“RAISE UP A CHILD"

Edith V.P. Hudley, Wendy Haight, and Peggy Miller

Chapter 2:  Watching, Listening, Questioning

I used to watch my mother cook, and I used to be the little girl that keeps the wood in the stove. See, that was the way I got to be so close in the kitchen all the time. Because I was the youngest girl, and I liked to be around her cookin. And sure enough, if she’s cookin somethin sweet, I’d want a taste. So therefore I was in the kitchen with her more than any of the other girls. And I think that’s where my cookin came from.

Plus, my dad’s older sister, I stayed with her one time when Mother and Dad was workin at Lufton, Texas. They had to leave home. They was goin over there workin. My dad was cookin for a hotel when I was small, and I stayed with dad’s sister.

I wanted to cook so bad. She had a man to bring her a little tin stove, and the little dishes and all. And I was bein anxious, tellin how I wanted to help cook. She’d put ’em in my little cup, tell me to fix it all up, and she’d say, “OK, you can go out and put it in the stove,” and I’d put it in the stove. Then she’d say, “Well, you go out, and I’ll watch it for you.” I’d go out to play. She’d put it in her stove [laughs] and cook it, then put it back in my stove and tell me, “Well, you better come see about your food.” And I’d come in, “Oh, it’s done!” “Yeah, you better take it out.” So she was foolin me all along, but yet still she was encouragin me to cook, and that was her idea, to cook. So I got a lot of that from my dad’s older sister and my mom. Those were the two that instilled in me, small, of startin up cookin. And my dad, my dad was a good cook. He was a good cook,

I was a little girl and they was buildin a chimney. They used to get this, they called it “post oak soil” and mulch, and that’s what my daddy started to build these chimneys to the house. And Mama had this baby. It was a pretty baby, and I was at the house. But they had a hall in between—two rooms on this side and two rooms [on the other side]—well, they let me stay in the kitchen, and Mama was in the room when the baby was born. That was the prettiest baby. It had a head full of hair! And the baby died—or was born dead.

And I went and I was a lookin at the baby, and Papa had to stop buildin the chimney to build a little box to go bury the baby. And I was there watchin the baby, and I was just lookin for the baby to say somethin. And I said, “Mama, the baby ain’t sayin nothin!” I was listenin for the baby to cry. And Mama said, “Well, the baby won’t be sayin anything. The baby’s goin back to Jesus,” she said. That’s the way she told me the baby’s dead. But she had, if I’m not mistakin, it was five kids [who died in infancy] ’cause she told me she woulda been a mother thirteen times, and there was eight livin. I was a nosy child, and I asked her, “Mama, how many children?” She said, “I been a mother thirteen times.”

My mother taught me how to wash baby diapers on a washboard. She taught me all the things that, I don’t know how I can put it in words. My mother was a mother, and she was teachin me before she had her last two babies. My mother taught me how to make a cake. We had those old granite pans, with the big spoons, and she put that sugar in there and the butter. We had milkin cows, and we had butter. She learnt me how to churn. She learnt me how to pick up the butter, how to work the milk out of the butter.

And she taught me my ABCs, and she started teachin me from the school books before I was old enough. You had to be seven years old in order to go to school. The first day I went to school I went through two books that the teachers had that I was supposed to be startin at. Mother had taught me at home.

Now I told that teacher, I said, “I know all that.” And she said [laughs], “You do?” I said, “Yes, Ma’am!” She said, “Well, OK, you want to stay in recess with me?” I stayed one recess and read her that whole book. Then I said, “Now I know how to spell those words.” She said, “You do?” “Yeah.” She said, “OK.” Well, she said, “Another book, borrow it.” I brought it home, “Mama,” I said, “Mama, she give me the same book you done taught me.” She said, “Well you has to go back and tell her you know that book.” So I went backs the next day. I said, “I know this book.” She said, “You do?” “Yes. Yes, Ma’am, I know this book!” “Well how you know?” “My mama taught me this book.” And so, she said, “OK, you want to stay in?” I stayed in. I read that book through to her. Then I say, “I can spell all the words too.” She said, “Well, OK, I’ll take your word for it.” [Laughs] She didn’t want to spend all that time inside too.

So, she gave me another book. I went home with that book, I said, “Mama, I’m tired of this woman givin me these same books. “ I said, “Mama, won’t you come go to school with me? So you can tell that teacher what book I need!” So Mama said, “Well, maybe I’ll go down there with you.”

So, she took—I heard her tellin my dad one night—I was a eavesdropper. I was a big eavesdropper. I’d hear ’em talkin, and I’d get to where I could hear, and I was takin all of it in, too. And I heard her tell my dad, “Mr. Aaron, I think I’m a goin”—she called him “Mr. Aaron”—“I think I’m gonna have to go to school with these kids tomorrow. Can you hitch up the wagon? And so I can go down there and talk to their teacher. Valerie [Edith’s middle name and nickname] is not satisfied. She’s comin home every day complainin about this same book that she done read.” Papa said, “OK.” He was always good about things like that.

He fixed up the wagon the next mornin, and we all got in there and we went to school. Mother was in school with us all day. It was too far for her to go by that wagon back and forth, or to walk, so Mother stayed in school with us all day. She fixed—that was one thing about her, bless her heart—she’d fix a big pan, so we could all eat together at school that day.

When school was out, we all came home, but in the time she was down there, her and the teacher was havin a conference about what was best for me, and for her to keep me busy. ’Cause mother had to tell her everything that she had been teachin me. And see, you had to be seven years old. And that was borin to me to be home. And everybody’s goin to school, and I’m still at home. So mother just had to teach it. Mother started me on mathematics too. And then she had me learnin my time tables. Before ever I had went to school I was learnin all of that.

So she let the teacher know how far she had gone, and that woman told her, she said, “I wish all of the mothers was like you. And any day you want to come in here and help me with these children—.” ’Cause it was a two-room school, and it was two teachers, and each teacher had a bunch of grades they had to teach in a day’s time. She said, “Anytime you feel like you want to come and help me with these,” she says, “you are welcome.” Said, “All parents can come. Anytime.” So, that made it good for my mother.

But, Honey, I was a worrisome little child comin’ up. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know everything. They called me nosy. My mother used to say, “Lord, Mr. Aaron, that’s the nosiest little child we’ve got.” I was nosy. I could hear ’em talkin, and I would try to get to where I could eavesdrop and hear what they sayin. And now if I didn’t understand everything they was sayin, I was still tryin to hear. And mother called me “Nosy.” She named me “Nosy.” But, I was glad that I was nosy because of the age that I was when she passed. She had taught me a lot. And that helped me a lot with my kids when they’s comin on. And with my brothers under me. They was two under me. So, it helped me a lot. To know things that was good and things that was bad and things that we shouldn’t do, and all like that.

I was nosy [laughs]. And I seen things happenin but they didn’t tell me. And I goes and I asks my Mama one day. ’Cause I had seen my sisters and them havin their period. And that time, they didn’t have money to buy pads. They used those flour sacks and cut ’em up, you know, and then they would wash ’em. Oh, Lord, mmm. So, I went and asked mama one day, what was wrong with one of my sisters? And I said, “Mama, somethin wrong with her, ’cause—” [Laughs] I went to tellin her what I had saw, and Mama said, “Well, that’s all right. I’ll see about it.” Now that’s what she told me.

Because durin those times, it was certain things you just didn’t ask. You had to sort of figure it out. They wouldn’t come out plain with you—like they do now—and talk [to] the children about things. But if they wanted to know somethin, they’d say, “Tell Valerie to go ask Mother.” So, I didn’t have no better sense, whenever they’d tell me to go ask Mama—“Go ask Mama so-and-so and so-and-so”—and sometimes she’d look at me, she’d say, “Who told you to ask me that?” [Laughs] She knew the way I was askin I didn’t know what I was talkin about. And I’d say, “Mary told me to ask you that,” or “Margie told me to ask you that,” or “Purcell told me to ask you that.” Whatever! Mama said, “Mmm hmm, well you tell ’em I said come and ask me themselves.” I’d go back, and “Mama says you come ask her.” [Laughs] Then sometimes she’d give me the answer, and I’d go back and I’d have it all twisted up. [Laughs] And they’d say, “What?” I’d say, “Oh, go ask her yourself!” [Laughs] So, it sort of broke it down to me, then, that Mother was there for us, regardless, and she wanted us to come to her.