* I can’t recall why she was late getting the money. Maybe I was tardy in sending it.

**At the writing of this letter, Mama was seventy-four. I was indeed preoccupied with many emotional problems. I was involved with three women: Ella Jean, Shequita Cyprian, and a poet Mona Lisa Saloy. My head was all over the place. I was also considering returning to school to get my doctorate in English. I also wanted to write a biography of Marcus Christian’s life and thought the doctoral work would sustain further work on Christian. I, however, did not know how I would support myself undertaking such a task. My contract with UNO ended in the spring of 1986.

***The "land" was the property at Jerusalem. The land for which Daddy left no will. It was done purposively, I believe. He built a large house, eight rooms downstairs and several low ceiling rooms upstairs. His idea was that anyone who went to the city and had problems could always come home. They would have a place to return. If the property was in anyone’s name, that person would undermine the purpose for which he built such a large house. Though the house and property served that purpose for me and Annie, they both have caused a lot of bad feelings among Mama’s children and grandchildren who desired to gain sole control of the house and property. 

Yet, because Daddy’s legacy exists in the form that it does, it has held the family together, though in an odd sort of way. For both house and property are his memorials to himself and to his life. In this sense, he still lives in our lives and we can not get beyond that, nor should we desire to do so. My estimation is that the situation will never be resolved, unless one of the sisters or their descendants are willing to be bought out. Otherwise there will never be an agreement and there will continue to be until the last family member breathes his last breath, family tension over Daddy’s memorial to himself. In a manner, it is a fight over his body.