 - Last login: 6 days agoJunebugn
- Becca is a 55 year old married woman from Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Likes 144 pages, 8 videos, 27 photos • 12 fans • Received 4 reviews
- Member since May 18, 2007
My husband and I drive our own semi all over the country. As such, we are part of one of the largest groups of free-thinkers, individualists, and just down right stubborn people in America. We have two sons, 29 and 20, and a grandson just turned 20 months. I'm writing a preteen novel and a series of poems for my grandson. Parts of these are posted here. I welcome all criticisms!
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My brother and I spent every minute there in the summers, and my mother joked that I got so brown that if it were not for my blonde hair, they'd make me ride in the back of the bus.
The rules meant that you never said ugly things about colored people, you never used that word. Soon they would be known as African-American or black, but then they were Negro or colored. The water fountains at the Woolworth's were duplicated, and you could still see the faded paint that said "Colored" on one, although they could now use either fountain. According to the rules, you could love your colored housemaid, who helped rear your children, but you never dated outside your race. My Mama said that was because your children would be persecuted for being mixed. She said colored babies were cuter than white ones, though.
As a Tupperware dealer, she held demonstration parties in peoples' homes, and often I'd go with her. Some white dealers wouldn't hold parties in colored homes, but Mama would. I got to play with their children then. I guess the rules were suspended or something. I liked the little girls with the beautiful names - Serita, Jacquanda, Tanisha - and wondered about their hair. How did their Mamas get those rows so straight, those plaits so tiny? Then I remembered Bernice's fingers pulling at my hair, and winced. These girls were brave, I decided, if they could endure that all the time. The oils used on their hair made them smell different, exotic. I looked back at the girls as we left, and knew I'd never see them again. It made me sad.
That fall the rules would change forever. On Sunday, September 15th, we got back from church and changed out of our Sunday clothes. Mama opened the oven to check on the ham she'd been cooking since before Sunday school, and took the lids off the vegetables that, Southern style, had been cooking for hours with some of the ham fat. She took the ham out and slid in the pan of cornbread. Most of the time the routine on Sundays was the same. Church, then Sunday dinner, then a nap, then a trip to the library in downtown Birmingham.
The phone rang. Mama answered it, and gasped.
"What? No! Who? They don't know?"
My father came into the kitchen then, concern on his face. "Who is it?"
"Becky, I'll call you back. Let me turn on the radio and TV. Yes. Thanks."
"My sister," Mama answered. "Someone blew up a Negro church. Downtown, 16th Street Baptist."
We did not go to the library that day, nor for many days afterward. We read the newspapers and listened to the news. We heard the names of the four young girls killed that day by the bomb set off right after their Sunday school. Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, and Denise. Their names sounded just like my classmates'. Not Negro made-up names. Mama had had a Tupperware party at Denise's Mama's house.
"Those are fine people," she said in the aftermath, when Denise's parents had spoken to the press. "I don't think I could be so forgiving if someone killed my little girl," she said, drawing me close. "Denise was just a little older than you."
After that the world was not as safe, not as certain. Colored people were not an alien race of exotic creatures who smelled funny, and lived somewhere else. They were families with little girls in white Sunday dresses, suddenly splattered with blood. Little girls my age.
I rode my bike that fall, suddenly cold in the new wind blowing through my hair.
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