Grocery Shopping With My Mother Lyrics

I got to go back to church again too, God is everywhere

But they need to accept God

That's what you should say

Dear God

Please do not

Take my mother

From me

Any time soon

I am not ready God

I do not know what

I would be without her

She has been my mother and my father

Since she pushed and pulled me through her earth

The way a jagged little pill

Shoves its way 'round the mouth of history

I love my mother like I love breathing air

Even when she bruises me

With her words with her rage

God, my ma has forever bruised me

With her words with her rage

When I was a horribly lonely only child

I did not understand why

She behaved as she did

But when she got sick

Lord, really sick

A few years back

I was terrified

Of losing my mother

I had her

Speed-dialed to the hospital

There in Jersey

And sprinted me

As fast as I could to be with her

Lawd Ma said

It was the first time

She had been in a hospital

Since she had given birth

And there she was

Flailing like a caught fish on a frosty metal table

In an off-white hospital gown

Her belly had

Swoll so big

It looked like she

Was pregnant with

Me another time

And that, God, is how it began

Our regular trips

To the grocery store

Because ma could not

Move without immense pain

Without waddling

Like a penguin

In the middle of a summer hurricane

Dear God

Dear God

Dear God

Dear God

Please help me

Dear God

My mother does

Not know that

I often walk behind her

On purpose

As she grabs

A pound of hamburger

A bag of sugar

A loaf of bread

A box of cereal

Aisle after aisle

My heart spills a bucket of suds

Aisle after aisle

My eyes spill two buckets of suds

Like that day she

Slid as a baseball runner would onto the floor Lord

In her senior citizen apartment

From her favorite chair

And it took my entire back strength

To boost my mother's plump frame

To get her up to her recliner

And before I could God

There we were one-two-three-four-five seconds

Her on the floor me on the floor

When she and I

Stared at each other

As we may have stared

At each other when I was

A scared baby and her a scared young woman

And in that very

Moment I wanted to tell

My mother what she meant to me

But could not because

My mother and I have never hugged

Have never kissed

Have never said I love you

And here I was the caretaker

Of a person who did not care to be touched by anyone

Dear God

My mother's legs throb bad

Ma religiously rubs ointments on them

Like she is scrubbing grime from her bathtub

She repeatedly refers to herself as being sick

She says she an old woman

She says she tired so so tired

She prays to you God from can't see to can't see

She says you Lord will work a supernatural miracle

And heal her body oh Lawd

She says blood of Jesus each chance she thinks of it

Like Jesus fixin' to be Superman

And jump off that prickly cross

My mother's altar

Is the shopping cart at the supermarket

She baptizes the handle with one of her wipes

She cusses at me

When I ask her to pull her mask over her nose

She smooshes

Her worn black purse into the child seat

Where I once drooped my skinny limbs

She clutches tight the cart

Says it helps her balance

Ma is afraid to fall

Ma ain't gonna fall in front of no strangers

My mother's power

Is in the steering of the shopping cart

She pushes it forward the way

A truck driver inches their tractor

Through bumper-to-bumper traffic

She wobbles slowly from the cart when she

Spots an item she needs Lord

Three peaches

Four red apples

Five bananas

A package of chocolate chip cookies

A bunch of collard greens

A carton of orange juice

Dear God

I straighten the crooked cart

That ma always leaves in the middle of an aisle

Hold my pocketbook

Watch my pocketbook

My mother chides me loudly

When she wobbles from the cart

Smashed inside her pocketbook

Are those wipes and tissue and

Cash and coins and her food stamp card

And clipped coupons lots of clipped coupons

And her crinkled grocery list

Neatly written

In blue ink

Ma has the list mainly in her head

But sometimes God glances at it

When her memory

Is a throwback to the beautiful little dark-skinned girl

On that porch in South Carolina

But they did not tell little

Dark-skinned girls God they were beautiful back then

My Lord, Ma thought only

White people and light-skinned Black people

Were good-looking

They did not tell

Little dark-skinned girls

They could be anything

So ma thought her life was

Munching the raccoon meat

Her desperate father shot and skinned

Life, God, was daddy beating her

And her three sisters and brother

And her mother

As if they were slaves on an auction block

Because life for every Black was one big beating

Ma thought life was signs and railroad

Tracks that told her

Where she could go

What her slipped joints could not do

Was being branded

"Tar baby" and "spade"

And "jiggaboo" and "spearchucker"

And ugly real ugly

By the local White folks

And the local Negroes too

Just because she was born tobacco brown like James Brown

Ma ain't know nothin'

About no sexism or no classism

Ma ain't know nothin'

About bell hooks or Toni Morrison or Alice Walker

But she knew, my mama, God, knew

Yes God, she knew

She was Celie before

Celie was Celie in "The Color Purple"

This

God

Is why

To this day

I believe my mother loves Whoopi Goldberg

Because when ma sees Whoopi in the movies

She sees herself crashing through

The broken glass of a dream deferred

This

God

Is why Black people got therapy sessions

We name

Field hollers

Spirituals

The underground railroad

The blues

Jazz

Church

Dance

The chitlin' circuit

Prayer circles

Funk

Hip-hop

Holy ghosts

Barbershops

Hair salons

Black Twitter

Talkin' in tongues

Laughter

The soul food

We squeezed between our chained ankles Lord

And transmitted with us from Africa to the plantations

Ma be sayin'

We don't know nothin' 'bout no Africa

We ain't African

Ma don't know Africa all up in her

Whenever she talks about the fish

She gonna lather and fry Lord

About chocolate cake God

She sacredly crowns with pecans

About potato salad

She will punctuate with sweet pickles

About wild and buttery cornbread

Surrounded and lassoed Lord from scratch

Dear God

Food is my mother's best friend God

Because my ma

Ain't got no friends

Except her sister Cathy and me

Food is my ma's best friend

But the food has left her body wretched

Like the planet

With diabetes

With high-blood pressure

With mysterious things God she won't discuss

Dear mother

You are real mysterious

With all those doctor visits

Like you're a bow-legged root woman

Plotting potions

While lurking behind a sabal palm tree

Dear mother

You are real mysterious

With the inflamed whip marks of your past

Held hostage in your bedroom drawer

Dear mother

You are real mysterious

While heavy living room curtains

Smother your sunlight and your loneliness

But you are not alone

You are not alone Ma

Ma, you are not alone

We are moon twins

Emotionally eating our way

To the promised land

You told me food is your happiness

You begged me Mother not to take away your happiness

I will not mother I will not

I see your beauty and your genius

In the way you boil the water

In the way you season the food

In the way you create kitchen magic

As you did when I was a boy

I smell the joy on your house dress

I feel the joy when you crunch and chew

I sense the divine, God, I miss it,

I feel it God, the divine,

When my mother, you, suck on that chicken bone

And I know, I know, I know Lord,

When the time comes

For God to look herself in the mirror

She will see you

Mirror

Such a long ways from home

When you gotta go grocery shopping again

This week I ain't gonna buy much

Maybe the following week or next month, you know