Читать книгу Officer Clemmons - Dr. François S. Clemmons - Страница 10

WHEN I WAS BORN IN 1945, THE SANDERS-Scarborough clan had lived for several generations in the sprawling, blanched little town of Blackwater, Mississippi, just north of Meridian, in the backwater region near the Okatibbee Reservoir and the Alabama border. If you weren’t a cotton farmer, a sharecropper, or a smithy who worked for white folks, there wasn’t much for you to do there. Some folks got along raising chickens and guinea fowl; some did light farming but could not prosper. Each year they fell further in debt to the landowner, Ol’ Mastuh Sanders.

Twice in our clan’s memory, the floods had come in late spring, and no one had been able to plant in time for a summer crop. The seed money was wasted. But most folks stayed on because they didn’t have anyplace else to go. It seemed better to be around your own folks—to scratch out a living in the tired earth—than to move to some strange place where folks called you mister and missus and didn’t know your nickname, or your granddaddy’s name, or how your uncle Jeb had lost one finger in the smithy on Mastuh Sanders’s homestead, or even who to call for a county fair game of baseball. New folks wouldn’t know nothin’ at all about you. That was no way to live, so folks stayed on, hard as it was.

To my great-grandmama, this is what seemed important and what made her call this place home. She was also tired. Laura Mae Sanders Pinman had raised thirteen children of her own and found herself surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including my older brother Willie Jr., me, and my twin sisters Betty and Barbara. She raised the children when their mamas couldn’t do it. And the children just kept coming. She would cook. She would clean. She would wash and pray. She worked and didn’t slow down for old memories to catch her.

The Old Homestead on Mastuh Sanders’s land had been falling apart for as long as she could remember. Every shutter was hanging down or gone. The paint she helped apply when she was a young girl had never been refreshed; it was barely visible. If she could ever get the front door of the sagging porch to close, it might help to keep the marsh rats from invading the kitchen on hot summer nights. She was always mindful not to leave food out where they could get it; and she felt constant dread that those rats might crawl into the bedrooms of one of her grandchildren—her grans—and bite one of her darlings. When it rained, every bucket and pot in the house was used to catch water from the leaky roof.

There were many causes for sadness in her life, but the way people tell it, the greatest sadness of all was when her last husband was killed. Noah Leon Pinman could work hard and was good with his hands. He had a quick smile with pretty teeth. He had been her third husband and had stayed around The Homestead the longest.

My own mama, Inez Delois, would sometimes tell me and my brother the story, later on after we had moved up north, to give us an idea of how it was down south in the old days.

The way she told it, everybody knew that Great-Grandmama Laura Mae was Ol’ Mastuh Sanders’s woman. He came by to see her every week. Noah Leon Pinman knew it too. Even though he had agreed to work the farm for Ol’ Mastuh Sanders, he hadn’t agreed to anything else. Still, Noah Leon went on about his business farming and, with the help of the kids, year after year, got the planting and harvesting done. There was always some fence that needed mending, or some field that needed watering. He kept the children busy, and they all worked together from sunup to sundown.

Most of the time, Noah Leon just ignored Ol’ Mastuh Sanders and his late afternoon visits. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae used to wonder how it was that Noah Leon always seemed to know when Ol’ Mastuh Sanders was coming and just disappeared into the fields. She tried to ignore it too. She had been going with Ol’ Mastuh Sanders for so long that it just seemed natural to her. She didn’t know any other way. Mama Inez said that her grandmama, Lily Mae, had told Laura Mae to go with Ol’ Mastuh Sanders when she was a young girl, and it had been that way ever since.

Laura Mae’s mama, Lily Mae, had been a slave on the Sanders plantation all her life and had always been “worried” by the white men who came by the place. That’s just the way it was, and she was no different from any of the other colored girls around there, even if she had wanted to say something.

One day, Noah Leon asked her to come to town with him and not go with Ol’ Mastuh Sanders when he came by. She just looked at him and kept on with her cooking and cleaning.

When Ol’ Mastuh Sanders came by the old house that night, Noah Leon stuck around. Laura Mae pulled off her apron and headscarf, wiped her face with her hands, and straightened her simple dress as she had always done when Mastuh Sanders came. She walked slowly out of the house, down the path, and past the barn.

She didn’t like leaving and going with Mastuh Sanders, but if she didn’t go, she knew they couldn’t stay in the Old Homestead any longer. She didn’t know where they would go. This place was home. This was the only home she had ever known.

Just past the barn, Mastuh Sanders walked closer and spoke to her as he always did. He asked her how she was feeling and if she was glad to see him. She tried to smile and said yes, as she always did. He told her he had wanted to stop by and see her earlier that week, but his work and family had kept him away. He had been saying that for more than twenty years, and Laura Mae had stopped listening. That night, she was troubled by the pounding of her heart and the sharp voice calling to her from the house. It was Noah Leon, telling her to come back to him and leave Ol’ Mastuh Sanders.

Ol’ Mastuh Sanders was still talking to her as she tried to block the hurt and anguish of Noah Leon’s voice out of her ears. His voice grew louder, and she realized, suddenly, that he was standing close by. She wheeled around and stared at him. Noah Leon had a big chopping cleaver raised over his head, and he was coming toward Ol’ Mastuh Sanders.

She screamed as she heard the shots ring out. Noah stood motionless and stunned. Ol’ Mastuh Sanders had reached into his overalls pocket, pulled out his pistol, and shot Noah Leon point-blank, three times without stopping.

Everybody knew that he carried that pistol. He sometimes used it on sick livestock and stray rabbits. Didn’t Noah Leon know it? Laura Mae never had time to speak, it happened so fast.

Noah Leon was on the ground at her feet, bleeding from his chest and stomach. A crowd quickly gathered around them.

“Stand back!” Ol’ Mastuh Sanders barked. “Let him lay there! Nobody touch him. Let the slimy bastard lay there where he belongs: in the dirt. I never liked him anyway.”

They all stood there; nobody moved, not even the babies. They were all afraid of Ol’ Mastuh Sanders and knew that he would shoot any one of them just as quick as he had shot Noah Leon. He looked around, and his eyes stopped on Great-Grandmama Laura Mae. She started crying, fell to her knees, and crawled over to Noah Leon’s body. Blessedly, he’d died before he hit the ground.

Laura Mae gathered what was left of him and rocked him gently in her arms as she cried and wailed. She rocked him as though he were her baby and he was only asleep. Ol’ Mastuh Sanders told everyone to leave him be and to not bury him. Silently, everyone backed away while Ol’ Mastuh Sanders stood there over Laura Mae, who was crying and rocking Noah Leon’s body. She looked pitiful and helpless, there on her knees, while Noah Leon’s blood slowly soaked the front of her dress.

After mumbling something to Laura Mae and getting no response, Ol’ Mastuh Sanders just shook his head, turned, and walked away, putting his gun back in his pocket. He walked away without looking back, past the barn and up the path to the Old Homestead. He moved silently around the side, got on his horse, and rode away.

My mother remembered Great-Grandmama Laura Mae sobbing and wailing in the yard for the rest of that evening. She was still there hours later when Aunt Coradelle and Cousin Dina Mae walked over to her, called to her softly, and carried her to the house.

After dark, some of the men went back for Noah Leon’s body and carried it into the house. They laid him out and cleaned off the blood. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae insisted on being in charge of everything. She gave him his last bath with love and great patience as she talked to herself and anyone there listening. She kissed his body and rubbed him with Vaseline and the lanolin oil she used for her hair. When they had finished cleaning him and dressed him in overalls, she sat with him all night and continued to talk and sing and pray.

She sat for the rest of the night with one hand holding the Bible in her lap and her other on him. When people began to wake up in the morning, before the rooster crowed, they found her still in silent vigil with her Bible.

She stayed in her trance, weeping quietly, until some of Noah Leon’s people arrived from Louisiana. They wanted to take his body back home to be buried, but she wouldn’t hear any of it. Finally, she allowed him to be buried on a little hill by the creek. She put up a wooden cross. That way she could see him every day and take food and flowers to his grave. That was the way she wanted it, and no one could change her mind. Noah Leon’s people went home without him.

When Ol’ Mastuh Sanders came back, weeks, maybe months later, it wasn’t to see Great-Grandmama Laura Mae. It was to introduce Mr. Slim Hawkins to everyone as the new overseer for the plantation. That time Great-Grandmama Laura Mae never came out of the house. Ol’ Mastuh Sanders waited for her a long time, but she never came out. He stood around his horse and the trough looking and just waiting. After that, he came to the Old Homestead to talk to Slim about the crops and to discuss planting, but he never came to “worry” Great-Grandmama Laura Mae again. Those days were over when Noah Leon died.

Nothing much was ever said of Noah Leon’s death. No questions, no investigations, no detectives, no county sheriffs, no coroner’s report, no trial. That’s what I remember most about my mother’s telling of Great-Grandmama Laura Mae’s story. Everybody knew something, and nobody said anything.

How long it took before things returned to normal, nobody knew. It just happened.

Laura Mae’s third daughter, my Grandmama Minnie, bore six children: Lula Bea, Abraham, my mother Inez Delois, Catherine, Minnie Laura, and Levi. All these babies were left in the country with their grandmother while Minnie went to town to earn money as a domestic for white folks. Minnie had married Saul Scarborough when she was fifteen, and she bore him those six children before he lost his mind.

When I was a child, Granddaddy Saul did little except sit in the old rocking chair and dip snuff or chew tobacco. He wore the same weathered overalls every single day until he had to get a new pair. By the time I was three years old, he was already using a cane to get around. I remember him telling me that the cane could talk. When we were alone, the cane would tell me fanciful stories of raccoon hunting and catfish fetching down by the creek. Granddaddy Saul’s arthritis and rheumatism bothered him most of the time, and he had frequent migraine headaches, but nothing seemed to bother him when we went walking in the woods and that cane was busy talking. As we walked out beyond the hedges and down by the fields, he would hold my hand for a while. Then he would let me hold onto the side of his overalls so I could keep up. He seemed just like everyone else to me; he always seemed fine.

Every morning when I woke up, I’d go looking for him. I’d always find him sitting and rocking by himself or staring off into space or talking with the chickens in the yard. When I found him, I would stand by him and talk to the chickens too. After a time, we would go off walking together.

All the big people who came to the house were bossy to me and said that I was kin to all of them. Even when they came from far away and I didn’t know them, they said I had some of their blood. Then they would hug me and kiss me and call me Little Angel and Little Buttercup, as if they knew me. I didn’t like that.

If I could find Granddaddy Saul, we would go out walking for a long time. I would stay with him until the big strangers left. When we’d come back, it would be after dark and the dogs would bark and jump up, licking and greeting us. Everybody would fuss at Granddaddy Saul for keeping me away so long. I never complained because he fed me corn bread and sorghum from a can, and we talked to the cane. When I told my brother Willie Jr. that the cane could talk, he said it wasn’t true because Granddaddy Saul never asked the cane to talk to him.

At night, while I lay on my pallet, I could hear my Great-Grandmama Laura Mae fussing at him about that talking cane and those tales he told. She said she knew he wasn’t telling the truth and shouldn’t be fooling me like that. That was when I had the revelation that Granddaddy Saul hadn’t told Great-Grandmama Laura Mae or Willie Jr. or my mother that the cane could talk. This was a deep secret between him and me.

Granddaddy Saul taught me that to hear the cane talk, we had to be quiet. Sometimes we were quiet for so long that I fell asleep. Granddaddy Saul would wake me up to tell me that I’d missed the talking. I didn’t like it that I had fallen asleep under a shady tree in the midday sun and had missed my important encounter with the talking cane. I would promise Granddaddy Saul and myself that I wouldn’t fall asleep again.

When I managed to stay awake, the cane would tell me of clever animals that lived in the woods and outfoxed the old plantation master and ate his chickens. It told me about the deer and the rabbit and the fox, the bear and the coyote, the turtle, and the grasshopper that lived deep in the woods. I’d listen anxiously, hardly blinking my eyes and holding my breath.

Sometimes Granddaddy Saul and I would sing songs with the cane. We’d sing about flying, fishing, marching, and stealing honey from the bees. It never occurred to me that the cane wasn’t singing when Granddaddy Saul was singing.

One day when we were out walking and I wanted the cane to talk, we waited a long time. After a while, we sat down by the banks of the Wateechee Creek and continued to wait and listen. Finally, Granddaddy Saul told me to hold the tips of my thumb and index finger together in each hand, close my eyes real tight, and make a wish that the cane would talk to us. I closed my eyes, and slowly the cane began to talk.

It told me of kings and queens who were my oldest kin, peoples in an ancient civilization called Afrique. The cane talked about tropical jungle places and described strange, ferocious, growling animals large enough to eat the fox and possum and jackrabbit and deer and me. The cane talked of a great Afrique warrior who was strong enough to kill the big animals with a spear and knife. He would skin and cook them over a fire. Then he would eat them and share them with his kinfolk. He wasn’t afraid and would protect me from the big animals. The warrior, a mighty leader who was loved by his people, was named Shakti Binge. I told Granddaddy Saul that one day I would take him with me to Afrique. He smiled and rubbed my head and said that he would wait.

One day, my mother called me in from chasing the chickens and told me to stay in the house. It had been raining all day, letting up only for brief moments. There was water everywhere, and we all huddled under quilts and kept our socks on to try to stay warm. The rain continued steadily, and the pounding of the water on the roof and the wind battering the side of the house made us look at each other in fear. I stood between Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and Granddaddy Saul. My brother and Mr. Slim Hawkins stood behind Mama Inez and my daddy, Willie Son. Cousin Dina Mae and her four kids and Lula Bea and her six kids were all huddled nearby looking out the window and wondering like the rest of us. It had been raining off and on for well over a week. The rain was affecting everything. Daddy said that the factory didn’t have any work for him.

Grandmama Minnie Green arrived home from town soaking wet. I heard her voice before I actually saw her. She said that everybody in town was talking about the rising water and the rain. Her feet were muddy, and she was carrying her shoes. She said that she’d had to walk the last five miles because Ol’ Mr. Carmichael was afraid his mules and wagon wouldn’t make it through the waterlogged roads. There were snakes everywhere, she said. She was almost bitten when she accidentally stepped on a rattler.

That whole day, the men huddled and smoked, and they checked on the animals in the barn so many times I knew it was a way to get away from the houseful of ladies and kids. They grumbled and hunched over as they walked through the rain, reaching in their pockets for their matches, pipes, tobacco, and snuff. Nobody had a good feeling about this water. The men had to mull over what to do if the rain got worse. There were few choices because there was no higher ground anywhere.

Mr. Elijah Sanders Jr., Ol’ Mastuh Sanders’s oldest son, who ran the plantation, appeared through the trees, leading his horse and holding his coat tightly to his chest. He was soaked to the bone. He called out to Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and drawled his news, “I reckon we may be movin’ up the valley a piece to higher ground if this rain keep comin’ up. My ol’ missus up the road’s been gatherin’ everything to move first thing in the mornin’ with this water not stoppin’. Y’all best be packin’ and gettin’ ready. Just don’t know what this water’s goin’ to do.”

Great-Grandmama Laura Mae let him know that we all intended to stay—if the house held up. Elijah said he’d be leaving in the morning and bid her goodbye.

Despite the best efforts of Great-Grandmama Laura Mae, her sons and daughters, their sons and daughters, and Mr. Slim Hawkins, the Old Homestead couldn’t withstand the heavy downpour. The rains kept coming and the water got higher. By morning, the brick-and-stone supports began to sink and lean. Everybody began to feel unsafe. We gathered all the dry things we could, wrapped food in old sacks and quilts, pulled out small precious things we could carry (like Laura Mae’s Bible), and began the long, muddy trek to higher ground. As we walked, we kept looking back at the sagging Old Homestead and wondered when, if ever, we might return. Would the house still be there? Great-Grandmama Laura Mae looked longingly at the knoll where Noah Leon Pinman was buried and tried to hide her tears. Those closest to her knew her anguish at leaving Noah Leon’s body behind.

Our progress was slow and slippery. Everybody was soon soaked and muddy. Snakes and mosquitoes were everywhere, and most of the paths had been washed out. Sagging trees and heavy, hanging branches were strewn along the way. All conversations slowed and finally stopped as we all moved farther and farther away from home, from stability, from our roots. By midday we had covered several miles, but nobody knew where we were. We were lost and confused.

Time and time again, Great-Grandmama Laura Mae would refer to that torturous journey as The New Flood Days, and everybody who heard would nod, look at one another, and sigh knowingly. That journey tested us all. The torrential rains kept coming. The clouds of circling, biting mosquitoes; the slithering snakes; and sodden, fallen branches were everywhere.

All through those first awful days, Granddaddy Saul wandered off the path and couldn’t keep pace with the group. At first, my cousin Lemiel was told to watch over him. He had to go fetch him from his wandering. But after a time, with all the mosquitoes, snakes, and panicked stray animals, and with more people joining our trek north, it got harder to keep track of Granddaddy Saul. Twice my cousin went looking for him through the crowd, which grew ever bigger, more raggedy, and disorganized. Luckily, my cousin found a local farmer who allowed Granddaddy Saul to ride on the back of his mule-drawn wagon.

But then someone noticed that Saul wasn’t riding anymore. What had happened to him? Where had he gone? Nobody knew. We all searched frantically, but there was no trace of him. Later, someone found his cane alongside a gulch. No one was surprised that there was no trace of him in this torrential rain. No footprints, no clothes, no body—nothing. Only his cane, lying there by itself on the stream bank.

When I saw the cane, I knew that something bad had happened to my granddaddy, but nobody told me anything. I cried and screamed until they gave me the cane for comfort. For days I lugged it along with me, urging it to talk, fluctuating between asking it to tell me where my granddaddy was and imploring it to tell me more stories of Afrique and the warrior Shakti Binga. I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. I was lonely and listless, watching, listening, and waiting.

One night while I was asleep on the march to Alabama, the women in my family banded together and took the cane away from me. “For your own good,” they said.

I grew silent. I withdrew. It just wasn’t worth trying to talk about it. The loss of my beloved Granddaddy Saul and the magical cane was simply too much for me. Even though I was only four years old, I grieved deeply. I was inconsolable.

Then one day, I began to sing. No one had heard me sing before except my granddaddy. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae, Grandmama Minnie Green, and my mother all looked at me and at each other. I sang the songs I had sung with Granddaddy Saul and the magical cane. I didn’t really know what I was singing about or whether my songs made sense to anyone. I sang because it eased my pain. Singing, I found my Little Buttercup self, my center, my home. It was Granddaddy’s legacy: I was singing the music he taught me, the music of the cane.

WHILE I WAS GRIEVING FOR MY LOST GRANDDADDY, our group traveled a long way. I had heard the talk. People said Alabama enough times that I wondered if it was a new world. Where and what was Alabama? They said I was born in Alabama; we had left when I was too little to know.

I heard my daddy say that he knew people and had a few relatives in the area. He felt that our family could make a fresh start working in the factories and that he could give up farming. Willie Son had a plan for himself and his family.

Some members of the clan knew they weren’t going back to Meridian, Mississippi, again anytime soon. There was talk about how bad it had gotten. They’d heard news from the area. The floods were worse than anyone had seen. It seemed we had all been lucky to leave the Old Homestead when we did, lucky to get out with our lives and what few belongings we had. Word among the clan was that the Old Homestead was no longer even there. The relentless rains had washed it from its moorings. They said it seemed like it just floated away. No reason to go back—no love, no land, no house, no loss.

For days the motley, undisciplined caravan continued east until it eventually came to rest at a village called Aliceville. Some wanted to settle there. Others were still eager to move on, maybe north. The Sanders-Scarborough clan decided to meet and talk it over. The rain had stopped. The sun had come out. People hung their wet clothes on dry branches and sat down. The old folks smoked, and everybody relaxed. Everyone knew that we couldn’t continue to travel and live a nomadic life much longer. It was beginning to wear all of us down.

My daddy finally spoke up. He had some people in Tuscaloosa who had come up from Mobile and Baton Rouge, and they were now doing very well working in the sawmill and furniture factories of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. Daddy had been itching to go back there and work and live. He and Mama had lived there when they were first married, but Mama had made him bring her, my brother, and me to Mississippi, to her own people. He wanted to go back to Tuscaloosa. He was sure they could all find work there. He didn’t see a future for himself and our family in sharecropping. He wanted to explore something else.

As the family sat around the low, gently snapping campfire every night, everyone was uneasy with the uncertainty they faced. They wrestled for days with the thorny issue of what to do next and how best to do it. Ideas were thrown back and forth for quite some time before they reluctantly consented to give my daddy’s idea number one priority. Without exception, they had misgivings about moving to another strange city and attempting to make it home. Some said out loud that they just might be better off staying exactly where they were. However, that idea was soon dismissed. It was finally decided one evening that my daddy, accompanied by Cousin Lemiel and Uncle Josiah, would go to Tuscaloosa.

OUR HOUSE WAS NOISY. I HATED THE NOISE. I USED TO go outside and sing to myself. At first, I sang quietly, but the farther I got from the house, the louder I sang. I sang all the way to Big Mama’s, Minnie Green’s, house and then she sang with me. In no time, I forgot about the noise in my house and my parents’ frequent arguments. I never told Big Mama they were arguing. I knew she wouldn’t like it, so I sang and pretended I was happy.

In those days in Tuscaloosa, Big Mama would ask me to sing for anybody who came by the house. When she would take me back home, nobody was arguing, and I could pretend I was happy again. It was during those times I would think about running away to Big Mama’s house forever. But no matter how much I sang, she kept taking me back home.

My brother, my sisters, and I were sleeping one morning when we were suddenly awakened by a horrific scream. I sat up in my bed and remained perfectly still, listening. The scream came again and again. It was my mother calling for help. I heard another heavier, deeper voice yelling something I couldn’t quite make out. It was my daddy. He sounded equally upset and angry.

The loud commotion and the sound of breaking glass terrified me, and I began to cry. Willie Jr. dashed up from the bed and ran to the bedroom door. The next thing I knew, my cousin Dina Mae and my aunt Minnie Laura came rushing in. They scooped my sisters and me up with our blankets still around us, took Willie Jr. by his hands and shoulders, and rushed us out of the house. I kept asking what was happening and calling for my mother. I saw the flashing lights of the police cars and people beginning to gather in front of my house.

Aunt Minnie Laura and Cousin Dina Mae ran as fast they could to get us away from the house. We didn’t talk until we arrived at the house where Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and the rest of the Sanders-Scarborough clan were living.

Great-Grandmama Laura Mae finally quieted everyone down, and Cousin Dina Mae and Aunt Minnie Laura began to recount what had happened. Over the years, I would hear the story many times from many mouths; it became part of our family’s least favorite memories.

Mama and Daddy, along with several of their kinfolk, had gone dancing a block or so down the street at a local juke joint called Joe’s Cradle Rocker. The place was crowded, and people were having fun. One of the locals named Johnny Damon started flirting with my mother and asked her to dance. She declined and told him she was married. At the time, my daddy was at the bar getting something for them to drink. When he came back to the table, Johnny Damon excused himself and said pointedly to my mother that he hoped to see her around. She turned her head and never even answered him, but my daddy was all questions as he sat down again with the drinks. His anger and jealousy couldn’t be assuaged by anyone at the table.

Through the excitement of the evening, the incident was soon forgotten by everyone, it seemed, except my daddy. He continued to drink and badger my mother for the rest of the evening.

As they walked home, my mother lingered a little behind everyone else and remained quiet. She had never seen her husband this way. My daddy was light and casual with the boys as he bantered and teased back and forth with everyone on the way home. But once inside the house, he turned into a monster. He slapped her, assaulted her, and accused her of flirting with this strange man whom she had never even seen before. In shock and panic, she begged him not to hurt her and denied his charge of her being a flirt. The slaps and cursing got worse until she fled the house, only to have him follow her and demand that she return to the house and the children. She did, not knowing what would happen to her next.

When she woke up the next morning, he was back at it again. Eventually, out of self-defense, she ran into the kitchen and grabbed one of the carving knives on the countertop. This time when he came after her, she lashed out with the knife and it drew blood. He began to hit her and grabbed her by the hair. She lashed out again with the knife and again drew blood. He screamed and yelled, backing up and knocking over glasses, pots, and pans. She fled from the kitchen with him in pursuit.

This battle continued until several of the neighboring men entered the house and tried to break up the bloody fight. Daddy, in his bloody, frenzied state, refused to stop, and my mother continued to wield the knife. More neighbors arrived, and a few successfully pulled them apart. It was then that Cousin Dina Mae and Aunt Minnie Laura had arrived and rescued my siblings and me. The house was in shambles, with blood everywhere. The police arrived, and efforts to restore calm were finally successful. My daddy would spend several weeks in St. Martin De Porres, the local black hospital, recovering from several serious knife wounds. His chest was covered with stitches; he’d have the scars for the rest of his life.

Mama’s features showed the results of Daddy’s anger. She had a swollen nose and two black eyes. There were lacerations on her face and hands, and patches of her hair were missing. As if that weren’t enough, my mother sank fast and invisibly into a black, surly all-enveloping funk that she would carry with her for the rest of her life. Years later, when I would think about that day and about my mother, I would realize that her heart had been broken and she didn’t know how to deal with that—or how to ask anyone to help her deal with it.

In retrospect, I’m also aware that my daddy was incredibly controlling, and he saw my mother as more his chattel than his wife.

After Cousin Dina Mae and Aunt Minnie Laura told this horrific tale, Great-Grandmama Laura Mae became enraged. She went into her bedroom and gathered her gun; she was dressed in a flash. She informed the family that several of them were to accompany her to my mother and daddy’s house. She intended to go and get her granddaughter.

When the group arrived at the house, the crowd parted in the face of this formidable feminine energy. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae’s presence was foreboding and unfriendly. No one wanted to block her way. She moved through the crowd, up the front porch, through the front door, and into the front room. The sight of my bruised and beaten mother made her cry out sharply in alarm and disbelief. She embraced her grandchild and cursed the forces that had allowed this evil to happen.

She insisted that my mother come immediately with her and never return to this house again. She was taking her beloved grandchild home. Nobody stood in her way as the somber parade moved out the front door and down the street. My great-grandmama’s head was held high as she led the procession of her family’s clan out of that house of iniquity.

I was sitting on Aunt Emma’s front living room floor, rocking and singing to myself, when the group returned to Aunt Emma’s house. My brother told me not to be afraid—Mama and Daddy were fighting, but Great-Grandmama Laura Mae would take care of everything. I stared at him and kept singing. Why were they fighting? I thought. I watched as they made my mother as comfortable as possible until Aunt Emma picked me up off the floor and began to rock me in her lap. Anxiously, I sucked my thumb and turned my head into her ample bosom. I fell asleep wishing for and calling for Granddaddy Saul. I was looking for the cane and trying to sing. I needed to sing.

It took a while for my mother to recover from the shock and trauma of her ordeal with my daddy. Although she could walk and got dressed every day, she didn’t leave the house, and no one insisted that she go out. For some weeks, everything was done for her. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae fussed over her and combed her hair every day and massaged it with healing oil she had made. She held her in her arms often and rubbed her skin and face as she talked to her and told her how beautiful she was. She whispered stories of how she should live her life.