By Deesha Philyaw Thomas
Li'l Mama (born Emma Cooper) cared for my mother and her brothers while my grandmother worked, in exchange for room and board. The room Li'l Mama slept in later became my bedroom. She was still living there when I was born, even though my uncle James, the youngest, was 17 years old at the time. She stayed and looked after me while my mother went to work.
Li'l Mama had no children of her own, and little family to speak of. Professionally speaking, she was a childcare provider. But my mother and my uncles say, "She helped raise us."
Li'l Mama was a big woman. Among my earliest memories are the endless folds of her skirts, getting lost in them, barely able to walk and clinging desperately to that worn cotton. Whenever Li'l Mama's name is mentioned, my mother tells the story of coming home from work one day and finding eight-month-old me perched, as usual, on one of Li'l Mama's massive hips. Li'l Mama stood at the stove, feeding me corn bread soaked with the vitamin-rich "pot liquor"-the juice from a pot of fresh collard greens-directly from the pan with her fingers. My mother cringed at such a "country" practice. But her complaints to Li'l Mama went unheeded. "This girl knows good eatin'," Li'l Mama said of me as she shoveled another finger-full of cornbread mush into my eager mouth. She helped raise me; she could take such liberties.
Li'l Mama liked to dress up for church, wearing a favorite floral dress and a jet-black wig which had seen better days. Beneath the wig, she wore her near-white hair in tiny neat plaits. She was not a beautiful woman, in the classic sense, but I loved gathering her jowly face into my hands and tracing the large moles which covered her skin. I buried my face in her neck, surrounded by the smell of her perfume. The heavy sweet scent failed to cover her natural pungency, something faintly dank, earthy. It makes me think now of sickness, old age.
One day, Li'l Mama went down to the courthouse with Mr. Sam and they got married. Then Li'l Mama moved out of my house. I was four. She was seventy-something. We kept in touch. I spent some weekends with her. On those Sundays, the long services at Li'l Mama's church proved too much for me, and I slept with my head in her cushiony lap.
Back home on Mondays, I cried when Kim from next door came over to walk me to the daycare center. All I remember about the place was napping on canvas cots and eating animal crackers.
A few years later, I did not walk down the aisle of the church to view Li'l Mama's casket when she died of leukemia. I was not allowed to go to her funeral. When the call came, everyone cried, so I did too. It would be years before I missed her and mourned her on my own.
At different times in my elementary school career, three older women in the neighborhood cared for me in their homes after school. Mrs. Ford liked things quiet. Miz Maybelle smoked and had a husky voice like a man's. Mrs. Kelly had a German Shepherd named King, and she sewed my Easter dresses.
When I was old enough, 10 or so, I let myself into the house after school, did my homework, and watched sitcoms in syndication until my mom, grandmother, or James came home.
Li'l Mama was in my life for a short period of time, but at a crucial time and in a crucial way. My mother calls her an angel, for the way she protected and guided us, and I agree. The artists have gotten it all wrong. Angels are not winged cherubs. They are women who love and care for children they did not bear. Full-bodied women with both feet planted on the ground.