To Be a Mother To be a mother. To be a Black mother. To be a Black mother, in Mississippi, and so in love so soon, within the slice of a second’s second, of the small waa-waa-waa’ing of him or her, waa’ing for your breast, waa’ing for your milk, waa’ing for your hold, waa’ing to be back in your warm womb, the only world they’ve ever known. My chile, my chile, my chillren. Come home to your mama. You have been a mother your whole life even before the push-breathe-push of this soft piece of human God call you grown enough to have. A mother, when your mother taught-told you to cook, clean, do. The breakfast. The kitchen. The undoing of your lil siblings' diapers while they wiggled-wiggled as you tried to wipe, got all kinda nasty stuff all over themselves, but good Gawd were they so cute, and Gawd is good ‘cause they weren’t really yours: Here, mama. They clean now. Mama pushed a kiss to your bouncing brown jaws, leaving the hardness and shine of a diamond behind, cut as to her lips. Thank ya, baby! Your bouncing brown diamond jaws beamed, ‘cause who knew that your mama, your so—wise, observant, kind—mama would have ever needed your lil ole help? A mother, when you grew things in your garden. Things you wanted, and things you didn’t mean to. Why, even the weeds creeped around your feet like lil chillren wanting to play in your harvested mighty-harvest to take back home. Runt of the litter rutabagas not going to waste or given away, even they got stewed, ‘cause good God-fearing homes needed all the food they can get. A mother, to yourself when you hot-combed your hair, greased your scalp and skin, shined up your teeth, de-crusted down your eyes, painted your nails “Now, that’s some kinda woman” red, and slipped yourself in a dress so darling even the devil himself offered his soul to you, but God said Nah, now. That one there is mine, ‘best leave her ‘lone. Her, who is an angel in this world and destined to be an angel in the next. A mother, still, when you cried out to be back with your own mother. Because to be a mother. To be a Black mother. To be a Black mother, in Mississippi, and so in love, so soon at the striking shout of your newborn chile, is as close to the love of Gawd as it gets. A love that loves you in your goodness. In your badness. In your beauty. In your ugly. Always welcome, always with the same worth of your womb—My chile, my chile, my chillren. Come home to your mama.
Exodus Brownlow wrote this poem in honor of her grandmother Christine Williams, who passed away in December. “I was the Mistress of Ceremonies at her funeral and read this piece. Simply, it is about the yearning for a mother no matter our age, no matter the quality of the mother, no matter our successes.”
Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a writer, editor, fashion designer and sewist native to Blackhawk, Ms. She is a graduate of Mississippi Valley State University with a BA in English, and Mississippi University for Women with an MFA in Creative Writing. She is an associate editor at Fractured Lit and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Loveliest Review.
Exodus has been published or has forthcoming work with Electric Lit, West Branch, Denver Quarterly, F(r)iction, BOOTH, CRAFT and more. She has been nominated for Best of The Net, Best MicroFiction, Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize. Her pieces “Chicken-Girls and Chicken-Ladies and All the Possibility of Pillowcases” and “It’s 5am-ish, and My Father Tells Me A Story From His Time in Singapore” were included in Best MicroFiction 2021 and 2022. Her piece “The Terrible Darling” was featured as a Wigleaf Top 50 2022 selection. She is the recipient of the 2022 “The Changing American South” fellowship at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Exodus also received a Mississippi Arts Commission Grant for an Individual Nonfiction Artist Fellowship in 2023.
Exodus’ essay “When the World Was Ending We Wore the Cornrows, We Twisted Our Coils, and We Waited” was selected for Best American Essays 2024 as notable.
Exodus is the author of a fiction chapbook—”Look at All The Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and The Bittersweet, Sweet and Bitter Loves”—which was published with Ethel Zine and Press in the Spring of 2023. Additionally, Exodus is the author of a debut collection of essays—”I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?” [a Mississippi Top (ten) Reads with The Clarion Ledger debuting at #6], was published with ELJ Editions in the Summer of 2023.
Her debut collection of short stories, “When It Gets Cold In The South”, is publishing with Screen Door Press, The University of Kentucky Press, in 2027!
Her favorite color is green.
Read more by Exodus Brownlow:
This poem would make a great bookend to Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Mother," both thematically and emotively.
Beautiful!