Life was different in Augusta —
fancy clothes, stepping out every night.
She left the kids alone in the hotel room,
dresses tucked under the feet of the iron bedstead.
Porters brought them chamber pots.
They had lots of daddies.
Daddy Lee set them all up in style.
He got her a job at the candy factory,
and a maid to look after the children.
While Mother worked, they played on the levee,
watching paddle wheel steamers on the Savannah.
When she came home
they searched for candy in her pockets.
Life was sweet.
But it was hard to lose her taste for the night life,
and her sugar daddy took his leave.
His gun was still in the dresser drawer,
but she chose the more dramatic,
and less effective escape —
potassium permanganate,
brown clover leaf tablets,
choked down with a tumbler of gin
in an empty clawfoot bathtub.
The kids stood on their toes watching
purple swirls wind their way to the drain
as the ambulance took Mother away.
The police took them home to Grandma -
and Daddy —
who used them again and again,
before anyone listened. Before anyone believed.
Before they were finally taken away to the
Home for Children of Broken Dreams.
Dear Gussie
never quite recovered from the pain.
She found release in laudanum and morphine.
Sometimes she visited her children at the Home.
Dressed in fine clothes,
she enchanted the young ones
while the matrons followed her,
disinfecting everything she touched.
Her addictions got her half a lifetime
in the state mental institution.
Released in 1952
she hitchhiked to California to see her baby,
and for the second time in her life said
"no."
Beaten with a chain,
she was left by the side of the road for dead.
Dear, dear Gussie.
