Coming of Age in Mississippi Read online

  Our house, which was separated from the Johnsons’ by a field of clover, was the best two-room house we had been in yet. It was made out of big new planks and it even had a new toilet. We were also once again on paved streets. We just did make those paved streets, though. A few yards past the Johnsons’ house was the beginning of the old rock road we had just moved off.

  We were the only Negroes in that section, which seemed like some sort of honor. All the whites living around there were well-to-do. They ranged from schoolteachers to doctors and prosperous businessmen. The white family living across the street from us owned a funeral home and the only furniture store in Centreville. They had two children, a boy and a girl. There was another white family living about a quarter of a mile in back of the Johnsons who also had a boy and a girl. The two white girls were about my age and the boys a bit younger. They often rode their bikes or skated down the little hill just in front of our house. Adline, Junior and I would sit and watch them. How we wished Mama could buy us a bike or even a pair of skates to share.

  There was a wide trench running from the street alongside our house. It separated our house and the Johnsons’ place from a big two-story house up on the hill. A big pecan tree grew on our side of the trench, and we made our playhouse under it so we could sit in the trench and watch those white children without their knowing we were actually out there staring at them. Our playhouse consisted of two apple crates and a tin can that we sat on.

  One day when the white children were riding up and down the street on their bikes, we were sitting on the apple crates making Indian noises and beating the tin can with sticks. We sounded so much like Indians that they came over to ask if that was what we were. This was the beginning of our friendship. We taught them how to make sounds and dance like Indians and they showed us how to ride their bikes and skate. Actually, I was the only one who learned. Adline and Junior were too small and too scared, although they got a kick out of watching us. I was seven, Adline five, and Junior three, and this was the first time we had ever had other children to play with. Sometimes, they would take us over to their playhouse. Katie and Bill, the children of the whites that owned the furniture store, had a model playhouse at the side of their parents’ house. That little house was just like the big house, painted snow white on the outside, with real furniture in it. I envied their playhouse more than I did their bikes and skates. Here they were playing in a house that was nicer than any house I could have dreamed of living in. They had all this to offer me and I had nothing to offer them but the field of clover in summer and the apple crates under the pecan tree.

  The Christmas after we moved there, I thought sure Mama would get us some skates. But she didn’t. We didn’t get anything but a couple of apples and oranges. I cried a week for those skates, I remember.

  Every Saturday evening Mama would take us to the movies. The Negroes sat upstairs in the balcony and the whites sat downstairs. One Saturday we arrived at the movies at the same time as the white children. When we saw each other, we ran and met. Katie walked straight into the downstairs lobby and Adline, Junior, and I followed. Mama was talking to one of the white women and didn’t notice that we had walked into the white lobby. I think she thought we were at the side entrance we had always used which led to the balcony. We were standing in the white lobby with our friends, when Mama came in and saw us. “C’mon! C’mon!” she yelled, pushing Adline’s face on into the door. “Essie Mae, um gonna try my best to kill you when I get you home. I told you ’bout running up in these stores and things like you own ’em!” she shouted, dragging me through the door. When we got outside, we stood there crying, and we could hear the white children crying inside the white lobby. After that, Mama didn’t even let us stay at the movies. She carried us right home.

  All the way back to our house, Mama kept telling us that we couldn’t sit downstairs, we couldn’t do this or that with white children. Up until that time I had never really thought about it. After all, we were playing together. I knew that we were going to separate schools and all, but I never knew why.

  After the movie incident, the white children stopped playing in front of our house. For about two weeks we didn’t see them at all. Then one day they were there again and we started playing. But things were not the same. I had never really thought of them as white before. Now all of a sudden they were white, and their whiteness made them better than me. I now realized that not only were they better than me because they were white, but everything they owned and everything connected with them was better than what was available to me. I hadn’t realized before that downstairs in the movies was any better than upstairs. But now I saw that it was. Their whiteness provided them with a pass to downstairs in that nice section and my blackness sent me to the balcony.

  Now that I was thinking about it, their schools, homes, and streets were better than mine. They had a large red brick school with nice sidewalks connecting the buildings. Their homes were large and beautiful with indoor toilets and every other convenience that I knew of at the time. Every house I had ever lived in was a one- or two-room shack with an outdoor toilet. It really bothered me that they had all these nice things and we had nothing. “There is a secret to it besides being white,” I thought. Then my mind got all wrapped up in trying to uncover that secret.

  One day when we were all playing in our playhouse in the ditch under the pecan tree, I got a crazy idea. I thought the secret was their “privates.” I had seen everything they had but their privates and it wasn’t any different than mine. So I made up a game called “The Doctor.” I had never been to a doctor myself. However, Mama had told us that a doctor was the only person that could look at children’s naked bodies besides their parents. Then I remembered the time my Grandma Winnie was sick. When I asked her what the doctor had done to her she said, “He examined me.” Then I asked her about “examined” and she told me he looked at her teeth, in her ears, checked her heart, blood and privates. Now I was going to be the doctor. I had all of them, Katie, Bill, Sandra, and Paul plus Adline and Junior take off their clothes and stand in line as I sat on one of the apple crates and examined them. I looked in their mouths and ears, put my ear to their hearts to listen for their heartbeats. Then I had them lie down on the leaves and I looked at their privates. I examined each of them about three times, but I didn’t see any differences. I still hadn’t found that secret.

  That night when I was taking my bath, soaping myself all over, I thought about it again. I remembered the day I had seen my two uncles Sam and Walter. They were just as white as Katie them. But Grandma Winnie was darker than Mama, so how could Sam and Walter be white? I must have been thinking about it for a long time because Mama finally called out, “ ’Essie Mae! Stop using up all that soap! And hurry up so Adline and Junior can bathe ’fore that water gits cold.”

  “Mama,” I said, “why ain’t Sam and Walter white?”

  “ ’Cause they mama ain’t white,” she answered.

  “But you say a long time ago they daddy is white.”

  “If the daddy is white and the mama is colored, then that don’t make the children white.”

  “But they got the same hair and color like Bill and Katie them got,” I said.

  “That still don’t make them white! Now git out of that tub!” she snapped.

  Every time I tried to talk to Mama about white people she got mad. Now I was more confused than before. If it wasn’t the straight hair and the white skin that made you white, then what was it?

  In the summer Mr. Johnson would drive down to Florida in a big trailer truck and bring it back running over with watermelons. Then he would sell them to the stores and markets in Centreville and nearby towns. Often Mrs. Johnson would go with him now that school was out and she wasn’t teaching. When she went, I would stay with Miss Ola.

  Miss Ola was a very nice old lady. She would bake cookies, candy or something for us every Saturday. She had a little bell that she used to ring for us to come over when she had cooked us somethin
g or wanted one of us to help her in the yard. We always sat out in the clover on Saturdays and listened for that little bell. I learned to like Miss Ola even more when I started staying with her at night. She liked me very much too and we had lots of fun together when I was there.

  Mrs. Johnson had a shaky little rollaway bed that I was supposed to sleep on in the dining room which was right next to Miss Ola’s room. I never did sleep much on it, though. Before going to bed I had a hundred chores to do for Miss Ola. First, I had to scratch her white hair and brush it. Then I cleaned her false teeth, got water in a foot tub for her to soak her feet in, and a thousand other little things. It would be about twelve o’clock at night before I got in that little shaky bed. But as soon as I got in, Miss Ola would call me into her room and read to me. She slept in one of those old antebellum beds with big posts covered with a flowered canopy. It was high with big soft feather mattresses. I had to use a stool to get up in it. Most of the time, as soon as Miss Ola started reading, I was so tired that I fell asleep. I would just look up at that flowered canopy, close my eyes and I was out cold, sleeping down. I guess I never heard a single story she read to me.

  During those nights with Miss Ola, I had access to the first bathroom I had ever used. I had never had such a privilege before. I used to go in that bathroom and sit on the stool even if I didn’t have to use it. I would just sit there and look at that big beautiful white tub, the pink curtain that hung over it, the pink washing powder in the big beautiful glass container, the sink with pink soap in the soap tray. It all looked so good to me. There was a small round pink rug in front of the stool. I would take my shoes off as I sat on the stool and just run my feet all over that soft rug. Sometimes I would stay in there so long Miss Ola would come in to see what I was doing. After taking my first bath in that beautiful white tub, I hated our round tin tub every time I bathed in it.

  I liked everything about the Johnsons’ house. There was always soft music playing on the radio as I did my little chores. The house was large and spacious with beautiful furniture all the way through it. It was everything ours wasn’t.

  I kept trying to learn the white folks’ secret from Miss Ola. When I asked her questions about it, she didn’t get mad like Mama. But she still didn’t tell it to me. However, there was one secret I learned. That was why all white women had colored women working for them. Because they were lazy. Mama would clean that house up for those white folks every single day. She would make the beds, dust the furniture, run the vacuum, and clean the bath. Then she would cook three meals a day too. After eating the food Miss Ola made I could see Mama had to do the cooking because white women didn’t know how.

  Miss Ola had a cold one night when I was staying with her, and I saw her make some soup. She was coughing and mucus was running out of her nose and dripping right into the pot. Miss Ola was so old she had lost control of her bladder. Every time she coughed pee ran down her legs. Then she would wipe it off the floor with the dish towel. When she set some of that snotty-pee soup in front of me my stomach turned inside out. Now when she would ring that little bell for us on Saturday, Adline and Junior ran over there but I didn’t. I finally realized what Mama meant when she said, “Miss Ola is gonna kill y’all with that shit she cooks.”

  Adline and Junior started school the second year we lived on the Johnson’s place. Now that they were in school, I had a problem on my hands. Junior was only four and a half and Adline six. Mama started him early because she didn’t have anyone to keep him or for him to play with while Adline and I were in school. He wouldn’t stay in his classroom because he thought he belonged with me and Adline. I was now nine years old and in the fourth grade. Junior would follow Adline everywhere she went. Sometimes I would look up and he was standing outside my classroom door peeping in. I think I must have taken him to his classroom at least ten times a day. During the lunch hour, he would follow me all over the campus holding onto my skirttail. I would send him to play with the other boys. Then a few minutes later, he came running around a corner telling me some boy was chasing him.

  Mama was seeing the soldier again. He was out of the army now and he didn’t wear his uniform anymore. So now we called him “Raymond” instead of “the soldier.” He was coming to the house every other night now. When he was there he would help us with our lessons. Mama never did help us. She said she had only finished sixth grade, and she could barely read my fourth grade reader. But Raymond had almost finished high school. He could read and work arithmetic better than my teacher. I didn’t need much help from Raymond because Miss Ola helped me a lot when I stayed with her. She had taught me lots of words and showed me how to spell and write them too. Because of Miss Ola’s help, I made all A’s in reading and spelling. In arithmetic, with a little help from Raymond, I made B’s. In no time at all I was doing my homework without any help from anyone. Adline and Junior were the big problems. Raymond had to work so hard with them. He would take Junior over his lesson eight or nine times but Junior wouldn’t remember a single word afterward. He was a dumb little thing. Adline wasn’t as dumb as Junior, but she didn’t do much better. She thought it was funny to learn words. She would laugh the whole time Raymond was helping her. They never did learn their 1–2–3’s.

  When I was the only one going to school, Mama would buy one loaf of bread a week and a jar of peanut butter and jelly for lunch. I had a peanut butter sandwich every day. Now that all three of us were in school, she couldn’t afford the loaf of bread. So she bought ten pounds of flour instead of the five she had always bought. Each night she would make biscuits and fix two biscuits with peanut butter for each of us. I kept the lunch bag and Adline and Junior would come to me for their lunch at twelve. I remember that once when I was eating with some of my classmates, I pulled my peanut butter biscuits out of that lunch bag and they laughed at me all day.

  After that embarrassment, I never took those biscuits to school again. We ate our lunch on our way to school every morning. All day long I was hungry but it was better than being laughed at by my classmates. Sometimes during the lunch hour Adline and Junior would tell me they were hungry and I would send them to the water fountain to fill up on water.

  Times really got hard at home. Mama was trying to buy clothes for the three of us, feed us, and keep us in school. She just couldn’t do it on five dollars a week. Food began to get even scarcer. Mama discovered that the old white lady living in the big white two-story house on the hill sold clabber milk to Negroes for twenty-five cents a gallon. Mama started buying two or three gallons a week from her. Now we ate milk-and-bread all the time (milk with crumbled cornbread in it). Then Mrs. Johnson started giving her the dinner leftovers and we ate those. Things got so bad that Mama started crying again. And she cried until school was out.

  One Saturday I went to get some clabber milk and the old white lady asked me to sweep her porch and sidewalks. After I had finished she gave me a quarter and didn’t take the quarter Mama had given me for the milk. When I got home and told Mama, she laughed until she cried. Then she sent me up there every day to see if the old lady wanted her porch swept. I was nine years old and I had my first job. I earned seventy-five cents and two gallons of milk a week.

  Soon after I started working for that old lady, I stopped drinking her milk. One evening, I was cleaning the back porch where she kept it, when a little Negro boy came to buy two gallons. She came in to get them while he waited out in the backyard. She kept the milk in three old safes with screen doors. I saw her open one of them and pour some milk out of a big dishpan. Then she went out to the yard, leaving the safe door open. Now this old lady had eight cats that also lived on the back porch. About five of them scrambled into the open safe and began lapping up the milk in the dishpan. She was fussy about her cats so I didn’t yell at them or shoo them away. I just let them eat. “She’ll run them out and pour that milk out when she come back in,” I thought.

  But when she came back, she just let those cats help themselves. When they had had enough, sh
e pushed them away from the milk and closed the safe door. I stood there looking at all of this and I thought of how many times I had drunk that milk. “I’ll starve before I eat any more of it,” I thought.

  I could hardly wait to tell Mama, but when I did she didn’t believe me. “She probably is gonna give the rest of that milk to them cats too. I don’t think that woman would sell us milk she let cats eat out of,” Mama said. I didn’t argue with her. “I will still bring the milk home,” I thought. “Y’all can eat it but not me.”

  I didn’t keep that job long. That big old white house had the biggest porches I had ever seen. It had a porch on the bottom and top floors circling the entire house, which gave the house a rounded look. Pretty soon the old lady even had me sweeping the inside of the house downstairs where she lived and dusting the furniture. She started keeping me up there all day. Mama didn’t like that. One day she kept me up there until after dark. Mama came up there and got me.

  “What she got you doing she have you up there all day?” Mama asked me when we got home.

  “I sweep the porches and dust the furniture and sweep the bottom house. I was washing out some stockings for her today,” I told her.

  “You go up there tomorrow and you tell her you ain’t gonna come back no more, you heah. She been trying to kill you for seventy-five cent and that little shittin’ milk she gives you. Tell her you gotta stay at home with Adline and Junior.”

  The next morning I went and swept the porches and cleaned the house and stayed up there all day. When I had finished, I told her what Mama told me to tell her. I didn’t really want to quit working for her. I got a good feeling out of earning three quarters and two gallons of milk a week. It made me feel good to be able to give Adline and Junior each a quarter and then have one for myself.