Excerpts from "How Prince Eldridge Got His Own"

Ms. Eloise Jackson

My boy stands with a proud, straight back against the foul smell of indignity.

He likes to play saint.

He sings the song of a free man, the song full of chariots and shouts of "Lawd, Lawd!"

He paints pictures in the sky for his momma, pictures dripping with the lush colors of sweet air, earth, and time.

He sings, like I said, but as no one else on this living earth can sing: deep, magnificent, belting tones that fly into the air like the rush of rain under clouds and over dust-just as loud, just as wet.

My boy carries with him half of me and half of his daddy.  His daddy, a black man, as black as the thoughts some men will carry, (if not on their sleeves than in their elusive hearts) loved me as his own, loved me as in the Song of Songs.

"Your eyes are doves," he'd said to me, "my doves in the clefts of the rock."

And I loved him, oh yes, my man! I loved him as my own.

And my baby boy came to me through an etch of stained glass, like the light that warms a room, like the light that gathers dust, forever changed because of the color it pushes between.  But it is beautiful.  I would stare at the color, the warm tinge of his skin, the deep deathless eyes, the straight black pins that are eyelashes, and remember a perfect love, such as I had.

No, my boy can do no wrong.

My boy sits on the rocking stone, staring, hearing the rancor mouths around him, patiently gathering and dropping every slur, every laugh, every sting into a grave dug fresh every day.

He does not know I know.  He does not know I share it with him.

For the day I allowed young Theodore Howe to love me my skin darkened, too.  It struggles, too, through glass stained red, yellow, and blue, and yes, black; stained and swirling into a menagerie too bold to imagine.  Too bold to see.

Do you know this boy?  Do you know how I struggle with you?

My boy sits now on a stilled stone, staring at bars that don't break under the emotion of those within.  My boy, my boy, He knows, don't you see?  Are you holding to Him, like you held to me?  He knows, he forgives, and He sees...my boy.

Sing it like the free man you are.

"When Paul and Silas were bound in jail,

do thy a-self no harm

one did pray and the other did sing,

do thy a-self no harm..."

I sit with you, Leroy.  I sit with you, and I am dark, like you.  I am proud, like you, I sing well, like you; I swim in hope that's a tepid-still pond, like you.

No, my boy can do no wrong.

If he can see his momma as she sees him now, ignore the salt water that streaks this face, ignore the wringing of the towel under trembling hands.  My body is of no consequence.  My body bore yours, and this body would lie down for you.  This body would wail for you.

Boy, stand straight to the eyes of those who are looking in.  Make no judgement of them, make no judgement of yourself.  Let the Lord judge, He who is the only one who may judge.   Wait and hope for me, my boy, your tired old momma, your sad old momma, straw purse in one hand, white gloves in the other, brown hat on her head.

Your momma is coming soon, boy, wait for me on your tired feet.

Wait for me on your tired feet, boy, your momma is coming soon.