLT "Pride comedi before de fall," Mama said when I aksed her why she done name me so. I was thinkin' dat meant when leaves turn red. "Dat night in November yur daddy fled when I announced, 'Inside me yur seed grow.' Pride cometh before de fall," Mama said, wonderin why I aksed 'bout everything dead, in school 'n prakticly everywhere I'd go. I was thinkin' dat meant when leaves turn red, ponderin' 'bout lost souls in de books I read, shot deer 'n squirls hit by cars on de road. "Pride cometh before de fall," Mama said, complainin' 'bout nother talkin' mouth to feed while I be rejoicin' each inch I grow cuz I's thinkin' dat meant when leaves turn red. Den Mama toi me she ne'er be wed 'n some preachin' 'bout "You reap what you sow." "Pride cometh before de fall," Mama said. I was thinkin' dat meant when leaves turn red. But I'm not eleven years old any more, and I know my name Pride has nothing to do with the leaves turning color on the cherry, oak, or sycamore before all fall to the ground. I'm seventeen, and I want to be a poet despite the fact that Mama says, "Poets don't make no money nohow. [Meridians.-Jeminism, race, transnarionalism 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 253-64]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 253 What good all dat edkation be if'n yu don't make money?" Mama wants me to find a rich man and marry so I won't have to struggle all my life like she's had to do raising me last and six other children before. Every one of my brothers and sisters is grown and gone up North to make a better living supposedly, but none ofthem has sent any checks back to us or written even a single letter about how they're doing. Mama says she doesn't want me to make the same mistakes she made. "Givin it 'way forfree beforeI donejumped de broom," she's always harping , using that old slave term which had something to do with becoming engaged or even getting married without a preacher or anyone as far as I understand. I guess I want to make my Mama and myselfproud that she named me Pride. You know, make the name a virtue, not a vice like a deadly sin or something because Missus Zyrna always says, "It's good to take pride in your work, have pride also in who you are." That's why I'm struggling to become a poet, to make something of myself with words, because I learned about Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, and I just gotta be a poet or I'll die. Chastity My older sister is named Chastity, because my Mama said that's what she lacked "Dat night I gave away my body free," Mama touched her head, "dis brain was done cracked." Mama always smiled and wore a white dress; I believed she was as pure as North snow. "When de men want more," she said, "jive 'em less." This was the year when I began to flow. She lied to me that daddy died in war. I made a reason then why he was gone. But Mama told me, "You don't have no Pa." I didn't know he had done Mama wrong. "All yu chillun are fatherless lost souls," Mama explained, insisting we have goals. 254 ROCHELLE LYNN HOLT I wrote that sonnetwhen I was thirteen, and I thought Mama would be proud when I announced I wanted to enter it in Rust High's Writing Contest, but she wouldn't let me. "Don't wanna have the whole world knowin' our bizness," she shouted, but nobody heard on account of it was thundering that afternoon when I came home with my books and the application for the contest Mama made me burn. I wasn't too happy, being the only daughter left on our little patch of cotton and all since Chastity had leftafter her baby son was born...

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