Seizure

This was the winter mother told time by my heart ticking like a frayed fan belt in my chest. This was the fifties & we were living on nothing & what of her, the black girl, my own black nurse, what of her who arrived on Greyhound in the heart of so dramatic a storm it froze the sleeves at her wrists & each nostril was rimed with white like salt on a glass, what of her who came up the dark stair on the limp of her own bad ticker, weary, arrogant, thin, her suitcase noosed with rope, in the grip of a rage she came, a black woman, into our white lives, like a splinter, & stayed. Charming & brilliantly condescending, she leaned down to kiss “the baby,” & hissed my little princess& hushed the Jordan & set the chariots on the golden streets &Mother, I cried to her, & went out like a light.