Like Water Slipping Through My Fingers

Phyllistine Goode Poole

Description

“No use living if you can’t be happy,” says the main character, Delores. Her words are prophetic. In the meantime, free-spirited Delores works hard at having fun and brings the author, her teenage babysitter, Phyllis, along for the ride. Delores is not the kind of woman Phyllis' protective father and grandfather, a preacher with an eye for the ladies, approve of. That is, she is not a sweet little demure housewife. When her father-in-law complains that she is not acting like a lady, Delores counters, “To hell with ladies!” The author takes the reader on an initial joyful and unconventional journey and along divergent paths of family relationships, Jim Crowism, tragedy, loss, and love. The author says this book is payment for the debt she owes to Delores for her caring sisterhood when she was a young girl suffering a great loss and for the good times.

Sujets

• The Phone House
• Biography
• Happy
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 27 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781669871859
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Like Water Slipping Through My Fingers
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Phyllistine Goode Poole
 
Copyright © 2023 by Phyllistine Goode Poole.
 
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7183-5

Softcover
978-1-6698-7184-2

eBook
978-1-6698-7185-9
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Cover illustration by John Clinzo “Sonny” Goode, Jr.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 05/23/2023
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
846323
Contents
Dedication
Thank You
Foreword
 
1972
1963
Bound for Brooklyn: Escaping Sorrow
Memories and Mourning
Visitors, Welcome and Unwelcome:
That’s Delores
On the Stoop
Shared Sisterhood
Jimmy Remembers Daddy
A Terrific, Terrifying Time
A Pants-Losing Good Time
The Apollo: Taking Us to Loveland
Shopping, a Teenage Girl’s Dream
Down the Hudson River: Looking Good Was the Thing
Jimmy Didn’t Know about This No-No
Remembering the Bootlegger’s House
Remembering Lonnie
Delores Sends Me to Church
Another Special Dress
The South in Me
This, Too, Shall Pass
Little Mother
Mighty Melanin
Speak Back or Get Cussed Out
Dutiful
Integrated!
A Girly Magazine, Too
Summer Comes to a Close: “Send My Daughter Home.”
1972
Chicken Bone Express
None of My Business
Double-Standard Daddy
“He Found Out What Kind of Motherfucker I Was.”
New York Pop
Meeting Other Characters
Good Times: The Apollo, Etc.
“Lola’s a Fine-Looking Woman.”
Low-Hanging Cloud
Time to Mourn
“Girl, Get Out!”
They Knew!
Goodbye
Dedication
This story is dedicated to my family, to Delores, and to all who knew and loved her—especially her children, Lola, James, Diane, and Gerald, and her husband, Jimmy. With gratitude, love, and vivid remembrance, I dedicate this book to you.
Thank You
Shelia Payton for editing the first draft of this memoir after listening to it in your creative writing class and inspiring me to continue. Darlis and Marisa, my daughters, for editing a subsequent draft. Linda Hobson for your careful, thorough, and thoughtful editing. Emman, at Xlibris, also, for your careful, thoughtful and thorough editing. Louise at Xlibris for helping to deliver this baby. Richard at Xlibris for your patience and your timely attention and responses. Readers for having the open hearts and minds to look into the heart and mind of ano ther.
Foreword
Nudge from the Univ erse?
For too long, I have kept this story on a back burner. I am now bringing it forward, encouraged by a series of mysterious events. There was the “visit” from a writer, Folami. “It’s been a long time,” I said when Folami appeared. “Let me give you a hug.” She felt thin in my arms. It had been seven years since she died. She then took me to see a man who seemed to be performing experiments mixing chemicals at a long table. He poured something into a little metal cup and passed it around to the small audience. I didn’t hear anyone say anything or see anyone drink from the cup. When it was handed to me, I took a sip and discovered, “This is w ater.”
Next, Folami and I were seated on a bus. I looked out of the window and saw what appeared to be a small old-fashioned train station. Somehow, I understood that Folami would be getting off at the station, but I would not. This was my d ream.
When I lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Folami and I belonged to a writer’s group called New World Griots. The group shared our stories, and Folami admired my writing. She appeared in the dream while I was rewriting this story. I wonder why. We were not close or friends. Usually, when I dream about the deceased, they are friends or close relat ives.
Was Folami an emissary? Was the universe urging me to finally tell this story? Because of some other experiences in my life, I wonder if unseen agents of the Almighty work in our lives, nudge us, and give us hints about what is to come. Are agents at work in the releasing of this story that I have kept stored for almost forty y ears?
Versions of this story, on aged sheets of paper, written over these many years, have been stashed in drawers, a briefcase, a plastic bag, and a wooden produce box under my bed. Giving in to a pack-rat impulse, I picked up the box beside a dumpster at a fruit stand. It has “GrapeKing” in big white letters centered across one side.
Another “storage unit” is a little brown wicker chest in the corner near the head of my bed. In it lies a Barnes and Noble Booksellers plastic bag with a more recent version of my story. Several nights, after going to bed, I have heard a rustling sound coming from the bag though nobody has touched it, and I have never seen critters in the room. The window is closed, so no wind has blown in to account for the mysterious noise. It really doesn’t frighten me but makes me wonder, “Is something trying to tell me to get up and do this work, to let this story out?”
I have received help in writing this story. My thoughtful daughter Darlis surprised me with a Windows Millennium Edition computer. No more slashing out words and sentences, writing sideways in the margins, and circling and numbering and tearing pages in two to rearrange paragraphs. No more storing my pages in a box or a bag. I could now save and store and insert and delete and cut and paste at will with a point and click of the mouse and the touch of a few keys. It didn’t matter that my typing could stand some improvement, to say the least. I could now print out lovely, unblemished pages. I had a friend at my fingertips. After its years of useful service, I updated to a Dell fla t-screen model, and so the memoir conti nues.
And what I view as encouragement continued. One day, I opened a fortune cookie with this message: “Writing your life story will bring you prosperity.” Oh no! I cannot tell it all. That would be too embarras sing.
What was all this about? A message about my writing? Whatever it is, I am compelled to tell this story because of the debt I owe to Delores and her family—to Delores, to tell her story because of what she did for me—she brought fun, laughter, and care into my life when I was a young girl grieving for my father. I miss Delores and think about what her children and grandchildren have missed. And what she has missed. The Delores I knew would have been a fun and loving grandmother. Maybe in the story I am about to tell, her children will find some understanding of her and her final act.
1972
The Call: “Oh My God!”
On a cold, gray afternoon in late December in Greensboro, North Carolina, I had just set my luggage down on my bedroom floor when Mama called me to the den and handed me the telephone receiver. She looked puzzled. “It’s Ray,” she said. “He sounds str ange.”
Uncle Ray’s voice rushed at me. “Phyllis, she did it! She did it, Phyllis!” I knew he meant Del ores.
I had returned from visiting relatives in Brooklyn over the Christmas holidays. I had gone to New York specially to see Delores. Twelve hours earlier, Uncle Ray had seen me off when I boarded a bus at the Port Authority bus terminal, but he wasn’t calling to see if I’d made it home safely. I was still stunned by what I had discovered about Delores when a greater shock came through the telephone line.
I don’t remember what I said or how I reacted when he told me what had happened, but whatever I said or did startled Mama. She had gone into the kitchen and rushed back into the den. “What happened?” she asked and took the receiver fro m me.
“Ray, what’s going on? What happened? Oh, God! Oh my God!”
Delores had climbed, with twenty-three-month-old Patricia in her arms, to the roof of the eight-story apartment building where she lived and threw the baby off. Then she jumped. Her fourteen-year-old daughter, Lola, had followed her to the roof and saw it all. “It happened at three o’clock this afternoon,” Uncle Ray said. “They couldn’t move the bodies for an hour. They had to find Jimmy. He was out on his (postal) r oute.”
Lord, have mercy! We had tiptoed around Delores, and I hadn’t even thought to pray.
Delores’s husband, my cousin Jimmy, now retired from the post office, and the four surviving children, now grown, have moved from Brooklyn—Lola, James, Diane, and Gerald to North Carolina. I see Jimmy, Diane, and Gerald from time to time; but we don’t talk about Delores. I can’t, but I want the children and grandchildren to know about the old Delores I knew.
Why had Delores taken her life and also her baby’s life? If they don’t know why, maybe her husband, children, and grandchildren can find some answers in these pages. This is her story—and some of mine.
1963
Pop Said She Wasn’t All She Should Be: That Sounded Good t o Me
This story began on an eavesdropping spring night in Lowell, North Carolina, in 1963. After we children had gone to bed and they thought we were asleep, Mama and Daddy were in the kitchen discussing something they didn’t want us to hear as