Delta Jewels

by Alysia Burton Steele

14 GRANDCHILDREN

  2 GREAT-GRANDS

  Mrs. Woodley and I meet at a community center that houses an adult literacy program. The room is filled with tables and chairs the right height for children. The center is closed; the room is quiet. She’s always been a teacher, except for 18 years when she drove a school bus. She’s now teaching a 70-something-year-old man how to read.

  Learning is fun. I tried to make learning fun, not just reading, reading, reading. Gotta put a li’l fun in it. This man said, “Ms. Woodley, if I had had somebody to take the time and have the patience with me that you have, I wouldn’t be in the shape that I’m in.” And when I looked up, across the table, tears was just comin’ down. Now you talkin’ about an indescribable feeling? I don’t know how I felt, I can’t describe it. It was joy and it was sadness, a mixture. Here this man, he’s 77 now. He was 69 or 70 then. That was my joy feeling, I reached this grown man, like I used to reach the little fellas. I’m tellin’ you, rain, shine, sleet, or snow, he gonna be out there in that li’l white truck. He’s gonna be here every day. He feels good about himself. Now he’s beginning to read his mail; he’s reading receipts. I pull that book away from him and try to deal with things from his environment, so he can relate to what’s going on in his home. I can see the pride in his face. I’m teaching him how to read things that pertain to his life. Sunday school book? Let’s talk about it. Let’s see what we’re gonna do in Sunday school. You can’t keep him away from here. It took about four years to get him to read on a fourth-grade level. It’s not how fast you go, how many pages you cover. He is my greatest success story because of the age.

  You gotta make learning fun, make it interesting. When he was younger, he left, went up north. He didn’t think education was important, so went into barber, to cut hair. Thought that’s all the skills he needed. I came in—not a stiff-neck teacher—I came in trying to get acquainted with him, to find out how am I going to work with him to bring him from this level to another level, what’s the best method? You gotta find what method is best. I tried all of them. Right now we’re goin’ to lesson 20. Guess what it’s about? Barack Obama—how he got his start, what he went through as a child. See, he can relate to that. Barack wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but because you’re down here now doesn’t mean you’ll live forever down here. It’s hope for all of us if we put it into practice. My hope is that I can build a confidence in him to show others, “C’mon, there’s hope.”

  He got a friend that’s in the same shape. A lot of them ashamed to go back and try to learn how to read. “I’m too old to learn.” They’ll tell you that in a minute, but he’s proof, he’s in his seventies. If he’s learning, others can.

  When I was teaching third grade, they were paying 10 cents for lunch. I noticed this little girl and her brother never had a dime for lunch. Never. I asked the bus driver, “What kind of home they comin’ from? They never have lunch money.” She told me the mom died when the little girl was two and there were two boys and three girls. Daddy worked on the river somewhere. Daddy was an alcoholic. They had a shotgun house. Daddy slept in the room where the heater was, the girls slept in the next room, no heat, and the boys slept in last room, no heat. Daddy up there where the heat was.

  They always came school so stinky, wet. Put on clean clothes on top of the wet clothes. You could smell that pee.

  I went to a store and bought undies for this little girl and gave them to her. Well, didn’t see them anymore. Next day or two they stinkin’ again. Bought me another set and said, “When you come to school, you put this on.” I had my teacher’s assistant help me take her down and sponge her off. Got some soap and water from the kitchen and a big, ole vegetable bucket and we cleaned her up and put on clean clothes. Before time to go home, we pull those clothes off. I kept them [for the next day].

  That same little girl wanna come spend the night with me. You wouldn’t believe, when she hit my house, she turned my Coca-Cola crate over, stood at the sink, and washed dishes. And then it dawned on me, “This baby wants something. She wants to be somebody.” It went on from there. I bought clothes, she spent nights.

  Her dad would take the girls to this lady’s house who would drink more whiskey than the dad. Anyway, one day she was at that house and this lady’s husband made a pass at her. She was about 13 or 14 years old then. She came to me and asked me if she could stay with me until she found somewhere to stay. I talked to my husband and he said as long as she acted like a nice little girl, everything was cool.

  She finished high school, she graduated, and she went to Chicago. I called her up there one day and said, “C’mon, girl, you goin’ to college.” She went to Jackson, Tennessee, and got her degree. She came out and taught in Memphis.

  She said if it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have been where she was. I said, “No, you needed a li’l help but you had it in you. You needed some help and I gave you that help.” Now she’ll come see me, take me out to dinner. She hasn’t forgotten me. I picked her up in third grade and she still hangs on to me.

  Mrs. Woodley reminds me that Gram said, “Get an education because they can’t take that from you.” After a long meditative silence, I ask Ms. Woodley, “Who is Jean Woodley?”

  I don’t know who I am. My mother come down here pregnant to Mound Bayou. I was born there. Mother left me in Mound Bayou and went back to Ohio. I never saw her again. I never said, “Oh, that’s my mother over there.”

  There was a distant cousin from my mother’s family, came to Mound Bayou, her name was Mary Alice, and got me. She married umpteen times and every time she married, I had a different last name, so I didn’t know what it was on my birth certificate growing up.

  My dad—I was 33 years old before I ever laid eyes on him. Saw him one time.

  I grew up with people thinking Mary Alice was my mother. We were living in a very isolated house in Tunica County. I was 13 years old. She wanted to go to Memphis and I wanted to stay with another lady, I called her My Mary. And she [Mary Alice] got mad at me. She wanted me to stay in her house with her husband while she shop and come back. I didn’t want to stay. I’m 13 years old and I’m knowing what could have happened when the doors closed and lights go out. She fussed at me and that’s when she came up with the truth. Of who I really was. “You wanna go down there and stay with Mary Brown?” See, I thought Mary Brown was my grandmother ’cause she was one of the mothers of the men that she [Mary Alice] had married. She said, “You wanna go down there and stay with Mary Brown? She ain’t no kin to you.” My hair stood up like Buckwheat.

  “What you mean she ain’t no kin to me?”

  She said, “I’m not your mother. Mary Brown ain’t no kin to you.”

  And I wanted to die. I was 13 years old. I finally asked her where are my people?

  She said “Well, your momma got a sister named Virgil in Gary, Indiana.”

  I asked for the address, she finally came up with the address, and Virgil and I started writing. That is when everything opened up to me, when I got over the heartache. I wanted to meet my biological people. I know The Man Upstairs was in this plan. The family sent me a ticket to come to Gary. When I got there, and they looked at me, it was just a joyful time.

  My dad was in Ohio and I got a chance to see him. He was a short guy. They took me to this house and he came in and shook hands. This is my biological father and I’m looking at him. He sat down and said, “No doubt about it. This is my child.” I’m 33 years old and sheer bumps. I just went through something, when he sat there beside me. He got over the shock; I guess we were both in shock.

  I thought all these people were my relatives and then one day I had no relatives. I cried. I wanted to die. Then the Lord gave me strength to come out of it.

  When Mrs. Woodley tells me this story, I think about people who told me they didn’t want my parents to marry, asking, “What would happen to the child?” as if I were a disability. To worry about how biracial children will cope is a cop-out. All children struggle
with identity. We all need communication from our parents. If my family had been transparent about race, perhaps I wouldn’t have had such identity and self-esteem issues. Most teenagers just want to fit in. When you don’t, you feel like there’s a big scarlet letter on you.

  I could relate to Mrs. Woodley. I never expected a woman of her generation to say she was still trying to find out who she was. That shocked me. I appreciated her openness. Not every woman I approached was open or receptive to the idea of talking to me. With the joys of my private history lesson from the Jewels came the frustrations of encountering women who did not trust strangers. Because of my own story, I couldn’t really blame them.

  MRS. VELMA T. MOORE, 79

  BENOIT

  BORN JUNE 1935

  MARRIED FOR 49 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  15 CHILDREN

  145 GRANDCHILDREN

  33 GREAT-GRANDS

  26 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  14 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  When I meet Rev. Jerry Walker on the side of a country road in Grapeland, he directs me to Mrs. Velma Moore. She’s a beautiful woman, with high cheekbones. She tells me her daddy was Cherokee. I know immediately from looking at her that I will take a photo that highlights those apple-shaped cheekbones.

  Inside her tiny living room are more than a dozen relatives. I wasn’t expecting that many. Emergency scanners are going off, someone is heating food up in the microwave, and everyone is gathered to listen to our interview. All eyes are on me. I feel the pressure. Everyone is wondering what I want to talk about.

  I ask Mrs. Moore about her childhood and she tells me that she has a twin sister named Thelma, who now lives in Washington State. Mrs. Moore is fine giving an overview of her life, but she tightens up when I ask for specific memories of her childhood. She is still pleasant, but tight-lipped. After an hour, I’m still struggling to get interesting quotes from Mrs. Moore. She has a twinkle in her eye, and I know that she was a handful when she was younger. “Mrs. Moore, I know you are not telling me something. Don’t you have a story that you like to tell your grandchildren?”

  She shakes her head no. Her grandson Contrell asks her if she’s told me the story about pulling a woman out of church and punching her.

  “What?!” Did I just hear him correctly?

  “Boy, be quiet,” she says. Everyone is laughing. I’m the only one in the room who isn’t in on the joke. I am the outsider.

  “Ms. Moore, what are you not telling me? I’ve been here for over an hour and you’re holding out on me?”

  She just smiles.

  “Ms. Moore, you know you’re wrong,” I say.

  She is silent for a minute and then says, “If somebody is flirting with your husband, talkin’ about how fine he is, like you ain’t even there, what for you to do? I pulled her out the church so we could talk about this.”

  Everyone busts out laughing. Her daughter Thelma, named after her sister, is looking at me.

  “She said she didn’t know he was my husband, but she meant what she said,” says Mrs. Moore, who is shaking her head while telling me. “So I said, ‘Well, I mean to show you who I is,’ and I punched her in the face. Right between the eyes.” She laughs.

  “Ms. Moore, you pulled her out of the church?” I ask.

  “Oh, yes, I did.” She pokes her lips out.

  I notice the attitude still present in her. This feisty woman makes me smile. “What did you pull her out by?”

  “I pulled her out by her arm, but I would have pulled her out by whatever.”

  “Then what you did do?”

  She says her mother came out of the church and said, “Velma, you know you’re wrong. I said, ‘Mama, I ain’t wrong. I pulled her out the church. I didn’t hit her inside the church.’ ”

  “What did you do then?”

  She says she told the woman to get up. The woman refused, so Mrs. Moore walked back into church.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I sat quite comfortably.”

  We are all laughing. I learn Mrs. Moore was deeply in love with her husband. They had 15 children. I’ve never met anyone with a family this large and tell her that she doesn’t have a family, but a town, with 145 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren, and 26 great-great-grandchildren.

  You talk about love? Mine [for her husband] was deep down. I reckon because I loved his style. I loved his style and he was wild about mine. When we get together and get to talkin’, I thought he was beautiful. I just really loved the man. He wasn’t real tall. He wasn’t no fat neither, ’cause I never liked a big ole man. He had a stylish walk, the cutest walk, and I loved that walk. With that walk, he was mo’ better looking. He dressed real neat and he talked real kind. He was kind, nice and kind.

  I wouldn’t say how my style was to him, but I knew I was cute. Everybody would tell to me, “You is one pretty young lady.” And when he told me, I knew I was. And that made me feel really, really good.

  When I ask her about divorce, her jaw tightens. She frowns. Her tone changes, and gone is the laughter.

  If you gonna marry somebody, you supposed to marry them ’til death do us apart. You hang there. It’s gonna be dark days, light days, but you supposed to hang there until death do you apart. I always said, “Lord, I want one husband. I want all of my children to be by that one man.” And God fixed it so. We got 15 heads. He was the first man I married; never been married no more and never will. No, I will not. And I got 15 children by that one man and I thank God. I did just like He say: we was not divorced. I’m still Mrs. Moore. I be Mrs. Moore until I’m dead and gone.

  “I’m still Mrs. Moore. I be Mrs. Moore until I’m dead and gone.”

  MRS. MYRLIE EVERS, 82

  JACKSON

  BORN MARCH 1933

  MARRIED 12 YEARS, FIRST HUSBAND, WHEN WIDOWED

  REMARRIED 19 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  3 CHILDREN

  6 GRANDCHILDREN

  1 GREAT-GRAND

  Mrs. Evers was married to Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers for 12 years when he was slain; she remarried a very good friend, Walter Williams, and was married for 19 years when he passed away. She spoke about her first husband, Medgar, at the Ole Miss campus, where I teach. I attended the event with Bobby. She is gorgeous. She has neat, short, natural hair. Her voice is eloquent and strong, and she pronounces every syllable. She commands attention. She’s a powerhouse. She is history. I decide to take photos, move around, and capture more than 300 images. After the program, Bobby and I introduce ourselves to her, and she asks if I will make sure she gets a few images. I instantly develop a feeling of awe and want to include her among my Jewels.

  It took me only nine months to get her.

  I reach out to our school’s Overby professors, Bill Rose and Curtis Wilkie, who give me the e-mail of Mrs. Evers’s attorney, and I send him sample pages of my Jewels interviews. He’s intrigued but informs me she is out of state for a month and doesn’t have her phone. (He thinks her son took it from her so Mrs. Evers is forced to rest.) He introduces me by e-mail to Ms. Susan Glisson, director of William Winter Institute of Racial Reconciliation, who agrees to meet with me. I Google Susan and I find out that she’s a white woman who’s been voted one of the most influential Civil Rights leaders in our country!

  I am intimidated as I wait in a cozy nook in the hallway near Susan’s office on campus. She strolls in wearing jean overalls. She’s short, wears glasses, and is youthful looking with long, naturally curly brown hair. “Hello, Alysia!” We shake hands, immediately hit it off. Kindred spirits. I enjoy her warm smile and fun-loving disposition—not at all what I’d expected. We sit side by side in two chairs in her office and I explain my project, read some interview material, and then ask if I may play some audio of the women. “Yes, please, I’d love to hear it.” I play the audio, and she responds, “I love it.”

  “Dr. Glisson—”

  “Susan. Call me Susan.”

  “Thank you. Susan. I’d like to interview Mrs. Evers for the
book. I’ve heard you know her. Can you help me?”

  “Oh yes, Mrs. Evers is like another mother to me. I know her and her daughter, Reena. I will reach out to them.”

  My newfound friend tries over the next several months to arrange an interview, but Mrs. Evers is hard to reach because of her schedule. Months pass, and Susan tells me she is still holding on. I have moved on, telling myself, “If it is meant to be, it will be.” I’d reached out to everyone I could. It’s like she is behind a steel curtain.

  Eight months later, Susan calls my office. I’m about to go give a final exam to my students. “Al, I’m at the Lyceum with Mrs. Evers and Reena. I showed them the Southern Living article.” (Six pages of my unpublished book ran in the May 2014 issue.) “If you can get here in the next few minutes, Mrs. Evers has agreed to meet with you. She loves the article.”

  “She loves it? Oh my God! I have to give a final in 20 minutes. I don’t know if I can make it…” Wait… What am I thinking? I’ll never be able to reschedule with Mrs. Evers. Drop everything and go, I tell myself. “Susan, I’m coming. I’ll be there right away. Wait for me.” I dial Paula, the Journalism School receptionist. Please don’t be out to lunch.

  “Meek School of Journalism?”

  “Paula, this is Al. I have to give a final in 20 minutes and I just got a call that Mrs. Evers will see me. Do you think you can help me by starting to give my final? I shouldn’t be long. Please?”

  “Of course, Al.” Everyone in the school knows about my book and that I’ve been trying to reach Mrs. Evers.

  “Good luck,” says Paula when I drop off the final, thank her, and dash out the door.

  I run to the Lyceum, the historic building where James Meredith stayed when he integrated Ole Miss in 1962. My asthmatic chest is tightening as I sprint. I don’t have my inhaler. Am I having a panic attack as well as an asthma attack? I arrive at the Lyceum and walk inside the building. Susan and one of her staffers are in the hallway. I am a hot mess. Sweaty, wheezing, and flushed red.