Momma Dee

From the day she was born Momma Dee had rarely been alone. At first she was one of a crowd of howling babies hanging from her mother’s breasts and hips. When barely old enough to tie her shoes, she’d been given most of the responsibility of raising brothers and sisters; children born beyond the time their mother had the will or the energy to care for.

One of them, a brother named Bill, was the first to call her Momma Dee. Too young to pronounce her given name he’d given her another one. Soon her original name was forgotten, even as her own mother began to call her Momma Dee. Now that she was old, there were only a few of that original generation who remembered she’d ever been called anything else. Though to tell the truth, none of them remembered what that original name was, that she had ever been young, had dreams, or had wanted more out of life than what had been given her.

With her salt and pepper hair in two great braids which hug down her shoulders Indian-style, and hands strong and firm like knotty pines that smelled of Ivory soap, cooking grease and honey brown baked biscuits, she was as busy and bountiful as she’d been when she was young. While others cut themselves in pieces, trying desperately to conform to whatever current trend was in vogue, like a forgotten leaf lost in a forest of the same, Momma Dee was wonderfully unique. She was beautiful, but not in the way that those whose opinions of beauty were formed in magazines or in movies. Her skin, the color of morning coffee with just enough cream to give it a silky delicious warmth, was firm and soft like a stone worn smooth by rushing water. Barrels of bulbous brown fat held and had held generations of children, who happily nestled in the warm, musky softness of her.

Her arms, house and heart were still full of children. Some of them had come to her through own blood, body, passion and sweat, but most had journeyed from other bodies and other beds and, except for Momma Dee’s kindness, would have been either homeless, lost in the mire of bureaucracy or dead.

“Not as long as I’m livin’,” Momma Dee would say when such thoughts crept into her mind. “As long as the good Lord gives me the strength whatever child needs a home has got one.”

The shadow of the once carefree gingham smiling child that she was sometimes still peeked through the lines that life had left on her round and welcoming face. But years passed quickly, too quickly for Momma Dee, who knew that for most of her ever-growing brood the world was going to be an especially hard place to feel at home in. But beyond giving them a home there was little she could do. She’d learned long ago that where children were concerned there were no guarantees. After years of watching and hoping, luck was all she could wish them as they grew and left her one by one. But as soon as these got it into their heads to leave, why there were new ones, some only a few hours old for her to care for.

Most of her “babies” were given to her by their own mothers. This majority being the offspring of her generosity as many of the girls she’d raised would leave; have a “time,” then return to deposit their children at her door. Some came back to reclaim their children, but most had disappeared back to the streets which now claimed them. The boys, except for a few who occasionally came to help her around her place, simply pushed themselves away from her table one day and walked out of her door. Generations had marched in and out of her life in that same way since her mother had first given her the mantle of mothering so many years ago.

The house she lived in was not fine, had not been painted in years, held the heat in summer, and was abandoned by it in winter. Its floors were lined with buckets when it rained, and its windows were sealed shut with plastic when it snowed. But beyond its obvious inadequacies it was a haven; for Momma Dee’s house, run down as it was, smelling of soap, shitty diapers, vomit and plates full of masterfully prepared food, with a tin roof that beat out the rhythm of the songs that God sent with the rain, was filled with love.

“That oil hot yet, Lila?” she called to a girl of about ten years old who had come to her, not like any of the others, but on her own after being through something she wasn’t able to speak about.

“Yes ma’am, Momma Dee. It’s good and hot.”

Momma Dee’s feet, swollen from a diet of salt-pork, and hours standing over a stove, ballooned all the way up to where her tightly rolled and knotted stockings left permanent red indentations around her knees. She’d spent her life on her feet. Walking. Endlessly walking across a floor, a field, to church meetings and back, through hospital corridors, and to the grocery store where those who looked like her, were tolerated, but never welcome. She did not step lightly. Weight and arthritis forced her to move in an ungraceful weaving gait, as her whole body shifted from side to painful side, while she dragged herself uneasily, yet with a pride born from knowing that each step she took and, each breath that escaped her, crowned her as conqueror.

She only owned one pair of good shoes; black patent leather Oxfords that her feet were usually too swollen to even think of fitting into. So instead she either put on moccasins that she’d worn so much that the deerskin had become tattered torn up fringe, or a pair of faded beyond pink flip-flop slippers (a gift one of her “babies” had given her several Christmases ago) that she wore around the house, for short trips to the market and anywhere she had the strength to travel to.

Momma Dee tried to rise from her chair so that she could better supervise Lila, but this was one time that age and aching bones were too much for even her to do battle with. So she sighed, temporarily gave up the battle, and remained seated. “Well I guess today’s the day you’re gonna learn how to make frybread,” she saying waving Lila towards the table. “Come get this dough, child, and place the pieces in that hot oil carefully. You don’t want none to splash out and burn you.”

Momma Dee’s eyes followed and savored every step that Lila made across the floor. Apprehension and pride rose and fell like disturbed cakes in a noisy kitchen. This child, who followed her like a weary shadow, had become especially dear to her.

She closed her eyes listening to the hiss-gurgle the oil made. The sounds of good food being prepared were something she’d loved since the womb. There was something magical about it. This simple sound could fill a room full of children without her uttering one word. Of course she knew that the anticipation of savoring this bread had been born in that bubbling oil, still she felt a sense of something beyond all that.

She smiled.

“Whose turn is it to set the table?” she said, as one of the girls raised her hand. “Then get to it, child. The foods almost ready!

“The rest of you best get washed and ready right quick!” she said to the remaining children before returning her attention to Lila. “Be careful now. Turn that heat down a bit, you don’t wanna get burned.”

While gripping the arms of the chair and hoisting herself up enough to watch Lila take a fork and carefully flip the dough as the agitated oil sizzled, revealing the wonderful brown color of it, Momma Dee couldn’t help remembering the countless faces and names of all those who had also come to claim a special place in her heart. Though she loved all of her babies, there had been those throughout the years who, for some reason or another, had come to mean more to her than the rest. Whether it was that they, like Lila, had come from a particularly bad situation, or whether it was the way their faces lit up when Momma Dee entered the room, these children were the ones who bade her tired body to keep living. These were the children who’d helped her understand the language of little souls, and it was for them that she’d begun a certain ritual long ago.

Every evening she’d look around the table carefully scanning each face for mischief or lack of seriousness.

“Hold hands,” she commanded, watching as each child reached out, grasped their neighbor’s hand, and continued to do so until a circle of tiny hands and round faces surrounded the table.

“Who are you?” she asked, scanning each face.

“I am a precious gift of God!” all of the little voices cried out in unison.

“And what else?” she said, now peering into each pair of eyes.

“I am wonderfully and fearfully made!” they all cried.

Then she’d sit back and sigh as hopes impossible and not looked back at her from around the table.

“And who, besides God and Momma Dee, do you believe in most in this world?”

“Myself!” they all shouted.

“Amen,” said Momma Dee, praying that they were saying more than words. That they believed and that what she was teaching really meant something to them.

“Amen,” they repeated.

“Now eat.”

She knew it wouldn’t be enough for most; the deep furrows on her face told that story. Looking at Lila as she forked the last of the frybread onto a large wooden plate, Momma Dee remarked to herself how the journeys her life had traveled were told and retold in the lumps and valleys of kneaded dough, as if she, pressed hard and flat, had somehow still found the determination to rise.

“How’s this Momma Dee?” Lila asked as she proudly held the platter.

“You done good, child. You done real good.”