In Uncle Archie’s lore, no one could touch Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, the fighter he grew up following on the radio—hearing, feeling, smelling, and seeing every move, jab, swing, punch, and step, all on a nonvisual medium. As a result, Uncle Archie could narrate those fights for me as well as any announcer of his time. Now we were watching history unfold together, with Sugar Ray Robinson still going strong, including his fight with Jake LaMotta, which I’d never forget. Sugar Ray and the other boxers were larger than life, superheroes who could do and have it all, including a pink Cadillac. What that said to a poor kid from the ghetto like me was everything, a very early precursor to the red Ferrari. But Sugar Ray Robinson and his Caddy were on television. I had something closer at hand to show me the beautiful world beyond the ghetto: the Spiegel catalog.
Through those dream pages, Ophelia and I lived vicarious lives as we played a game we made up with the household’s catalog. We called it “ this-page-that-page,” and it was played simply by flipping randomly to a page and then claiming all the treasures pictured on it as mine or hers. “Look at all my stuff,” I’d say after flipping to my page. “Look at my furniture—all these clothes are mine!” and Ophelia would follow, flipping to her page, singing, “Look at my stuff, my nice stove and my jewelry!” The Spiegel catalog must have been three hundred pages or more, so we never tired of this-page-that-page.
In the dead of winter one year, we changed the game in recognition of Christmas. When it was Ophelia’s turn, she flipped to a page and smiled her big-sister smile, announcing that this page was for me, pointing to all the stuff she was giving me for Christmas. “I’m giving you this page. All this is yours.”
Then it was my turn. I flipped to a page and exclaimed, “I’m giving you this page for Christmas. This is all yours!” I wasn’t sure what made me happier, getting a page all for me or having one to give.
In those hours spent playing this-page-that-page, there was no discussion about who Momma was, where she went, or when she was coming back. But there was a feeling of anticipation I recognized. We were biding time, waiting for something or someone to come for us. For that reason, it wasn’t a shock or even a memorable instance when, at last, I learned that Momma was leaving wherever she’d been—prison, I now know—and that she was coming to get me and Ophelia and our baby sister Sharon, who suddenly appeared on the scene.
