Sharecropper's Shack

Remember the story about mama's mortification over the stolen chicken? Well, the little sharecropper's shack that we lived in looked just like this picture. It's not the house--this one may be a little bigger, but when I saw this, I was taken aback, because at first I thought I was looking at the very house!

When Mama remarried, she was working in another state, and I was living with my grandmother in Georgia.

I remember when Big Mama told me that Mama had gotten married, and they would be there in a few days. Mama got married! That meant I would have a daddy. At last, a daddy! I could hardly contain my excitement...it was all I could think about, and I must have asked Big Mama a thousand questions about him, but she knew no more than I did.

At last the day came, and Big Mama and I were standing out in the yard, looking up the dirt driveway that led up to our house. Finally, we saw them coming, walking up the road, having walked from the bus station in town. My heart felt as if it might burst! There was Mama. My little short mama with the shining blond hair. And next to her, a tall, handsome man with curly dark hair.

They were walking with their arms around each others' waist, and I just started running toward them as fast as I could run! When I got about halfway there, he knelt down and held out his arms to me, and I ran into them, and he swung me up in the air, putting me on his shoulders, a leg hanging over each one, and he carried me, laughing that laugh that only Daddy could laugh, the rest of the way back to the house. From that second on, he became my Daddy until the very second he died--while I was holding him.

Mama had met him in the town where she worked. He was a widower with six children, whose wife had been dead for over a year. The next day after they got there, we got on a bus going to Alabama, to a place called Sand Mountain. All the way there, I kept expecting to see a big old mountain made of sand, but it was called that because of the soil in that particular part of Alabama, and of course, it was up the mountain.

When we got there, one of his nephews met us and took us home. And what we went to was a little house which looked just like the one in this picture.Daddy was a sharecropper, and this was the sharecropper's shack. It had two rooms, and a smaller little room which was the kitchen. That was it. And we , Mama and Daddy, and five of my step-siblings (the oldest son was on his own) all lived in that little house.

I had never seen anything like it in my life. Big Mama wasn't rich, but she had nice things. This house had a plank floor, with cracks wide enough to see the ground underneath, and plank walls with cracks wide enough to look out through in the winter to see the icicles hanging on the nearby trees. There was no bathroom inside. It was down a little trail a little distance from the house. There was no running water. There was a well in the back of the house, though, with the coldest water you ever tasted. That supplied our drinking, cooking, and bathing water. A big old metal washtub was where we took our baths--in water heated in a special compartment of the woodstove in the kitchen.

It sounds primitive, I know--and it was. But for me, at that time, it was home. Home with a mama and a daddy--and oh yeah, some stinking mean stepsisters and a stepbrother, too. That might be another story.

Seasons of Life

There was an Indian Chief who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall. When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.

The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted.The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping withfruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that each of them had reported correctly, because they had each seen but one season in the tree's life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season,and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are passed.

If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, the fulfillment of your fall.

Moral: Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest. Don't judge life by one difficult season. Persevere through the difficult seasons and better ones are sure to come.

Kool-Aid or Coffee

"Kool-Aid, or coffee?" She stuck her head around the door between the kitchen and the livingroom.

"Coffee," I said, remembering how she watered down the Kool-Aid. I could hear the sounds of lids being unscrewed and taken off jars of peanut butter and jelly, and the crinkle of bread wrapper. She was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids--everyday, the same old thing for lunch, for the kids, and for Liz, too.

I asked her one day, if the kids got tired of it. "Perhaps," she said, wiping the stickiness from the table for the umpteenth time, "but they're just little, and with what Roger gives me for groceries, I have to stretch it as far as I can. He'd have a fit, though, if he didn't get meat every night for dinner."

"Here you go." She set the coffee mug down on the table in front of me. She sank down into her chair, and rested her hand across closed eyes.

"He didn't come home last night. Didn't call or anything. Last time I saw him yesterday, he was going to pick up that part for his motorcycle. Said he was going on to work from there, but he didn't come home after work, either." She leaned over and pretended to pick lint from the worn, braided rug she had just vacuumed.

"I bet he went to Fontana. A friend of his called the other day from there--said they were gonna have some cycle races, or something." She twirled a twig of long auburn hair around her finger, her brown, fawn-like eyes looked about to spill over.

I took a sip of the too-hot coffee--watered down, too, today. "Don't worry, Liz," I said, feeling sorry for her. "He's alright--probably be home before long." She had told me about the times he had cheated on her.

"Yeah, I know, but it's not just that." She twisted around in her chair so that she was looking at me. "You'll never guess who called me this morning. My mother," she said flatly.

"You gotta be kidding!" I knew her mother hadn't spoken to her since she had married Roger. Liz was from a wealthy family there in California. Prominent. Her father was a renown obstetrician/gynecologist. Her mother was very proper, and very "la-ti-da", as Liz described her, and it was she who had most objected to her marrying Roger. "He's just a sailor, Liz," she had said disdainfully, so they had dated in secret.

She was four months pregnant before her mother finally found out about it.

"How could you be pregnant?" she had asked. "I checked the waste basket in your bathroom every month, and I know you had your periods."

Knowing that her mother always did that, she had wrapped a sanitary item in newspaper, and deposited it in the waste basket, for five days out of each month at the appropriate time.

"I'm phoning your father's office for an appointment," she had said angrily. Liz had begged her not to, and she had been humiliated nearly to death as her own father conducted a pelvic exam.

"Well," he had said, slipping off the glove and dropping it into the waste can. "Looks like you are about as pregnant as pregnant can be! How many times did he do it to you?" Her face had burned with embarrassment, and she snapped, "What difference does it make--one time is all it takes, isn't it?" Her father had laughed then.

When her pregnancy was confirmed, her mother had asked, "How could you do this to me? What are people going to think?" She had cared more about what other people would think than how Liz felt, and she put her through the agony of a large formal wedding--white gown and all. "They'll know anyway, Mother, in five months," she had cried--to no avail.

After the wedding, her mother told her that she never wanted anything to do with her again--and she hadn't--not even through the births of three grandchildren. Her father called, occasionally, and always sent money for the kids' birthdays, but her mother had held her grudge. But now she had called.

"What did she want?" She looked up, as if startled. She had been lost in her own thoughts.

"Oh...my kid sister is getting married, and she wants me to be Matron of Honor--Mother said we might as well forget everything that's happened. She wants to come over tonight. I wonder if she knows my sister is three months pregnant? Father told me." She gave a harsh little laugh, "And wouldn't you know, it would have to be when Roger hasn't been home all night, and I don't know if he will be--and I don't even know where he is!"

She got up, slowly, looking more like an old woman in her movement, than the young, attractive woman that she was. She walked to the window and looked out.

"Maybe they were right about Roger--at least, now, Mother will get to say I told you so. I could hear the pain in her voice. I picked up the mug, taking the last swallow of lukewarm coffee.

In my vocabulary there was never any profanity--but at that moment, it was in my thoughts. "Damn you, Roger," I thought. "And damn you, Mrs. La-ti-da--damn you all, anyway!"