Stroking the sleeve of the sweater I’m wearing, I say, “I love this sweater you made for me. It really is beautiful. How did you learn to design clothes?”
“Practice. But more important was I had a gift, an eye for beauty. How colors went together. Used nature as my guide for images of what would work. That sweater you have on, Cora, is straight from the sea. Blues and greens swirling together in movement like the waves.”
Grandma gets up from the table. “Time for blackberry cobbler.”
“With homemade ice cream?” Daddy asks, a huge smile on his face.
“Of course,” Grandma says.
“I’ll help,” Mama says, and she starts to clear dishes. Uncle CJ gets up to help her.
I follow Grandma into the kitchen. “Did you spend a lot of time at the Gulf, Grandma?”
She nods. “Once your daddy and the others were old enough to leave alone, weekends I would often go to the Gulf to see Big Daddy and stay with friends of his there. So many hours of walking together on the beach set aside for black people. There always were new things to see, and so much to say to each other. My heart remains full to this day thinking of him and our love for each other.”
Big Daddy died when Daddy was twenty and still in college. Lung cancer was what did it. Seems smoking was a major pastime during lulls on a fishing boat. He was fourteen years older than Grandma.
“Sounds like a wonderful, easy-going life,” I say as we carry dessert back to the table.
Everyone laughs, but before I can take offense, Uncle CJ jumps in to explain.
“Cora, truth be known, times were very tough,” he says. “Your grandma and my brother just made the very best of it that could be made. My life was different from my brother in that I never found the love of my life, and things in this community were tough compared to floating in the Gulf. Tough economically—lots of people left to go up North for jobs. Also, tough between blacks and whites.”
“Tell her about the Klan, Uncle CJ,” Daddy says.
“The Klan was here?” I blurt out.
“All over the South, and some beyond, Cora,” Uncle CJ says. “Here, led by this young white guy who the Army had rejected because he was nutty. So he starts looking for people here to fight with. Gets in barroom brawls for a while but then decides to organize a local chapter of the Klan. We got word of it. My grocery store was the center of all black gossip in the county. Some of us decide not to quiver in fear but come up with a plan to counter the mounting talk. It was early July, and the biggest thing that happens in this community every year is the 4th of July parade. We decided that would be the perfect time to, as they say about wars these days, ‘win the hearts and minds of our enemy’s people.’”
Daddy has obviously heard this story before. “All the black men dressed for the parade in US uniforms—army, navy, air force,” he says. “Even two black women wore their WAC uniforms from WWII.”
I wonder why Daddy’s never told me these stories before. Was he trying to protect me somehow?
“Not everyone wearing a uniform actually served,” Uncle CJ says, “but they were representing someone in their family who did. I wore your Big Daddy’s army uniform, which included a medal of honor.”
Daddy says, “Look here, Cora.” He’s pointing to a framed picture on the mantel of Big Daddy in his uniform.
“That July 4th, marching behind the US flag, they all looked just as handsome and dignified as Big Daddy in that picture,” Grandma says.
“We figured that would give people something to chew on,” Uncle CJ says. “And it did. The other part of our plan was for after the parade: while people were milling around, everyone in uniform had to speak with at least five white people—a real conversation, not just a hello. And it was beautiful, the genuine interest by the whites in where we served and what we did. We also made sure we spoke with every police officer there. We knew how much they could come to our assistance at various times if we made friends of them.”
“I wasn’t born yet for that July 4th parade, but I remember the Black Eagles organization, first started to plan the march in uniforms at the parade. Black Eagles still exists to protect blacks in this community from terrorism.”
“Terrorism, Daddy? I thought terrorism was between countries.”
“The USA has our own personal history of terrorism,” Uncle CJ says. “Against Native Americans and Black Africans, mostly. Surely you know about the lynchings of more than four thousand black people between the Civil War and WWII? That was a way of controlling blacks in the Jim Crow South, which whites could justify with their belief they were a superior race. But the Black Eagles had a way of fighting back against terrorism. We paid attention. When we heard something, we talked among ourselves.”
I think about Black Lives Matter. These days it’s the police who are targeting black teenagers.
“One time we heard the Klan was targeting a black teenager,” Uncle CJ says. “Bad thing was our ally—the white Chief of Police, a friend of mine—was on vacation. So we sent the boy away to a remote lake to go ‘fishing.’ Everyone claimed not to know where he was, just that he was ‘fishing.’ When the Chief of Police returns from his vacation, the teenager comes back home, with lots of fish. We get with the Chief, he talks with the Klan leader and tells him if anything happens to that boy he’ll be after the leader himself and put him away, maybe in a loony bin—and that was the end of that story.”
“Why was the Chief of Police different from other whites?”
Uncle CJ laughs. “Another story. A funny one. You want to hear it?”
“I love hearing all your stories,” I say, nodding eagerly. “You make me feel like I’m a part of history.”
“CJ, make this the last one. It’s getting late,” says Grandma.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Well, when the Chief was a young boy, I scared off a black bear that he thought was about to have him for dinner.” Uncle CJ can’t continue until he’s able to stop laughing. “The boy didn’t know black bears are very shy and intimidated by people. Truth is, given a chance, they almost always run away. But to this day, the Chief gives me credit for what was in the bear!”
Hearing more stories, good and bad, over this week has made the inside of my head hurt. I’m so confused. The stories seem still alive yet also from days gone by. Violence, guns, separation, and people believing this thing called race was real … and at the same time, the so-called “race” on the bottom of the power ladder was full of people living happy, productive lives. And where does all that leave me, stuck in the middle of black and white?
We leave Grandma and Uncle CJ reluctantly, knowing how hard it is to keep in touch across the miles. But it will be easier for me now, because they have given me the gift of spirit; for the first time in my life, I feel truly connected to these brave and loving people.
I also understand now where Daddy got his ingrained tie to nature, among the lure of the mysteries in Grandma’s woods. Every day this past week he walked those woods from dawn to dusk, returning excited to tell his experiences of new acquaintances and old friends among the species thriving in the depths of those woods.
When I’m older and return home, I wonder what will connect me back to my roots.
Next stop is Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The biggest thing in the town of Tuscaloosa is the University of Alabama, where both my parents went to college. This is where Mama grew up. I read up on the town a little as we drive. The European conquest of the area was achieved only after they fought a variety of Native Americans—Creek, Alabama, Chicksaw, Choctaw, Koasati, and Mobile—for the land. The University of Alabama campus was burned in the last weeks of the Civil War. In 1963, Governor George Wallace blocked, literally, the entrance of two African American students into the university. Federal marshals arrived and Wallace stepped aside.
My mama wasn’t born until 1970, but according to her, the legacy of racism never died in Tuscaloosa. She says her parents were different, though. On the drive there, Mama decides to tell me
a story she says her parents would never speak of with me.
“I was born in the home of a midwife in the black community. Your grandmother was seventeen, unmarried, not sure who the father was, and hiding her pregnancy from everyone, including her parents, who were strict and racist. Grandmother intended to give the baby up for adoption, but after seeing me, she just couldn’t do it. She convinced the midwife, a very loving woman, to keep the baby until she could get married and come back for me. The midwife said she would do it if your grandmother would visit once a week. That arrangement lasted for over a year. Finally, your grandmother got married to your grandfather, he welcomed me into their home, and your grandmother was disowned by her parents as white trash. I never met them.”
“That’s crazy,” I say. “If you hadn’t been born, or had grown up with other people, I might not have been born.”
I try to focus on what I know about Grandmother and Grandfather. They are not warm and fuzzy people, but they’re kind and decent folks who live a simple lifestyle. Grandmother always seems to be hiding, like she has a big secret. (And I guess she does!) Being pushed away by her family most of her life and Grandfather’s people not being close, living spread out and far away, it’s like they are on their own.
Mama has tried to get them to travel up to Virginia but they won’t. And I can tell it is very uncomfortable for Mama to visit here where she grew up. Not that anything bad happened—there’s just lots and lots of silence in her parents’ house. The funny thing is, at home, Mama and Daddy talk all day and night. Mama’s parents act friendly to Daddy, but in that same standoffish way they are with everyone, including Mama. And since they don’t talk much, they don’t tell stories.
It’s our second day here and I’m snooping around Grandmother and Grandfather’s small, 1920s-style city row house, curious to learn more about them. I see this picture of a white guy who looks like a young version of Grandfather with his arm around the shoulders of a black man the same age. In the background, there are old cars I’ve only seen in history books. The sign above their heads says it is a repair shop.
Grandfather comes in and says, “That’s me and Henry, my best friend. Going on fifty years, we’ve worked together five days a week and fished together every Sunday. I know him better than anybody, and vice versa.”
Holding the picture in his hand, Grandfather says, “Henry brings out the gumption in me. I’ve fought with hospitals, drug stores, and insurance companies about the way he has been mistreated. He has the sugar, diabetes. I’ve also stood up to our boss about finding other things for Henry to work on since he can’t see too well or stand for very long anymore. Henry is smart, even though he didn’t go far in school. But when he is not feeling good, he just doesn’t have the energy to fight for himself. Besides, the boss is white and the higher-ups in health care are white. The idea of race still matters around here, the way businesses and such are set up.”
I’m thinking about the importance of Henry in Grandfather’s life when he totally shocks me by saying, “Cora, how does it feel to be in between?”
I’m used to being the one who asks questions. Nobody has ever been so straightforward with me. And there’s not one bit of judgment in his voice—just a simple and caring interest in me.
Because of that, it seems natural and easy to be truthful. “Like I don’t know where I fit,” I admit. “And it makes me mad I feel I have to fit in some group. I push everyone away so I don’t have to choose. Well, not everyone. But I make it hard for people to get to know me.”
“Like your Grandmother?” he asks, his voice quiet. Grandmother’s constant companion isn’t a person—it’s church. From what Mama says, Grandmother takes her shame to church every Sunday and Wednesday night. Her shame from sleeping around looking for love, not standing up to her parents, not being able to love Mama, who rejected her when she returned for her, and pushing Grandfather outside the trust border because he knew her too well. For her, shame means trusting nobody, not trusting herself, not knowing herself.
“I don’t know. I’m not ashamed or anything,” I say. “It’s more that I want to be just me, the same individual, no matter where I am or who I’m around. And that’s hard. So I guess it seems easier to just be on my own. Except for Mama and Daddy—they’re great. But I’m getting older, and I need to find my own way.”
Grandfather puts his arm around me and says, “It’s good you’re thinking all this through when you’re young. I know me standing up for Henry, putting myself out there to be took down, has made me stronger. I wish I had learned that when I was younger. Not to be afraid. If you don’t take a stand out in the open, then it seems to make you feel ashamed inside. There’s nothing worse than feeling shame.”
“Like Grandmother?”
He goes quiet for a minute; then he says, “I love her, I truly do. But the shame has crippled her. She thought once she told your Mama her story, she would be released from the pain she’d felt all those years. But it was too late. In her head she knows she doesn’t deserve to suffer, but her heart has become too rigid, unforgiving—not of other people but of herself.”
“Thank you for being honest with me,” I say. “I’m struggling with who I am, and it helps to hear how others, family, have grown through the challenges they’ve faced—and how they’ve gotten stuck.” I surprise myself by turning toward him, arms wide open, and giving him a bear hug. I’m even more surprised when he hugs me tight back.
“Grandfather, do you think racism is dying out? That young people are more aware now?”
“Many whites I know think they are not racist and try to treat people with respect. But they don’t see the way traditional beliefs like ‘whites are more intelligent and hard-working’ have become built into workplaces, schools, and politics. Groups are more separated now, like in neighborhoods, churches, voting districts, and schools, than they were before the big school desegregation case the Supreme Court decided.”
I learned about that in school. “Brown vs. Board of Education.”
“Right. Anyway, change is slow when you got to change not only people’s minds but their livelihoods, habits of trying to get ahead by buying more and more things rather than standing up to people at the top of businesses and government.”
“People my age I talk with think racism is gone.”
Grandfather shakes his head. “Things look different in my world. Seems like young and old today are still buying into that idea of climbing to the top using whatever is to their advantage, race being one example. Their attention is taken up with the climb to the top, so they don’t speak up when some redneck says he’s going to start a race war by doing something crazy, like shooting nine black people in the Charleston Emanuel AME Church.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?” I truly want to be with Grandfather, just talk and get to know him as deeply as possible before the looming, long drive home. In his presence, I feel my life matters.
“I’d love that,” he says, and I feel warm all over.
Walking must be in my bones and heart. Grandma and Big Daddy strolling the beach, loving more with each step, listening to the roar of approval from the surf; Daddy’s passion for life in the woods; me and Chelsea going through our paces of growing-up questions; and even golf for walking meditation.
Grandfather knows the real me. That’s love. And I know Grandfather now too. He trusts me to open up, like I am mature enough, worthy. That’s love.
During the drive home to Virginia, my brain is running on high speed. Walking is not an option, so I employ reading, my second-best calming strategy. I need to finish a book and write-up before school on Monday anyway. Our English teacher played an audio tape of Toni Morrison reading a section of her book God Help the Child. Four of us decided we wanted to read the whole book and talk about it together. My ticket to get into the discussion is a short written description of events in the book I would like to explore with others. There are amazing parallels in the book to encounters I’ve had on this trip, so I
’m feeling inspired and start writing.
God Help the Child is about a beautiful young woman who grew up too black to warrant her lighter-skinned mother’s love. Her mother would not even touch her, hold her hand. The father left, assuming the child, who was so dark, could not be his.
The young woman’s lover is a deep thinker, stalled in growth by his brother’s murder as a child at the hands of a molester, for which he blames everyone else—even, mistakenly, his current lover. Neither one knows about the most significant experiences of the other.
Her identity, as an adult with a new name, is the surface characteristic of stereotypical beauty, playing in shallow form to her blackness, for attention and admiration. His identity is perpetual mourning of his brother, unstated and unresolved, while feeling superior to everyone else. “Black is just a color” is his response to her defining blackness. There is a clear, fundamental connection between them, but not enough trust for them to be open to themselves or each other. Their heartbreak as children has not been mended but stuffed down, and it comes out in the untruth of silence and secrets.
Hope is suggested by new awareness of each one’s deeper self.
My parents have never abused me and no twisted events happened to me during my childhood. Just the opposite. But I’ve always felt an inner large black hole of absence when it comes to the question of who I am. I have only been able to answer the question in socially defined categories, like “black” or “white”—not “neither,” which is the answer on the down deep human level. I need to be able to answer, “Who am I?”
School Tales Page 20