Grandma, Cousin Mayhew, and the Road Grader ©

I think there are more stories than I realized. I am trying to get a bunch of these things typed out before I go see Aunt Cabby. I'm damn sure not going to move the folder stuffed with them from my house - it is perhaps the best thing I have and certainly the best thing I have of hers besides the YouTube videos I have of her telling some of these wonderful stories. I loved hearing her tell this one. It is about her Grandmother Moss who she called Grandma.

Grandma Moss, Cousin Mayhew, and the Road Grader

by Anita West Moss ©

See, my grandmother is eighty-six years old and doesn't know who she is or where she's at most of the time. Sometimes she thinks I am one of her daughters and sometimes she thinks she is a little girl herself.  But sometimes she knows everything and just pretends not to -- like the time she took off her clothes and paraded around the house just to shock that fat Baptist preacher she can't stand. Grandma is my daddy's mama, and her full name is Martha Virginia Duke Moss, but most folks call her Miss Virgie. I help take care of her even though I am only 5 years old, but she thinks she takes care of me. I have to help her give herself shots twice a day for sugar diabetes. See, she grabs a bunch of flesh on her leg and holds onto it while I swab it with rubbing alcohol. Then I measure the insulin from the little glass bottles until it reaches the right mark on the syringe.  Then I put the needle in quick and press on the syringe real slow. It looks awful and Grandma's legs are all purple. She says she has had sugar diabetes since she was thirty-five years old and plans to eat anything she wants as long as she lives. Old Dr. Reed comes to see her about once a month and cusses and carries on because she won't stay on a diet. Anyway, she ain't hard to take care of except that time she stuck her whole hand in the electric fan and got blood all over the room. It was summer and Mama and Daddy were working in the cotton field. I quick bandaged her up with a kitchen towel as best I could and then hightailed it out the back leaving the screen to slam behind me. Mama had a literal bloody mess on her hands, but it all ended up okay - she didn't lose no fingers or nothing. Most of the time she sits in her big rocking chair on the front porch in her navy blue cotton dress that buttons up the front and has a white starched collar and cuffs. She rocks and fans herself with a heart-shaped palm-leaf fan that says Pickel Funeral Home on it. "Get pickled at Pickels," I'd sometime hear the adults joke like that. She watches Greenbriar Cemetery close to see who has died lately because it tickles her that she has just about outlived everybody she knew when she was young.

She likes to look out at the little green cotton plants and the dark fresh-plowed earth and fruit trees and garden and say that this farm is the garden spot of the world and all the heaven she needs. She likes to tell how she took care of her thirteen children and lost three babies down there in the cemetery and buried her husband and raised three orphan grandchildren all by herself. "I organized this farm and made it flourish when they were all saying I would have to sell it off for a song when the depression hit," she'd say, her black eyes flashing. Lots of times I could get her going and telling about when she was a little girl or she'd quote verses she memorized in school or the proverbs or Ben Franklin's aphorisms. Anyways, she has a saying for everything, and sometimes  I wish she would just shut up. Aunt Alice says the same thing. If I want to get some sleep in the morning, she'll start quoting "early to bed, early to rise..." or "the early bird catches the worm." Or if I'm trying to primp in the mirror and complain because I don't look like Heddy Lamar or Veronica Lake or even Betty Grable (who ain't, I mean isn't, that pretty anyway). Grandma will start in with her favorite saying of all: "Beauty skin deep, ugly to the bone; beauty fades away, but ugly holds its own." Then she'd start in about how pretty she used to be -- better looking than any of her daughters, daughters-in-law, or granddaughters. "And just look at me now -- pore old pitiful ugly thing!" Or if my sister would try to take her picture on Sunday when she was all dressed up for preachin' with her cameo shining at her bosom, she'd slap away the camera and say "Get that thing away from me! You know I look like hell!" And we'd all laugh and she would too except I'd notice she looked a little sad, too.

So I'd get her going every time I could 'cause I loved more than anything to hear what happened a long time ago before I was even borned or even before mama or daddy was borned. "Lord, child," Grandma would say, "I'm older than dirt! I can't remember all that mess that happened so long ago." But then she would cross her wrinkled spotted hands in her navy blue lap like two gnarled up sassafras roots and set in to tell about it. She said that her daddy was a Virginia aristocrat with a club foot who came to Mississippi from Norfolk to buy land and wound up marrying a black-eyed girl who was one-quarter Chickasaw and an orphan to boot and so his uppity family wouldn't have anything else to do with him. That part-Chickasaw woman was my great-grandmother, and Grandma said she was mean as a snake and never gave her husband a minute's peace. "She drove pore old Papa directly into his grave," she'd say with a mean look on her wrinkled face. "And then she just couldn't wait to marry off her daughters. If Papa had just lived I could've been studying Latin in my old age and remembering my students instead of wasting time on this farm. I always said my girls wouldn't have to marry unless they wanted to. I said "There's plenty of work for all of us and plenty of food on this fine farm. As long as I have a home, you have a home; as long as I have bread, you have bread." Yes, sir, those are the very words I said to Leo after her sickly mama passed and left her with nobody because her papa had already worked his poor self to death." And she'd sit quiet for a while and say, "Lord, I didn't want to marry that old man."

Lots of times, like I said Grandma got stuff mixed up. Like that day in July when we sat on the front porch and she started thinking about her cousin, Mayhew Duke. She said Mayhew was her favorite cousin and she hadn't seen him and his wife Estelle for the longest time. "You remember Cousin Mayhew, don't you?" she asked? 
"No, ma'am, I never heard of him. He doesn't go to the Baptist Church, I reckon." 
"Course he does; Mayhew's been a deacon for years." Grandma looked at me with those black eyes she got from her Chickasaw Mama, and they were flashing and spitting. They could bore right into you if she was mad or curious. "I'll tell you what. Go get my bonnet and your sun hat and we'll just walk down to Acker Corners and visit with him and Estelle for a while. Estelle is a wonderful cook -- makes the lightest pie crusts and cooks her vegetables just right and makes good cornbread. Course, she ought to cook right; I taught her how to cook. Grandma said an old nigger woman named Aunt Annis taught her how. Aunt Annis had been the main cook on the Flint plantation before the war. "My own mama couldn't put a meal fit for hogs on her table," Grandma would say, her lips curling.

"So, come on, let's get going. Estelle'll have dinner ready about the time we get there."

I looked at that big pan of purple hulls and thought that just about anything would be better, so I ran to the back porch to get Grandma's sunbonnet. My hat was straw, but painted white and looked like Dale Evans' hat, so I didn't put up a fuss about having to wear it the way I usually did. "Do you want your brains to boil, you silly fool?" my sister would say, "Put on that hat." I pictured the pork brains Mama fried up with eggs for Daddy's Sunday breakfast and put on the hat quick. I got Grandma's walking cane, too because I knew she'd need it on the graveled road, even if I heard the road grader buzzing and whirring that morning.

So that's how we started out walking on the hottest mid-morning in July I could remember. You could just see the heat rippling in waves in the distance; dust and gravel burned my red sandals from Montgomery Ward's in Chicago. I trudged along feeling that maybe we ought to go home before we got too far away,

"Cousin Mayhew's wife, Estelle will most likely give us a good drink of fresh lemonade when we get there; she likes to make it in that cut-glass pitcher she inherited from her aunt in Memphis," Grandma said. She stumbled along in her cotton flesh-colored stockings rolled on garters above her knees. Her swollen feet were encased in black lace-up oxfords with thick square heels. My daddy had to take her all the way to Pontotoc to get them. They were thera-something shoes. "Old lady shoes," I thought looking at my neat brown feet in their red sandals. "I hope I never have to wear ugly shoes like that or have ankles fat that way." Then I began to dream about Dorothy's ruby slippers and wish I had them right then. Grandma and I would just fly over to Cousin Mayhew's and get that lemonade.

Out loud I said, "She might give us some tea cakes, too," because my tummy was beginning to fuss, "or some ice cream from her frigidaire."

"Lord have mercy," Grandma said, "Estelle wouldn't be caught dead serving any store-boughten ice cream with that tacky cardboard taste, but she and Mayhew are crazy for freezer ice cream, specially with peaches cut up in it."

"Well let's hurry and get there, Grandma. I'm burning up and starving, too," I said, wriggling under my floursack sunsuit because the sweat was streaming between my skinny shoulder blades. I could see wet spots under Grandma's arms and she mopped her fiery red face with a wadded up lace-trimmed handkerchief.

Loose dirt was piled high on one side of the road where the road grader had scooped it up that morning, I knew it was way too soft to sit in, but Grandma didn't remember that. 

"Lord, I'm wore out," she said, "Let's sit down." And with that, she plunked her bottom down on that soft loose dirt and kept on going. The first thing I knew, her black oxfords and flesh-colored old lady stockings were flying over her apron and navy blue skirts in a crazy backward somersault and her sunbonnet was nowhere to be seen. She landed right in the middle of that steep ditch in the middle of the brier patch, just like Brer Rabbit, but for Grandma, this was no laughing place. In fact, that fall didn't improve her disposition at all. Grandma didn't often say bad words, but she would cuss if she got mad enough, even if she did like to pretend to be a well-bred and tragic confederate lady.

"Goddamit, get me out!" she yelled. I took off my red sandals and clambered down the steep bank into the briers and bitterweed at the bottom of the ditch and began pushing her from behind. 

"Get up, Grandma. No, take your shoes off and then climb out like this," I said, and scrambled back up the bank. 

"Take my shoes off? It would take a week to get them off these swollen feet in this heat and I'd never get them back on again, she yelled. "I can't believe I've lived eighty-six years, birthed sixteen children, raised thirteen, just to die of heatstroke in this snake-infested ditch," she said. And then her old voice cracked and she set in to blubber.  I jumped back down in the ditch and didn't cry yet because my feet were so full of stickers but instead I hauled on her some more. But then I could tell, I wasn't big enough to get her out,  and I began to bawl myself. I watched the little rivulets on my dusty feet and legs where my tears fell on them. "We're pitiful and lost,  aren't we, Grandma?" I said feeling terrible because somehow I had failed at my job of taking care of Grandma. "But I'll dig up some roots and pick some berries when it cools off a little," I said, remembering a story I heard of two lost babes.

"Durn Mayhew," Grandma muttered, "I never did like him anyway."

About that time, I heard a motor complaining and whining up the road and climbed out of the ditch fast to see who it was. 

"Hurrah!" I cried, "The road grader is coming -- we're saved!" I waved my arms wildly and shouted "Emergency - Mayday - Mayday!" like they did in the WWII movies I saw on Saturday afternoon.

Mr. Cooper Cantrell was driving the road grader. He was an elected official -- the county supervisor of roads, but folks could never find him in his office because he liked to drive the road graders so well. I knew him and liked to go back to his house because he had a mean old parrot named Al who attacked me once, but then we made up. Some folks said he sold whiskey on the side, and that's why he could build Miss Lalia-Faye such a fine house. Mr. Cooper Cantrell pulled up abreast of us and stopped the road grader. He climbed down with his eyes big and his mouth hanging open and slack. "Miss Virgie, what in the world are you doing in that ditch?"

"Just taking a little nap," Grandma snapped, real sarcastic, and then she said in a real mean voice, "Get me outta here this instant, Cooper Cantrell. Miss Rosie Cantrell didn't bring you up to stand there and gawk with a lady flat on her back in a damned brier patch. She brought you up to be  gentleman, and I know that for a fact because we were inducted into the Daughters of the Confederacy at the same ceremony, now hurry up and get a move on."

"Yes'm. yes'm," Mr. Cantrell said. He got down in the ditch and shoved Grandma out on the gravel. She moaned and cussed and complained the whole time. I sat down in the hot gravel and picked the stickers out of my feet and put my sandals back on; then I tried to brush off all the dirt and dust that was smeared all over my yellow sunsuit. Cabby would be mad because she had just ironed it; my french braids were coming undone too, and I had lost my yellow hairbows. I finally spotted Grandma's sunbonnet, though and my sunhat was hanging down my back. Finally, Mr. Cooper Cantrell got us both in the road grader, and we all began to feel a whole lot better. Mr. Cantrell let me sit in his lap and drive the road grader all the way back home.

"Miss Virgie, where were you going on such a hot day, anyway?" Mr. Cooper Cantrell asked.

"Aw, I was takin' this young 'un to visit Cousin Mayhew Duke."

"Lord God, Miss Virgie! Mayhew moved to Birmingham forty years ago. Nobody lives in Acker Corners no more." Mr. Cooper Cantrell was grinning now.

"Course, I remember it," Grandma said, "I was taking her to see where they used to live." She snapped her lips together tight and folded her arms across her bosom. 

When we drove up, Mama, Daddy, Cabby, and all the dogs came running out to greet us. "Thank God," Mama said. "We've scoured the place looking for you." I jumped down and bounced on my rubber-soled sandals. "Where have you been, you dirty little pissant?" Cabby said and looked me up and down. I knew I was going to get it for being so dirty. But Mama hugged me and said come on in and eat. She said I wouldn't have to eat purple-hull peas after all - I could have tomato sandwiches on light bread and crisp-fried eggplant and lemonade and frozen custard for dessert. "Can I stir a little bourbon in my custard this time? My nerves are shot." She and Daddy laughed and said, "We'll see." 

Then I said to Cabby, "You needn't be so smart and mean. You're just jealous because you haven't saved anybody's life and now I've saved Grandma's life twice. Today, and that time she put her hand in the electric fan and I wrapped it in a towel real tight and ran all the way to the little place to get Mama and Daddy." Cabby rolled her eyes at me. After dinner, Grandma and me took a long nap in the cool of the hall. "Well, I don't reckon I'll ever see Cousin Mayhew and Estelle now." "No'm" I whispered, as I fell into sleep remembering how it felt to be high up in that road grader in the afternoon July sun, "reckon we'll have to do without that peach ice cream, but that bourbon in my custard was good."

"Lord, God, she'll be a drunkard. Mark my words." 

Daddy's Brothers by Anita West Moss ca. 1987-89 ©

This is another of the stories that Mama typed up between 1987 and 1989. My apologies for the story using the "N" word a good bit. I didn't want to change it because that is how they really talked, unfortunately - I hope you will enjoy the story anyway...

I do not know why Milt was terrorized by the Klan. I know that my great-grandfather was killed by the Klan for selling land to black people. Virgie, Milt's mother, routinely delivered babies in the black community, and it is likely that Milt showed some kindness to that community as well 

pictured - Rubel Moss in the cap, Henry the Mule, and Charlie Moss

Daddy's Brothers by Anita West Moss

My daddy was among the three youngest of sixteen children, except that only thirteen of them lived to grow up. Grandma Moss, who had been Virgie Duke, always spoke of the tiny still-born twin boys who were buried at Greenbriar Cemetery in a common grave under twin heart-shaped headstones with grief and longing.  Somehow her hopes seemed to be in those identical boy babies who never saw the light. But the one she fretted over the most was Ira Green Moss. He was named for old Dr. Walden, a country doctor who traversed the muddy roads of Monroe County in North Mississippi delivering babies, black and white, and shaking his head over children strangling to death with Diptheria or heaving to death with whooping cough. Their tiny doomed graves speckle Greenbriar Cemetery even now. Almost every family, black or white, had an Ira Green in it somewhere. Grandma said her Ira Green was a child especially blessed with second sight. She knew this because he was born with a caul over his face, "And I'll tell you what else, that little thing never had a chance for a normal life because his heartbeat on the wrong side. Yes, sir, that little thing's heart was where his lungs was supposed to be. I don't know where his lungs was though, but many a time the little thing would just struggle to draw breath." Then, when Ira Green was five, Grandma said, "He just taken sick late one evening in April. That very day he looked out across the field and said how pretty the young cotton looked where it had been fresh-plowed-- he said it looked just like it had been starched and ironed and I give him berry pie and ice cream for supper. Then he just taken sick and was gone before day. I knowed then that the Mosses was doomed."

So Grandma's best hopes perished early in those three tiny graves way at the back of the cemetery near the woods. I used to find the tiny blackened stones when I was a child and ponder whether or not those little children, my kin, could watch me all the way from heaven.

But even with Ira Green and the twins dead, Grandma still had four fine sons, not to mention all that gang of gals. Her sons were Milton, Hezekiah, Charles, and Rubel. Milt was the oldest and had already achieved a kind of sainthood by the time I could remember because everybody said that he had "worked himself to death." Perhaps he did. My aunts and uncles used to talk about how he would light a lantern and clear new ground all night long - just like he had gone crazy. My daddy always said that was the reason Milt went blind, but my aunt said no - it was because he forgot the Lord. Aunt Maggie said, "When Milt set in to plow on Sunday when the Lord has strictly bidden us to remember His day and keep it holy, well, then and there the Lord decided Milt had done went too far." My daddy said, "Well, you may be right, but I'm gone tell you one thing and it's the God's truth. The old nigger woman they called Calacie brought Milt's sight back to him. I know - for I seen it."

None of the relatives at the Sunday dinner table believed a word of it; they said and went on chomping chicken and dumplings. "Rubel", Aunt Maggie said, "You ought not to talk such stuff on the Sabbath. Think of them children. They say old Calacie is a witch. Why Edna Betts works at the Amory Hospital and says on Saturday night they'll bring in grown niggers, mostly men, lying stiff as a corpse and swearin' that Calacie has hoodooed them." 

My daddy said he didn't give a cuss about no hoodoo but that he had seen Uncle Milt's eyesight restored himself. "She just stood there with her hand on his shoulder, all clutchin' like, and her eyes closed tight and her lips drawed back from all them gold teeth and mumbled some of them hoodoo words and Milt said to me, "By God, Jack, I can see." (My daddy's name was Rubel but his folks all called him Jack.) But then Calacie commenced to whine in a high sing-song voice that sounded 'bout like a screech owl and then she said, "But, white man, you have no faith in the dark power and the vision will fade." And then Milt said, "You damn right I ain't got no faith in no damn dark hoodoo power." And then my daddy said Uncle Milt couldn't see no more nor ever again,  And my daddy said, "Milt just give up after that and went down and went down and died."

But Grandma Moss said, "Humph, it was that trashy second wife of his that brought him down - her and that passel of younguns. Milt said she was so lazy she wouldn't even get up and fix them children a decent breakfast. But her folks was shiftless like that. They would lay up and eat store-boughten vittles with the finest garden spot in the county with nothing planted but a few scrawny greens. Milt would have been alive and prosperous today if Carrie hadn't up and died on him like she did."

Our family would only be friends with Uncle Milt's first set of children -- Leo, Mary, and another Ira Green were all the children of a fine woman from a good family with Uncle Milt. But when Carrie died after Mary's birth, Uncle Milt married beneath himself, Grandma always said. So none of the Mosses wanted to have much to do with Bessie Allred's brood, especially when Uncle Milt died and left them all. Some people say Bessie supported them all being nothin' more than a public woman but she pretended to sew for a living. My daddy always sent them money every fall after he had sold his cotton crop. He said that was little enough to do for poor Milt's kids. One time when I was about six years old, we were having a big Sunday dinner for my big brother, James Russell, who was home from Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. All my aunts and uncles gathered to see Rubel's boy handsome and smart in his Eisenhower jacket. We thought he would soon be going to Korea to fight the communists but he only had to go to San Antonio, Texas. Mama said it was a shame too because that's where he met a catholic woman, a grass widow with a child. Mama never did get over it, but the woman had the priest say a mass for Mama's soul when she died. So that time the daughter-in-law had the last word on religion but she never did get my brother to become catholic himself.  Anyway, that Sunday, I was sitting up in my favorite pecan tree reading my favorite book because it was only one of two that I had - - Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. About the time that Kay is getting kidnapped by the evil and icily beautiful snow queen, a big truck full of strangers came lumbering down the driveway. They said they were from Arkansas. I counted twelve altogether and hightailed it in the backdoor to tell Mama. "They's twelve people from Arkansas out front," I announced full of importance, "They say they're kinfolks and have come all that way just to eat dinner with us." Mama had a pie server in her hand as she was serving fancy jello salads onto a platter; a recipe in McCall's Magazine told how to make them. Mama said the magazine said it was a cool and refreshing way to eat in the summer. The pie server paused only a moment before Mama sighed and began cutting the salads in half. "Lord, Lord," she said, "just give me strength to get through it and hope there won't be no Sunday dinners in heaven." Then she told my sister to break the ears of corn in half. And then she mumbled something about Jesus, loaves and fishes, and multitudes.

These kinfolks turned out to be some of Uncle Milt's second batch of children. They also had a handsome young man in a uniform with an Eisenhower jacket. My daddy called him "Little Milt" because he was Milton, Jr. and because he looked so much like his daddy. Not long after those kinfolks went back to Arkansas, we heard that Little Milt had been killed in Korea, but Uncle Milt's other son, Ira Green, from the first batch, lived a long time until one day a bulldozer crushed him to death. My daddy said it was because Ira inherited Uncle Milt's stinginess and wouldn't buy a proper ramp for unloading the bulldozer but tried to get it off the truck by rolling it down a couple of logs. My daddy said Ira had turned totally black by the time they finally got him out and that it was a tribute to Guy Pickel, the town undertaker, that Ira made such a good-looking corpse after all of that. Uncle Milt's line is healthy, though. Ira Green had a son himself, Ira Green, Jr. who runs a motel in Hattiesburg and has four sons growing up.

My Aunt Inez said it wasn't hard work or witches or wives that killed Milt. She said he never was the same after them murdering, thieving Ku Klux broke in his house and beat him up and stole his money and burned the cross out in front of his house and scared the children to death. She said that experience just soured Milt besides the injury to his head had caused him to go blind. She said Milt said it was a shame that a man could work so hard just to have worthless trash like that break in on him and terrorize him and his family. She said one of the Ku Klux had hit him with a stick of stove wood and that's what made him go blind. But no matter the way, poor Uncle Milt went to his grave and him not even forty years old. So that's what happened to Milt, Virgie's oldest boy.

Grandma Moss thought Hez would be all right because he was so big and tough. She said Hez was the sweetest thing the way he would pick up his little brother Ira Green and tote him around the farm to watch the comical guinea hens and hunt their eggs. All the girls around Amory had been after Hez when he got back from World War I because he looked so handsome in uniform, but Granma said Hez loved his mother the best and took no interest in those little fool girls like Janie Williams that was always runnin' after him. Hez did like to gamble and brag about how strong he was and how much work he could do and he drank whiskey some too. That's when he got into fights. "Remember," Grandma said, "Hez always called himself Pig-Iron Pete and bragged they wasn't nobody in Monroe County that could whoop him."  "By God," Daddy said, "that was nigh the truth, too. And eat - Hez could out-eat anybody. Remember that Fourth of July when Hez won that contest for eating the most homemade ice cream? That was the time he beat Whit Whitaker. 'Course Whit would have won, but he'd taken sick. Dr. Walden said Whit had froze his stomach from eatin' so much ice cream and that it was a thousand wonders that he didn't die right then. Dr. Walden said any fool that would eat enough ice cream to freeze his stomach ought to die." 

But Grandma and all of them said it was a shame that Hez didn't find a good decent girl to settle him down. Mama said it was too bad he had that Simms girl living in the house with him. Mama said she talked to the girl herself and told her she and Hez should marry because folks was talkin' but the girl said her folks was too poor to feed her and she needed someplace to stay and Hez took her in and she cooked for him. And Hez said, by God, he didn't want a wife but when the sheriff came to lock him up, he said it was a shame that an honest man couldn't even hire himself a cook. But after that, Mama and Daddy ran off and got married, and they lived with Uncle Hez. Mama said Uncle Hez always bragged on her and said she made the best biscuits of anybody and the best banana pudding and the best fried chicken and fried okra. Grandma Moss got jealous then and said that, by Ned, Daisy ought to make good biscuits, chicken, and vegetables because she herself had learned her everything she knowed about cooking a good meal and getting it on the table.

They said during that time, after Grandpa Moss had died one night right around midnight my Uncle Charles took off for St. Louis. People said he had gone wild listening to nigger boogey-woogey music. They said he even played a bass fiddle himself in an after-hours speakeasy joint and watched women do the shimmy and the shake. Clarence Bright even told around the county that Charles had taken up with a girl no better than a common public woman, And everybody said it was too bad that Charles had run off and left only Hez and Rubel to help Virgie Moss with all that gang of gals to raise. They said Charlie had gone to barbers' school and made his living cutting hair and spent the rest of his time dancing the Charleston and listening to Handy's dirty boogey-woogey music and blues. One of the Duke boys went off up there to see him and said it was all true and that Charlie never even went to church and would even cut hair on the side on Sundays. In fact, Herbert Duke said that Sunday was the biggest day because Charlie would cut the gangsters' hair on that day, and they gave him flashy tips because they had so much money from selling illegal whiskey. Herbert said Charlie even had a tap-dancing job at a local show. That may even be true because I once saw Uncle Charlie do a tap dance on the front porch. The preacher was shocked that Uncle Charlie would dance at all, much less at his mother's house on a Sunday. But my daddy never did forgive Charlie for running off to St. Louis. He said it over and over again; the litany came even the night he died, "Papa made his way back to the house after the Ku Klux left him to die in that ditch filthy and chilled to the bone that January night. He died that night before midnight just a-freezin' to death after I built him the best fire I knowed how and then Charlie run off to St. Louis and Mama sendin' all them worthless lazy gals to school with just me to do it all -- the milkin', the plowin', the hoeing, the layin-by, cutting all the wood and all. Hell, I didn't get no education because Charlie run off and them girls was spoilt. I just never had no chance, don't you see?"

But Uncle Hez was good to Mama and Daddy. Mama told how he would always buy oranges and coconut on Christmas and how he'd brag on Mama's coconut cake and how moist it was so it melted in your mouth. "That's because I learned her how to pour the coconut milk on the layers," Grandma said. Mama said it was worth it all to hear Hez laugh and slap his knee when they told stories and popped corn before the fire in the winter. He liked to tease Mama about the time my daddy scared her hiccoughs away by yelling, "Watch out for that kangaroo nest!" Hez laughed and asked if she thought them durn kangaroos would have done hopped all the way across the Pacific Ocean and across California, and Texas and all just to set up housekeepin in her kitchen! My daddy said that fall when Uncle Hez died that they had the biggest cotton crop they'd ever had. He said Hez was feelin' good about it. Hez and a no-account fellow named Suggs had gone to unload a wagon of cotton in the cotton house. The way Suggs told it, Hez had climbed up on the wagon, grabbed the biggest and heaviest sack and pitched off the wagon dead. Later Mama said that she dreamed Hez come to her and said, "Yes,sir, Daisy, that son-of-a-bitch Suggs robbed me. He took that twelve hundred dollars and me layin dead and helpless. By God, Daisy, that Suggs fellow took my money. And everybody thought this was so, but couldn't prove it, especially when Suggs left Monroe County not long after that. Mama said she had that dream for years. She reckoned when she stopped having that dream that Suggs had died himself. and Hez somehow got even with him on the other side.

Mama said the night Hezzie lay a corpse, that Grandma Moss lay in the bed and cried and said it was all her fault that Hez had dropped dead and him not even thirty-six years old. "Yes, sir, Daisy, I as good as took a gun and shot him in the head. If your boy wants to marry when he is seventeen years old, don't you say a word to stop him." Then Grandma told Mama how Hez had loved a girl named Mayrene Myatt. She had to go off to Texas with her folks but she had promised to marry Hez. Hez said write me and as soon as I sell my cotton crop, I'll send you the money to come back and we'll get married. Grandma said she didn't like the Myatts and thought Mayrene just wanted to trick Hez out of the money to marry somebody else, so she took all the letters when they came and burned them. Hez never did even know Mayrene had written at all. He thought she had just taken off to Texas and forgot him. That's when he commenced to drinkin' and gamblin' and quit going to church. "Yes, sir, Daisy, he was as good a boy as you'll ever see, and I just the same as shot him."

They buried Uncle Hez with his WWI uniform on and soldiers came to play the bugle over his grave and fire shots over it, and the government draped a flag over his casket and then two soldiers folded it and gave it to Grandma Moss. I used to see it in her big wardrobe smelling like mothballs. She kept it in with all the nightgowns she wanted to be buried in, but the moths and the mice ate it up in the end. When Grandma Moss died, we found a shred of that flag at the bottom of the trunk.

Long after his death, I'd play near his grave and talk to him and remember him even though I had never seen him. He was a corporal, the tombstone said. "That was something," I thought, "a corporal!" The stone said he was gone but not forgotten. "That's true" I whispered, "I remember you, Uncle Hez, I remember you better than anybody."

After Uncle Hez had pitched off the cotton wagon with a heart attack and all the gang of gals had married off or got settled off in Kentucky with my Aunt Lou, who had educated herself to be a college teacher, Charlie came on back from St. Louis, married a fine girl, bought a farm, and settled down. But he still cut hair on Sundays instead of going to church, and once, James Reed Harmon, the county sheriff, had to arrest him for being a damn shadetree barber, said he wasn't allowed by the law to cut hair even on Sunday without proper papers and such. But Uncle Charlie would still tap dance and cut up on the front porch sometimes. My daddy said that was one good thing Charlie got from St. Louis; he said that there wasn't many families that had somebody that could cut hair and tap dance both.

"It didn't come from my side"

I'm the one in the yellow shirt - I look normal, don't I?

Grandmama and Granddaddy Pierce moved from Memphis, TN to Topsail Island, NC when I was six or so. I don't really remember as much about the house in Kingsley Cove as far as the bedrooms go. I remember the kitchen, the living room, and the family room. Often, I would sleep on the pullout sofa in the living room when I was there - I suppose Pam slept with me but my memory of my childhood is no match for how my own mother remembered hers.

What I do know is that the kitchen was right off the living room, and I suspect that I slept there instead of in a bedroom because I liked to get up early with my granddaddy to eat breakfast. The invitation for bacon, over-easy eggs, orange juice, and toast with butter and honey was open to everyone who was willing to get up when he did. I was the only taker and as such, I guess Grandmama put me in the living room so I wouldn't wake up the rest of the house getting up. Granddaddy could move silently, but I had trouble doing so as a kid. 

Granddaddy liked for me to wait to get up until he had started making breakfast. Once I heard the bacon sizzle, I would rise, go wash my hands, and sit at the table patiently while we chatted and he cooked breakfast. I learned a lot about my granddaddy from these talks. God knows, Grandmama never let him speak with her constant narration of life as it happened. I learned that the prettiest thing he ever saw was when he would watch the chemicals being dumped into the river when he worked at Monsanto Chemical Company. He said the river turned all the colors of the rainbow. I learned that his favorite place in the world was Havana. He said it was the best vacation he ever had just before Americans were not allowed to go to Cuba anymore. I learned that he went blind for a while because he studied by oil lamp and was beaten by his father for doing so. And I learned that he loved to garden, tinker with his car, study science, and make jokes about my grandmother. Mostly, I learned that I loved him and he really loved me.  He could do no wrong in my eyes and he called me his pet. They say the most important thing that people remember about you is how you made them feel, and Granddaddy made me feel loved. 

Grandmama was a different story. She was embarrassed by me. To be more specific, she was embarrassed by the fact that I have epilepsy. She once said to a stranger in line in front of us at the grocery store  "This is my granddaughter, she has epilepsy. She looks normal, doesn't she?" I was horrified, even though I was only five or so.  

I got other signals from the adults in my life that having epilepsy was strange. Mama and Daddy both assured me that I would always have a home with them since I probably would not be able to work as an adult. They had both known people who had epilepsy when they were growing up. Reportedly, these people had not been able to hold down jobs or have families, but other than that, my parents assured me, they lived normal lives. It seemed to me that working and having a family was how one lived a normal life. 

I got signals at school, too, that epilepsy was strange and embarrassing. It was not easy marching up to my teacher's desk every day just before lunch to get my medicine with whispers all around me. I would make my lonely trip to the water fountain to take my Dilantin and Phenobarbital. In first grade, and throughout elementary school, some children were not allowed to play with me because their parents were afraid that their child would catch epilepsy from me. It happened to me so often that I got to where I would let people know right off the bat and have them check with their parents to see if it was okay if they played with me. I didn't want to get attached to a friend who couldn't be my friend anymore.

The most devastating event for me concerning my feelings about having epilepsy happened one night as I lay on that sofabed in Grandmama's Memphis home on Kingsley Cove. I never have slept well. Mama and Grandmama were in the kitchen and they never really got along. I think that Grandmama liked to upset my mother. She liked to upset all of the women in the lives of her sons and grandson. She wanted to be the most important woman in their lives. That night, they were apparently talking about the fact that epilepsy is genetic. "Well, if it's genetic." Grandmama insisted "it didn't come from my side of the family. No one in my family has ever had epilepsy." Mama retorted, "No one in my family ever had it either; it did not come from my side." This debate continued without resolution. I listened intently while tears streamed down my plump cheeks. I have never before or since felt like such an outcast. I felt that both sides of my family were ashamed of me and there was no way I could change it. To this day, that conversation haunts me. But they finally went to bed, and I finally went to sleep, and do you know something? The next morning, I got up with my granddaddy and he made me eggs and bacon and toast with butter and honey. He beamed at me and told me stories of his youth and he made me feel loved again.

Years later when I told this story to my mother, she denied it ever happened. But I know that it did, and I know that it hurt, and I know that many others have been similarly hurt by their families. But still, we love our families, and we endure. We live with our challenges, We overcome our challenges. My parents generous offer to always provide me a home made me determined to work and have a family and live a normal life. Not normal for an epileptic - just normal, or as close as I could get. Do any of us truly achieve or even know exactly what normal is?

Incidentally, my genealogy uncovered the death record of my great-grandfather James Fears, Grandmama's father. Guess what he died from - an epileptic seizure. So, I guess it did come from your side, Grandmama. Not that it matters in the least.

Christmas, 1945 ©

Well, I have not had a chance to post since Thanksgiving. I still have to do my capstone next semester, but my last real class - I just completed on Thursday - and I have maintained my 4.0 the whole way through my second master's. Since it is already getting so close to Christmas - I thought this story would be appropriate. It was one of a dozen or so stories that Mama (Anita West Moss) typed up. So this had to be typed before 1990 because somebody stole her typewriter and many of her rings in 1989.

Christmas 1945 by Anita West Moss ©

Pictured: the picture of her Daddy (James Rubel Moss)  that was kept on the mantel. Isn't the frame pretty?

I stand clutching my doll, Roy Rogers. I am only one and one-half years old, but I remember this. It is not a dream. It is not what I have been told; it is a vivid and intense memory. Mama and Cabby and Brother are listening to the radio. I like that radio. It is not a floor model like Grandma West's; it's a table model and it has an amber light in the center. I think people are inside. Tiny people who tell the news or sing or talk about calling for Phillip Morris or say that "We doctors prefer Camels." But this time, the voice of the little man inside the radio is saying, "The War in Europe is over. I repeat; the War in Europe is over." And then Mama and Cabby and Brother are hugging each other and jumping up and down and crying. When I remembered this, I thought -- surely you cannot be remembering that scene correctly. Afterall, the TVA did not even bring electricity to rural Monroe County until 1949 -- so you must have dreamed that radio. But my sister said no; we had a battery radio that did look like the one you describe -- the arched kind made of beautiful veneer and with decorative carving on the front.

Later, much later, Mama stands me up on the ironing board to put on my blue velvet coat and my blue velvet bonnet. I do not like the tight strangling sensation around my throat when she ties the bow beneath my chin. The firelight shines in her eyes. Folks say Mama is such a pretty woman; they say that she has the loveliest eyes of anybody, even prettier than a movie star's because no one has eyes like hers. They are the deepest aqua, the color of the Atlantic ocean on a stormy day with amber flecks in them that pick up the flames in the fire. Her hair is so shiny black that it looks dark blue in the flickering light. Her eyebrows have been plucked pencil-thin, flapper style, like Jean Harlow's. She has a puffy pompadour of black hair in front and on each side, her hair is swept up and held with a comb. A blue velvet bow nestles just behind the pompadour. I reach up and pat the bow and stroke her soft cheek. I cannot get enough of my mama - I love her smile and her smell. I love the gentle soft Southern voice - the quick childlike delighted laugh. She arranges my curls around the bonnet and hugs me and says, "Your daddy's going to think you are the sweetest, prettiest, smartest thing that ever was!" She laughs and picks me up and twirls around with me in her arms. I hug her neck and kiss her on the cheek. "My daddy's in France," I say, and point to the picture on the mantel. When company comes, I always climb up on a chair and get down the picture and show it off to the folks so they can see what a fine-looking man in his uniform my daddy is. Mama would tell how he had to leave before I was even born and go off and fight old horrible Hitler, and how she had to try to farm the place with just my fifteen-year-old brother to help. Her folks tried to make her shut up the house and come live with them and just live on the money the government sent each month. But my mama had spunk, folks said. She was determined to save every penny the government sent and to make the crop just as if my daddy were there. And none of her folks or my daddy's would even help her, Just the young, Methodist preacher who loved our family and especially my brother would come help, and then people were hateful enough to gossip that the preacher had a crush on my pretty mother -- or at least that's what my sister told me about later. Mama would just hug me and say that I was the Good Lord's baby sent to her special and how she could never have stood it all without me.

Mama put on her rose-colored coat with the wide fur collar. It fits at the waist and flares out just like a dress. She picks me up again and I ride lightly on her hip. I like to be swung into the front seat of the old black Chevrolet. When I ride with Mama by herself, I stand up in the front seat beside her while she drives. I put my arm around her neck and pat her cheek. I can smell the perfume she always puts on the scarf underneath her coat collar. We drive fast down the gravel road.

"Hang on, my precious baby!" she cries gaily, "We goin' to town." I giggle and jump up and down beside her on the seat. Once my brother said after church he was going off with his friend, Louis Kendrick and Mama said no. My brother hated to be bossed around, so he got in Louis's car anyway and took off. Mama took off right behind them. Cabby had to hang on to me. Finally, Mama caught them and pulled Brother out of the car and spanked him. She said he was not going to act any such disrespectful way just because my daddy was fighting Hitler in France. I said "let's ride that way again," but Cabby said no; she was a fraidy-cat but not me.

After a while, we ride over that bump in the road and my tummy flip-flops and makes me squeal and laugh. Soon we are at the Kroger's store. Mama needs to buy some coconuts to make the coconut cake for Christmas. Miss Eunice Turman is there. People are laughing and saying how maybe all the men will be back by Christmas. Mama says she hopes so because Christmas hasn't been Christmas since my daddy went off to the war. She said how my Aunt Inez could not stop crying because her son, Ellis, wouldn't be coming home at all because ol' Hitler had killed him and buried him in a grave so far away in France. Miss Euny said she heard there was a terrible storm in the North Atlantic and that a hospital ship was feared to be lost, My mama looks scared but says my daddy can't be on that ship. She says she just knows that my daddy will be home for Christmas.

That afternoon, I watch for Brother and Cabby to come home on the big yellow school bus. Mama says we're going out in the woods and cut down the biggest Christmas tree we can find. When Brother and Cabby finally get there, Mama says "Go hitch up Dixie-Jane to the little wagon." Cabby is excited and swings me round and round by the arms till I scream with delight and feel the whole world twirling. Mama says "Stop that, you'll make her sick." Mama instructs Cabby to fo change me into overalls and to change out of her school clothes. Cabby finishes eating her cornbread and peanut butter. She is a finicky eater; Grandma West says she would starve herself were it not for cornbread and peanut butter. Cabby changes me; I struggle to get my hands into the armholes. I make sure that Roy Rogers goes with me. When Cabby starts in about how ugly he is after I painted his face with red nail polish, I start to cry and hug him close to my chest. Mama says hush because there are Christmas elves everywhere in the woods just waiting for us to act up like that. She says they'll get upset if we fight and cry and no little children in the whole world will get toys and she said for Cabby to hush about Roy Rogers because he is my child that Santy Claus brought when I was only one month old and I can paint his face up anyway I want to. Cabby sticks her tongue out at me; I think about returning the gesture but I remember the Christmas elves and decide not to do that or to blubber again. 

Brother drives the wagon up beside the back porch. He gets down, goes in the well house and brings out the ax and the hand saw and puts them in the wagon. I jump up and down on the porch, "Let me ride, Jane Jutchy!" I cry. Cabby laughs because I can't say my brother's name. "Say it right - James Russell; look at my mouth, she insists. "James Russell." I say "Rain Russell:" Mama, Cabby, and Brother laugh. James Russell swings me off the porch and throws me high in the air over and over. I laugh but lose my breath and feel scared. Prince, our copper-colored collie, runs out from under the house and barks viciously and nips at James Russell. "It's okay, Prince," James Russell says, "I'm just playin' with my beautiful baby sister." I put my plump arms around his neck and kiss him. His face is not soft like Mama's; sometimes it scratches my cheek. He swings me up in the wagon seat and pats Prince, who barks with joy now because he knows we are going deep into the pine forest.

Mama gets in the wagon, but Cabby likes to swing her legs off the back because we don't need the tailgate today. "Let's sing Deck the Halls," Cabby says - they all start to sing. I pretend to know the words and sing along, too. I like the fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la part and keep singing it after they have stopped. I do that at Sunday Scool when the children's choir sings Jesus Loves Me. That's because I like singing better than talking or preaching. My brother laughs at my song, "Well, girl, you're going to be another Alice Faye!" "Jingle Bells!" My sister calls out.

Soon we are in the pine forest and can't see our house anymore. I like the piney-winey scent and sniff it in I like the mist in the air and the hush of the woods and the wind murmuring in the tree-tops. I think we should all be quiet or maybe just whisper. Mama thinks so too, I guess, because she whispers, "Children, I think we'll find our magical cedar tree in that clump of trees over there."  We clamber down from the wagon. Cabby holds my hand while I run to keep up. Her knees are knobby and her calves are mottley-purple from the cold. Mama looks at one and shakes her head, then points to one, and says, "that's the one; that's our magical tree." My brother saws down the tree; my sister and I skip around bouncing like my brother's basketball on his clay-packed court behind the corn crib. We can't be still. Mama says we need some holly because my daddy likes holly garlands on the mantel and around the windows. "Will he really be home by Christmas, Mama?" my brother asked. "Oh, how I pray he will be," Mama says. "My daddy's in France," I say. "Yes, silly, but he's coming home," Cabby says, "We told you the war is over. Our boys have beat ol' Hitler!"


That night Mama pops corn. We eat some and Cabby strings the rest into ropes to decorate the tree. We hang colored glass balls on the tree too. I struggle to hang a blue one and drop it. It shatters and I cry. Mama holds me close and then gives me some more popcorn. After the tree is all decorated, Mama sits in front of the fire grating the coconut for the cake. I rock beside her in my little red rocker with the blue morning glories on it. I hold Roy Rogers and sing Christmas songs to him or pretend to. I throw bits of the coconut shell into the fire and watch the flames burst into blue flowers like the morning glories on my chair.  I am fascinated by the flames and by the soothing noise the fire makes as it burns lower and hotter. I rock slower and slower staring at the fire. I'm being lifted by my brother and placed in a big feather bed where I sleep every night between my mama and Cabby. I feel safe and snug between them. I'm glad when they come to bed. Mama rubs my back. I reach back and pat her soft hair. 

The next morning, I wake up first and climb over Cabby, who gives me an angry shove. I tip-toe when my feet hit the cold floor. I go through the French doors into the living room and stare at the tall tree. I walk close and smell the pungent cedar and oranges in the fruit bowl and the chocolate covered cherries that Mama makes herself. I lie on my tummy and wriggle up under the tree. I lie on my back and look up through the branches and feel the cedar needles tickling my nose. "Maybe Christmas elves are hiding in this tree", I think. I think to myself that the elves are watching me; maybe they even like me, I say to myself. 

That day Mama gets all excited when a man brings a yellow piece of paper. It is a telegram, she says. It tells where and when to meet my daddy. He has come all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. Then he got on the train and was on his way to Camp Shelby which was close to Jackson. That's where the Army would give him his discharge papers, Mama said. She said it was a dream come true that he would be home for Christmas after all that time. He would get to Camp Shelby on Christmas Eve and my brother was to drive the old Chevrolet to meet him. Mama says she'll stay with us and get everything ready for him to come home.

When I get up on Christmas Eve, my brother has already left. Mama spends half the day cleaning the house, I have a little broom and mop and try to help. Mama and Cabby don't pay me much attention. Cabby keeps going to the window to look down the snakey red road wandering off among the pines to see if they are coming yet. Later, I cry when Mama washes my hair and gets shampoo in my eyes, I sit in my little red rocker naked by the fire while Cabby combs out all the tangles. Then she dresses me in my white blouse with puffed sleeves and my red velvet Christmas jumper. Ir seems like we are getting ready to go to Church. Cabby and Mama have white blouses and red jumpers just like mine. "Look, Mama, we're triplets," Cabby says. It has been dark for a long time. Cabby runs to the window now every few minutes to see if she can see headlights coming along the road. I sit in my red rocker and try to get Roy Rogers to sleep, but he is too excited about Santy Claus coming tonight. I can't settle him down. Cabby calls out, "It's them, It's them! They're here!" She runs outside and Mama runs after her. Prince dashes from under the house and barks; he runs back and forth and squirts the ground again and again because he is so excited. I hide behind one of the porch columns and watch. When the car stops Cabby flings open the door and gets inside. Mama waits outside the car. Then a tall man gets out of the car. He picks up my mama and swings her round and round. He kisses her on the mouth. I have never seen her so happy. I can tell she doesn't remember me. I don't like that man hugging and kissing my mama.

The man wears a uniform that is the same color as the Cedar Christmas tree. It has gold buttons with big birds in flight. The buttons shine just like the ornaments on the tree. I run to Mama and tug at her skirt. She picks me up and says, "And here is our precious baby." But I hide my face on her shoulder and won't look at the man in uniform.

Later Mama gives the man coffee in a ruby glass cup. I can see the fire gleaming through the red glass and I think it is prettier than any of the ornaments on the tree. I like the man a little better now that he is not hugging my mama. He is telling how he almost got lost in a terrible storm on the North Atlantic. I go to the living room and drag the pink velvet Rebecca Davis chair to the mantel. I struggle to climb up on the chair and reach up to get the picture of my daddy. Being so careful not to drop it, I climb down from the chair, clasp the picture to my chest, and run to the kitchen to show it to our company, just the way I always did. I held the picture up to the man; "See, this is my daddy, he is in France!" Then the man is picking me up. I can feel the shiny gold buttons pressing into my soft flesh. I feel his rough cheek next to my soft one and wonder why it is wet. I wriggle to get free, "Come on," I say "Come see the Christmas tree, but don't cry, 'cause elves live in this tree and they'll get upset and forget to bring toys to all the little children in the world." He smiled at me and then at my mama. He took my hand and we went to lie under the magical Cedar Christmas tree to search for the elves.