The Women of Brewster Place

by Gloria Naylor

  And Brewster Place is abandoned, the living smells worn thin by seasons of winds, the grime and dirt blanketing it in an anonymous shroud. Only waiting for death, which is a second behind the expiration of its spirit in the minds of its children. But the colored daughters of Brewster, spread over the canvas of time, still wake up with their dreams misted on the edge of a yawn. They get up and pin those dreams to wet laundry hung out to dry, they’re mixed with a pinch of salt and thrown into pots of soup, and they’re diapered around babies. They ebb and flow, ebb and flow, but never disappear. So Brewster Place still waits to die.