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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY SYLVIA FREEMAN
Mixed Messages
a Southern Childhood
1 In my grandmother’s kitchen, Dora sang her favorite gospel hymns ‘He’s got you and me sister in His hands, He’s got the Whole World . . .’ she tied a red and yellow patterned scarf around her head scrambled eggs, fried bacon, made frying pan toast let me stir the grits, drop butter in to make them creamy. When I asked Mamaw why Dora always comes through the back she looked at me like I was crazy, whispered because she’s colored. So were some of the traveling musicians in my uncle’s jazz band who came in the front door, joked with Mamaw, ate dinner with us slept upstairs in big-windowed rooms, practiced for gigs in the music room, piano, standing bass, sax ‘It don’t mean a thing If It Aint’ Got That Swing’ floated down the hallway. Dora knew all the words swung her hips side to side, kneaded biscuits to the beat. She met the ice man, milkman, grocery man at the back door handed out food to the hungry waiting outside. I begged to go home with her, play with her daughter exactly my age but Mamaw said, No. You’d have to ride in the back of the bus walk to her house and she lives in a real bad part of town. 2 Mama worked at the front counter of a cleaners. They called it dry although I remember steamy heat fans blowing hot air both winter and summer smell of chlorine solvents that made my eyes water sweat dampened shirts stuck to the backs of black workers in the stuffy back room where they removed buttons, ornaments pre-treated garments by hand, Tetrachloromethane in the air, the water so toxic it corroded washers and dryers they loaded, unloaded.
SYLVIA FREEMAN’s poems have been published in storySouth, The Lake, Galway Review, Muddy River, and other venues. She is the 2018 winner of the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition from the North Carolina Writers’ Network, the 2018 Franklin County Arts Council Writer’s Guild Carolina Prize for Writing for Best Overall Poetry and a 2021 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize semifinalist. A native of North Carolina, she lives in Durham. Her photography – of writers and birds, in particular – has been featured in NCLR’s pages.
Winter 2022
