Gran'pa

My gran’pa says when he takes my watch that he does it to keep the wolf from the door.

We are not depraved beginners, / But hereditary sinners, / For our fathers never acted as they should; / ’Tis the follies of our gran’pas / That continually hampers; / What a pity that our gran’pas weren’t good!

The rest was stories, told before his bedtime, of the dark deeds of night, remembered from her own childhood, told to her by her own mama, and her gran’pa and gran’ma, the things a black child in the South needed to know, and luridly colored, in Flora’s telling, as warning to her boy.