Glenis Redmond
Setting the Table
Mama hands me fork, spoon and knife
as she circles the table I follow her lead.
Learn what comes around goes around.
She demonstrates how to fold the napkins
and where the drinking glasses go.
I never ask her how she knows how to set a table
I just accept this as one of my many chores:
learning place and how everything has one.
I note how the table sits in the center of our home,
the place where mama’s voice is the loudest.
Dressed with each and every season
Her table boasts Royal Dalton,
specifically the Country Rose pattern.
She collects eight place settings
any unlikely piece: salt and pepper shaker, gravy boat etc…
Mama doles out stories sparingly, but always tells me:
I’ll never clean for white people.
She places this mantra deep within me.
In her eighties I learn why: Mrs. Mary Burton,
the woman whose house her mama cleaned
the house that loomed on the hill in Waterloo,
“Bring Jeanette,” grandma was in no position to say no
so mama always came along as her mama scrubbed,
dusted, mopped, washed clothes and swept.
Mrs. Mary Burton taught mama place:
how to properly set a table.
How to polish the silverware.
Her mama’s eye was on how her daughter
was being groomed, to serve. What comes around goes around.
She ships mama to the next county
where colored children can get an education,
Fountain Inn Negro High School.
Mama felt like unwanted hand me downs.
Given to her Aunt Carrie and Uncle Willie,
but her mama was giving her
what she never received, a chance.
In home economics mama excels.
Mrs. McDuffie marvels at how she sets a table,
gives her the highest marks in the class.
Mama parlays her skills as an Air Force wife
at woman’s auxiliaries or church functions.
She becomes the go-to person at every base.
People look to her. When she looks at me she hands me
what she learned: how the table is the center,
what comes around is what she gives: stretched dollars
and a hand out to help me climb the ladder
to be the first in the family
to earn a college degree; what goes around
learning how I can go beyond what’s set before me.
Previously published in MER Vol. 21 (2023)
Glenis Redmond is a performance poet. Her books include Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), The Listening Skin (Four Way Books), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green (University of Georgia Press). Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in April 2022.