This is the second stage to the story that was started yesterday. I trust that you will enjoy it and be helped by its telling.
Momma?
I remember crying because I wanted my Momma. And crying and crying and crying, until daddy took us to find our Momma. (Actually, it was only three days, but to my little child’s brain, it was forever.) I learned later that the dirt road that I remembered running across was in a little town in Mississippi called Lake Como. My Momma had run away to Memphis to her sister’s house. -
Where’s My Daddy?
I remember telling myself that if I cried and went to sleep my daddy would come cause he always came when I cried. And he did. Momma and daddy went back together, but this time in Memphis. Things did not work out, though. Momma finally left daddy after so many missed paychecks, women and crying children. (She said we cried because we were hungry and that she had to use Vaseline and the last of the meal in the house to cook cornbread and feed us because there was no other food in the house. For her, that was the last straw.)
I do remember daddy coming around a couple of times and begging Momma to take him back, saying that he would stop the drinking and women chasing. She gave him an emphatic, “No!” And that was the last time I saw my daddy.
That’s Just the Way It Is
I heard those words for the first time when my Momma told me with tears that my Daddy was not coming back anymore. She said that he was not going to live with us anymore.
But, I had a plan. I knew what I would do. I would cry. I knew that if I cried my daddy would come. He always did. Yeah, right! I cried until my nose ran (and I didn’t wipe it either); I cried until I had a headache, but my daddy still didn’t come. I cried until I went to sleep, but when I awoke with eyes practically swollen shut, my daddy still was not there.
He never came back.
And
My mommy told me years later that she used to have to go to his job to get his paycheck so that he would not spend it on wine, women and gambling. She told me that the last time she had gone to his job, she ran up on his girlfriend, who was pregnant with his baby and was there to get his check, too! Momma got the check that time, but then he started taking off early to avoid giving Momma the check, or not coming in on Friday at all, which was his usual payday. As I told you earlier, the Vaseline bread was the last straw for Momma.
Who’s Going to Help Momma
My Momma was a preacher’s daughter and had been a teacher in Mississippi. She knew she could make it and she did because of her faith in God. She would never accept welfare. She said that as long as there was a God and she had her health and strength, we would be alright.
And we were. We went without new clothes, lights, gas and water (sometimes in the dead of winter) but we made it.
It was during my growing up years that I learned to put my brain on problems that Momma had and to try to help her figure things out. I remember the first time that I tried to help her think about a problem that she was worrying over and she told me that I was a child and to stay out of grown folks business.
I remember hearing her hum. She had a certain tune that she hummed when she was worried. I got pretty good at figuring out what was bothering her. And I remember thinking, “Why does she have to worry when I have an answer inside me, but she won’t listen because she thinks I am a child." I remember thinking that though I was a child, I thought like an adult.
Then I had to think of a way to help her without getting a spanking because I was stepping out of a child’s place. And I did. This is what I said. “Mommu-uh?” Yes, y’all, I had to drag her name out that way because if I just flat out said how I thought she should work some problem out, it would be licks because I was getting out of a child’s place. So, here I went, “Mommu-uh? Ain’t trying to get out of a child’s place, but I know what I would do if I had that problem.” (The last of this particular walk down memory lane will be published tomorrow.)
