Still she thinks of herself as a poor black girl living in the south before blacks and whites mingled. I say this because her past is always with her as those times seem to be more real than present day life. Since I’ve known her it’s been that way. Some things run real deep. She’s a good storyteller, and when I look at her I can vividly imagine that little girl back then in Arkansas. The stories she tells of that time will make you laugh, though some will bring a sense of acute sadness. My childhood was in New England and those stories never reached me.
I like her style of cooking. I think it’s changed just a little from her mother’s way. She makes corn bread every week, eats the greens of the south (gave up frying, but makes every attempt to recapture that taste by vigorous sauteeing). Her mother once took her and three of her siblings on a trip north to visit family, and she talks about seeing, for the first time in her young life, whites and blacks together. You feel in the telling of this that every fiber of her body relives the shock.
She didn’t marry a black man and didn’t stay in the south. She owns a nice three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, has a big loving heart and, has what could be called, a good life. The value of money that was instilled then holds true now. Money or no money, she’s solidly frugal. I feel that keeping those stories alive is important because many people still haven’t grasped the enormity of what happened if you were black and living in the deep south at that time. From listening to her stories, a new understanding was very gently pounded into my head during my stay with her this year. Any new insight has the potential to shed new light on other areas of life. I thank her for that and for the loving person she’s become in spite of it all.