A Piece of Mine

A Piece of Mine
Homemade Love
Some Soul to Keep
Family
The Matter Is Life
In Search of Satisfaction
Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime

Maxine Rosemary Lincoln Cooper, My mother.
One and only,
PARIS A. WILLIAMS
, My chile.
Joseph C. Cooper, My father.

My sisters and brother, Helen Shy Cooper,
Elvira Mitzi Walker and Joseph C. Cooper, Jr.

My Great and Grandmothers,
Marie Lincoln-Smith, Augusta Nero,
Addie Lovey Cooper.

My Great and Grand Aunts, Ellen, Clara,
Charlie Mae, Rebecca and Ruth.

Important others. Hazel, her daughter Patricia,
DeRethal and Opal,
Shirley Williams Ethridge, Mama.

All the female ancestors whose names I will never know. I regret knowing nothing about these important women in my life, whom I am positive, struggled to survive, which is the only reason I am here.

TO THE FUTURE

Kiska, Pamela, Lamont, Gigi, Teague,
Annette, Mia, Little Mimi, Landon, DeBoise,
Lavaundos, Joseph, Jr.,
And Me!

To Alice Walker and Robert Allen of Wild Trees Press, without whose encouragement and consideration my stories would still be sitting in a drawer, someday to be thrown out by someone saying, “These are useless.” I will never be able to thank them enough.

To Howard Morehead, photographer, for giving me my first book on the written word years ago.

Margo Norman and Shy Scott for listening.

Paris Williams, for all the support a mother needed.

—J.C.C
.

W
HERE
we live is not a big town like some and not a little town like some, but somewhere in the middle, like a big little town. Things don’t happen here very much like other places, but on the other hand, I guess they do. Just ever once in awhile, you really pay tention to what is going on around you. I seen something here really was something! Let me tell you!

Was a woman, friend of mind born here and her mama birthed her and gave her to the orphan house and left town. Her mama had a sister, but the sister had her own and didn’t have time for no more mouths, she said. So the orphan home, a white one, had to keep her. They named her “Mary.” Mary. Mary live there, well, “worked” there bout fifteen years, then they let her do outside work too and Mary saved her money and bought an acre of land just outside town for $5.00 and took to plantin it and growing things and when they were ready, she bring them into town and sell em. She made right smart a money too, cause soon as she could, she bought a little house over there at the end of the main street, long time ago, so it was cheap, and put up a little
stall for her vegetables and added chickens and eggs and all fresh stuff, you know. Wasn’t long fore she had a little store and added more things.

Now the mens took to hanging round her and things like that! She was a regular size woman, she had real short hair and little skinny bow legs, things like that, but she was real, real nice and a kind person … to everybody.

Anyway, pretty soon, one of them men with a mouth full of sugar and warm hands got to Mary. I always thought he had a mouth full of “gimme” and a hand full of “reach,” but when I tried to tell her, she just said, with her sweet soft smile, “maybe you just don’t know him, he alright.” Anyway, they got married.

Now he worked at Mr. Charlie’s bar as a go-for and a clean-up man. After they got married I thought he would be working with Mary, in the field and in the store, you know. But he said he wasn’t no field man and that that store work was woman’s work lessen he stand at the cash register. But you know the business wasn’t that fast so wasn’t nobody gonna be standing up in one spot all day doing nothing over that cigar box Mary used for a cash register.

Anyway, Mary must have loved him cause she liked to buy him things, things I knew that man never had; nice suits and shirts and shoes, socks and things like that. I was there once when she was so excited with a suit to give him and he just looked at it and flipped its edges and told her to “hang it up and I’ll get to it when I can,” said, “I wouldn’ta picked that one, but you can’t help it if you got no eye for good things!” Can you magine!? That man hadn’t had nothing!! I could see he was changing, done spit that sugar out!!

Well, Mary’s business picked up more and more and everybody came to get her fresh foods. It was a clean little store and soon she had a cash register and counters and soda water and canned goods and oh, all kinds of stuff you see in the big stores. She fixed that house up, too, and doing
alright!! But, she didn’t smile so much anymore … always looking thoughtful and a little in pain inside her heart. I took to helping her round the store and I began to see why she had changed.
HE
had changed! Charles, her husband! He was like hell on wheels with a automatic transmission! She couldn’t do nothing right! She was dumb! Called her store a hole in the wall! Called her house “junk!” Said wasn’t none of that stuff “nothing.”

But I notice with the prosperity he quit working for Mr. Charlie and got a car and rode around and walked around and played around! Just doing nothing! And when people go to telling Mary how smart she was and how good she doing and they glad she there, I heard him say at least a hundred times, “I could take $100 and nothing and have more than this in a year!!” Didn’t like to see her happy and smiling! I think he was jealous, but he coulda been working right beside her! When he married her it was his business, too! I heard her tell him that and guess what he answered? “I don’t need that hole in the wall with stuff sitting there drawing flies, I’ll think of something of my own!” Lord, it’s so many kinds of fools in the world you just can’t keep up with them!!

I went home to lunch with Mary once and he got mad cause we woke him up as we was talking softly and eating. Lord, did he talk about Mary! Talked about her skinny legs and all under her clothes and her kinky hair. She tried to keep it up but she worked and sweat too hard, for him! She just dropped her head deeper down into her plate and I could see she had a hard time swallowing her food.

Then, she try to buy him something nice and he told her to give it to the Salvation Army cause he didn’t want it and that he was going to give everything he had to the Salvation Army that she had picked cause it ain’t what he liked! Ain’t he something! Somebody trying to be good to you and you ain’t got sense enough to understand kindness and love.

She cook good food for him, too, and he mess with it and throw it out saying he don’t like her cooking, he feel like eating out! Now!

Just let me tell you! She want a baby. He say he don’t want no nappy head, skinny, bow-leg baby and laughed at her.

She want to go out somewhere of a evening, he say he ain’t going nowhere with the grocery bag woman!

I didn’t mean to, but once I heard her ask him why he slept in the other bedroom stead of with her one night—she had three bedrooms—and he said he couldn’t help it, sometime he rather sleep with a rock, a big boulder, than her. She came back in with tears in her eyes that day, but she never complain, not to me anyway and I was her best friend.

Anyway, Mary took to eatin to get fat on her legs and bout five or six months, she was fat! Bout 200 pounds but her legs was still small and skinny and bowed. He really went to talking bout her then, even in the store, front of other people. Called her the Hog! Said everybody else’s Hog was a Cadillac but his was his wife! And laugh! He all the time laughing at her. They never laugh together, in front of me, anyway.

So, one day Mary say she going to take care some business for a few days and she went off alone. He say “Go head, do what she want to do.” He don’t care bout what she do! “Do whatever!” Just like that! Whatever! Whatever! Didn’t finish it like other people do, like “Whatever you want to,” just, “Whatever!” I guess he heard it somewhere and thought it was smart to say it like that. Well, when Mary come back, I coulda fell out cause she brought one of her cousins, who was a real looker; long hair, big busts, and big legs and a heart full of foolishness. Maybelline was her name and she worked in the store all day, I can’t lie about that, she sure did help Mary, but where she got the strength, I don’t know, cause she worked the men all night! In three or four months she had gone through all the legible men in town, some twice, and then all the married illegible ones, some of them
twice too. She was a go-getter, that Maybelline. But, she did help Mary and Mary seemed to need more help cause she was doing poorly in her health. She was sighing, tired and achy all the time now.

But she still took care of her business, the paper work and all, you know. Once, I saw Charles come into the store and she needed him to sign a few things, if you please, and he took them papers and bragged to the fellas in the store that “See, I got to sign things around here to keep things goin.” He didn’t even read them, just waved his hand and signed them and handed them to Mary without even looking at her, like she was a secretary or something, and went on out and drove off with a big grin looking 50¢ worth of importance, to me anyway.

Well, Mary just kep getting worse off. I told her to see a doctor and she said she had in the big city and she had something they couldn’t cure but she wish I wouldn’t tell nobody, so I didn’t. But I felt so bad for her I loved her. I knew whatever was killing her was started by a heavy sad heart, shaking hands, a sore spirit, hot tears, deep, heavy sighs, hurtful swallows and oh, you know, all them kinda things.

Soon she had to stay home in bed. Wasn’t no long sickness though, I could see she was going fast. Near the end, one day I saw her out in her back yard picking up rocks and I knew the dear soul must be losing her mind also and I took her back in the house and tried to get her to let loose the rocks and throw them away, but she wouldn’t let go. She was sick but she was strong in her hands, from all that work, I guess, she just held on to them, so I said, “Shit, you ain’t never had too much you wanted to hold on to so hold the rocks if that what you want!” And she did.