I'll tell you a tale 1

I'll tell you a tale when I was a kid growing up in 1950s St. Louis I knew many cares even as I was poorer then my mother and that is saying something one Christmas season it was raining in the winter dark my mother and aint Bea beauty her name who lived to be one hundred and three was going Christmas shopping and as a kids we were charged as if high on Mary Jane. Banana Splits Nut Chew next door there lived an old lady at the time the oldest lady that I knew an elder Miss Nancy who would baby sit us as sure to form she agreed to sit us mama and Bea was off into the night lit with Christmas lights in Miss nanny’s apartment it was a collection of a life of surrounding herself with memories an East Lake bed set a Queen Ann chair where she sit knitting a blanket over her lap and legs the room was dimly lit and full of the shadows of the night as we played at what we want for Christmas and what we thought that we would get I asked Miss Nancy if I could have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and she said I'll fit it after I putdown this heavy thing I went back to playing and forgot the sandwich when mama and Bea came home loaded down with bags and bags of hidden stuff mama discover that Miss Nancy sitting in her chair was dead I remember standing on the lime stone porch as some white men in brown uniforms rolled Miss Nancy out of the apartment the refection of the rotating red light reflected on rain glazed streets I learned at an early age that there was a peacefulness to dying just a matter of setting some heavy thing down