It’s a normal day in Greenville, Mississippi in July. The heat here nearly snatches my breath away when I play outside. At night I try to catch a cool breeze and chase a few fireflies to pass the time. This is the part of living down south that I don’t miss.

“You ain’t better than nobody just because yo mammy moved yall up North!” said Fredericka Louis. She is the fat-head from the old abandoned plantation way down the road from the land of our Lady Ruby’s paw and maw.

My mama wanted something better for us than to end up working in someone’s kitchen or sharecropping. Mama lost Daddy the last year of WWI. His company had been sent overseas but he didn’t make it back. Mama had just given birth to me in 1918 when he died. In 1922, Mama had saved up enough to move us North. She found us a new home on the south-side of Chicago.

My older brother, Cephus, got an automobile a few years back. He originally wanted the automobile to ride around Bronzeville showing off his girlfriend. Mama never liked that girl.

“Something just ain’t right about not being comfortable in the skin God gave you! Ain’t like we can take it to the store to trade it in. Nothing good will come to that little girlfriend of yours as long as she keeps passing for white. Don’t get killed by one of these crazy kids of the klan that found their way North too!”

Cephus and that girl ended up not lasting long anyway. She found some man who was so old and white that he could barely see himself let alone that his fiance was a Black passing as a white woman with olive skin.

Now we can take trips back south each year to visit with our family. My mama had Cephus to drive me down here for the summer. He will return before the end of August to bring me back to Chicago.

I know you’re probably wondering who I am. My name is Frances AnnMarie Davis and I am 14 years old. Family and friends call me “Frankie” for short. I am the baby of the family. They say they call me Frankie because I look so much like my father. Never knew him but I seen photographs before. I have his almond-shaped eyes, ears, and yellow skin just like my daddy.

My mama LenetteAnn is Lady Ruby’s 2nd oldest. I have a host of aunts and uncles from here to Chicago. We even have one cousin who made it all the way out to California to find a better life for him and his new wife, Tabitha Grace.

Now Lady Ruby, she is my great-grandmother. She’s like a mama to everyone in the family. The other day one of my vocabulary words was “matriarch”. A matriarch is a woman who is the head of her family or “tribe”. That’s our Lady Ruby.

No one in our family really knows how old Lady Ruby really is. She is a tall woman with smooth black skin and hair always styled without a hair out of place. Her dresses never ever come above the knee. Lady Ruby is a seamstress by trade and designs nearly all of the wedding dresses of the local girls.

Whenever I go into town with Lady Ruby everybody knows who she is. All the men stumble over their words and the ladies at the local shops study the hand embroidering on her dress. When she speaks she commands a room and people listen.

When I tag along with her whether it be to go into town or when she goes out into the countryside to visit with the sick and shut-in from her church, I imagine if I can be like her when I grow up. She is the strongest person I know taking on the troubles of so many. She always seems to have an answer, the answer to solve everyone’s issues. I wonder tho. I wonder who is busy being everything to Lady Ruby while she is busy being everything to everybody?

Under The Pecan Tree

“Frankie girl. Get in here!”, Lady Ruby yelled. I was out back picking pecans from the tree of Lady Ruby’s paw. I miss him. Before moving to Chicago I spent so much time with Paw Bradley. That’s what we called him.

He would get up early in the morning and begin his day. Every morning he would drink his same cup of coffee and the meal my great-great had made for him. Our Lady Ruby’s parents had a love affair and their early mornings they shared together happened from the early days of their marriage back in 1888.

Paw Bradley would sit at the table sipping and thinking. Thinking and sipping. If it was my lucky day he would come, wake me up before my brothers and sisters to tag along with him.

We would grab our handcrafted wooden pales from the back porch and head out. There was a field of pecan trees his paw had planted on the land while it was still owned by his owner, Mr. Leland. Before old man Leland passed away he had given ownership of the land to my Paw Bradley. The Klan hated it and had burned so many crosses on the land they got tired of it.

“Reach for that right there and those over there. Those are some good ones, Frankie.” He was always teaching me things and taking me places. Paw Bradley took a shining to me more than my siblings. Maybe because I will never know my own daddy so he shines a little bit more of his Paw Bradley love on me.

“Paw Bradley, can I asks a question?” I asked him.

“Keep moving while you’re asking girl and asks me what ya want!” he replied.

“Well Paw. Why come you the only Negro man around here with all of this land? Nobody else Paw barely have two pennies to rub together but you got all of this. ” I asked.

He stood up straight looking me straight in the face and said, “Frankie girl, come sit over here under this here tree.” I grabbed my basket of pecans and found a clear spot under the tree. We began cracking a few open and he started talking.

“I own this land because it’s what I and anyone that’s come after me is owed after what those before us had to endure. My daddy was a damn slave every single day of his life. Every day of his life as a baby, a boy, a young man, a man, and until his last moment on this here earth. My daddy got up he put his all into this land, a land he didn’t own and would never own every single day of his life.

I remember this old crazy woman, Mama Leslie that Mr. Leland just couldn’t bring himself to sell or kick off the land. Mama Leslie had been his wet nurse and nanny so he had a soft spot for her since he was a young boy I guess. She would tell us the spirits from the forest told her that Mr. Leland will pay for every soul he owned on earth. She said he would right his wrongs before he went to see the Lord. No one believed her.

See I only visited the plantation grounds when my mama and daddy would meet on weekends. Mama had been freed years before meeting him and lived in the local boarding house community, so I was born free amongst free-thinking people. Years later Mama Leslie passes, hell most people still on the property had died. Mr. Leland had outlived most of the slaves he owned including my daddy!

Frankie, do you remember Mr. Kitlings butcher shop in town? Well, I worked there when the original Mr. Kitlings was alive. One day he said, “What I’m about to ask you might be too much to ask but I need you to deliver a few fresh hens, a dozen eggs, and fresh milk to old man Leland’s property.” I hadn’t been back on the property since he buried daddy and had no clue what happened to Mr. Leland. See Kitling knew that he was asking a lot of me because I had sworn I would never step foot on that land again.

I had to be down in that part of the country-side for a few other deliveries and I didn’t want to miss the 15 cents I would get for that delivery. My plan was to get there and drop Mr. Leland’s groceries off to his help but when I got there he had no help. When I got there it all I saw was what Mama Leslie said would happen.

Mr. Leland could kill a newborn chick right in his hand because his grip on anything he touched would be so tight he would suffocate the life right out of it. The fields were dry and dead. The old slave quarters were hollow and bare. There was only the sound of old rags left on the line to dry flapping in the wind. He had been an evil man in his younger years. In his prime, he gloated that there wasn’t a slave alive on his land who wouldn’t die there.”

“What was it like when you went back Paw?” I asked in my most inquisitive tone.

“It was like a ghost town in the house. I could tell it had been a long while since someone had tended to this house. The entire house was filthy. There were dishes and rotten food in nearly every room. Dust an inch thick on every piece of furniture. It was clear to me that Mr. Leland had been left to fend for himself. He was such an evil man that when his children were old enough each girl married as fast as she could to never return.”

“I see you came, boy. Find yourself a seat,” said Mr. Leland while coughing in-between his words. It had been a long while since I allowed anyone to call me “boy”. That was an understanding that Mr. Kitling and the other whites grew to learn about me. I am a man and I expect you to respect me as such.

“No, sir. I prefer to stand. Mr. Kitling sent over what you requested: a few fresh hens, a dozen eggs, and fresh milk. Here they are so I will get going.” I said with haste to be able to get back to my horse and carriage.

Mr. Leland started coughing up a storm. I saw a few spots of blood on his handkerchief after he uncovered his mouth he said “Bradley, boy, please sit down for a moment. I must speak with you.” Then I heard a whisper, “Sit and listen.” It wasn’t Mr. Leland and if I had to bet a silver dollar on it, I would swear it was Mama Leslie.

“Speak Mr. Leland. I have other deliveries to get to before Mr. Kitling begins wondering what is taking me so long.” I said snapping at him.

“Well boy. I mean Bradley. Mr. Kitling told me that you’ve grown into a fine b…man. A very fine man.” he said.

He continued talking but I kept hearing this voice telling me to sit and listen. Now I don’t believe too much in that old stuff from the village but I wonder if when Mama Leslie went crazy after that beating Mr. Leland gave her, did she put a root on him? I complied and finally sat on the least dingy chase in his sun parlor.

“Do you think you’ve lived a good life, Bradley? Do you think you did what God asked of you?” Leland asked me while gazing out of the window into a baren garden.

“Still living and got a lot more living to do. Guess I’m doing alright for myself.” I replied.

“When you get my age, you end up having a lot of time on your hands. A lot of time to think. Hours. Days. Weeks. I have had the last few years to just think. Everybody in town thinks I am crazy living up here alone with no wife or children to care for me but I don’t deserve it.” he said while fighting against the growing lump in his throat.

He talked on and on for the next few minutes and I had had enough. Jumping to my feet and kicking up dust I stood to say, “Mr. Leland I really must be leaving now.” I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

“You’re my kin, Bradley!” he shouted. I froze right where I was. Frozen in time because he thought he was telling me something my family didn’t know. We already knew that he was my daddy’s half-brother!

My eyes peeled back like a banana peel and I yelled “Paw Bradley! He was your uncle? How?”

“Well Frankie, have you ever heard of a place called Africa? That’s where our people come from. Mr. Leland’s parents had taken a voyage by boat to West Africa. While there Mr. Leland’s mama, Jessica, took a liking to the driver of their carriage. That driver was my daddy’s daddy, Obi. His name was later changed to Nelson once they made their way back to Mississippi.

Mrs. Jessica wasn’t the most virtuous woman and had become known amongst the house help and slaves for making her carriage rides shake with anyone within arms reach. She was different when it came to my daddy. My granddaddy had fallen in love with my mama when he was just a boy and never had eyes for another since then.

Mrs. Jessica noticed this one-day catching mama and daddy with eyes locked so tough on one another you knew it was nothing but love. She couldn’t risk her secret jealousy of mama being exposed but she pushed herself on my grandpa over and over. She pushed herself so much that she found herself throwing up in the morning. She was now with child. With no clue of knowing who the father of her unborn child be she had to wonder in silence.

The day came when she gave birth and something was wrong. The baby was brown and I when I say brown I mean brown with a capital B! Mr. Leland had already been born 5 years earlier. When he tried to come in to see his newborn baby the nurses fought to not let him in. He broke his way through to find a little brown baby in the arms of his very white wife.

Now this wasn’t the first time that Mr. Leland’s daddy had seen a brown baby in the arms of his wife. 7 years prior she had become pregnant and gave birth to a tiny baby with dark olive skin and ginger-colored hair. When Mr. Leland’s daddy found out about it, he nearly beat her within an inch of her life and sold the baby. That was before Mr. Leland’s daddy had heard the good word of the evangelists at a dinner party in Benin.

Mr. Leland burst into the room and quickly drawing the conclusion that his wife’s hunger for Black boys hadn’t come to an end. Tears began streaming down his face and he walked towards her reaching out to hold the newborn baby. She clung onto the baby tighter afraid that he would snatch this baby from her arms just as he had with the last.

“Hand him here NOW!” Mr. Leland’s daddy yelled with a face as red as clay dirt. Mrs. Jessica’s best house girl, Lynn, handed him the baby and more tears rolled down his face.

“Lynn! Take this here pickaninny to one of those slave shacks to be cleaned up. Feed it. Bring it up to be my most prized possession out there in that field, ya hear me?” and Lynn nodded while whisking the baby away. Mr. Leland was just a young boy and followed his daddy everywhere his little scrawny legs would carry him. He was tucked away in a chair and had heard every word.

“Cecil! Come and stand before me right now.” he yelled at Mr. Leland. That’s his real name his daddy call him. He rushed over to stand before his father and says, “Yes, father.”

“Cecil, your mother is a whore and after today you will never see her again. Because of her sins, you will now have to do the Lord’s work to make her and everyone she attached to her earthly sin of sleeping with niggers! That their baby you just saw in Lynn’s arms is your half-brother. Never speak of it after leaving this room. When I die, I will leave you this land but only if you promise to never set Nelson or that spawn from the devil free. Do you hear me boy? You better take your last breath before you let either walk off of this land.”

A young Mr. Leland nodded his head and ran over to his mother to hug her but his daddy drug him out of the room screaming and kicking.

Written by Nolita R. Pore, M.Ed.

To be continued on January 18, 2020…

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