Delta Jewels

by Alysia Burton Steele

  I NEVER SKIPPED SCHOOL AGAIN

  I call Mrs. Idleburg the “bad girl” in the book. She was head cook for 22 years at Mound Bayou Heart Start, yet the stories she shared were all mischievous. Her giggling, as she recalled them, made me smile. She reminded me that neighbors who paid attention to us kids were important when I was growing up. I don’t know what it was like in white neighborhoods, but in black ones, neighbors watched out for one another’s children.

  When I was in middle school, Gram, Pop-Pop, and I moved to a mixed-race, middle-class part of town from our previous neighborhood, which was on the northeast part of town, just north of downtown. Our old street was tiny; if cars parked on both sides, it looked like cars could sideswipe you. When cars weren’t coming down the street, my dad would race me down the street. Trees were planted on the sidewalks in front of brick row houses. Neighbors swept in front of their homes. It was an all-black street in an area of town Pop-Pop says Blacks could buy homes—one of few such places back in the day. Our old neighbors were seniors, who watched the neighborhood kids. They made sure we didn’t do what we weren’t supposed to and they made sure we were safe. We knew if we did something we weren’t supposed to do, our parents would get a call if the neighbors didn’t spank us first. We played jacks on the porch and caught lightning bugs in old Hellmann’s Mayonnaise jars. It was a good childhood home. I always drive down the street when I visit. Most houses are abandoned now. I get tears in my eyes when I look at our old house. I don’t see my grandmother’s white flowered curtains.

  Most of our new neighbors were white, but there were a few black families. Our house was about a mile from school.

  One of my best friends, Shantih, and I decided to skip school and watch Oprah. We were art students. Our high school had a partnership with an arts magnet school. We would take academics in the morning at the traditional school and ride the bus to the art school in the afternoon. We decided to skip art school this day. We were even bold enough to have a pizza delivered. My grandparents were at work. I thought we were free and clear until in walks Gram. Shantih and I were lying on the floor having a good time when Gram casually walked into the house and said, “Hello.”

  “We don’t have school this afternoon,” I lied.

  “Okay,” she said, and went upstairs and evidently called the school, because she very calmly came downstairs and politely told us: “Get up. I am driving you back to school.”

  We didn’t argue with her. We got up and went. There were no fights in the car, no talking back. When I came home from school, Gram didn’t punish me. She didn’t give me any restrictions, which is what she would have normally done. I knew how fortunate I was not to get punished, but her disappointment was enough punishment.

  I was 18 years old when this photo was taken in 1988. My mom and grandfather Harry Larson are in the picture with me. This was taken in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During this time, I would argue with Gram Burton about chores. I had to do them just as she wanted or I would be put on restriction.

  I knew who called her. It was Ms. Ruth, an older white woman who had the most beautiful brownstone across the street from our gray and white stone house.

  I never brought it up and Gram didn’t either. I never skipped school again either. I knew Ms. Ruth was watching me.

  I think back to all the devilish things I did and giggle now. As mean and strict as I thought Gram was back then, I am grateful for her. I wish I could tell her that now. It’s an empty feeling. People tell me she’s with me. Yes, she is, but I wish she were here in person, so I could tell her that I hold close what she instilled in me.

  MRS. RUBY STEIN PERRY PATTON, 86

  SHELBY

  MARRIED 25 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  BORN JULY 1928

  5 CHILDREN

  15 GRANDCHILDREN

  11 GREAT-GRANDS

  3 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  Her answers are short and sweet, no detail, and I can tell she doesn’t think she has much of importance to share in the book. More than an hour into the interview, ” her son Robert says, “Mama, did you tell her about how you helped people to vote?”

  I just stare at him, my mouth open.

  “She took 100 people to register to vote—in one day,” he continues, and explains that it was in the 1980s when he was running for alderman in Shelby, Mississippi.

  “Mrs. Patton, you helped people to vote?”

  “Oh yes, yes I did,” she says, her voice livening up. “I drove a shuttle to the polling center, back and forth all day. Taking peoples both Blacks and Whites to vote. I didn’t care what race they was, if they wanted to vote, I’d help them.”

  I was very political not just during election time, but year-round. I hauled 100 peoples in one day to vote. Carried them to the poll to vote. It’s been years ago. It was in the eighties. In one day. I started picking them up at 6 a.m. I would have them lined up. I’d go through the community and campaign and talk to the peoples on who I would support, ask them what did they think about this candidate.

  One of the reasons I got started in the 1980s, door-to-door, talking to the peoples [was] because my son Robert was running for Shelby alderman.

  My name got so famous, so popular, among people by helping so many people, didn’t nobody wanna ride anyone’s bus but mine. They would say, “I’m waiting on Ms. Patton.” I bought a van and would go get people and take them to vote and make another run—all day. So many times I would help them, even to bathe, old ladies. I would help wash them, dry them off, and then come back and pick them up and take them to vote. I could go to the poll and have them line up outside the door, sometimes to across the street. They would say, “I want Ms. Patton to assist me.”

  It was important to me. I would tell them who is gonna run for mayor and they would have their cards in their hand and say, “This is who I’m gonna vote for.” I never had a hard time voting from Whites. I would rehearse with my peoples before I got there. It was just the way you would carry yourself a lot of times and not try to take the election over. I would say to my peoples, “We gonna be very cooperative now. Don’t make nobody mad. It may take a little while.” So many times I’d take extra chairs for them to sit down and rest. There’d be that many people wanna vote. I was trying to help our poor black peoples get elected. I had white and black peoples that I would help. I wouldn’t just say black all the time. It was who I thought was the best person.

  I worked for Barack Obama. I campaigned. I started out in daylight. I went from door to door. When he won, everybody could hardly make it, so excited. I was excited. My candidate had won. I’ll tell you what, I’d be so tired, I couldn’t even go to victory ball. Be done give out. When you haul 300-some people a day, by yo’self, you give out when night come.

  [During the 2012 presidential election] I got excited. I said “Our president playing basketball and he need to be tryin’ to win.” I went to cryin’. I was worried because he talkin’ about playing basketball. I said, “That man need to be workin’. He gonna mess around and lose this election.” I said, “Oh, Lord have mercy.” I was excited, I ain’t gonna tell no stories.

  Now I’m 85, I done retired from politics now. I go in and vote and that’s it. But everybody wants to know, “Ms. Patton, who you votin’ for?” I want my legacy to be that I always want to help somebody in the polls. That’s what I do.

  Mrs. Patton reminds me of the time when I was in high school that Gram campaigned not to have our street named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was Market Street, but it came up at a city meeting to change it to MLK Drive. Gram was adamant about keeping the name. Black folks wanted to know why a black woman would oppose the change. Gram—never one to sit back and not voice her opinion—said during a television interview that after a certain point down the main drag, the “element” changed and it wasn’t the nicest street. “Dr. King would be embarrassed to have that street named after him, looking like it does.” She said it was named Market Street, had always been named Market Street as long as
she could remember, and she didn’t think changing it, when it got shady just north of downtown, was a good thing.

  MRS. ANNIE McFARLAND MISTER, 77

  GRENADA

  BORN OCTOBER 1937

  MARRIED FOR 34 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  4 CHILDREN

  7 GRANDCHILDREN

  4 GREAT-GRANDS

  Mrs. Mister was sick when I traveled to Grenada, and I interviewed a Jewel she recommended, Mrs. Fox, instead. But I can’t stop thinking about Mrs. Mister’s interesting name and call her a couple weeks later: “Mrs. Mister, how are you doing?” She’s fine, back home after a short stay in the hospital. “I haven’t forgotten you. Do you still want to be in the book?”

  “I thought I missed my chance.”

  She lives in a neat community of brick ranch homes. Everyone has a carport, and all the yards are neatly manicured. I drive down her street and a male neighbor waves to me. That’s one thing I love about the South—people wave and speak. Black angel figurines populate a table in front of the living room window. She sits in a wooden rocking chair by the kitchen. The tidbit she most wants me to know about her is this: “I won an oracle contest in 1955. I was a good speaker.” As I show her the book pages, she sees a quote from one of the women. “I want my quote to say, ‘I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.’ I want my legacy to be that I inspired young women by leading them to Christ and being a role model for them. You know, Lisa, I feel like a grandmother to you.” When asked to share a story to educate people about life in Mississippi, she’s quiet for a minute, looks me in the eye, and says, “I can’t forget about how I grew up and how we went to school.” She goes on to say her father was a deacon and her mother was a church mother who baked the communion bread. “I used to like to watch her.” She says it seemed like she was in the spirit.

  We lived on a farm and we were sharecroppers. We didn’t have any tractors; we had mules. My daddy plowed mules in the field. We chop cotton. And we picked cotton. We walked two miles to school while the white children would ride the bus and pass by us and throw the mud on us, and all that kind of thing. But what I can remember about going to school and being a sharecropper, I tell everybody now, that I attended private school because it was segregated. I just make a joke out of it, sayin’ that it was private because it was segregated. We had black schools and white schools and everything was different about everything. I can remember walking to school. I was the youngest, and the big boys would have to carry me because I couldn’t keep up. I was in the first grade, six years old. Everybody on the farm would gather together and walk to school, the two miles to school. It would be cold, ice spewing up out of the ground, but we would make it to school.

  My uncle had an old pickup and he covered it over and he would pick up the children near him. And we would all ride on the back of Uncle Sylvester’s old truck and we thought that was a luxury to get to ride to school.

  My mother would have special wood, oak I think, that my brothers would chop, to burn in the wood stove, to cook her communion bread. She felt like it was sacred. She would go and make her fire and she didn’t want to be bothered. She just wanted to get in the spirit while she was makin’ that bread. I never shall forget. If you go near her, you could see not to disturb her while she makin’ that bread. She didn’t make loaves. It was just like piecrust or somethin’. Real thin. And she would just lay it in the pan and cook it. And then she would carry it in a whole piece. It would kinda curl up when it was cooked in the oven. A whole piece. She would not break it. The pastor would break the bread. When she’d take it there, it would be in this cloth and he would break the bread. He would break it in small pieces, then he would serve it.

  She home made wine. She used it for communion. I do it now. Make it from muscadines and grapes.

  I would have liked to be a social worker or midwife. [When asked if there is any regret in her life, anything she wishes she’d done, she says:] I wanted to be a midwife, really, to deliver babies. I was with my sister before she could get to the hospital and I helped her deliver the baby. I guess we bonded with that baby. I felt so good about it. I wanted to help others. Before I could pursue it, it became so controversial. You had to go to school and get a license, and all that kind of stuff. You had to have so much training. All of my mother’s children were delivered by midwives. I still regret I didn’t do it. I still try to teach women now how to have a baby naturally. They need to exercise and breast-feed, and all that kind of thing. I want them to let it be natural.

  MRS. EMMA EUDORA McGEE HORTON, 76

  CHARLESTON

  BORN OCTOBER 1938

  MARRIED 34 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  3 CHILDREN

  4 GRANDCHILDREN

  “If you’re in front of Mrs. Smith’s house, you can see mine,” Mrs. Horton says as she gives me directions to her home. An educator, she is a graduate of Piney Woods College with a master’s degree from Tuskegee. She also lives across the street from another Jewel, Mrs. Florida Smith. At her front door, wasps are swarming from several nests. I walk to the door, ducking wasps. She hears me and peeks her head out the carport door.

  “Hello, Mrs. Horton, I’m Lisa. It’s nice to meet you. Be careful because there are wasps’ nests outside your front door.” She tells me she doesn’t use the front entrance. “Is there someone who can spray those for you?”

  “I’ll have my son do it next time he’s here.” Inside, in the family room, are a built-in bookshelf, fireplace, sofa, recliner, and coffee table. Above the fireplace, family photos hang on wood paneling. “You know, I almost didn’t let you in,” she says nonchalantly. I’m offended. Does she not know how long it took me to get here? I would have been so upset had I driven all the way for her not to answer the door. But I can’t say I blame her for being skeptical. “But I called Mrs. Smith, who said you were a good girl and to let you in.” Right away, she lets me know her husband of 34 years died a few years ago. “My best friend is gone,” she says, and looks down at her fingers.

  I can tell she was deeply in love, so I ask, “What did you like most about your husband?”

  “Well, he was honest and said he’d always prayed for a good wife—and he just figured I was meant to be his wife.”

  “Tell me about your first date. Do you remember it?” She sucks her teeth.

  Our first date? He told me he goin’ to a movie, and we got there, I looked, I said, “This not a movie, this look like a hotel.”

  He said, “We goin’ in there, baby; we gonna love it up.”

  I said, “Not me.” I said, “Only man I gettin’ in the bed will be my lawfully wedded husband, and you can take me back on home now.”

  He carried me back on home. He said he woke his daddy up. He said, “I have met my wife.” ’Cause, he said, any lady who would jump in the bed with him, he not marryin’. Put an X through her name and moved on to the next one.

  Yeah, I was offended he did that. I went out with him again because he changed. He respected me. He honored me ’cause he said I was the first lady who put him in his place and that’s the type of lady he was lookin’ for, not one to jump in the bed and have babies and all that mess. I put him in his place.

  So he started plannin’ a big wedding with me. We got married—December 22 in Yazoo City—after dating for a little over a year. We came back here [Charleston]. He got a travel house for us to stay in and he told me this when he was ready to get in the bed: he said, “We married now.”

  I said, “Get on your knees.”

  He said, “Get on my knees?”

  I said, “Yeah, ’cause you do not know who you just married and I don’t know who I just married, but we gonna get down on our knees and pray that we be nice and good for each other.”

  So he bent down on his knees and I got down on my knees. I stayed there a long time and he got up. He said, “Eudora, get up off your knees. I’m a good man and I’mma be nice to you.” And I got up.

  I had prayed about it [going to Piney Woods College]
and so I caught the old yellow school bus with a old raggedy suitcase. Got on it and rode over in town and my brother got out the bus and walked me to the Greyhound bus station. I go from the Greyhound bus station, get a cab, and go over to the Trailways bus station and then Trailways would carry me on to Piney Woods. And when I got to Piney Woods, I said, “Lord, if it’s not Piney Woods, I ain’t got enough money to get home,” but it was Piney Woods.

  I heard one day down on campus someone say, “Y’all see her?”

  I was 22 years old when I started at college. I heard one lady say, “But doesn’t she look like she gonna be somebody one day?” That’s what I heard her say. And, you know, most of my students, those that made doctors, lawyers, and what have you, they give me credit.

  I always wanted to be a schoolteacher. My second grade teacher said I went to her desk and said I was gonna be a schoolteacher. I just worked toward that goal. I sent myself to college. I worked. Reading Up from Slavery from Booker T. Washington, was some of the reason I end up goin’ to Tuskegee. ’Cause that was one of the most fascinating books I read. So when I made it to that campus, I broke down and cried ’cause I’m at a school that the founding father inspired me to come on and go to that school.

  MRS. LILLIE V. THOMPSON DAVIS, 85

  MARKS