the times they used to be

Mama, Mama.
Tell us about when you was a girl . . .
tell us one of them stories 
about the olden days.

So begins this tender story, set in 1948, when Satchel Paige was in the majors, Ralph Bunche was at the U.N., and each evening Sooky and her family turned on the radio to listen to Amos ’n’ Andy. Uncle Sunny, a veteran of the 92nd Division in World War II–it was his time, too. But mostly it was Sooky’s time, as she sat on the curb with her best friend Tallahassie May Scott in the dusky summer nights, waiting for the street lights to go on. That summer Sooky was 12 years old and got her first pair of wedgies, and sin broke all out in her best friend’s body because she wasn’t saved.