on the line or down in the kitchen
speaking softly with her mother-in-law, Grace, missing
her own mama back home.
Maybe the car was packed and ready for the drive
back to Columbus—the place my father
called the Big City—now their home.
But every Saturday morning, they drove
the hour to Nelsonville and stayed
till Sunday night.
Maybe right before the phone rang, tomorrow
was just another day.
But when the news of my uncle’s dying
traveled from the place he fell in South Carolina,
to the cold March morning in Ohio,
my mother looked out into a gray day
that would change her forever.
Your brother
my mother heard her own mother say
and then there was only a roaring in the air around her
a new pain where once there wasn’t pain
a hollowness where only minutes before
she had been whole.
good news
Months before the bone-cold
Buckeye winter settles over Ohio,
the last September light brings
my older sister,
named
Odella Caroline after my uncle Odell
and my aunt Caroline.
In South Carolina, the phone rings.
As my mother’s mother moves toward it,
she closes her eyes,
then opens them to look out over her yard.
As she reaches for it,
she watches the way the light slips through
the heavy pine needles, dapples everything
with sweet September light . . .
Her hand on the phone now, she lifts it
praying silently
for the good news
the sweet chill of autumn
is finally bringing her way.
my mother and grace
It is the South that brings my mother
and my father’s mother, Grace,
together.
Grace’s family is from Greenville, too.
So my mother
is home to her, in a way her own kids
can’t understand.
You know how those Woodsons are, Grace says.
The Woodsons this and the North that
making Mama smile, remember
that Grace, too, was someone else before. Remember
that Grace, like my mother, wasn’t always a Woodson.
They are home to each other, Grace
to my mother is as familiar
as the Greenville air.
Both know that southern way of talking
without words, remember when
the heat of summer
could melt the mouth,
so southerners stayed quiet
looked out over the land,
nodded at what seemed like nothing
but that silent nod said everything
anyone needed to hear.
Here in Ohio, my mother and Grace
aren’t afraid
of too much air between words, are happy
just for another familiar body in the room.
But the few words in my mother’s mouth
become the missing
after Odell dies—a different silence
than either of them has ever known.
I’m sorry about your brother, Grace says.
Guess God needed him back and sent you a baby girl.
But both of them know
the hole that is the missing isn’t filled now.
Uhmm, my mother says.
Bless the dead and the living, Grace says.
Then more silence
both of them knowing
there’s nothing left to say.
each winter
Each winter
just as the first of the snow begins to fall,
my mother goes home to South Carolina.
Sometimes,
my father goes with her but mostly,
he doesn’t.
So she gets on the bus alone.
The first year with one,
the second year with two,
and finally with three children, Hope and Dell hugging
each leg and me
in her arms. Always
there is a fight before she leaves.
Ohio
is where my father wants to be
but to my mother
Ohio will never be home,
no matter
how many plants she brings
indoors each winter, singing softly to them,
the lilt of her words a breath
of warm air moving over each leaf.
In return, they hold on to their color
even as the snow begins to fall. A reminder
of the deep green South. A promise
of life
somewhere.
journey
You can keep your South, my father says.
The way they treated us down there,
I got your mama out as quick as I could.
Brought her right up here to Ohio.
Told her there’s never gonna be a Woodson
that sits in the back of the bus.
Never gonna be a Woodson that has to
Yes sir and No sir white people.
Never gonna be a Woodson made to look down
at the ground.
All you kids are stronger than that, my father says.
All you Woodson kids deserve to be
as good as you already are.
Yes sirree, Bob, my father says.
You can keep your South Carolina.
greenville, south carolina, 1963
On the bus, my mother moves with us to the back.
It is 1963
in South Carolina.
Too dangerous to sit closer to the front
and dare the driver
to make her move. Not with us. Not now.
Me in her arms all of three months old. My sister
and brother squeezed into the seat beside her. White
shirt, tie, and my brother’s head shaved clean.
My sister’s braids
white ribboned.
Sit up straight, my mother says.
She tells my brother to take his fingers
out of his mouth.
They do what is asked of them.
Although they don’t know why they have to.
This isn’t Ohio, my mother says,
as though we understand.
Her mouth a small lipsticked dash, her back
sharp as a line. DO NOT CROSS!
COLOREDS TO THE BACK!
Step off the curb if a white person comes toward you
don’t look them in the eye. Yes sir. No sir.
My apologies.
Her eyes straight ahead, my mother
is miles away from here.
Then her mouth softens, her hand moves gently
over my brother’s warm head. He is three years old,
his wide eyes open to the world, his too-big ears
already listening. We’re as good as anybody,
my mother whispers.
As good as anybody.
home
Soon . . .
We are near my other grandparents’ house,
small red stone,
immense yard surrounding it.
Hall Street.
A front porch swing thirsty for oil.
A pot of azaleas blooming.
A pine tree.
Red dirt wafting up
around my mother’s newly polished shoes.
Welcome home, my grandparents say.
Their warm brown
arms around us. A white handkerchief,
embroidered with blue
to wipe away my mother’s tears. And me,
the new baby, set deep
inside this love.
the cousins
It’s my mother’s birthday and the music
is turned up loud.
Her cousins all around her—the way it was
before she left.
The same cousins she played with as a girl.
Remember the time, they ask,
When we stole Miz Carter’s peach pie off her windowsill,
got stuck in that ditch down below Todd’s house,
climbed that fence and snuck into Greenville pool,
weren’t scared about getting arrested either, shoot!
nobody telling us where we can and can’t swim!
And she laughs, remembering it all.
On the radio, Sam Cooke is singing
“Twistin’ the Night Away”:
Let me tell you ’bout a place
Somewhere up-a New York way
The cousins have come from as far away as Spartanburg
the girls in flowy skirts that swirl out, when they spin
twisting the night away.
Cousin Dorothy’s fiancé, holding tight to her hand
as they twist
Cousin Sam dancing with Mama, ready to catch her
if she falls, he says
and my mother remembers being a little girl,
looking down
scared from a high-up tree
and seeing her cousin there—waiting.
Here they have a lot of fun
Puttin’ trouble on the run
Twistin’ the night away.
I knew you weren’t staying up North, the cousins say.
You belong here with us.
My mother throws her head back,
her newly pressed and curled hair gleaming
her smile the same one she had
before she left for Columbus.
She’s MaryAnn Irby again. Georgiana and Gunnar’s
youngest daughter.
She’s home.
night bus
My father arrives on a night bus, his hat in his hands.
It is May now and the rain is coming down.
Later with the end of this rain
will come the sweet smell of honeysuckle but for now,
there is only the sky opening and my father’s tears.
I’m sorry, he whispers.
This fight is over for now.
Tomorrow, we will travel as a family
back to Columbus, Ohio,
Hope and Dell fighting for a place
on my father’s lap. Greenville
with its separate ways growing small
behind us.
For now, my parents stand hugging
in the warm Carolina rain.
No past.
No future.
Just this perfect Now.
after greenville #1
After the chicken is fried and wrapped in wax paper,
tucked gently into cardboard shoe boxes
and tied with string . . .
After the corn bread is cut into wedges, the peaches
washed and dried . . .
After the sweet tea is poured into mason jars
twisted tight
and the deviled eggs are scooped back inside
their egg-white beds
slipped into porcelain bowls that are my mother’s now,
a gift
her mother sends with her on the journey . . .
After the clothes are folded back into suitcases,
the hair ribbons and shirts washed and ironed . . .
After my mother’s lipstick is on and my father’s
scratchy beginnings of a beard are gone . . .
After our faces are coated
with a thin layer of Vaseline gently wiped off again
with a cool, wet cloth . . .
then it is time to say our good-byes,
the small clutch of us children
pressed against my grandmother’s apron, her tears
quickly blinked away . . .
After the night falls and it is safe
for brown people to leave
the South without getting stopped
and sometimes beaten
and always questioned:
Are you one of those Freedom Riders?
Are you one of those Civil Rights People?
What gives you the right . . . ?
We board the Greyhound bus, bound
for Ohio.
rivers
The Hocking River moves like a flowing arm away
from the Ohio River
runs through towns as though
it’s chasing its own freedom, the same way
the Ohio runs north from Virginia until
it’s safely away
from the South.
Each town the Hocking touches tells a story:
Athens
Coolville
Lancaster
Nelsonville,
each
waits for the Hocking water to wash through. Then
as though the river remembers where it belongs
and what it belongs to,
it circles back, joins up with
the Ohio again
as if to say,
I’m sorry.
as if to say,
I went away from here
I’m home again.
leaving columbus
When my parents fight for the final time,
my older brother is four,
my sister is nearly three,
and I have just celebrated my first birthday
without celebration.
There is only one photograph of them
from their time together
a wedding picture, torn from a local newspaper
him in a suit and tie,
her in a bride gown, beautiful
although neither one
is smiling.
Only one photograph.
Maybe the memory of Columbus was too much
for my mother to save
anymore.
Maybe the memory of my mother
was a painful stone inside my father’s heart.
But what did it look like
when she finally left him?
A woman nearly six feet tall, straight-backed
and proud, heading down
a cold Columbus street, two small children
beside her and a still-crawling baby
in her arms.
My father, whose reddish-brown skin
would later remind me
of the red dirt of the South
and all that was rich about it, standing
in the yard, one hand
on the black metal railing, the other lifting
into a weak wave good-bye.
As though we were simply guests
leaving Sunday supper.
our names
In South Carolina, we become
The Grandchildren
Gunnar’s Three Little Ones
Sister Irby’s Grands
MaryAnn’s Babies
And when we are called by our names
my grandmother
makes them all one
HopeDellJackie
but my grandfather
takes his sweet time, saying each
as if he has all day long
or a whole lifetime.
ohio behind us
When we ask our mother how long we’ll be here,
sometimes she says for a while and sometimes
she tells us not to ask anymore
because she doesn’t know how long we’ll stay
in the house where she grew up
on the land she’s always known.
When we ask, she tells us
this is where she used to belong
but her sister, Caroline, our aunt Kay, has moved
to the North,
her brother Odell is dead now,
and her baby brother, Robert, says he’s almost saved
enough money to follow Caroline to New York City.
Maybe I should go there, too, my mother says.
Everyone else, she says,
has a new place to be now.
Everyone else
has gone away.
And now coming back home
isn’t really coming back home
at all.
the garden
Each spring
the dark Nicholtown dirt is filled
with the promise
of what the earth can give back to you
if you work the land
plant the seeds
pull the weeds.
My southern grandfather missed slavery
by one generation. His grandfather
had been owned.
His father worked
the land from dawn till dusk
for the promise of cotton
and a little pay.
So this is what he believes in
your hands in the cool dirt
until the earth gives back to you
all that you’ve asked of it.
Sweet peas and collards,
green peppers and cukes
lettuce and melon,
berries and peaches and one day
when I’m able, my grandfather says,