Delta Jewels

by Alysia Burton Steele

  I miss my mom when she died. Her name was Mary Bell Short. I was the oldest child at home—I was 17. My dad was amazing, he just took over and become mother and father. He was everything after she died. His name was Vertis.

  I couldn’t cook. I remember—this is funny—my dad was trying to teach me how to make biscuits, and I would forget the ingredients, especially cutting the shortening in there. I would forget to do that, and you would have to eat my biscuits when they were hot. Daddy said if they got cold, they would knock the dog out! My rice always stuck to the bottom of the pot. I really didn’t learn how to cook rice until I got married. It’s humorous, but like I said, it was hard. I had to learn how to cook fast. I had to take care of my little brothers and sisters.

  She was 46 when she died. She died in 1965, the year I graduated. I went to school that morning. We got up and got dressed and got on the bus. She was really sick. She was in her bed. I went in and I said, “Madea, I’m leaving for school. I’ll see you when I get back.” And she said okay. Got on the bus, went to school. I had been to school less than an hour and was going down the hall and the principal walked out of his office and begged for me. I went into his office. He said, “Your momma passed.” And I just went to pieces. I just saw her. I left her sittin’ in the bed. She didn’t look like she was gonna die and then, bam, she was gone. Something just knotted up in me and it wouldn’t release. I just hurt.

  The day of my baccalaureate, we buried my mom. It was so ironic, all of my friends from school from Indianola came out to my mom’s funeral.

  I just ached and it took a long time to go away. I mean a long time. That pain stayed with me so long. I would just pray that the Lord would move that pain. I just hurt, I just hurt, I just hurt for a long time.

  We didn’t know what to do. Madea was our rock; she was the glue that kept us together.

  I am much, much better than I used to be. For a long time Mother’s Day would just absolutely leave me crushed. I just could not function. I even had a child who was trying to honor me for Mother’s Day and I was just not functional that day. All I wanted for that day was for it to just pass. I would be almost like steel—nonactive ’cause I wanted the day to end, so I could pick up the next day and I wouldn’t have to relive memories. Thank God I got delivered, but it was painful for a long time.

  My mom, back in the day, was considered a fashion trendsetter. Listen, my mom used to dress for church! We were poor, but my daddy loved my momma. Oh my God. Oh my God. She had dress, hat, suit, shoes—everything match—because my daddy made sure. I don’t care, whatever extra money. She would order from this book back in the day called the National Bellas Hess. She would order from that book, the whole outfit. She was a trendsetter in the day when black women didn’t do that, other than the preacher’s wife. And the women would be so jealous. We laugh about it now when we get together at family reunions. “Well, you’re here because they went out that night. You’re here because they came back with you.” They would sneak off, go to the movies together, go riding together—those type of things. What I remember most about her was her dress.

  When the Freedom Riders came to Indianola, I was a junior, I believe, in high school. First I went out of curiosity, went to the meetings. It was right down the street from the school called the Baptist Building. I went there the first night and it was just jam-packed. These black folks and these white folks. Plantation owners was there. I’m sittin’ there and lookin’ at the man that owned the plantation next to us. I’m just lookin’ at all these people. Didn’t really know what was goin’ on. I was so intrigued. I went back. My daddy was just furious because back in the day, if the plantation owner found out that you were involved in the Freedom Movement, you’d have to move from the plantation. So my daddy was just furious, he was scared to death.

  I had a best friend on the plantation where we lived; he was involved, too—much more outspoken than I was. That plantation owner found out, said something to his father and his father sent him away, sent him up north. He finished school up north ’cause his father was afraid. My dad came home one night, rantin’ and ravin’ ’cause I had been out at meetings. He was just furious. He said, “Don’t you go back up there. I’m gonna send you up north wit’ ya brother.” My mom said, “You are not sending my daughter anywhere. She’s gonna stay right at home where she’s supposed to be.” I loved her. I never forgot that. She told me, “Be careful. Don’t get yo’self hurt out there.” She never tried to stop me or anything.

  You know, it’s amazing. I did not know we were in bondage like that, as black people. Going to school every day, being B+ students—just not cognizant of the fact that we were in total bondage, that we were practically in slavery. Just not aware of it until it was shown to you in these meetings. It was a way of life and you didn’t question it. Until it’s right there in your face. You realize, wow, you’re a second-class citizen. You can’t even drink out of fountain uptown at the courthouse, you can’t go in the restroom at the courthouse, you can’t even vote. It just kinda hit you. I got feverish about it. I wanted to do somethin’, I wanted to be part of the change, and I took an active role. Not a verbal role, but wherever they were, I was.

  We went up to Ruleville, where Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer was. That was the only time I can remember seeing her, hearing her talk. Very quiet lady. She didn’t look anything like you thought she should look, to be that brave. She just looked like a grandmother.

  MRS. ROSIE H. BYNUM, DIED AT 101

  LELAND

  BORN NOVEMBER 1913

  MARRIED 58 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  14 CHILDREN

  77 GRANDCHILDREN

  139 GREAT-GRANDS

  42 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  8 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  After I photograph Mrs. Curtistene Davis, I am delighted that she rides in my car with me and takes me to two more Jewels. “We’re going to Mrs. Bynum’s. She is quite a handful,” Mrs. Davis laughs. Mrs. Bynum is 99 years old. “Mrs. Bynum is a good interview but her memory isn’t so good sometimes,” Mrs. Davis confides. “It can be hit or miss. I think she’s battling early dementia, but her daughter Patricia has agreed and will be there.”

  Mrs. Bynum lives within a mile or two from Mrs. Davis’s house. We arrive at a two-story brick apartment building. She lives on the second level. I am shocked.

  “She’s 100, right?” I ask Mrs. Davis.

  “Yes, she is.” Understanding that I am surprised she is able to walk up and down the stairs, Mrs. Davis adds: “Listen, she’d still be driving if she could.”

  Mrs. Bynum’s daughter Patricia is standing in the doorway waiting for us. We shake hands. Young men, probably in their mid-twenties, check me out. I nod and say, “How you doin’?” They return the greeting. As I drag my camera gear up the stairs, one of them asks if I need help. I am used to hauling it; I shake my head no and say thanks, as they watch me walk up the steps.

  The room is dark, and I immediately wonder how I’m going to take photos inside. Mrs. Bynum is sitting on the couch, just looking at me. Something about her eyes tells me she’s a spitfire, a handful. “What do you want?” she asks, turning her head down and looking at me over her glasses.

  I tell her I’m doing a book about grandmothers.

  “Are you going to give me a book? I want one.” I tell her that every mother gets her photo framed and a signed copy of the book as my thanks for sharing. She smiles and says, “Well, all right. That’s what I’m talking about. Ask your questions.”

  “Mrs. Bynum, how many children do you have?”

  “What? How many children? You sit there and listen good. I had 14.”

  “Did you want that many children? Did you want more?”

  “Did I want any more?!” She laughs. “Naw, I didn’t need them. The good Lord gave me them, but I didn’t need them.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “I can’t tell you. Long enough to have them 14 children.” When asked what she liked about her husband, she
replies, “Sometimes I liked him. Sometimes I didn’t. ’Cause you know sometimes men are hell. I ain’t gotta tell you.” She laughs. “You got a husband.”

  I was a good baseball player. I was the first baseman. They couldn’t do without me. I just got out there and do good. Well, I played against the boys. There was a girl team and the boys team. We used to win. They ain’t had nothin’ to say about it. If you win, you win. My dad didn’t think nothin’ of me playing.

  I was driving my own car. If someone passed me driving slow, I would make them drive faster. I would get close up behind them and they’d know I was driving for them to move. And if they didn’t move, I would pass by them in the other lane. I would get right on their butts if they didn’t go. I would go about my business. I was a fast driver, I didn’t drive slow. I didn’t have nowhere to go, I just hate to drive the car slow. I learned how to drive when I was grown, about 25 or 26. I learned my own self. My husband had the car; when he’d leave the car, I’d go out there and crank the car up. Pull up and back up, pull up, back up, ’til I learned how to get on the road and go. My oldest child, my boy, would tell me how to turn the wheel and back up. He was a li’l ole boy, but he knowed how to do. He’d be in the car, telling me to turn the wheel this way and that way. I don’t drive no more, don’t have nothin’ to drive. Some of my children came and took it from me, but I could drive now if I had a car, that what it is. I’d drive now if I could.

  Patricia and Mrs. Davis are cracking up about this driving story, and Mrs. Bynum says, “Listen, I had no problem riding on someone’s butt until they moved out of my way.”

  “Did you tell Lisa about how you were at the high school?” asks Mrs. Davis.

  I wonder what they’re talking about: “Mrs. Bynum, what did you do at the cafeteria?”

  She just looks at me.

  “Mrs. Bynum, how did you like working at the high school?”

  She doesn’t understand my accent, they tell me. So her daughter repeats my question. Then Mrs. Bynum looks at me and says:

  Sometimes it was good and sometimes it was hell working down there [at Leland High School cafeteria, where she worked for 19 years]. The children worried the hell out of me. When we would run out of napkins, I would tell them to do without them. Use their paper. All these different children want this, want that. They used to make me mad and I had to say some words. They’d say, “So-and-so got more than me. So-and-so got this.” I would tell them to go on, get down the line, and get on out. I would give more to some others, though, but I didn’t treat the Whites different from the Blacks. Sometimes it was hell with all them children.

  MRS. EASTER W. SUMMERVILLE, 92

  LELAND

  BORN DECEMBER 1922

  MARRIED FOR 11 YEARS

  6 CHILDREN

  20 GRANDCHILDREN

  24 GREAT-GRANDS

  6 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  Mrs. Curtistene Davis and I have spent half a day together, and as we drive to the last interview she facilitated for me, she said, “I’m really enjoying sitting in on the interviews. Thank you.”

  “Oh no, thank you! You have been a big help with breaking the ice. You are someone they know and trust, so this is helpful to me.”

  “But this is so much fun for me.” She smiles, and I wish can make her understand how much she has done for me.

  Mrs. Summerville is wearing her Sunday dress and hat when Mrs. Davis and I walk inside her home. She and her daughter Debra have been patiently waiting and I’m running late. They called Mrs. Davis at Mrs. Bynum’s to make sure we were still coming. Mrs. Summerville has a picture of a White Jesus hanging on the wall. Gram had one hanging in our home. We had the Last Supper with White Jesus and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  She tells me that living wasn’t easy when she was younger. She made $10 a week cooking and cleaning for Whites, but she progressed and eventually retired as a county employee. “What was hard, what else do you remember?” She says sleeping on the mattresses made of leftover cotton.

  There was a portion of that cotton that you didn’t use because some of it had so many cotton hooves in that bale of cotton. You see, that would be cast aside. Well, you could get that cotton and make you a mattress if you knew how to sew. Put that cotton it in. And when you gather your corn, you gather the shucks and mix shucks, cotton, and hay together to fill that mattress. That’s what you had to sleep on. First you made the mattress out of the cotton sacks because after you get through pickin’ cotton, well, some of those sacks were worn. They give those sacks to the tenants, you know. Fix those holes and the ladies would make the mattress and put that shuck and hay in it.

  You had to stir it up wit’ your hands every morning when you get up to make your bed leveled. You had a split in the middle and you would put your hand in it and stir it up. Then you would put your sheets and quilts on there. A lot of times you would get some more cotton sacks, you would open them and wash them, and that would be your sheet. The quilts, the ladies that could sew, they saved those quilt pieces and box ’em up. And during the winter months, sittin’ around the fire, you’d piece your quilts—whatever pattern you want—you’d use that sew and needle. You’d take a cotton stalk, make that cotton fluffy, and put it in that quilt. That would keep you warm in the wintertime, ’cause you didn’t have no heat like you do now. During the night, you see, the fire would go out, because you had to have that wood to build a fire, and when that fire go out, you would be cold and that quilt was what kept you warm.

  It felt good to sleep on that mattress. It was a long time before I bought a bed in a store. It was much better. I was grown and married when I could buy a mattress and spring from the store. I was about 24 years old when I bought one. We came a long ways. It was wonderful. Oh yeah, because you had a leveled head and was laying on top.

  I cannot imagine how her back felt, and when I ask her what else she remembers from her younger days, she smiles.

  I was converted in 1936 on a Wednesday night, the 26th day of August. I can’t forget it. That’s a happy day, oh happy day, and I met Jesus. A moaner’s bench in the church. They had three benches. One on each side and one in the middle, and there was a chair in the center. They called that the pool, and the preacher would ask the sinners to come to the front and sit on the moaner’s bench, and that’s where the Christians would pray for the sinners. And when they would sing they song and go ’bout at that chair to pray for you, you were ’bout on your knees at the bench. You pray for yo’self and they pray for you. I was 13 and that’s when I was converted.

  They baptized me the next month on the fourth Sunday in Deer Creek; trees and bushes, snakes and fish, and everything was in there, but I was not afraid. See, Jesus was wit’ me. That was a good day.

  A sunny day on an old country road near Merigold.

  Mrs. Summerville recites the names of all the pastors and deacons, and who stood next to whom.

  “How can you remember so much detail from that day?” I ask her.

  “When you meet Jesus, you never forget that. Um, um, no, you don’t forget that.”

  “Do you remember all the songs from that day?”

  “No, because they would sing different songs. That Wednesday, when I was goin’ to church wit’ my mommy and daddy, the sun was settin’ over in the west. You know just before the sun go down, looks like it gets bigger and it’s orange-colored, just above the treetop. And I was talkin’ to the sun. I told the sun to tell Jesus, ‘I’m over here. I don’t wanna go home a sinner tonight.’ I talk to the sun, and while I was talkin’ to the sun, I heard a moan in the air above my head.” She starts to sing, “Lord, have mercy. Lord have mercy.”

  Her daughter Debra sits three feet from her, her hands in her lap, and hangs her head down while listening to her mom talk. Now she leans closer, “Lord, have mercy,” she whispers, so softly I can barely hear it. “Um, um, um,” Debra says, shaking her head. Mrs. Davis begins shaking her head. She is quiet. Mrs. Summerville’s voice quivers and she starts to cry. “It ju
st sound like a choir up in the air over my head, that they was moanin’ and I was so happy. See, Jesus was wit’ me, and when we got in the church and I sat on the moaner’s bench that night, that’s when he touched me and the fire was burnin’. I couldn’t hold my feets.”

  We all look at one another. Something touching and magical has happened between us. We all know it. Each of us is shaking our head, crying. “You got me cryin’ over here,” I say. “That was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was a beautiful story.”

  “Um, hmm,” Mrs. Summerville says.

  “Is there anything else you want?” asks Debra.

  “I don’t think there’s anything that can top that.”

  Mrs. Summerville rocks in her chair saying, “Um. Hmm.”

  “Are you in a good place with that memory, Mrs. Summerville?” I ask.

  “That was a good time,” she says, and rocks in her chair.

  As Mrs. Davis and I walk back to the car, I ask, “That was powerful, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was. This is good work you’re doing for us.”

  I think, They are teaching me history.

  MRS. RACHEL J. SCURLOCK, 88