by Maxine Headd

Created on: July 15, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Mama's Prayer

I saw my Mother, her face sharp and pinched against the night sky as she was leaning over the soggy raised bank of a flooded river bed. The eroded sides of the river bed were deep, and the rock precipice she was using to stand on was not safe enough for her to be there. I cried piteously, to her in my little voice for I was only three years old. "Mom, please come back from the edge of the flooded river." We were afraid of the dark rushing waters that were seemed to be thrown up over the darkening sides of the river, as it overflowed the area where we were. We could see that the water was dark and abnormally flowing in its current stream bed. We didn't want to be there at all. The flooded rocky precipice we were standing on was deep, dark, and very slippery, but Mama wasn't listening to me. She had her own reasons for being there in the high blowing wind of the storming night. She was trying to throw a fishing hook into the flood waters. She was hoping to get a bite of fish for all of us to eat for our supper that night. It was raining harder and we were shivering and cold against the wind that blew. A miserable windy cold night with a hard cold rain. My little brother and I were worrying that she might fall in. She could be gone from us forever. I was holding onto mama's ragged dress tightly, with my other hand outstretched, to try and catch her if she leaned a little farther away from me. Then I guess she just gave up, because she gave us a longing sigh, and looked at both of us watching her carefully. We watched her sharp pinched face as it turned to us close up. "Well, if I quit trying now, you will only have corn meal and grease to eat for supper," she said. "They ain't nothin' else." she said flatly. We said, passionately to her and to ourselves. "It will be all right Mama, as long as you are there."

But she did not stop right away. Mama continued trying to catch whatever it was that she expected to catch there in the fast flooding route of the streaming river bed. She needed something to fix for supper. She had run out of everything that she had to cook that day, except a little corn meal, and a small bit of bacon grease. It had rained hard everyday this week. She and her husband had not been able to get into the fields to work for money. They never had any more than she actually needed to live. There were no backup accounts available for her to use. She had to make to do with what she had. Which was nothing to her? She had seven children

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>