Derrick and Jon Jon have smoking guns in their dead hands. In the dream, they’ve both moved up from their positions as Lookouts and are full-blown gangsters. Right around this time I start floating backward, out of the streetcar. Something pulls me east, and I am flying, looking over my friends and their family and random people from the block. When I reach the lake, I see Mama Pearl at the very end of the line. She lies there like the first and the last of our neighborhood. Her bag is gaped open, and a pistol with a pearl handle shines in the sun. It blurs my vision, and everything blends into one peachy color. I always close my eyes at this point and feel the heat of the red orange. It’s a warmth that eases the pain in my head, and I float, up, up, up, and Woody and Earl’s song comes back, but this time I sing it with them.

Twenty-Four
Sheeping

The nightmare followed me for a few years, then faded into random add-ons to other dreams, the bits becoming less scary over time. Long past the series of dreams, I’d remember seeing Mama Pearl by the lake and the feeling of that warm orange color that took the pain out of my head. Something about it made me feel less terrified before I even woke up. I had to go through the entire dream before I could feel the color at the end. I’d wake up trying to figure out why Mama wasn’t there and why Mama Pearl played such a major role in the dream. Now I realize it’s because of the pivotal role she played in my formative years.

As they knocked down 4946, Mama Pearl had become a kind of history teacher in addition to a friend, filling me in, finally, on everything I didn’t know I needed to know about Bronzeville.

“Way back before they built the Dan Ryan, State Street looked a terrible mess, with horse stables and muddy roads. There was peoples everywhere hollering all up and down the street selling things. Back in 1944, when I got here from Jackson, men ran up and down these here streets screaming, ‘Watermeluh!’ or ‘Ice!’ hustling things that didn’t kill you.

“Then, here come these chil’ren hollering, ‘Loose squares!’ and ‘Bud!’ They got loose squares, alright.” It was hard for me to imagine this slum; it was a different time, back when you actually saw horses in the city and a paved street was brick, not smooth cement.