Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange

Author:Ntozake Shange
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312198992
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

16

At first when faced with the funerals, the two diminutive caskets set in the middle of the room, Elma found comfort in the collection of old women mourners from her church. With their rambling talk offering remedies for her condition, they seemed by their own longevity to hold death back. “Liver, ginger, and some tonic, baby,” one elder counseled. “Don’t bind ’em to you till they passed the sixth year,” added another. “Take that baby boy of yours outside. He’ll do jus’ fine. You will have your family yet,” the last solo voice added, accompanied by the choir, “Uhn hmm, yes, that’s right.” Yet . . . there my daughters lay. Stiff curls, powdered skin, painted lips, Elma mused sadly, China dolls. The ritual circle of Bethel A.M.E. women with their wrinkled, down-turned eyes, so consoling when she thought she could not face the day, reminded her of Mah Bette. Old women, Elma thought, dismissing her sorrow as something that would dissolve like sugar in a hot cup of tea.

“No m’am, thank you. I cannot eat another one, Miss Tavineer.” Elma feigned a smile, eschewing the last of her downstairs neighbor’s crystal plate of cinnamon rolls. The weekly prayer circle that had tried to ease Elma through her children’s illness and death was now reduced to one, Miss Tavineer, who lived on the second floor of the four-story Tenderloin walk-up Elma called home. Because the older woman often watched her surviving son, Jesse, while Elma ran her daily errands, she patiently suffered the woman’s company and talentless baking. “Seems the whole congregation, all the good colored folk movin’ on to Harlem,” Miss Tavineer muttered, then heaved a sigh. “Now even the church itself.”

“Yes, they’re making fine progress. It’s hard to believe the groundbreaking was only last spring,” Elma replied. “Raymond tells me they’ve already started on the chapel interior.” She added with a tight-lipped Cheshire smile, “He designed it, you know.”

“It was hard enough getting down to 15th Street,” Miss Tavineer grumbled and shifted in her seat. “I don’t know how I’ll make it to 135th. I don’t know how you manage, raisin’ a child with such troubles on your own in a city as difficult as this. Jesse’s gettin’ so heavy, I cain’t hardly cart him up and down those steps. Maybe you should take the boy and go on back home, least for the rest of the winter.”

Elma stood, indicating that the conversation was done, and saw her neighbor to the door. “You needn’t cart him, Miss Tavineer. I will drop him off and come to fetch him myself as need be, if you can still oblige lookin’ after him from time to time. I’m sure Raymond and I will soon be able to provide some compensation for your trouble.”

In her weekly letter to Lizzie, Elma reiterated the conversation, emboldening her speech. “No sirree! I told her. We’ll not be goin’ back south for a while, or anytime.” Elma resented the old woman’s intrusive advice. Of course she

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