before baby sister came along and spoiled everything
it was just me and mama and daddy around the supper table
mama would cook up some beans
daddy would work the cotton fields
don’t tell nobody
but I’d probably be out exploring the forest down behind the barn
I didn’t know we were poor
I didn’t know that everybody didn’t eat pinto beans most nights
and fried chicken sometimes on the weekend
and I didn’t know that cornbread
was what my family ate
when there weren’t no pinto beans
mama would set down some glasses
on that little round kitchen table
with a damp washrag in the middle of it
for wiping crumbs off your face
daddy would come in from the fields all sweaty
he’d rag off a little and push his thin brown hair back
to make himself presentable
then we’d sit down at the table
and mama would say the blessing
we never went hungry
but sometimes supper was a cold glass of buttermilk
and a warm hunk of cornbread
with a big piece of raw onion that would burn your tongue
we’d all crumble up that cornbread into the buttermilk
and eat it with a big spoon
stopping every now and then
to bite off some of that onion
or to reach across the table and grab that washrag
I didn’t eat a lot of cornbread as an adult
but when things got tough on me
and my sister took me in and saved me
from the mental darkness that almost destroyed me
long after Vietnam tried to kill me
my brother-in-law would sometimes take us
to the Cracker Barrel for a big meal
they made good biscuits
but my sister always got cornbread
so I did too