st days, the assault of the city eclipses its promise:·When thewater in the building has stopped running, when even in her bestdress she cannot help but wonder if she smells like the outhouse orif it is obvious that her bloomers are tattered, when she is so hungrythat the aroma of bean soup wafting from the settlement kitchenmakes her mouth water, she cakes t0 the streets, as if in search of thereal city and not this poor imitation. The old black ladies perched intheir windows shouted, "Girl, where you headed?" Each new depri-vation raises doubts about when freedom is going t0 come; if thequestion pounding inside her head-Can/ live?-is one to whichshe could ever give a certain answer, or only repeat in anticipation ofsomething better than this, bear the pain of it and the hope of it, thebeauty and the promise.

Outsiders call the streets and alleys char com-prise her world the slum. For her, it is just the place where she stays.You'd never happen onto her block unless you lived there too, or hadlost your way, or were out on an evening lark seeking the pleasuresyielded by the ocher half. The voyeurs on their slumming expeditionsfeed on the lifeblood of the ghetto, long for it and loathe it. The socialscientists and the reformers are no better with their cameras andtheir surveys, staring intently at all the strange specimens

These "medicines," these devices,became in my day as part of one's anatomy,one's exertions/insertions,the secrecy of secretions,the panics, narrow escapes,nightmares of being chasedby armies of greedy babies.Let me alone!Forgiveme!We girls stared down pharmacy clerksor squirmed in stirrupsof bow tie-wearing gynecologists,bought or begged these itemsand prayed they'd work

The preponderance of legal marriage and the acceptability of onefamily form did not and could not forestall Jim Crow, disfranchisement, pov-erty, and pervasive exploitation. It did not guarantee full citizenship rights.New laws notwithstanding, the validity of slave unions would continue to bequestioned in ways that implicated and burdened freedpeople. At century’send, African Americans were still struggling to undo the enduring havocwreaked on their most intimate affairs.

made known that their desires did not always mesh with these expectations,as they frustrated plantation owners’ efforts to control them under contractssigned by men. They refuted such agreements on the grounds that theirhusbands had “no powers to contract” their labor as they were “living freeand responsible” like the men.

The laws wereconsistent with the edicts produced by French and the Freedmen’s Bureau.They excluded paupers or public charges from the rights and obligations ofmarriage. Apprentices could not marry without the permission of their mas-ters. Husbands and wives could not abandon or turn away the other withoutfacing prosecution on misdemeanor charges, fines, or corporal punishment.A husband who was able-bodied and who abandoned his wife could bebound out to labor, with the proceeds directed to maintaining his wife andfamily—on the basis of “merits and necessities.”

The federal government played a leading role in this process through theFreedmen’s Bureau, which served multiple functions in implementing poli-cies, adjudicating martial conflict, and punishing sexual crimes associatedwith marriage and nonmarriage during Reconstruction. Agents of the bureauthroughout the South were encouraged to set their own rules, like French, tohelp establish a structure for legal marriage that ex-slaves could adopt andthat lawmakers could sanction.

I remember the women.Torught they walkout from the shadowswith black dogs,children, the dark heavy horses,and worn-out men.

t death, they sayeverythinginside us opens,mouth, heart, even the ear opensand breath passesthrough the memoriesof lovesand faces.The embraceopensand grandmothers pass,wearingsunlightand thin rain,walkingout of fireasflameand smokeleavingthe ash

In those days, through song,a woman could flyto the mother of waterand fill her ladlewith cool springs of earth