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Under the summer sun of long ago, when we were colored, Yellow Hammer cut my hair in a kitchen chair under a shady tree, conversations of colored men permeated the air, baptizing me in thoughts of crackers, the war and negroes. Colored women whispered liaisons in the ears of old men who all wore hats, little colored girls in pigtails jumped rope on bloodstained sidewalks, while the brother in the doo-rag wearing a sharkskin suit, pimped the welfare mother out of her state check with silver words. Music played on a radio with a wired hanger, Motown never sounded better. My uncle Edmond danced with a bottle of black label in one hand while looking for a skirt, Aunt Mamie stayed home intoxicated waiting for his return. It all ended when the yellow constellation went behind the clouds and the little colored girls went home when the street lights came on, the doo-rag pimp, went to spend his money on a fix and the colored women went to play love with the old men in hats. I remembered this when Yellow Hammer cut my hair when I was a little colored boy.
