Delta Jewels

by Alysia Burton Steele

  Mr. Chatman has been patiently waiting for his wife for almost two hours. Rev. Tinson is waiting to lock up the church. As we walk outside, Mrs. Chatman says, “Lisa, don’t forget my peaches.”

  POP DIDN’T HAVE TO SAY A WORD

  I was a senior in high school when this photo was taken in my bedroom in 1987. I was not allowed to wear colorful makeup. One day I put red lipstick on while we were driving to church. Pop-Pop casually took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the lipstick off my lips. Without him having to say a word, I knew never to wear bold lipstick in his presence again. This photo was taken around that time.

  Mrs. Chatman talked about girls coming to church naked. She considers anyone whose arms are exposed naked. Gram was the same way. No wearing pants to church. Always wear stockings and always wear something with sleeves.

  I poked holes in my stockings when I didn’t want to go to church and said, “I guess I have to stay home.” She had a brown complexion, and I wore “tan” or “nude” stockings, colors she didn’t wear.

  “No, you don’t. Get in the car. Let’s go to the store and I’ll buy you stockings.” Gram would drive me to the convenience store, buy me the lightest-colored stockings she could find, and off we went—whether they looked right or not.

  My grandparents were proud I was active in our church. I was proud, too, but I had no choice in going. It wasn’t up for discussion. I did have a sense of pride as one the eldest children going to church and I especially loved it when the elders smiled at me. I just wished there were more children in the church, so I wouldn’t have stood out so much. What I remember most about church was being a teenager and wanting to wear red lipstick.

  I idolized a popular 1980s singer named Sade. She was known for her long ponytail, big silver hoop earrings, and the trademark scarlet lipstick on very full lips.

  One day, while I was high-school-aged, I put on red lipstick while I sat in the backseat of the car on the drive to church. Pop noticed through the rearview mirror but never said a word. He just looked at me. He parked the car and we walked up to the church doors as a family. Just as I reached for the door handle, Pop took his handkerchief out of his pocket and without a word wiped the lipstick off my lips. After the red was removed, he opened the door to the church.

  As a teen, I never wore red lipstick again in front of the family. I knew better. Without Pop-Pop or Gram saying a word, I knew I was never to wear it again. I would sneak it to school, wear it, and then wash my face before heading home.

  I am 45 years old now and don’t have the confidence to wear it even now. I know it looks good, but my dad and my grandfather always told me that I didn’t need to wear “that mess” to be beautiful. “Men don’t like all of that mess. Women look like clowns with a bunch of makeup on. When you wear it, we wonder what we’re getting. If you wear so much of it as a young woman,” my dad said, “you will have to wear it as you get older.” Dad is right.

  Pop took his handkerchief out of his pocket and without a word wiped the lipstick off my lips.

  MRS. DELCIA R. DAVIS, 87

  INDIANOLA

  BORN MARCH 1928

  MARRIED 62 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  15 CHILDREN

  40 GRANDCHILDREN

  20 GREAT-GRANDS

  3 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  Mrs. Davis volunteers every day as a senior citizen companion. I find it enchanting that an 87-year-old helps other seniors. She has a friendly face, clasps her hands when we talk, and leans to the side of the recliner chair when she smiles her innocent smile, which I like very much.

  One of the pastors told me she was blues musician B.B. King’s first cousin, but she said, “No, I was married to his first cousin. They were very close. Almost like brothers.” (They were in a singing group together called St. John Gospel Singers.) “You know, I’m in the museum, too. My photo is over there.” She’s referring to the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. She explains that she; her husband, Birkett; B.B.; and his first wife all lived together in a sharecropper’s home when they worked in the field. “His name was Riley, Riley King at that time. But when he started playin’ the blues, he changed it. Changed it to B.B. He left us. He moved to Memphis. He and my husband were lovey-dovey, never had a falling-out. They were good to one another. Never told on each other.” She chuckles. “When he left to go to Memphis, it hurt him [my husband]. My husband said he didn’t know why he left. But he got famous. Played and got famous. Broke my husband’s heart when he left. He stayed down to earth. He stayed the same.”

  “Do you still see Mr. King?”

  “He still sees me when he comes home. He was really close to my family. When he came home, he came to my house and his auntie’s house. When they passed, he just came to my house. He liked my cooking. I used to cook peas and okra for him. Right out of the garden. It would be some good eatin’—nothin’ like straight out of the garden. He used to love my pies and vegetables. He knew I could cook when we all lived together.”

  “Well, how did you meet your husband?” I ask, and she smiles.

  I first came to Indianola to visit my sister and I met this young man and his name was Birkett Davis. After I stayed awhile, I went back to Kosciusko in Attala County [in Mississippi], and then after that he came up there and asked my mother for me. I really was amazed because I didn’t think he thought that much about me.

  When I met him, he was a singer, sang quartets [St. John Gospel Singers]. I was sittin’ in a chair listenin’ to him sing, and when he finished singin’, he sit down beside of me and asked my sister could he take me to the picture show. She said, “Yes, if she wants to go.” We went to the picture show and we talk and talk.

  After he asked for me, my sister brought me back to Indianola and we got married. I was 15 years old, should have been in college or at least in school, you know. My father died when I was 9 years old and my mother married again. I had a stepdaddy and I didn’t like him. I wanted to visit my sister so I can leave home. After I got acquainted with this young man, I said this is my time to leave home for good. And I got married. I liked that singin’ he was doin’ and he was just so nice and mannerable. His mother was so nice to me. I liked that about him—he loved his mother; that means he love his wife. He was a good husband to me, my goodness. And we were together for 62 years before the Lord called him home.

  When we were wrapping, I asked if there was anything she wanted to tell me that I may not have asked, and she replied, “Oh, I have a story. I need to tell you this.”

  A car wreck in 1975 killed two of my sisters and hurt four family members of mine. Killed my oldest sister and my only brother on the spot in Lexington, Tennessee. My mother was in there, and my sister-in-law was in there, and my other sister in there, and a grandchild. They survived. They came to visit me right here in this house. They were on their way to Cincinnati, Ohio, and an 18-wheeler jackknifed, fell up on the car, and mashed it down. I tell you that was the roughest thing in my life. I got home from church that night. My daughter was here [at home] with some little ones and she told me about the wreck and everything. My husband and I got in the van, got ready, and went to Lexington. That’s where he had the wreck. It was a Jim Crow town, and they were so mean to my mother and my sister.

  Mrs. Davis’s grandmother as a child.

  That was a rough time in my life. She [Momma] had collapsed lung, cuts on the back of her head. She had to have surgery. They put a hole in her back and got that water out of her lungs so she could live. Then they put my mother out of the hospital. My mother had Medicare, and I asked, “Why can’t y’all keep her?” [They said,] “Well, her hours are up here. She can no longer stay here.” The black folks that saw the wreck said they were lucky to put her in there at all. They didn’t like black folks. The hospital in Tennessee put her out, put her out completely, and my sister and my momma’s grandchild out. God, it was rough then—1975. You know it was rough. We cryin’ day and night, just cryin’, tryin’ to get my momma somewhere. My siste
r had her back broken and her arm broken in three places. They sent her to a hospital in Jackson, Tennessee. Everybody got injured. The black folks that saw the wreck, I didn’t know them, they helped us, told us it was a Jim Crow town. I said, “What?” I didn’t know what Jim Crow town was. They said, “They ain’t gonna keep your momma.” I said, “What’s I gonna do? She ain’t able to go back to Indianola, that’s too far. My son-in-law live in Cincinnati and won’t be here until tomorrow. What am I gonna do?” Woman said, “We gonna find somewhere.” And she found a place for Momma to stay. They was some good peoples.

  MRS. EASTER LEE SHARP, 75

  SHAW

  BORN MARCH 1940

  STILL MARRIED, 49 YEARS, TO PETER SHARP JR.

  2 CHILDREN, 1 STEPDAUGHTER

  3 GRANDCHILDREN

  13 GREAT-GRANDS

  Rev. Hawkins has referred me to Mrs. Sharp. She agrees to the interview and we meet at her sister’s home in Shaw. Her sister Ethel Taylor opens the door and welcomes me in. She’s cooking dinner; it’s fried and smells good. Mrs. Shaw is tall and has shy eyes. She’s wearing her Sunday best, with a hat. Her sister leaves us in the living room and I break the ice: “Your first name is unusual. Where did you get it?”

  My daddy named me Easter because I was born on Easter Sunday. We never had a lot of money, but we were never hungry. You know my mom was resourceful. She did a lot of canning in the spring, so in the wintertime we had food because she had already prepared. She raised a garden and raised chickens, hogs, and stuff. We always had plenty to eat; we just didn’t have a lot of money.

  Mrs. Sharp is serious with little visible emotion. I can’t read her. She’s very polite, but unexpressive. I search for a topic that might get her to smile. She admits that she is shy and, when asked about her greatest accomplishment, states she wanted her children to have more than she did, and not to grow up shy like her. They are well-adjusted adults.

  I’m proud of my two children. When I was coming up, a lot of things I didn’t do because I was shy or didn’t learn to do. I guess, I tried to live my life through my children. I made sure they learned to do things that I wanted to do and didn’t do. Simple things like, everybody could ride a bike. I never rode a bike, so I made sure both of them rode a bike. My daughter didn’t have any problem but my son said, “I don’t wanna do it.” I just had to keep after him. I took music lessons, but I didn’t learn [the piano] as well as I wanted to, so when my daughter learned her ABCs, I started her with music lessons. She didn’t want to do it, but she learned. She’s just that type that she would learn anything. And my son, ooh, he hated music, so his grandma got involved. “Let that baby alone.” I took them to swimming. I never learned to swim but wanted them to swim. My daughter can swim but my son can’t. When the instructor looked around, he, my son, was sitting on the floor of the pool, underneath the water. It just frightened him so, and when he got home and we put him into the bathtub, he was shaking just getting into the bathtub. So then again his grandma said, “Don’t you take that baby back there.” My life was influenced a lot by her. I felt like I should have taken him back, but my sister-in-law said, “No, don’t you take that child back.” He’s not afraid of the water. He’ll go out there and wade in the water, but he never learned to actually swim. I just didn’t want them to be shy like I was. I thought I was too shy. When you get older, you don’t like to go out and start things, but when you start young, you learn a lot at a certain age and other folk don’t say to you, “You just now learning how to do that?” A lot of things I could have done, I guess, but I just couldn’t lend myself to get up there and learn how to ride a bike.

  I want my legacy to be that I’ve been fair and I tried to instill in others around me to treat others the way they want to be treated. It’s important to me to have folk do things decently and in order. I mean it that way because a lot of times we do things and we say, “That’ll do,” or “That’s all right,” or “We don’t have to do it that way.” It bothers me that you don’t care enough to try to do the right thing.

  DECENTLY AND IN ORDER

  Mrs. Sharp is a very proud woman and very elegant, graceful, and tall, albeit a bit shy. I smile at her words “decently and in order.” She reminds me of my gram and how we would fight about how to do certain chores. Gram was a tiny thing, but strict and firm in her beliefs. She ran the household. What she said went, and I knew that in order to get what I wanted, I needed to do what she told me to do. That didn’t mean I always got my way—I hardly ever did—but I would appeal to her.

  Sometimes I tried begging Pop-Pop to talk to her. “What did your grandmother say?” he’d ask. When I recently talked to him about it, he laughed. “I wasn’t getting in the middle of you and your grandmother. I knew better.”

  In order for me to go out with friends, I had to do two things: perform my weekly chores of sweeping, vacuuming, and taking the trash out of all the rooms in the house, and go to church on Sunday mornings. If I didn’t do those things every week, I could forget about going to the mall with my friends or doing anything fun. During the week I also had certain days to wash the dishes, as we did not have a dishwasher.

  During the warmer months my job was to rake and sweep the leaves. We had three old, large trees in front of our house. We didn’t have a driveway. We lived in the city, and our house was on one of the main drags. I hated raking leaves. Gram would stay in the doorway and watch. “Stop sweeping like that,” she’d say. “Do little piles so you’re not sweeping dirt everywhere.”

  “What differences does it make if it gets done?” Looking back, I’m amazed I didn’t get slapped.

  She sucked her teeth and said, “Do as I say. No arguments. I want it done my way.”

  I vividly remember wanting to say, “Then you do it.” But I was smart enough not to say a word. I’m positive I would have been slapped and then grounded. Gram liked things done her way. Decently and in order.

  “Do as I say. No arguments. I want it done my way.”

  MRS. DAISY IDLEBURG, 88

  MOUND BAYOU

  BORN JANUARY 1927

  MARRIED 14 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  1 CHILD

  5 GRANDCHILDREN

  7 GREAT-GRANDS

  Mrs. Idleburg lives in a ranch house on a large plot of land, a security camera by the garage door. Rev. Tony Anderson referred me, and mentioned he sometimes parks the church van at her house. “One day I came over to get the van and she pulled a gun,” he said, laughing. “So I always make sure I call her beforehand.” I park in front of her house. I see the church van. I call her: “Mrs. Idleburg, I’m here. I’m getting out of my car now.” She says okay and opens the door. “I heard about you and that gun. Rev. Anderson told me. I just wanted to make sure you knew who I was. I’m not trying to get shot.” She laughs and hugs me. The house has a sweet, aromatic flower scent. It smells fresh and comforting. “Ooh, it smells good in here!” I say.

  She thanks me as we walk through the red and white kitchen. In the living room an old Bible, its edges tattered, sits on the table. Her sofa is adorned with quilts, and a corner wooden shelf displays family photos. On the wall above the big window is a picture of White Jesus.

  “Mrs. Idleburg, may I photograph this beautiful Bible?”

  She nods her head, “Go ’head,” and she sits on the sofa, watching me. I ask to photograph White Jesus, too, and she gives me permission. When I sit next to her on the sofa, I begin to make conversation: “You have long hair.” Her shoulder-length hair is combed to the side. It looks hot-combed and waved.

  She nods.

  I set up the microphone to start the interview. “Are you nervous?”

  She shakes her head.

  “So Rev. Anderson tells me you’re a handful.”

  She giggles like a schoolgirl, covering her mouth with her hands, before I can say anything else and soon admits: “I was devilish. I was always in trouble.” She continues to laugh through this fun interview.

  We didn’t have no boys in ou
r family. Just the two girls—me and my niece. I was about 11 years old and my niece was about 15, so we grew up together and we did a lot of devilin’ together. When Momma whipped one, both of us cry. We plowed, we chopped, we picked cotton. Didn’t go in with nobody else; we had to do it ourselves, but we made it. Thanks the Lord. And we got to pickin’ cotton. We’d get out on the ground and pack our cotton with our feets. We packed it so heavy. We’d get to the cotton house, just a laughin’ cause he [her dad] had to empty them sacks, and we was packin’ ’em wit’ our feet—the bottom to the top. There was nothin’ between his shoulder and shirt and the sack. He’d have a fit. We’d put him to work. We’d laugh and keep on doin’ it. We said, “You won’t do nothin’, we give you something to do.” We made him empty those sacks. Yes, indeed.

  My niece and I got into all kinds of trouble. We’d picked peanuts. We’d put them on top of the house and let ’em get dry. She [niece] went up on the ladder and got her some. I didn’t eat no raw peanuts but I just doin’ it, and went up there and got me some and I heard him [dad] comin’ through the house. There was a nail in the side of the ladder and I was comin’ down that ladder and that nail struck me in the hip. Ripped my hip. I got down before he got out. That didn’t stop us, though. They’d be in the front of the house and we’d be on the roof eatin’ peanuts. We’d always do somethin’.

  When they be grindin’ and makin’ molasses, Daddy would come, bring that alcohol, whatever they called it, and bring it home. I would get some and mix it in the slop for the hogs. We’d get behind the back and put some in the trough, let hogs drink it and get drunk and fall out like crazy. We’d fall out and laugh. We got the hogs drunk. They’d be so drunk. We got into all kinds of stuff. Yes, indeed. You should have seen the hogs, staggering out. We’d be out there laughin’.