BooksBarbecue
Back Last Summer on State Street
Chapters (43)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. OneThe Square
  6. TwoIn War
  7. ThreeLease Compliant
  8. FourTonya from the Ten
  9. FiveSummer School
  10. SixSweeps
  11. SevenMakeovers
  12. EightBombs Bursting in Air
  13. NineProject Kids
  14. TenName-Calling
  15. ElevenCowboy Camp
  16. Twelve1502
  17. ThirteenThe Elevator
  18. Fourteen301
  19. Fifteen304
  20. SixteenSanctuary
  21. SeventeenPlans
  22. EighteenSalvation
  23. NineteenThe Wild
  24. TwentyLivestock
  25. Twenty-OneLast Tag
  26. Twenty-TwoThe Vanishing
  27. Twenty-ThreeAway
  28. Twenty-FourSheeping
  29. Twenty-FiveProject Mentality
  30. Twenty-SixLetter to Meechie
  31. Twenty-SevenA Reunion
  32. Twenty-EightRelocating
  33. Twenty-NineThe Whole Story
  34. ThirtyThe Happiest Place
  35. Thirty-OneEd’s House
  36. Thirty-TwoWhat Mamas Do
  37. Thirty-ThreeThe Living & the Dead
  38. Thirty-FourHaunted
  39. Thirty-FiveSnapshots
  40. Thirty-SixInvitations
  41. Acknowledgments
  42. About the Author
  43. About the Publisher

On this day, the afternoon of 4946’s demolition, her entire family gathered, a rare occurrence. In fact, everyone seemed to be on break from what they usually did on the block. Gangsters paused drug sales and just stared. Crackheads, winos, and little old ladies were there, looking too.

When I saw Mama Pearl—who wasn’t actually my grandma, but acted like it—my mouth fell open. She was in her seventies and only ever snuck outside before sunup. By the time we left for school in the mornings, her new-penny-colored Buick would be missing from its spot across from DuSable High School.

Mama Pearl stared at the wrecking ball, but I could tell her mind had dipped off to the good old days, when the buildings were still infants and she was a young adult.

Before her hair turned white from stress or horror or just old age, Mama Pearl, whose real name is Lucille Perkins, worked with my grandma, Mabel Stevens, at the White Cake and Candy Company in Jackson, Mississippi. Mama Pearl got these plump fingers with wide nails, so I couldn’t imagine them wrapping tiny foils over truffles. I learned over the years not to be surprised by anything this woman could do. Though they were surrounded by the scent of butter and chocolate and even tasted the sugar in the air, their lives in Mississippi were soured by hate crimes and poverty.

Most of the girls in the candy shop spent their shift gossiping, but Mama Pearl worked out her escape route. Outside the glass window, huge trains clanked and screeched, beckoning her. When they pulled into the station, just across from the shop, her fantasy of hopping aboard played out in her mind, and talk of boyfriends and church socials were tuned out. This was the plan: on her eighteenth birthday, she and Grandma would take that train north to Chicago, and Lucille’s father would help them rent an apartment. Mama Pearl had no clue that she and Grandma were headed toward the original Candy Land. In 1944, only a week after their arrival at the Roosevelt station, they would both land jobs at the Curtiss Candy Company, the makers of Baby Ruth and Butterfinger.