ABSTRACT
to Jeanette Weird sister the Black witches know that the terror is not in the moon choreographing the dance of wereladies and the terror is not in the broom swinging around to the hum of cat music nor the wild clock face grinning from the wall, the terror is in the plain pink at the window and the hedges moral as fire and the plain face of the white woman watching us as she beats her ordinary bread. the thirty eighth year of my life, 37plain as bread round as a cake an ordinary woman. an ordinary woman. i had expected to be smaller than this, more beautiful, wiser in Afrikan ways, more confident, i had expected more than this. i will be forty soon, my mother once was forty. my mother died at forty four, a woman of sad countenance leaving behind a girl awkward as a stork, my mother was thick, her hair was a jungle and she was very wise and beautiful and sad. i have dreamed dreams for you mama more than once. i have wrapped me in your skin and made you live again more than once. i have taken the bones you hardened and built daughters and they blossom and promise fruit 38like Afrikan trees, i am a woman now. an ordinary woman. in the thirty eighth year of my life, surrounded by life, a perfect picture of blackness blessed, i had not expected this loneliness. if it is western, if it is the final Europe in my mind, if in the middle of my life i am turning the final turn into the shining dark let me come to it whole and holy not afraid not lonely out of my mother's life into my own. into my own. i had expected more than this, i had not expected to be an ordinary woman.
