Mixtapes

Audio / Video files of songs mentioned in this story are collected here.

  My sister comes in.  Her eyes are full of sorrow. She sings to me: 

"When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls, someone thinks of me ... "   

I doze, thinking of plums, walls, and "someone."

No happy drunk -a friend of the family, with a fat neck, unmarried, you know, but God how he eats! - had sat at the piano and played 

"You are My Sunshine."

Even before the door was opened to her tapping, she could hear Poland singing - 

her voice sweet and hard, like new strawberries:

I got blues in my mealbarrel / Blues up on the shelf / I got blues in my mealbarrel / Blues up on the shelf / Blues in my bedroom / 'Cause I'm sleepin' by myself

"I told Mama, and she told Daddy, and we all come home, and he was gone, so we waited for him, and when Daddy saw him come up on the porch, 

he threw our old tricycle at his head and knocked him off the porch." 

"Did he die?"

"Naw.  He got up and started singing 'Nearer My God to Thee.'  Then Mama hit him with a broom and told him to keep the Lord's name out of his mouth, but he wouldn't stop, and Daddy was cussing and everybody was screaming."

There was a woman named Ivy who seemed to hold in her mouth all of the sounds of Pauline's soul.  Standing a little apart from the choir, Ivy sang the dark sweetness that Pauline could not name; she sang the death-defying death that Pauline yearned for, 

she sang of the stranger who knew ....

Precious Lord take my hand / Lead me on, let me stand / I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. / Through the storms, through the night / Lead me on to the light / Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on.

When my way grows drear / Precious Lord linger near, / When my life is almost gone / Hear my cry hear my call / Hold my hand let me fall / Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on.