Mammy, Summer 1959

Mammy

For a short time we had a maid. Her mornings

were spent in front of the Philco exercising

with Jack Lalanne and throwing low-spoken bids

at The Price is Right. Meanwhile, laundry collected

sharp wrinkles and dust bred families of its own.

We called her Mammy. Maybe not even twenty,

she could have been the model for the Aunt Jemima

bottle.  Her favorite snack was the fluffy ice scraped

from inside the freezer, formed into a snowball

and topped with a ragged piece of raw bacon.

I rode with my father to take her home, bouncing

over an unpaved lane to a long row of clapboard

shacks held together by the heavy stink of marsh.

All needed painted, all had rockers on the porch,

the steps of one loaded with beer-drinking men.

She came to the Studebaker’s back window

and patted my head. As the red powder and grit flipped

from the heels of her sandals I thought of the men,

and how the clink of bottles and bursts of sound

were not unlike the busy porch at our little white house.