Louisiana Lament

New Orleans (in accordance with Eddie’s rule). Then she’d done the same in Memphis, to no avail. She could do a nationwide search for anyone named Mozelle Winters, and maybe she should. She could just call them all, one by one. Mozelle was an odd name—there probably weren’t that many. But then again, Mozelle might be married, or married again.
    She was in a kind of daze when she arrived home, completely focused on something that shouldn’t have concerned a woman who had a performance to do that night. Actually, she was just reading at a restaurant and bar down on Carrollton Avenue, something she did at least once a month. But she thought of all her readings as performances. It befitted a baroness.
    Without even taking off her jacket, she pulled out a phone book and looked up “Winters.” She couldn’t have said why; maybe just to verify that the words
Mozelle
and
Winters
didn’t appear together in print. There was an M. Winters, but she already knew that from calling information, had already called that number. But there was no Mozelle.
    However, she learned something from this simple act—something important. Common as it sounded, Winters was no competition for Johnson or Smith. There was only a column and a fourth of Winterses. Quickly, she counted them. About seventy-five.
    Doable. Very doable. She could simply call them all and ask for Mozelle. The idea excited her—turning up a relative was really the best thing that could happen when you were looking for a woman, since you could never depend on women to keep the same name. This, she’d long since learned, was one of the most frustrating things about detective work.
    She had worked her way from Alan through David before she realized she had to pull herself together—had to get a few minutes rest, forage something to eat, and find a fabulous outfit. Something orange, she thought. She had an orange T-shirt she could wear with a great African-print, sarong-type skirt she’d ordered from the Essence catalogue. What she really needed to go with that was a turban, but it was too late to make one. She started rummaging. Hmmm. A tie-dyed orange and yellow scarf. Very turban-like when properly tied. And a multi-strand brown bead necklace. That should do it. Her outfit figured out, it was time for a ten-minute nap. Ever since she discovered those little bean bags for your eyes, she’d become a great cat-napper. She lay down with the bag on her eyes, but it wasn’t thirty seconds before she was up and scribbling.
    Three Sisters
    What’s a sister, anyhow?
    Someone you raised with?
    Somebody black?
    Somebody African-American?
    (Thank you, Brother,
    I be BLACK if I want to.)
    Maybe she got chains on her wrist and
    She white as a Celt and
    She touch me.
    She touch my body like a mama touch a baby.
    And I feel the pressure of her hands
    And I feel the muscles of her hands
    And I feel the muscles of her love
    And I feel the muscles of her dread.
    And I feel her dread.
    And I feel
her
.
    And I feel her dead.
    She died my lifetime ago (though not hers)
    ’
Cause we kill her, my mama and me.
    We got our reasons; oh, yes
…
    We got ’em, child Corey.
    Anybody kill
—
    they got reasons, don’t they, honey?
    Don’t they, sweet baby?
    Let me help you, precious.
    But don’t you say that “S” word.
    Don’t you do that now.
    You say that word, child
—
    You utter those innocent syllables,
    Mama feel her pressure rise in her vessels
    Like a horse
    Rarin’ with that rider on it (You know the one.)
    Big brother drop his scalpel;
    World
    tilt on its axis.
    Me
    I got my private things to think.
    I got a sound like thunder and a river like blood;
    I got things that can make that child a orphan;
    And don’t you mention it, now.
    Uh-uh, no. Not ever.
    Not how
    They ate her alive, my sister;
    Not how they bit her and chewed her
    Not how they spat her and shat her.
    Not how her own kin
    Devoured her,
    (and not out of too much love, either.)
    And certainly not
    how they hunted her down.
    And not
…
    How they did it again.
    In her death
    they did it again.
    And my sister was born yesterday.
    But my sisters are dead…
    All three.
    And I miss them.
    All three.
    And I love them.
    All three.
    (Or maybe I do)
    And I hate at least two
    And this poem is for Babalu.
    The poem was purely impulse; the reading had been planned for months, ten poets lined up to perform. Six of the ten read poems for Babalu.

Chapter Thirteen
    Into the belly of the beast, she thought as her