Ups and Downs of Childhood

When my mother married a second time, I am told that I was 2 years old. My grandparents, allegedly, wanted to adopt me but my mother was not having that. She took me to live with her husband and her. I never liked being there and can remember studying very hard while in school just to keep my mind off my living situation.

I didn't feel good about my looks because I could always overhear adults asking why I didn't look like the rest of the children in the family. Children would tease me about my color, the texture of my hair, and would call me "ugly". The only way I knew how to feel good about myself was to be smart so I always aspired to succeed academically.

I learned things easily and the old people in the community thought I never did anything wrong. My cousin, Ed, could always talk me into doing something crazy. One Saturday while visiting my grandparents, Ed convinced me that we should figure out how not to go to church on Sunday. We plotted to play sick so we could cook in the woods. We made up coughs and lied saying we both had headaches. My grandmother said, "There must be something going around". She gave us medicine and pampered us the way she knew how to do so well. Ed and I were careful not to be too active or she would figure out we were not sick. She asked our grandfather (Daddy) if he would agree for her to go to church while he watched the sick children. He agreed.

Daddy had a habit of nodding by the fireplace so we knew he would sleep long enough for us to cook in the woods the next day. On that Saturday, Ed found an empty 5-gallon can and a wire rack to use for the grill. We went into the woods that Saturday to set up our kitchen. Ed built the stove, took matches from the mantel, stole a mason jar of kerosene, put twigs in the 5-gallon can, and covered it with the grill. I sneaked in the kitchen and took enough of everything for two: ham, eggs, knives, forks, spoons, and syrup. We were innocent about our dangerous set-up.

The problem was not just our cooking in the woods. We set up the homemade stove and started a fire in the middle of pine thicket. There were dry pine needles all around. We never finished cooking because a huge fire was started immediately and quickly got out of control. Daddy smelled the smoke and came running out of the back door asking what we had done. We were both crying as we told him we were cooking. The volunteer fire department came and cut trenches here and there. I am not sure of what else they did to stop the fire because there was no running water. In short, we burned up about 3 acres of pine trees. I often wonder how much money those trees were worth then and how much they would have been worth now. After that incident, my grandparents sent me back to Preston saying that when Ed and I were together, we always got into too much trouble.

My step-father was a heavy drinker and his friends, who were also heavy drinkers, would gravitate to our house on weekends. I remember developing the habit of rocking all the time while sitting. It seemed that rocking would make some of the pain of having to look at the drunk men go away. I think I developed "bad nerves" at an early age. I probably needed counseling but receiving that kind of help was unheard of in the little town where we lived. Had my family known about psychological health, it would have been frowned upon and avoided, I am sure.

The rocking habit carried over into my classes. Students and teachers would ask why I rocked all the time. One boy who always taunted me said laughingly, "Rocking must be the reason you get all "dem" A's. 'I think I'll start rocking". He was not a good student. I think he always acted out to get attention and to cover up for his lack of brilliance.

I was smart but I couldn't "outlearn" the one girl in my senior class who was valedictorian. Our accumulative averages were less than 1 percentage point apart. I was salutatorian. I didn't think there was anything discriminatory about the calculation by hand and if I had thought so, I would not have been able to prove it. Back then, it was considered disrespectful to challenge teachers.

When I was a young girl, my mother was a member of an organization called Heroines of Jericho (HOJ). Daughters of the members of HOJ joined an associated organization called Children's Palace (CP). I remember being excited about going to the meetings. We lived in the country and there was not much to do beyond running across the fields and gathering vegetables from the garden. Belonging to the CP was exciting because I liked going to the meetings, remembering the password for entrance, and reciting rituals. It was soon discovered that the Masons were giving a scholarship every year and they were awarded on a competitive basis. To compete, one had to participate in an oratorical contest on the local level. The winner at the local level would move to the state level to compete at the Masonic Temple.

For 3 years, the same girl competed from my chapter and did not move beyond the local level. I kept asking my mother why I could not compete. She continuously responded that she had been told that only one person from a chapter could compete. I was persistent and repeatedly asked why. I suppose she was tired of my asking why I couldn't compete, so she wrote to the Grand Master of the organization asking if more than one person could compete from a chapter. He responded "Yes" in a matter of a few days. Excited to know that I really could compete and could probably win a scholarship, I went to work on preparing my speech. The required title was, The Constitution of the United States as it Affects the American Negro. I had a cousin who was an English teacher and she gladly edited my speech. She gave me pointers on how to sit, approach the podium, enunciate words, the importance of voice inflections, and to never say "Thank You" at the end of a speech because the speaker has done a favor for the audience.

I won at the local and regional levels and advanced to state competition. I thought I looked pretty in the beautiful white brocade dress my Aunt Ella had purchased for me and sent from Up North. I also remember the day of the competition being a dark, dreary, and rainy Saturday in 1962. The worse thing about the day was that I was sick and didn't know if I could get through the speech after months of practicing and believing I could win. My only thought was to pray because I had been taught that God could do anything but fail.

Students from the all districts sat on the stage in the Masonic Temple waiting to speak. To determine the order in which we would speak, we pulled numbers. I pulled the number 13. I had always been told that 13 was unlucky, so I prayed silently asking God not to let the number 13 be unlucky for me. I needed the $1200 scholarship that would be awarded to one of us. After all, a $1200 scholarship in 1962 was probably synonymous to a $10,000 scholarship in the current day and age.

I believed that God was omnipresent and...