Delta Jewels

by Alysia Burton Steele

  I don’t think myself beautiful. I ain’t ugly, am I! I just try to fix up when I go out. Now, I ain’t goin’ nowhere out unless my powder and lipstick on. I’mma put that on, through the week and everything. They [home attendants and family] come in and be waitin’ on me. You gotta keep yo’self up. When you go out, fix yourself up. I try to do that now. I be clean. When I go out, I be sharp. I don’t brag on myself. I want to look presentable. I put on my dress and my hat and my shoes, powder my face. Oh, I wear my jewelry. I got jewelry for Sunday and for every day.

  When I walk in church, they lookin’. They say, “Don’t your daughters sho fix you up?” They look at them bad hats. I got so many hats. I got them hang all upside the wall closet full. When we was comin up, we go to church, you didn’t have to wear no hat. But [when] they have testimony service, they put a hat on your head then, some of the mothers will. You ain’t dressed up unless you got a hat on. I don’t care what you put on. Go to church, if you ain’t got a hat on, you still ain’t dressed. I heard a preacher say that. But I was wearin’ my hat before he said that. He said, “A woman ain’t dressed up when she come to church unless she have a hat on.” But now you see more folk barehead. I wear my high heels, too. Not too high, about an inch or two. I always liked high heels. I dress when I go to church.

  GRAM—SWEATPANTS, A BLAZER, AND HIGH HEELS

  Gram loved her high heels. That’s all she wore. She’s the only woman I’ve known who could rock sweatpants, a blazer, and high heels. The only pair of shoes she ever wore that didn’t have a heel were her bedroom slippers. She wasn’t more than 5 foot 2, maybe 110 pounds.

  My grandparents William and Althenia Burton, with Gram Ree. Date unknown. Taken in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

  She always wore conservative colors—blue, black, and brown, maybe tan. I don’t recall an extravagant color like red. She believed in wearing the classics—A-line skirts, wide-legged dress pants, a blouse, and always a blazer. She was a sharp dresser, always well put together with a little Fashion Fair makeup—powder, blush, and lipstick. She was always a lady.

  She liked a certain Revlon nail color. It was a sienna brown mixed with a deep maroon. It went nicely with her medium brown complexion. Her nails were rounded and immaculate, maybe a quarter inch in length. If one nail broke, she filed them all down to match. She always told me to make sure the tip length matched for each nail. If the polish chipped, she would paint over the one that was chipped or take the color off every nail and redo them all. I used to sit and watch her nail ritual. She would file her nails and slowly run the nail sideways against her jawline, checking to make sure the nail was smooth. She could tell when she ran her nail gently across her cheek if it needed to be filed some more. Watching her was entertaining.

  To this day, it irritates me if there’s a tiny chip in my nail polish. As a photographer and professor, I’m always typing. I hate chipped nails, so I rarely paint them. But when I do, I like Lincoln Park after Dark by OPI. It’s my go-to color, like Gram’s Revlon, except mine is dark purple, almost black.

  I wish I remembered the name of her color.

  Gram had habits that would irritate or mesmerize me. She would drive about two miles north of our house to the Kline Village farmer’s market for fresh lunchmeats, cheese, and UTZ potato chips, still warm and in freshly packaged buckets. At the peanut shop she would buy fresh-roasted peanuts, still in the shell. She would break the shells, eat the nuts in the car, and leave the shells all over Pop’s Buick seat and floor. It used to make him fuss, but she didn’t care. She never stopped doing it. She never cleaned up the shells either. Gram would ask me to ride with her, to keep her company. I still hate the smell of peanuts or peanut butter. I also associate the smell of peanuts with the time I threw up from eating too many of those peanuts.

  Gram could not parallel park. She would back in, then pull out. In, then out. She’d do this several repeatedly and it would get on my nerves. As a bratty teenager I would ask, “Gram, please let me out,” while she continued to back in, then out, and so on. I’d have time to walk from the sidewalk to inside the house and she’d still be trying to park.

  The day of her funeral, my three cousins and I sat in the swing on the front porch—where I used to sit in my two-piece halter-top pajamas enfolded in Pop’s arm and Gram holding my hands—and laughed about how she couldn’t park. We found laughter after our tears that sad day. All of us girls talked about how Gram used to run her nails over her cheek to make sure she’d filed them smoothly. She’d do that in the car while she was humming and driving. When she parallel parked, she would blow air out of her mouth, like a little toot-toot. She’d turn the steering wheel, hum and blow air out, then back in. Then she’d turn the wheel the opposite direction, hum and blow air, and pull out. Again. And again. I find myself humming when I park, but I can parallel park with one attempt.

  We found laughter after our tears that sad day.

  MRS. DOROTHY A. KEE, 69

  COFFEEVILLE

  BORN FEBRUARY 1946

  STILL MARRIED, 47 YEARS, TO NATHANIEL KEE

  2 CHILDREN

  2 STEP-GRANDCHILDREN

  I met Mrs. Kee in the Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church office in Coffeeville. She has a warm disposition but seems nervous about the interview. She tells me education is important to her family. She has multiple degrees—a bachelor’s in social science with an emphasis in history from Alcorn State and two master’s degrees from Mississippi State University in education and social work. “It touches me that people still stop me and tell me I made a difference in their lives,” she says when asked about her teaching. She is a retired seventh through twelfth grade teacher who taught social studies, history, and economics. But Mrs. Kee wants to talk about her childhood. She was a daddy’s girl.

  I am the oldest of seven children, born to Clara and Clemmie Smith. We were reared in a God-fearing home and we were always taught to put God first in our life. We were encouraged to read the Bible daily. We attended church every Sunday. Daddy was a landowner and we lived on a farm of 160 acres. We were in charge of working every day to just live. My daddy grew everything, the animals, the crops, and the staple crops—like corn, soybeans, and cotton. He grew truck crops like watermelons, cantaloupe, and peanuts, too. This was for mere survival. We would pick blackberries and dewberries for survival. That was what we called for extra money. We depended on the cotton, the corn, and the soybeans for our staple crops—major crops. If he didn’t sell enough, you know, in the fall, then he would borrow money and then we would start over each year. But he was on his own. A lot of times he would have to make a loan for us to live. But we basically made it. My mom was a good homemaker. She made our clothes. She kept us lookin’, we thought, pretty good. She would put bows in our hair and all that kind of stuff. My daddy was very outspoken and a lot of times he got ridiculed, by even his own color. He had a dark complexion and my mom was real light. And a lot of his own peers thought he was somethin’ because he had a wife that looked like she was white. As a matter of fact, my mother’s father was half white. She would put bows in our hair, and with him [Daddy] being a small landowner, they said he was somethin’ else. My daddy didn’t take anything off anybody. He would speak his peace. We did pretty good in school and we got whoopin’s if we didn’t do pretty good in school, so we were ridiculed a lot. You know, a lot of people would say things about us because we had certain standards we had to keep. Daddy, I don’t mean he was mean to us, but he wanted us to be somebody—that’s what he said.

  She tells me that her father was well respected in the black community especially, and then she tells me there was a hit out on her father. Rev. Larry Hervey is in the room with us. I look at him incredulously. He nods his head yes. My mouth opens.

  An individual was released from Parchman State Penitentiary, with intent to kill my father. That ain’t good, is it? My daddy was upset with injustices in our little community. My daddy was very outspoken and sincere with his work in Civil Rights.
Many abhorred his efforts with Civil Rights; therefore an effort was made to get rid of him. A prisoner was brought from Parchman with intent to end his life. He [Daddy] was the first president of our NAACP. There was a march downtown for integration for schools. The individual from Parchman was given a gun on each hip, a rifle in his hand, and told to go down there and break up the march. He didn’t succeed.

  “Do you remember any more?” I ask. She tells me no. I am just stunned law officials would do something so heinous as this. I’ve never heard of such a thing. I am just in shock.

  Oh, yes, that’s true—and worse,” says Rev. Hervey. He’s leaning against a cabinet in his office. He’s been listening to the interview with his arms crossed across his chest.

  I Google her father when I get home and don’t find any stories about this incident. I suppose if you talk to the locals—and they trust you—they’ll talk about stories news organizations didn’t archive online.

  MRS. LELA J. BEARDEN, 88

  SUMNER

  BORN APRIL 1926

  MARRIED FOR 56 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  3 CHILDREN

  5 GRANDCHILDREN

  1 GREAT-GRAND

  My habit is to print copies of directions, not relying solely on the GPS of my phone. I’ve learned that while driving in the country, my phone service will drop. It’s early on an August day. Humid, like it always is in August. I schedule the first interview around 10 a.m. because it allows me to start the day early and I can schedule multiple interviews. Most women are at least two hours away, so I try to make the most of each trip. I’m going to interview a retired educator, a home economics teacher who graduated from Tuskegee Institute, Mrs. Lela Bearden.

  All I know is that she’s in her eighties and lives in a town where the elementary school named for her husband is directly across the street from her house. Google Maps told me to take Route 49 East to her house, but there was a street I was supposed to make a right on that I never saw. I keep going straight instead, am somehow on 49 West, and pass Parchman prison, officially called the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Google says to make a right down a small road. I hesitate because I am no longer in Sumner.

  I start to worry. I know Mississippi history. I know there are still places I wouldn’t feel comfortable in—even during daylight. When Bobby and I first moved here, I didn’t want him to get a job outside Oxford. I was afraid something would happen to him just because he’s black. I begged him not to take a job outside Oxford. What if his car broke down? Would someone act like they were going to help him, only to kill him because of the color of his skin? Would a cop stop him for a bogus driving violation just to harass him? We talk about it and he agrees to work in town. While I’m driving and getting lost, I look around and see plenty of places where someone could hurt me and no one would ever find my body.

  When I turn down this two-lane dusty country road to see Mrs. Bearden, the hairs on my neck stand up as I remember my conversation with Mrs. Florida Smith about white men who rape and kill black women, tie bricks to their bodies, and dump them in Whore’s Lake. I know something is not right—nothing about it is right—but I still keep driving down that road. I’ve gone somewhere I’m not supposed to be, I think. There aren’t any Confederate flags or signs, but I have a feeling. The road starts out with gray pavement, then turns into Mississippi red clay. On my left is a farmhouse: American flag hanging; a big, manicured yard; patio furniture. On my left is a field of corn: tall corn, almost as tall as my silver SUV. I think about Whore’s Lake. I get a funny feeling that I have gone somewhere I shouldn’t. I sense it. I panic and look at my phone to make sure I have service.

  I always get lost trying to get to the mothers’ homes. I forewarn the Jewels. “I’m a Yankee and I almost always get lost. Listen for your phone to ring in case I get lost,” I tell them. I call Mrs. Bearden.

  “Helllooo.” She sings every time she answers.

  “Hello, Mrs. Bearden, I’m lost. I’m on such-and-such road and I don’t think this is your neighborhood.” What I don’t tell her is that my insides are cramping. I know this isn’t the right place.

  “You went straight when you should have made a right turn. You passed me miles ago.”

  I tell her the road I’m on and she says, “Oh no. I’ll stay on the phone with you. Turn around and come back right now.” She doesn’t sound alarmed, but she stays on the phone with me until I arrive in her driveway. There’s a little sign in the front yard that reads, THE BEARDENS. She has a two-vehicle carport. I pull up to it. She doesn’t hang up until I’m getting out of my car. She greets me at the garage door, which is protected by bars.

  She is a beautiful woman, jazzy for an 80-something-year-old. Modern-looking glasses and she smells like a perfume I recognize from the 1980s. It smells good on her. She gives me a hug and says, “Come in.”

  Entering her home through the carport leads to a kitchen, and through the kitchen are the dining and the family rooms. I can’t help but notice how she adored her husband, Rogers, because his four-foot framed picture hangs behind a middle seat of the rectangular dining table. I walk into the back room, the den area, and see that it’s dedicated to his accomplishments. His and her plaques decorate the wood-paneled wall. Photos of the family from the 1950s adorn built-in bookshelves. The respect she has for her husband is obvious. She affectionately refers to him as “Mr. Bearden.” And easily shares this powerful memory about boarding the plane to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1953.

  A hallway in Mrs. Bearden’s home shows Mr. Bearden’s ancestors.

  The officer said, “We’re gonna get you all seated.” It was 40 mothers and 60 babies [boarding the plane to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1953]. All of us there with babies. I had one six-week-old and a two-year-old. I was the only black one. They said, “We’re gonna seat you according to your husband’s rank.” They were talkin’ amongst themselves, [saying,] “There’s some captain’s wife on here. Wonder who she is. Wonder where that captain’s wife is.” They were so sure it wasn’t me. So then: “Seat number one, the dependents of Captain R. H. Bearden.” I said, “Excuse me, please.” We had seat number one going over on the plane. You could have heard a pin fall. They were quiet. Let me tell you something, they hardly spoke. After that they got so friendly. After that it got very warm; they got very cordial. You see, that’s how they behave.

  “You know, you should call your husband Mr. Steele, Lisa,” she says.

  I don’t reply, but giggle, thinking, Oh, I am SO not going to call Bobby “Mr. Steele.”

  We sit down in the dining room, and a few minutes into the interview, she says, “Well, you aren’t white. Rev. Hawkins said you were a white lady.”

  I’m taken back by this and chuckle. “No, ma’am, I’m not white.”

  “Well, I can see that. It doesn’t matter.”

  Now, I’m puzzled. I don’t look white; at least I don’t think so. I laugh and then I start to feel offended. Why would Rev. Hawkins think I’m white? I wonder. He’s sat across from me. He’s seen me. He knows I’m not white. Maybe he told her that before he met me? More than a few people in the Delta say I sound white on the phone. This concerns me. So I make a point to use more dialect that I grew up with. Maybe that will make a difference in how I’m greeted when I call.

  Mrs. Bearden tells me that when Mr. Bearden cut grass while working on a plantation as a teen, “He noticed that white women wore wedding rings and black women didn’t. He told himself that he was going to save up and buy his wife a ring one day. He made change while cutting the grass, and saved his money over the years.”

  She said when they met at Tuskegee Institute and he asked her to marry him, he used the money he’d saved up to buy her rings. She still has the original set, even though he bought her a diamond—over two carats—for their fiftieth anniversary. Her daughter Cynthia Bearden McAdory wears her mother’s original set on her pinkie finger.

  While we are seated at the dining room table that seats six, she talks about how her husband couldn�
��t dress. He didn’t grow up with a lot and then joined the Army, where they provided uniforms. He couldn’t match clothes, so when they were dating, he asked her to pick out his clothes. She was happy to do so and said he gained all the attention of the college girls. After they married almost three years later, she continued to buy his clothes throughout their 56-year marriage.

  He [her husband] was always so well versed and everything, but he didn’t know how to dress. One night he said something about his dress, and I said, “I really don’t like that, what you have on.”

  He said, “These are new things, what you talkin’ about? What do you like? I don’t know how to pick clothes out. I left from high school and I didn’t have anything and I went in the service and I wore my uniforms, and I came out. I don’t know about clothes, why don’t you go with me to the store?”

  I said,” Oh, I would be delighted to go.” We went down to the men’s clothing store in Tuskegee, and he bought two suits, a blazer, slacks, shirts, ties to match. I told him what I liked. I was picking them all out and he paid for what I suggested.

  Nobody on the campus wasn’t lookin’ at him. They used to say, “Lela, you talkin’ to Farmer Brown.” Before then. When he dressed up, I like to nearly have lost him. The girls were lookin’ at him—so nice looking and everything. And he was enjoyin’ it, too.