greyhound bus station 1950
bea
the gift shop’s salesclerk
wore the scent of virginia
on her feet
she walked hard
like farmhands do but she
was beginning to understand
northern habituals
going to beauty shops
buying greens at foodbarn
dropping her ah rahs
but jim crow wouldn’t leave her alone
he kept showing up when she
tried on sassy chartreuse hats
with 9 inch feathers bowed around
the brim (for wednesday five o’clock service
at enon baptist)
lucky brown cosmetics
reddish savoy pumps at florine’s
the may company’s policy did not allow
grease stains on the merchandise
so she stepped over to sapphire’s brims
we crown colored heads
at the station she left the change for white
customers on the counter black skin leaches
yet her pride was in the display:
travels with white aunts
see new york city on a dollar a day
but she knew her station
arrived here at 19 to attend a colored
school for colored women
the stationmaster felt a colored salesclerk
would better serve their customers as
as a domestic in the back like her ride
up south
In Virginia
In Virginia’s room
Her own
Peruvian lilies light her desk
With carefully placed pens
Bought with her own words
The groovings in the desk waxed by
Pearline who at noon serves Earl Grey
In a pink apron carrying pink teacups
Laced with lemon on its pungent lip
Delicate woman-sized treats for swooning
Pearline moves to the door to bring in the silk road porcelain tub
Camphor, salts and tints-of-violet to balm Virginia’s tuckered feet
Unbend the curvature of Virginia’s back the enamored covetous prose
In Virginia’s own
Pearlie she calls bring my notebooks and more tea
Pearline walks hard into the kitchen to draw the fires prepare domesticity
For the writer who needs a room of her own to subordinate her muse
Her maid who labors for Miss Virginia’s ownness, her roominess
Virginia says the room frees her from the tyranny of man
Her men, planters and industrialists
Pearline is asked to stay late to prepare refreshments for her writer friends
To collect their wet coats and dry them by the hearth
And pleasantly waitress their personalities
Pearline agreeable prepares the table embosses it with fairies
and musing mermaids tapered flickering
Nights when Pearline walks to her bus stop fresh from clanking silver goblets of drink
She has never tasted goes to the butcher for the leftover shanks of meat closest to
The guts of its porcine body for her own family’s stewed victuals
At home she draws the fire for her children’s nightly bath
Washes clothes for school on the morrow, braids their hair
After all and sundry has been cared for she walks to the pallet she shares
And thinks of Virginia’s ownness the ownness that she
Pearline keeps pristine from the tyranny of mistress Virginia’s men
the hierarchy of humanity
we rotate
luminous on the muddy rubes
bright beside the dreamscape
a free so violet against the
intended fog i am sensuous
before the auction while the
crowd watched on jubilee we
are humming against this land
the birth is hard all arid
within the skin of restraints i
violate and redden the
hierarchy of
humanity
***
Photograph of Cynthia Parker-Ohene by Briana Ohene.
