I love back here, in the backseat,
With my brother and my sisters,
 Sometimes my cousins and a couple neighborhood kids come with us.
Grown folks in the front seat,
Mama drivin’, Auntie Esther on the front passenger side.
We piled up onto each other in the back seat.
The smaller kids sit on the bigger kids’ laps.
We squished together, but we comfy.
It’s real hot outside, but we got all the windows open.
So even though we all upon each other, we cool.
It’s cool ‘cause Mama smokes Kool’s cigarettes – Menthol.
Auntie Esther smokes Pall Mall’s
The smoke goes out the window. 
Mama keeps one hand on the steering wheel;
  She lets her other hand hang from the window
  With the cigarette pinned between two fingers.
I like how Auntie Esther puts her Pall Mall between her lips;
 She know how to make smoke circles.
 Her lip-stick gets on the butt-end.
 She looks so pretty in those long earrings with the balls at the end
  – I think she’s wearin’ a wig.
  They have grown-up talk
It sounds funny when Auntie Esther calls Mama “Emily Pearl”
   And Mama calls her only “Esther” – it ain’t polite for us kids to say that.
We try to listen, but they turn the music up.
One day I wanna be just like Mama and Auntie Esther
And sit in the front seat
Wearin’ lipstick
  and
Smokin’ me some Kool’s or Pall Mall’s.