The trip into town, looked different from the way it looked, on my previous trips. I didn’t know if it was because I wouldn’t a riding on Papa’s wagon or if it was because my young eyes had been opened; I was somber. When the folks at the orphanage asked who I was, the man from the bank told them I was Gilly Jacobs and that all my folks was dead. He told them he thought I was about eight years old and that he did not know of any relatives. They looked on me with pity too, and said that they would try to find someone to take me in, but I didn’t want that, even as bad as it had been, I wanted my life back.”
“It must’ve been very frightening for you.”
“Of course, it was; but just like everything else in my life, after a while, I got used to it. Much like anything in life, we can get used to it if we have to. I worked right alongside every other able bodied person there. We swept and scrubbed floors, hung out clothes, folded and handed them back out to whoever they belonged to… it wasn’t much different from the chores I’d been doing for a long time-the only thing I didn’t have to do there, was to cook.
I spent four or five years there at the Episcopal Church Home for Orphans. I was paraded in front of folks looking to adopt children, but none of ‘em wanted me-most wanted smaller children. The one’s that did not want to adopt, was just looking for servants and I reckon they thought I wasn’t big enough for that. Many of them that came there were looking for field hands and usually took the boys. When I blossomed into a young woman, a different set of folks came to look at me; it was men-folk looking to take wives.
They had taught me to read and write at the orphanage and I had grown up pretty good without having too many maladies. I had good teeth and strong bones. I was twelve or thirteen years old when Willie Eubanks married me and took me from the orphanage. He was twenty-four, had done his stint in the Army during WWII and now was going to be a sharecropper like my papa. The thing that struck me as funny though, was that Willie was sharecropping on the same 20 acres that my folks had. I ended up right back here in the same cabin where I was born; it’n that something?
“Yes, it is.”
“Coming back to this place was strange. It brought with is all sorts of recollections; memories of my younger days flooded my mind when I came back here-it also brought home the ghosts of Mama, Papa, and Annabel; not literally of course, just their leftover impressions lingering in this place.
It would be twenty years before I could think of this place as mine and Willie’s home and not Mama and Papa’s place.
One of the first things I did when I knew that I was living in the same place, was to ask Willie to take me to the church house, so I could visit Mama and Annabelle’s graves. I wasn’t sure where my father was buried and to this day am not real sure. There is an unmarked grave next to Mama’s, but the preacher man said he wasn’t sure who it was-he‘d only been the pastor there for two years at the time. I reckoned that it was Papa though, and there just weren’t anyone around to carve him a stone like he done for Mama and Annabelle. That was when I got to read what he had written there. It was strange seeing my name written on Mama’s marker… it gave me goosebumps, still does when I go there.
For the first few years, me and Willie was married, I was afraid that we would die the same as they had. I was also afraid that Willie would turn out mean and gruff like my father was. Willie worked those fields from daylight to dark the same as Papa had, but he was a kind and gentle man; I grew to love him very much. The only times he ever asked me to help him in the fields was during harvest. He said a woman’s place was in the home, not working the fields. And once we had several boys old enough to help him, I quit having to go out there at all except when it was time to call them in to eat.
In nineteen hundred and fifty one, Willie hired a Negro man to work the fields for him and he went to work for the railroad. He scrimped and saved every penny he could for five years. By then, he had saved the money to buy the place outright. That was when we built on to it and made it bigger. He worked the railroad several more years, and then came home for good… Our boys were ten and eleven years old when he quit the railroad and came home for good-that was when he turned it into a real farm, with cows, horses, pigs, and chickens. Life got harder, but I was older and I knew that what I done for Willie and the boys was appreciated.
You had asked me about your grandmother, Betsy-I met your grandma about three months after Willie married me and brought me here. Aunt Betsy was what everyone around here called her. Her and your grandpa lived just across the creek there. They were actually Willie’s great aunt and uncle. So you and Willie would be related by blood.”
“Really, I did not know that. No one ever told me that you were part of our family.”
“They probably had no cause to mention it, might a figured that you already knew. It’s easy to assume that just because you know something, your children do too. I did not know that Aunt Betsy was actually kin to Willie until several years after we were married. He took it for granted that because he called her Aunt Betsy that I would know she was really his aunt. Aunt Betsy was a real motherly type of person. She took to me right away. Most of her young’uns were grown by then, but a couple of them still lived there with her and your grandpa. One of ‘em living there, named Travis, was married. He, his wife, and his little boy lived there with them up until his little boy was about ten years old.
His wife Mary didn’t like me much at all, and she never attempted to hide it either. Aunt Betsy said that it was because before she married Travis, she’d had her sights set on Willie, but Willie would not give her the time of day. Then, when he married me straight out of the orphanage, she was outraged. Aunt Betsy said that she told Mary she had better hush her mouth and if she did not have anything good to say about somebody just to keep quiet. If she could not do that, she needed to leave her house. I know she meant it too. Your grandma could be firm when she needed to be.
On Saturday nights, we gathered over there at their house and listen to the Grand Old Opry on the radio. I really enjoyed that. On occasion, your grandpa would grab Aunt Betsy and dance her around the room. She would fuss and make a commotion over it, but I could tell that she loved every minute of it. My Henry would do the same and the children would laugh and giggle when he held me tight and kissed me at the end of our dance… You know, I don’t know much more about sharecropping than what I’ve told you, but I could tell you some more about our lives and the way we lived, if you want.”
“Oh, yes Ma’am, it is very interesting. I would like to hear more if you feel like telling it.”
“Honey, if I have someone that’ll listen, I can talk the horns off a Billy goat once I get started, especially about family and friends. You know how I was telling you that Travis’ wife did not like me, well neither did Travis, and he and Willie did not get along well either. That Travis was a thorn in your grandma’s side. She said she could not believe that he was the way he was. She had not raised him to be like that. She blamed most of it on Mary and her uppity ways. But according to Willie, Travis was like that from the time he was a young’un. He just got worse the older he got. Willie told me that he’d heard that Aunt Betsy had a great-grandpa that was sort a crazy… he said that he claimed he come from British royalty and acted uppity and highfalutin, too. Sometimes, things like that get passed down in the blood…
I might a done said too much. I ain’t a trying to talk down on your folks. It’s just what I remember and sometimes things come out of my mouth before I have time to check ‘em.”
“It’s quite alright, Miss Gilly. I like that you are frank and tell things the way you remember them. I want to hear more about my family. My mother is one of those people that could care less where she came from, but ancestry is something that has always interested me. I like hearing about the old days, and the ways of the people that lived before us… As you talk about them, I try to picture them in my mind.”
“Well, I can sure tell you what they looked like if you wanna know that.” When M
iss Gilly saw that I was interested, she began to tell me more about them.
“Who do you want me to start with?”
“It doesn’t really matter Miss Gilly-I’d like to know what all of them were like.”
Miss Gilly got up and walked inside; she came back out a minute later with a picture album in her hands. She sat down next to me and opened the album.
“This here is the only picture I have of me when I was a child,” she said, pointing to an old photograph of a little girl standing next to a pine sapling at the corner of a porch; she was holding a baby doll.
“I remember the day that picture was taken; it was not too long before Anna got sick and died. A traveling photographer came through offering to take pictures for a dollar a piece. Mama really wanted a picture taken of both me and Anna, but she didn’t have enough money in her coffee tin she kept on a shelf in the cabin. Papa saw how desperately she wanted them and even though it meant he’d be short on his payment to the Trust, he paid the man the two dollars to get the pictures taken. The photographer posed us with that doll you see me holding. It was the first store-bought doll I’d even seen-I was proud to hold that doll… I hated to give it back to him,” she chuckled softly, her eyes tearing up a little. “Anyhow, he took this picture of me and one of Anna; he then collected his two dollars. After that, he asked if the whole family would pose for a couple of pictures to go along with an article he was writing for some newspaper. He posed us on the front porch first; Papa was sitting on the top step and me, Mama, and Anna was standing behind him. He wanted me to put my hand on Papa’s shoulder… I remember my knees knocking together because I was scared to touch Papa. Papa turned those blue eyes on me and I saw them soften just a little-he nodded his head that it would be alright. It sorta made me feel proud standing there beside him getting our picture taken. I remember the way Papa’s shoulder muscles felt when he pushed his hat back on his head a little bit because the man said that he couldn’t see Papa’s eyes. This is Papa,” she said, turning the page and pointing to a man in overalls. “He had the prettiest blue eyes you’d ever want to look at. He was tall and lanky-Mama was rawboned and tall too-I can’t remember for sure if her eyes were green or brown,” she said, turning to the next page and pointing out a faded picture of a woman. “Her photograph didn’t turn out so well-Anna’s eyes were the same shade of blue that Papa’s were,” she said pointing to a photograph of a toddler standing near the same pine sapling and porch Miss Gilly had in her picture. “We didn’t get to keep the family pictures… After he done the family pictures and the individual ones, he got Papa to hook up the mule and start plowing so he could take of photograph of him doing that for the newspaper article… We didn’t get to keep the picture of Papa plowing, either. I was glad he gave us the close-ups of Papa standing on the porch and the one of Mama out in the yard; otherwise, I would not have a picture of them. These pictures and what few clothes I had was all I took when the man from the Trust took me to the orphanage.” Miss Gilly closed the album, but kept her hand on it. “I have a couple more pictures I’ll show you, after I finish telling you about Travis and his doings.”
Four
Tear the Stillhouse down
“The making of shinny whiskey has been going on for thousands of years, and will probably continue forever, but it became a profitable business for bootleggers around these parts during prohibition, when alcohol was outlawed in most of the country. It lasted well into the thirties, forties and fifties. Travis took advantage of the demand and built himself a whiskey still. He built it in an old abandoned overseer’s house that sat on the back of the prison property that joined your grandma and grandpa’s land.
Willie found out he was making it and told me about it, but your great-grandma and grandpa didn’t know anything about it that I knowed of. Willie was of a mind to tell them, but he didn’t want to be the one to spill the beans-I think that was why he told me; he hoped I’d tell Betsy-but I wasn’t about to be the bearer of bad news and come between a woman and her son. I knew that no matter how mad she was at him, she still wouldn’t want anyone else to talk about him even if it was true-so I kept my mouth shut. It lasted a year or so before it came to light on its own.
That Travis would disappear all hours of the day and night and your grandpa could not get ten cents worth of work out of him. He claimed he was working another job somewhere else, but he was lying to them and they knew it. When Mary turned up wearing new clothes and jewelry, Aunt Betsy knew for sure they were up to no good.
That Mary had always acted highfalutin, but after Travis started bringing in the money, her nose rose so high up in the air that it’s a wonder she didn’t drown when it rained. Your grandma might have let it slide if they had a done right by the boy, but they didn’t do right by him.
They rented a house in town and left the little feller out there on the farm for your grandma to raise him. It was not that she minded taking care of Bobby, but she felt that his mama and daddy ought to be the ones raising him. They were both healthy and able bodied, but all they wanted to do was whoop it up and pretend to be rich.
Travis had bought a new car, and he and Mary sported around to all the well to do places down in Mobile, Biloxi, and even over to New Orleans.
Aunt Betsy let it slide for about another year, but when Mary wanted to move off to New Orleans and not take little Bobby, your grandma took action. She enlisted my Willie to help her set a trap for them. She got him to contact whoever was in charge of that sort of stuff and set old Travis up for the fall. She said they did not deserve to live the highlife while little Bobby lived with them. They never gave her and your grandpa a single dime for all the years they stayed there with them, or to help them take care of Bobby, and it just wouldn’t right.
Your grandma didn’t begrudge giving the boy a home, and said she would raise him once his mama and daddy was sitting in jail.
Well, those federal men watched Travis at his “trade” until they gathered enough evidence on him and then they arrested him and Mary. Travis was sent up to Holman Prison for five years and Mary went to Tutwiler for eighteen months. I reckon she did not have to spend as much time in jail because she was a woman, but those agents had seized everything they owned pertaining to his illegal doings, and then to top it off, your grandma insisted they tear that stillhouse down. She didn’t want Travis or no one else to use it for wrongdoing.
When Mary was released from jail, she ran off with some feller she met while locked up, up there-no one heard hide nor hair from her until Travis got out of prison-then the two them hooked up again and took off somewhere. They sent Bobby a couple of photographs; he throwed them on the floor and stomped on ‘em. Before she died, your grandma asked me to keep them put up incase Bobby changed his mind one day and wanted them.”
Miss Gilly opened the album again and took out a photo of a man and a woman-I looked at it closely, studying their faces and clothes. It had a date of 1948 written on it. Miss Gilly said that it must’ve been taken just before they got into the shinny making business.
“Aunt Betsy raised Bobby and sent him to school-he turned out to be a right good man. He never would have anything to do with his folks after they left him there. I saw him at Betsy‘s funeral; he works over in Stone County Mississippi at some hospital. He seemed to be doing well.
I remember Aunt Betsy saying that Mary tried to make up with Bobby after he was grown, but he would not even speak to her… You can’t rightly blame the boy; not after the way they done him.”
“No, ma’am, you can’t.”
“The next two photographs I wanted to show you was these two here,” she said, opening the album again. “This one here is one I took of your grandma Betsy and your grandpa. It’s not a very good picture, but it’s the only one I have of her… she was like a mother to me. You know, I might have lost my blood family when I was a little girl, but I inherited a fine family when Willie took me as his wife. They always treated me kindly-well, except Travis and Mary, but they di
dn’t matter away. And this picture here,” she said, pulling out another photo, “is one of my husband, Willie Eubanks. It was taken after he got out of the service. He might not have been rich, but he always treated me with love and kindness-and he was kind and loving to our young’uns; we raised us a fine family.”
I took the photo of her late husband and studied him closely-from his expression, it was hard to tell much about him, but I believed what Miss Gilly told me about him.
“Honey, I could talk on and on about folks around here, good and bad, but I think I done said enough for today. You’re welcome to come back for a visit one day soon and we’ll talk again.”
“Did you know my grandmother, Miss Gilly? Her name was Janie.”
“Sure I knowed your grandmother; She was Betsy’s youngest daughter. You look like her too-You remind me of both Betsy and your grandma. Honey, I hate to run you off, but it’s getting late and I need to get up from here and get these peas put up. It’ll take me several hours to finish canning them. The next time you come out for a visit, we’ll talk,” said Miss Gilly, dismissing me from her presence. I wanted to beg to follow her inside and continue listening to her stories.
She stood with the bowl of peas she had shelled while we talked, tucked the photo album under her arm and then walked inside to her kitchen. Boldly, I followed her and told her that as soon as I could, I would come back for a visit, and that I appreciated her telling me what she had about sharecropping. She turned to face me. I could see that her eyes were weary and realized that she must be tired.
Orphan Girl Page 3
