Frames of reference can limit or expand what we can see and understand. This paper looks at the ways some

African Americans have commemorated lost, deceased, and absent children and other important people and creatures using ready-made figures. To some these figures appear mere "toys." However, I argue the substitution of a present body for an absent body is an instance of what Kamau Brathwaite calls "nam": an irreducibly important something so deep it is immune to creolization: to culturally mixing away over time in the upheavals of Diaspora.