by Anne Moody
Way down upon the Swanee River, far far away.
There’s where my heart is turning ever,
There’s where the old folks stay.
All the world is sad and dreary Ev’rywhere I roam.
Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary
Far from the old folks at home.
There was something about “Swanee River” that touched most of those old whites singing along with the band. There was also something that made the old Negroes even sadder. I got a feeling that there existed some kind of sympathetic relationship between the older Negroes and whites that the younger people didn’t quite get or understand.
The feeling that the song conveyed stayed with me all evening, and I was cold. I shivered throughout the rest of the parade. That night, when I was crowned Homecoming Queen during half time of the football game, I felt even colder. As soon as the ceremony was over, I left for home. I felt like I was coming down with something.
Chapter
NINE
Shortly after I was crowned queen, my name was changed. Graduation was approaching in May and Mrs. Willis had asked us to bring our birth certificates to her for school records. I found I didn’t have one. It had been lost with Junior’s and Adline’s when Junior set the house on fire. So Mama sent off to Jackson to get new copies for each of us. They came about a month later. But instead of one for Essie Mae Moody, they sent one for Annie Mae. Mama returned it even though all the information on it was correct but the name. Two weeks later she got it right back again—this time with a long letter saying there must have been some mistake during the original printing. She was told she could get the name changed for a small fee, but by this time it was only two weeks before graduation and Mrs. Willis had received all the certificates but mine. After much persuasion on my part, Mama decided to let me keep the name Annie. I was so glad, I had always thought of Essie as a name suitable for a cow or hog.
I shall never forget when I handed the certificate to Mrs. Willis and made my announcement: “Mrs. Willis, here is my birth certificate. Mama said it’s too late to have it changed and to go on and use Annie.”
Mrs. Willis held the certificate up so everyone could see it. “Class! Class!” she called out. “Queen Essie is now officially Queen Annie.” When she said that I felt just like a real queen.
The changing of my name didn’t really make a difference at school or at home. The first day I carried the certificate to school, a lot of my classmates had teased me about it but they kept on calling me Moody as they had before. And at home I was still called Essie Mae. Mama insisted that it was “bad luck” to change your name. So she wouldn’t even let Adline them call me Annie.
A few days after I gave Mrs. Willis my certificate, we spent an entire day computing class averages to determine the scholastic rank of each student. Mrs. Willis told us it was now time to see who would be Valedictorian and Salutatorian. I hadn’t even heard those words before. But within minutes I had learned what they meant from the student sitting next to me. Automatically I looked over at Darlene. She sat there looking so confident. I began to wonder what had caused the change in her.
Mrs. Willis drew a small square on the board in the left-hand corner. Within it she listed the numerical equivalent for each letter grade. After she had done this, she went and sat in the back of the classroom. She then began calling us to the board five at a time.
Didn’t any of us know our final grades. But everyone in the class expected me and Darlene to be the Val and Sal because we had always maintained the highest averages. Most of the other students weren’t as interested in their own grades as they were in ours. So they just sat tense in their seats and waited for our averages to be determined. And the way Darlene sat there smirking, I was sure she knew she had finally beaten me. Had it been any other time I wouldn’t have cared so much but for graduation … She would never let me live it down.
As the students returned to their seats from the board, they discussed their grades with their friends. And the room was getting very noisy. But when Mrs. Willis called Darlene’s name then mine, silence fell over the entire room. Now only Mrs. Willis’ voice could be heard calling out grades. And Darlene and I stood at the board sweating. She had been cool and seemed so sure of herself when she was in her seat. Now she was shaking. She was second in line at the board. She had all A’s and B’s when her grades were called. After hearing her grades, chills went all over my body. “If I get just one C or three B’s I have lost,” I thought. I was the last in line. When Mrs. Willis called my first grade, it was a B. My hand was trembling as I wrote it on the board: I didn’t even breathe until my last grade had been called. Discovering I had all A’s and B’s, I sighed with relief and heard the whole class sighing too. When I finished figuring out my average, I stood looking out of the window, afraid to even look in Darlene’s direction. Suddenly there was a lot of noise in the room and I heard someone whisper, “Darlene won.” I almost fainted. “What’s your average, Darlene?” called Mrs. Willis. Darlene almost shouted her 97. When Mrs. Willis got to me my 96 could barely be heard.
I went to my seat sick inside. “How did I let that happen?” I asked myself over and over again. I jotted down Darlene’s grades on a piece of paper and began adding them. But while I was doing this, someone shouted out, “Betty Posey got 98.” All the eyes in the room stared at the board. Betty stood there—gasping over her average. I looked at Darlene and saw her jot down Betty’s grades to add them as I had done with hers.
I didn’t even pick up a pencil for Betty’s grades. I just looked to Darlene for the answer. Then I saw some of the delight fade from her face. Betty had always been a pretty good student but Darlene and I had not considered her a threat at all. We were in for a lot of surprises that day. Betty had won. She was the Val, Darlene the Sal, and I was to give the Welcome Address on Class Night. So it was and school ended.
That summer Mama succeeded in getting Raymond off to California to look for a job. I hadn’t believed she could ever get him out of that bottom, but somehow she did. For years his relatives in Los Angeles had been urging him to go out there, telling him he could easily find a job, but Raymond had wanted to try and make it as a farmer in Mississippi. Finally, after two years of bad luck with the farm, he gave it up. Now there was nothing else he could do.
In Centreville there weren’t any factories or sawmills that employed unskilled Negro men. The nearest mills were fifteen to fifty miles away in Woodville, Crosby, and Natchez. White businesses in town employed Negroes as janitors only, and there was never more than one janitor in any single business. The Negro man had a hard road to travel when looking for employment. A Negro woman, however, could always go out and earn a dollar a day because whites always needed a cook, a baby-sitter, or someone to do housecleaning.
Raymond stayed in Los Angeles for about a month. Within that time he wrote home twice. The first letter came about two weeks after he left:
Los Angeles is a big city. But jobs are as hard to get out here as they are in Mississippi. And Negroes don’t live as well out here as people at home think. I am coming back home.
The second letter came about two weeks later. It said:
I am headed home I am just wasting time out here.
Three days later he was back.
We were all disillusioned. Poor Mama was hurt some bad. All of her hopes for ever getting out of that bottom were gone. She had sat around the house talking about California the whole time Raymond was gone. “Y’all can go to school with white children and be real smart”; or “We are gonna git a real nice house out in California ’cause Raymond kin make more money,” or “Essie Mae, you kin make ten dollars a day doing housework.”
The future looked very dim for us. It seemed as though we were doomed to poverty and more unhappiness than we had faced before. Raymond was out of work again. And again our diet consisted of dried beans and bread. In addition to the lack of food and money, Mama was about to have another baby. She would soon be the m
other of seven. She always chose the wrong time to have babies. It seemed as though every time we were encountering a streak of bad luck she shot up. One day you would look at her and she was flat and the very next day seemingly she was in labor and Aunt Caroline was being summoned to the house.
As usual when she was pregnant and times were hard she cried a lot. She cried so now she almost drove us all crazy. Every evening I came home from work, she was beating on the children making them cry too. Raymond couldn’t say a word without her biting his head off.
I was still working for Linda Jean during this family depression and contributed five of my six dollars to the cause. But that didn’t help very much. There were just too many mouths to feed, and soon even my six dollars wouldn’t be coming in. Mr. Jenkins had been building a house in the country for over a year and it was nearly finished. As soon as they moved I would be out of work. I looked forward to that time with intense fear. I began wondering what white woman I would end up working for next. The five I had worked for so far had been good to me. But I knew that all white women in Centreville weren’t good to their maids.
By the time Linda Jean was ready to move, Raymond had gotten together a few men and started dealing (cutting and hauling) pulpwood. He had picked up a ragged old truck somewhere and most of his money was spent on repairing it every day or so. But a little money was coming in—enough to buy food with, anyway. Now I would be able to take a week or two and look for a good job.
But the day before Linda Jean moved, all my plans were upset. Mama had the baby, another boy—she named him Ralph. In addition to that, the pulpwood truck fell completely apart. I went to bed that night and prayed for something to happen so Linda Jean them would have to stay another week.
As soon as I got to work the next morning, I knew my prayer hadn’t been answered. Linda Jean and Mr. Jenkins were wrapping all the china in newspaper. I just stood in the kitchen looking at them.
“Good morning, Essie,” Linda Jean said when she noticed me there. “I left Donna and Johnny over to Mama’s. She is gonna keep them until we finish packing. The man is coming to move us at two o’clock, so we’ve got a lot to do before then. Honey,” she said to Mr. Jenkins, “let Essie help me with these dishes.”
After we finished packing them, she asked me to take three glasses over to her mother and see if Donna and Johnny were all right. “Oh! Tell Mama to make some sandwiches for us for lunch, I don’t have time,” she said.
I took the glasses and headed for Mrs. Burke’s. Walking to her house was like walking on quicksand. I had no desire to get involved with Linda Jean’s mother. We shared a mutual dislike for each other. From the way she tried to treat me I knew how she felt about Negroes. She was one of those whites who would let her dog occupy a seat at her dining table before she would a Negro.
Now that I was facing that big white house, my knees were trembling. “Why am I shaking so?” I thought as I walked up the wooden steps into the front porch. I missed one and almost fell. Trying to compose myself, I stood facing the screen door. “What am I scared of?” I thought. “Linda Jean will be gone tomorrow and I won’t ever see this woman again.” I knocked.
“Yes!” I heard her say as she came down the hallway. “Did you come for Donna and Johnny?” she called from behind the door.
“No. Linda Jean sent these glasses and told me to tell you to make some sandwiches for lunch for us, that she is too busy,” I answered.
Mrs. Burke opened the door now and took the glasses from me. “Does Mrs. Jenkins want me to bring the children over, or will you come back for them?” She sounded very indignant.
“She didn’t say, but I can come back for them,” I said innocently.
“Tell Mrs. Jenkins to send some diapers for Johnny,” she said as I was walking down the porch steps.
When I carried the diapers over a few minutes later, she met me at the door with a smile. I stood there looking at her baffled by the change in her attitude.
“Come on in, Essie, and change Johnny’s diaper for me. I’m on the phone,” she said in a pleasant tone of voice.
I followed her down a long hallway that was as big as our whole house. The only piece of furniture in it was an office desk with a telephone on it.
“The children are in the dining room, Essie,” Mrs. Burke said, picking up the phone.
I stood there wondering where in hell the dining room was. “How does she figure I know where it is?” I thought as I walked into a bedroom. “It’s over here, Essie,” Mrs. Burke said, pointing to a room on the opposite side of the hall. I walked in there feeling a little stupid.
Donna and Johnny were sitting in a corner of the dining room as quiet as two mice. They looked as though they were scared to death. I realized then how mean Mrs. Burke was. Donna and Johnny were as noisy as ten children when they were home, and they never stayed in one place.
Mrs. Burke came in just as I finished putting on Johnny’s diaper. She stood smiling at me for a while.
“Essie, are you planning to take on another job now that Linda Jean is moving?” she asked. I just looked at her with my mouth wide open. She had purposely said “Linda Jean.”
“I can use some help if you want work,” she finally said, still smiling.
I was too stunned to answer.
“Well, you think about it and let me know before you leave Linda Jean’s today.”
I did think about her a lot the next few hours. She was a strange woman and she puzzled me. I just couldn’t make up my mind to work for her. However, when I got home and was again faced with a sick mother, crying babies, an unemployed stepfather, and a plate of dried beans, my mind was made up for me. I knew that I had to take that job, I had to help secure that plate of dry beans if nothing else. I went to work for Mrs. Burke the following morning.
I was so uneasy that first day at Mrs. Burke’s. However, I felt better after becoming familiar with the rest of the household, and making the discovery that Mrs. Burke was the only nasty person in there. Her mother, Mrs. Crosby, was a very nice old lady with long braids wrapped around her head. She thought I was a beautiful girl and took a keen interest in me from the start. Wayne, Mrs. Burke’s son, was my same age and grade. He was very much like Linda Jean in the sense that he also treated me as his equal. It was hard for me to accept the fact that he and Linda Jean were Mrs. Burke’s children. I didn’t meet her eldest son, Dennis, who was her favorite. I didn’t meet him, but I knew that if he was her favorite, he too must be evil with a negative attitude toward Negroes. Mr. Burke, her husband, was difficult to figure. He was very seldom home, and when he was he hardly ever said anything.
Mrs. Burke, an ex-schoolteacher, was a typical matriarch. She ruled her whole family and even tried to rule me. She had a certain way of doing everything in her house from sweeping to setting a table. I guess all the maids she had had before catered to these little wishes of hers. But I had no intention of doing so, and I had my own little ways of resisting her rule. When I first ironed some shirts for her she brought all fifteen of them back for me to redo. “Take out these cat faces, Essie. Wayne can’t wear these shirts looking like this. I watched you do these and I see you have no set way of ironing shirts. Let me show you how it’s done.” I stood back and watched her do one shirt. Then I went over all of the remaining fourteen. But the very next week I did the ironing, I did all the shirts my way, and Mrs. Burke watched me do them too. But this time she didn’t have me redo them. In fact, she didn’t say anything.
I had always used the front door when entering and leaving her house. The morning after that second ironing I walked up on the front porch and discovered that the screen door was locked.
“Who is it?” Mrs. Burke called as she heard me knocking.
“It’s me, Essie!” I answered.
“Use the back door, Essie, it’s open!” she yelled to me.
The tone of her voice told me that she was again trying to subdue me. I went to the back door that morning. But the next morning I walked up on
the front porch again and knocked at the front door. I knocked for what seemed like ten minutes and she still didn’t answer. I didn’t stop knocking though. Finally Mrs. Crosby came to the door and let me in. When I walked in, I noticed that as usual Mrs. Burke was occupying her favorite chair in the living room, which was the first room to the left as you entered the hall. I knew she had heard me knocking. “That’s all right,” I thought. “I will knock at the front door tomorrow morning again and the day after that too.”
When I knocked the next morning, Mrs. Crosby was standing in the hallway as if she was waiting for me. She let me in that morning and every morning at seven-thirty after that.
Soon Mrs. Burke decided to let me do things my way. I would have quit had she not. And I think she knew it. She really had no complaints about my work so she let me be. In a way, working for her was a challenge for me. She was the first one of her type I had run into.
Part Two
HIGH SCHOOL
Chapter
TEN
Not only did I enter high school with a new name, but also with a completely new insight into the life of Negroes in Mississippi. I was now working for one of the meanest white women in town, and a week before school started Emmett Till was killed.
