Mama

Today, I am at Mama's house. I am sitting in her chair at her kitchen table and writing about what she meant to me. Next to me and my writer's pad is a check.

Pay to the order of Marcus Howard, it reads. My name is written in her handwriting and her sprawling signature is in the bottom left-hand corner. The check is written for the amount of fifty-thousand dollars. I do not understand how Mama could have saved so much money, nor why she would want to give it to me. I must have been the worst disappointment in all of her life and yet she has done this for me.

No one could deserve to have Mama's money less than me. I am filled with shame. It is the shame that causes me to write today.

I was never much of a writer until I went to prison. A man has plenty of time to write in prison. Plenty of time to contemplate his deeds and plenty of time to take responsibility for his actions and his life. Most of my cellmates did not take advantage of this time. They were too busy running games and hustles or worrying about what the Man was up to.

If it weren't for Mama, maybe I would have been among them. But because of her influence, I could not reconcile participating in such petty activities. If Mama had been in prison, she would have spent her time praying to her God and searching for self-understanding. It would have been a slap in Mama's face if I had not spent my time as she would have. To Mama's disappointment, I have never been much of a praying man. But a man can search for enlightenment in other ways I've come to believe. In prison, my pen flowed across the pages of thousands of yellow writing tablets in search of this.

In spite of this, true enlightenment eluded me. It was not until today, standing over Mama's gravestone in the cemetery, that a sliver of it was discovered. It was a simple headstone identical to a hundred others around it. Someone had placed fresh flowers next to it recently. This did not surprise me. Mama formed many friendships in her life. She was a beloved woman. I felt ashamed that I had come today without an offering to her. In my haste to be by her side again, no thoughts of a gift for her had come to me.

Grace Bessie Howard, her headstone read. A Humble and Devoted Servant of God.

It was a fitting enough epitaph. Mama was certainly a devoted servant of God and humble in her way. But when I thought about my Mama, the word humble did not leap into my mind. She was proud and dignified. She walked with her head held high, a sense of purpose in her every movement. She was a large black woman, six-feet tall, big boned, with two giant bosoms pushing forward in front of her. But she moved with a powerful grace that was often intimidating to others.

Mama always meant business.

She must have seemed a hard and strict woman to all who knew her, and she was. One disobeyed Mama at their own peril and to disrespect her was unthinkable. But Mama was also compassionate and selfless. She radiated love and beauty to me when the rest of my world was a hateful, ugly place.

Mama was not my mother in the biological sense of the word. She did not come into my life at all until after I was eight years old. In the time before Mama, I had no idea of where I fit into this world except as a constant vessel of anger, fear, and destruction. I was an alien with no mother or father, with no one who viewed me as anything but a disturbed child who had to be dealt with. My mother was only fifteen when I was born. I have no idea to this day who my father might have been. After two years of neglectful treatment, the state took custody of me. My mother must have been ill-equipped to meet my needs and apparently had little interest in becoming so.

The records I've read about this period of my life indicate that an investigator found me screaming and emaciated, with a severe case of diaper rash as I had not been changed or fed in over a day. My infant body was covered in infected flea bites and I had been left lying unattended on the floor while my mother was away somewhere living her life.

The next six years of my life was a hazy carousel of foster homes. My behavior was wildly disruptive and violent for a child so young. When I was four years old, I became angry with a foster parent who whipped me with a switch for biting her natural child. To get revenge, I took her prized parakeet from its cage and ripped its head off while she screamed in futile protest. That was my final day at that placement. In another placement, I tried to burn the bed of a couple while they slept. Earlier that day, the man of the house had called me into that same room and fondled my genitals on that same bed, cautioning me to never tell his wife.

That night, I waited for them to go to bed and some extra time to let them get to sleep before I stole the man's cigarette lighter and went to burn them. Luckily for both of them, the woman was a light sleeper and she woke just as the first flames began to move up the sheet at the foot of their bed. She leaped up and smothered the flame and then beat me with a belt for it. The man took his turn as well when he saw what I'd done. They beat me until the backs of my legs were bruised and welted, but I gave neither one the satisfaction of my tears. I only glared at them with hateful eyes while they did their worse.

When the man had exhausted himself, I stared him down until he flinched, obviously afraid of a seven-year old.

"Bet you'll think twice before you touch another boy's dick, won't you, you motherfucker!" I said to him.

His wife glared suspiciously at him just like I'd hoped she would while he looked sheepish and angry, unable to meet her eyes. Then the couple herded me into their car and dropped me off at the police station that night.

The state tried to institutionalize me after that incident, but there was no bed-space and limited resources, so they found another home for me, neglecting to tell the new foster-mother about my penchant for bed burning. Another year passed before I finally met Mama.

It happened at church. My foster-mother at the time was a young woman who told me to call her Ms. Macy. She was very kind, but completely unprepared and utterly horrified by the innocent-looking monster the state was paying her to tend. On the previous day, I had decided to dump the contents of her kitchen trashcan all over her shiny, tile floor and then proceeded to stomp on it until it was so much stinking mush. Ms. Macy had only left me unattended for a moment to speak with a neighbor and had been as horrified by my actions as I'd intended when she returned.

"Why did you do this?" she asked, seeming genuinely curious beneath her anger.

This question was somewhat of a revelation to me. It had never occurred to me to think about why I did the things I did before. I had to ponder the question a moment before I realized the answer.

"Because I'm bad," I said.

"Yes," she agreed. "You are very bad. But I'm taking you to church tomorrow and see if we can help you to be better."

Then she cleaned up the mess I'd made herself, obviously trying not to retch as she did so. Before she was halfway through, I felt something like shame for the first time in my life. I bent over and helped her pick up the mess.

The next day, she'd dressed me in hand-me-down church clothes from the Salvation Army and took me against my will. In truth, my resistance was only half-hearted. I was curious to see this place that my newest foster-mother believed was going to magically transform me from a bad boy to a good one.

The church service was long and boring to me and there seemed to be no way to comfortably sit in the pew. I fidgeted and wiggled all through the sermon while Ms. Macy held me as still as she was able with a restraining arm around my shoulders. Those around me eyed me curiously while they prayed and sang and Amen-ed to the words of the greasy-haired reverend standing in front of us pounding on a Bible. I kept waiting for Goodness to magically settle on me, chasing the Badness forever away. But it didn't seem to be happening. Even as the sermon drew to a close, I felt as angry and bad as ever.

Then the Reverend began to call for lost souls to come to the front and repent before God. He begged them to come rededicate their lives to the "Lawd Gawd Almighty in his infinite merciful power."

That's when Ms. Macy had taken me by the hand to the front. She got me halfway there when I saw the reverend staring at me with the hungriest expression I'd ever seen.

Somewhere in my travels, I'd heard the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf and the same Bad Wolf in the stories of the Three Little Pigs. I'd always thought of myself as the wolf in those stories, but now I saw that that wasn't true at all. Here was the real Big, Bad Wolf in the flesh. He smiled and leered at me as I came toward him, showing his too white, pearly teeth in a mockery of kindness. I knew his real purpose was to rip my body apart with those teeth and to devour me. It was his eyes that revealed his true nature. Those hungry, eager eyes, feigning compassion, but wanting to destroy me as I had wished to destroy others during the short, angry years of my life.

As Ms. Macy half dragged me down the aisle with an iron grip on my hand, I knew that it was all a trick. When she'd seen what I had done with the trash on her previously clean kitchen floor, she had only pretended to not be very angry. She had not brought me to church to make me good, she had brought me to feed to this Reverend. Maybe others could be forgiven for their sins as he had said, but not me. I was far too Bad for that. I could not be forgiven. I could only be ripped apart by the Reverend's gaping jaws, my body torn asunder and my flesh eaten by the congregation.

As I neared the leering Reverend, I became more and more certain that this was the fate that awaited me. I began to scream and struggle with all of my strength against Ms. Macy's grip. She must have been very determined because it took all of the adrenaline-fueled strength in my young body to break free of her. It was only when I bit the hand that held me that she finally relented. Shrieking, I turned and darted down the middle aisle toward the door at the back of the church as fast as my small feet could carry me.

As I passed the last row of pews and believing I would make it to the salvation of the sunlight streaming under the doors, I was swooped up effortlessly by one giant arm and my face was pressed against two mammoth bosoms. I tried to shriek and pound against this new enemy, but I was held too tightly. My arms were secured in a mighty grip. My face was held too tightly against a massive chest to scream. All I could do was to be held.

"I've got you, child! No one is going to hurt you as long as I've got you. You'll always be safe with me." These were Mama's first words to me, and they were ones to be proven true.

Mama knew Ms. Macy and when the Reverend quickly dismissed the congregation after the chaos I had created, she spoke to her.

"Is this your child, Ms. Macy?" she asked.

"I'm fostering him, Ms. Howard. That boy's got the devil in him. That's why I brought him. I thought it might help if the Reverend said a prayer over him."

"He's got the devil in him, alright," Mama answered. "But there ain't no prayer the Reverend can say to get it out of him. You let me take him home with me, you hear? It might take a tolerable long time, but I'll get the devil out of him directly. You'll see."

"Well I don't know, Ms. Howard. I'd be happy to let you have him. But I don't know how the Defacs would feel about it. It might not be legal. I might get into trouble for it, you know?"

"Oh don't worry about that. I know how to deal with those people," Mama said. "This child's too much of a handful for you, sweet thing. You let me handle him and I'll make a fine, strapping good boy of him, you hear?"

Ms. Macy hesitated and looked at Mama for awhile. But she knew there was no choice but to do what Mama said. Mama was hard to disobey.

"Okay," she agreed, finally. "I'll bring his things to you and just call me and let me know if there's any paperwork, okay?"

Mama smiled and looked down at me.

"You say goodbye to Ms. Macy, alright sonny boy? She's been real sweet to you, I bet."

"Bye," I said to her. "I'm sorry about your trash and I'm sorry about today too. I just thought you were going to feed me to the Reverend. He looked like he was real hungry."

The two women exchanged puzzled expressions and laughed at that. Then I went home with Mama and stayed right there with her until after I turned seventeen and broke Mama's heart. That was the day I was sent to prison.


Mama didn't change me overnight.

She made me go to school everyday. She didn't care how much I screamed and complained or how many temper tantrums I might throw. I went to school and when I came home I did my homework. She sat beside me until it was done. I attended a school for behavior disordered children and Mama was determined to get me into a regular classroom. My teachers thought she was being unrealistic, but Mama never relented.

One day I suffered a setback. I was sent home from school for fighting. It was a minor incident as incidents with me went. A kid had pushed me on the playground and I had busted his nose.

When I got home, Mama embarrassed me. She'd called the child's mother and made me apologize to him. I did it in a barely audible voice and then I had turned my rage on her.

Mama was an artist. She made her living carving all kinds of porcelain figures that she sold to souvenir shops around the country. It was a profession she'd learned from her mother, she said. There was a room in her house she used as a workshop. She worked at a single desk with a lamp and the tools she needed. The walls were lined with shelves that held hundreds of Mama's delicate creations. Most were of children in various poses: children praying, children fishing, children reading, children playing, children with their parents. Sweet looking children and mean looking children. White children and black children, Hispanic children and Asian children. Mama's imagination seemed to know no bounds when it came to creating children.

The figures in her workshop would have brought wonder to any child, even a child whose childhood had been as severely stunted as mine. I spent hours in the room with Mama from the beginning, sitting beside her, watching her work. She let me help her sometimes, asking me to retrieve something for her or to bring her a drink. I liked to do things for Mama. It made me feel valuable.

But on the day Mama embarrassed me, I decided it was time to move on. I didn't talk back to Mama. I'd tried it before and it never served a useful purpose. She wouldn't argue. She simply stated things were a certain way and that's how they were. It was up to me to learn to live with it.

But I knew Mama's weakness. After bedtime, I waited until Mama started snoring in the other room. Then, I went into her workshop and began to destroy her creations. One by one, I took each figurine and slammed it against the floor, feeling an evil euphoria flow through me with every crash. I had made my way through about ten of them before I heard Mama's footsteps coming down the hall. Knowing my time was limited now, I began jerking down the shelves and stomping on the figurines that didn't break when they hit the floor. By the time, Mama arrived, over half of the beautiful figurines she had so painstakingly created lay in ruins on the floor.

I turned to her, expecting rage, prepared for the worst. Knowing what the figurines meant to her, I expected another late night trip to the police station. But there was no anger on Mama's face that night. Tears streamed from her eyes and she regarded me with nothing but sadness and compassion.

She came to me as I glared defiantly at her, ready to fight if she laid her hands on me. And she did. But it was not to punish me, but to hug me; to hold me against her bosom exactly as she had on that first day on the back church pew. My anger evaporated as she held me, replaced by a well of emotion I had not dreamed could have existed inside of me.

I wept against her. My tears started with a stream, but then grew to an ocean as all the despair I had disguised as anger for so long flowed out of me. I do not know how long we stood in that room of broken figurines. Time seemed to lose its meaning as she held me tight against her. At last, I pulled away from her, feeling slightly embarrassed by my outburst, but also refreshed. I looked closely at Mama to see if she might be hiding something from me.

"You're not mad?" I asked her.

"No, child, I ain't mad," she said. "They were just things. I loved those things. I put my time and energy into making those things real and that made me love them. But still...they were just things and you're my boy. I love you more than all those things put together. Do you know that?"

I was unable to answer. All I could do was nod with a lump in my throat and stare up at her in wonder.

"But you've got some cleaning up to do, you know it? Go get the broom out of the kitchen and sweep this mess up. I'm going back to bed. You about scared the life out of me with that racket you made, you hear?"

"Sorry, Mama," I mumbled.

She just shook her head at me and gave me one last hug before heading back to bed. I swept that room until there wasn't a shard of broken porcelain to be found.

When I finally went to bed that night, I lay there for awhile before going to sleep thinking about Mama with wonder. It made no sense to me that she had not been angry at what I had done. But she hadn't. It was a miracle and I couldn't help but smile about it. Before I drifted off that night, I realized that I loved my Mama. I also realized that I had never loved another human being in all my life before that night.

I turned a corner after that. Anger no longer paralyzed me. Much of it was purged from my soul by Mama's steady, uncompromising love. The hate that had clogged my heart and mind for so long had been flushed away, leaving room for better and brighter emotions.

I began to listen in school rather than to look for fights. My teachers noticed and were amazed by the change within me. They tried to take credit for it. They tried to say my change came about because of their wonderful, effective program. But their program had nothing to do with it. It was all because of Mama.

When the next school year started, I left the school for behavior-disordered children and attended a regular high school. The new school was intimidating at first, but I adjusted quickly. I became an honor student and developed a new-found sense of self-esteem. I went out for the junior-high football team and discovered I was a natural athlete.

Football was a perfect outlet for the aggression that still simmered within me. The coaches quickly recognized how fast and strong I was for my age and placed me at running back. I loved the sport. It filled a hole in my heart as no other activity ever had. Nothing brought me more joy than running around and over anyone who tried to bring me down. The sheer physicality of the game thrilled me as nothing else ever had in my young life. I was a star from the beginning and basked in the popularity it brought to me.

I felt reborn during this stage of my life. I was still far from the perfect child, but through football and Mama's loving discipline, I learned to channel the swirling, raw emotions that still existed within me into academic and athletic pursuits rather than to allow them to make me their slave.

I advanced through junior high and into high school excelling in every endeavor I pursued. Mama was so proud of me she could hardly contain herself from gushing over me in front of anyone who would listen. By the time I was sixteen, letters from college football recruiters came pouring into Mama's mailbox. Teachers and peers alike idolized me. The Bad Boy had transformed into the Golden Boy.

But it was all too much for me. My ego became too large. I began to feel I could do no wrong, like I was bulletproof and above the rules that governed lesser mortals. In spite of Mama's best efforts, she lost her hold on me. I began to stay out with friends into all hours of the night walking the streets, drinking, smoking marijuana, and looking for available females.

Mama had no illusions about my activities and she chastised me at every opportunity. Why would I endanger my bright future in the pursuit of such mindless, frivolous, destructive activities, she asked me. How could I put everything I had gained in my life on the line for so little?

She appealed to me with all of her passion and love, with tears in her eyes on many late nights when I came stumbling in at nearly dawn. But I could not be instructed. I had grown too big for that. I was just having some fun, I told her. I knew what I was doing. But Mama knew better. "You're going to break my heart if you don't stop this," she told me. "You think just because you're a football star and an honor student, you're indestructible. But you're not, and all of this will come crashing down on top of you if you don't come to your senses."

"Don't worry, Mama," I would say. "I've got it all under control."

But I was wrong and she was right.

It happened during the summer after my junior year in high school. I had only turned seventeen a month before. It was just past two in the morning on a Saturday night and I was cruising through town with a thug from the neighborhood named Roderick. I wasn't the best of friends with Roderick, but I felt a kinship with him. If it hadn't been for Mama, he would have been me. I was sure of that. Roderick loved violence and seemed to have no concern at for his personal safety. He was reckless and profane and seemed to be hell-bent on finding an early death for himself.

Mama had only seen him once. He had come to her house two weeks before and knocked on the door to ask for me. He drove into her drive with his radio blaring, his gold wheel rims gleaming and a joint between his teeth. He'd had the good sense to dispose of the joint before knocking on the door, but Mama smelled it on his breath in an instant.

"Get Marcus," he'd told her when she answered the door.

"Excuse me, young man?" Mama had exclaimed, staring him down.

Roderick did not understand what he was up against. He was unaccustomed to being questioned.

"Did I stutter, old woman? Get Marcus out here," I said.

Fire blazed in Mama's eyes while I watched, half-amused from the recliner in the den, curious to see the outcome of this clash of wills.

"Boy," Mama said in measured tones. "You'd best take your dope breath off my front stoop and get on. You ain't nothing but bad news for my boy and I ain't about to stand by and watch you bring him down. So you need to get before I call the police and let them know they need to see what kind of goodies they can find in that niggerized thing you drive. You understand?"

My heart skipped a beat to hear Mama talk to Roderick like that. I was pretty sure he wasn't above murder and I was scared for her. But I shouldn't have been. Mama never had a problem holding her own.

Roderick's face puffed with anger and if he'd been carrying a gun, he might have shot Mama on the spot. But she just stared him down like he was nothing but a petulant little child who needed a good whippin'.

"Fuck you, bitch! I'll kill you. You don't know who you're fuckin' with! " Roderick finally bellowed. But his words held no force. Mama had cowed him. He turned around, got back in his pimped out Oldsmobile and peeled tires backing out.

Mama shut the door and sat beside me quietly for awhile letting herself settle down.

"That boy's bad poison," she finally told me. "You stay away from him, Marcus. You hear?"

"Yes ma'am," I answered.

But I didn't.

That night, I sat beside Roderick in the same pimped out Oldsmobile listening to rap music with the most profane lyrics a human mind could think of. I understood the anger that made that music and so did he. That was one thing we had in common. We'd been driving aimlessly around town, drinking malt liquor and smoking weed for several hours when he pulled into an all night convenience store on a whim.

The parking lot was empty except for a single beat up Thunderbird which must have belonged to the cashier. I saw him through the window, a fat, bearded man, with tattoos on his arm, sitting on a stool and reading a magazine. Roderick turned off the engine and sat there for just a minute with a gleam in his eye.

He looked at me and grinned like he'd just gotten laid.

"Hold on, jock, I just gotta piss," he said. Jock was his name for me. I could never tell if he said it affectionately or derisively. I never asked him.

"What's up with you?" I said. He laughed. "Nothin' jock. Like I said, I just gotta piss." He winked at me, got out and closed the door.

I watched him get out and walk inside the store. He was wearing a baggy t-shirt and as he walked into the store, the wind blew the back of it up just enough for me to see the gun poking out of the back of his pants. My heart started beating double-time and sweat beaded on my forehead. I knew what was coming, but felt helpless to do anything but watch it happen.

Roderick walked matter-of-factly to the register and pulled the gun on the attendant. The fat man stood up so fast he knocked the stool over. He jerked open the register and handed Roderick all the money without a hint of resistance. But Roderick shot him anyway. The first slug hit him in the chest and knocked him against the back wall. Cartons of cigarettes fell off the wall on top of him. I could no longer see the man from my vantage point in the car, but Roderick leaned over the counter and emptied the gun into the man with five more quick shots. Then he came out of the store holding the cash and came to my side of the car grinning just like he had when he'd walked in.

"Get the fuck over and drive!" he said. "The cops'll be here quick!"

I felt helpless to do anything but obey him. All I could think about was how Mama had been so right. I was nothing but a fool. If I could get out of this, I told myself, I would walk the straight and narrow the rest of my life.

"I thought you said you just had to take a piss," I said.

"Well I didn't know how you'd take it if I told you the truth," he said.

"You might have just fucked up my whole life, you know that?" I said, as I pulled the Olds onto the road and hit the gas.

"Sorry, jock," he said. I glanced over at him and he looked genuinely sorry. I just shook my head and drove. I went straight to Mama's house and stopped the car on the street in front. I got out and left Roderick without a word. We hadn't been chased or heard any sirens at all. I dared to hope I'd gotten away.

But I was wrong.

The next morning, policemen knocked on the door before seven A.M. Mama was already up and opened the door for them, completely unaware of the trouble I'd gotten myself into the night before. I climbed out of bed, bleary-eyed and hung-over and went to meet them. They arrested me on the spot, hand-cuffed me and took me away in the back of their police car. I tried not to look at Mama while it happened. But her sobs of anguish were daggers to my heart.

I was convicted of armed robbery and accessory to murder and sentenced to twenty-five years with the possibility of parole after twelve. I was lucky. Roderick was given the death penalty. The expression on his face suggested he was happy to have it. I wasn't surprised. If not for Mama, he would have been me.

The judge was a distinguished looking white-haired man who'd tried to pierce my heart with his final words before the bailiff took me away to prison.

"Son," he'd said to me, taking his glasses off and looking me in the eye. "People in this community had high hopes for you and you've let them down. You've let yourself down. You've let this good woman who is your mother down, and you've let all of society down. You're going to have a good, long time to think about your mistakes now, and it's my hope that you'll emerge a better man. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

His words were nothing to me. "No, sir," I said.

But then I turned and looked at Mama. She was weeping silently, her hands clasped in front of her. I had seen her cry before, but there was a difference this time. This time, I had done more than make her cry. I had broken her. I'd used her love for myself and then turned it into a weapon to stab her in the heart. Twenty-five years wasn't a long enough sentence for such a crime as that. Tears of my own began to course down my face as I turned away from her.

"I'm sorry, Mama," I tried to say as they took me away. But my mouth would not form the words.

For five years, Mama wrote me almost everyday and came to see me every weekend. All of my life, she had encouraged me to take responsibilities for my actions, but now she did the opposite.

"It's my fault," I insisted, when I spoke to her. "You warned me. You're going to throw everything you worked for away," you told me. "Stay away from Roderick."

"That's nonsense," she would answer. "You didn't rob anyone. You didn't kill anyone. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person."

"That's a lot of wrongs, don't you think?" I would say.

Mama had nothing to say to that. She was a broken woman after I went to prison. Her health gradually but steadily declined and it came as no great shock to me when the prison chaplain came to my cell one evening to tell me she had died.

"Heart failure," he said.

"I know," I told him. "I'm the one who made it fail."

After twelve years of being a mostly model prisoner, I was paroled. I went to Mama's grave and stood there staring at her headstone and the fresh flowers next to it. I wept for her as I had not been able to in prison. I thought hard about Mama. It occurred to me as I stood there how little I really knew of Mama's life. I had never met her parents. I had never known another member of her family. She had never had a male companion of any sort during my life. She had dedicated herself to me with the same single-minded dedication she had given to creating her porcelain figures of children. I wondered why it had never occurred to me to ask her more about her life. It saddened me to think that as much as she loved me and I had loved her, that she would remain forever an enigma.

As I thought these things, I heard footsteps approaching and looked up to see Mama walking towards me. I took a step back and felt chills run down my spine. It made sense to me though. Mama had come back as a ghost to make sure I stayed on the straight and narrow after serving my time in prison.

But as she came closer, walking slowly between the headstones, I began to see that this might not be Mama at all. She was shorter and slimmer. Her bosoms were much smaller. But she walked with the same purpose and pride as Mama always had.

"You must be Marcus," she said when she came into earshot.

"Yes," I answered, still not entirely ready to abandon the idea that I was seeing Mama's ghost.

"I thought so," she said. She came to stand beside me and we were silent for a respectful moment, looking down at Mama's grave.

"You never met me," she said, "but I'm your Mama's sister, Charity. She and I didn't meet each other until we were grown and we never made the time to really get to know each other until you went away."

I stared at her, shocked and searching her face for the truth. She seemed to be sincere and there was certainly enough of a family resemblance to back her up.

"I got word you were free today and I already went by her house, but you weren't there. I had a feeling I'd find you here. I thought about where I might go in your shoes."

I nodded.

"Your mama asked me to tell you some things about her. Some things she never told you. She had a rough childhood just like you. She grew up on the street and in foster homes without much love or affection until she was a teenager. That's when she was finally adopted by a good woman who taught her how to make those porcelain figurines she loved so much. But Mama was still head-strong and wild even after that. She got pregnant when she was seventeen and wasn't up to raising the baby boy God gave her. She neglected it, got hooked on drugs, and the baby was taken away. Something happened after that though.

"She made up her mind to start living right and get her child back. She dedicated herself to God and made a good life for herself. But she never found that child even though she looked far and wide for it. But then God brought you to her one day in church. She knew you were a gift and she gave you all the love she had in her soul."

Mama's sister paused after that and studied me. I was speechless, but knew her words rung true.

"She wanted me to let you know you never disappointed her. Her last words to me were to tell you she believed in you and she always would even when she looked down on you in Heaven."

Fresh tears came into my eyes. They were liberating tears just like the night she held me after I destroyed her figurines.

"She also wanted me to give you this," Charity said. She handed me the check and I took it from her. Seeing the amount, the force of Mama's love even after her death overwhelmed me.

We studied each other for a timeless moment with Mama's headstone between us.

"Well I have to be going," Mama's sister finally said. "But I'll stay in touch, okay?"

"Okay," I answered. She hugged me quickly and walked away. When she was out of sight, the idea that I had encountered Mama's ghost came back to me. I could not completely shake the feeling.

I stayed by Mama's side in the cemetery until the sun set below the trees in the distance.

At last, I left, determined to honor Mama's love for the rest of my life: to live with purpose in my walk and love in my heart.