“RAISE UP A CHILD"

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

Chapter 4:  Mamie’s Death

I was the little nurse for the baby, and helpin mother when she was sick in bed, and the rest of ’em was in the field helpin my dad, see. So I cooked the dinner. Mama’d lay in bed, and I’d take the pan and she’d say, “Bring me the meal,” to cook the cornbread, “Bring me the meal.” She’d tell me how many cups to put in this pan. “Bring me the flour, bring me the bakin powder, and then the salt.” And she always put a little sugar in it. And she learnt me how to cook. She’d tell me, “Like this. Now put so much in.” Sometimes she’d say, “Now get you a big spoon.” Well they didn’t have measurin spoons. I didn’t know anything about a measurin spoon till I was workin in the city. And we had to go by if this is enough. Mama said, “Now, hold your hand.” And now my hand was my measurin spoon. And she’d have me to put so many hands of this and so many hands of that and like that. And my hand was small—you see it’s small. Then it was smaller.

And that’s the way I learned: listenin and obeyin. And that’s what I did. And by me bein the youngest girl, and she [Mama] was sick. The rest was helpin my daddy in the field. I cooked the dinner.

Mama raised one garden after she had my baby brother, and then she take me back down, and she said that was the best garden she had ever raised. And she said, “I’ll never raise another garden in there.” And she’d tell me to go out in the garden and pick this and that, and I’d come in and she’d help me pick the greens. She’d let me snap the beans. And she loved butter beans, and we had butter beans and she’d help me shell them. But she taught me. She wasn’t able to do all of this because she wasn’t strong from that last baby. That was what carried her away.

And she would have me to do the things that she would usually been doin, but she taught me how to do it. And no measurin cup—we had tea cup—that was the only cup we had, and so she just taught me that way. And she said, “You have to use your head and think, now, I’m gonna put so much of this,” she said. “Remember, now, how much you put there.” So I was puttin it in my head as I was learnin it. And I can’t come in here and measure you up some flour, and measure you up some biscuits by measurin. You won’t have no good biscuits. I can come in here and get this flour and everything and put it together, and I don’t measure. I’ll take me a spoon and I’ll dip bakin powder and what not. Now that I learned afterwards. But before then, mother had me doin’ this [motions with hands as if scooping], so, she said, “Now you see how much you got in there, now remember that.” You had to look and observe what you’re doin. And that’s the way my mother taught me how to cook, layin in her sick bed.

I look back over all of that now, and I say, “Oh, she had patience.” Because I had a brother under me, Oliver, and the baby was two years apart. And there Oliver was, and there was the baby. I was havin to wash the baby diapers, and I had to pack water from a well, and Mama’d say, “OK, the baby’s asleep now. You take the baby’s diapers and go up to the next house”—we was on a farm at that time—“and you wash the baby’s diapers, and bring ’em back to the house, and we’ll put ’em on the fence here and dry ’em.” The rest of ’em’s in the field. I’m doin what she’s tellin me to do. I’m followin her instruction. And they . . . they started callin me “Little Mamie.”

So, my mother was my grandmother’s oldest child, and I guess by her bein her oldest child, she clinged to Mama a lot. Then when my mama got sick, she [Grandmother] wanted Mother to be in her house—and I don’t see how in the world she wanted Mother there with all the children. She had two boys and one of her other daughter’s kids there, and I’m tellin you, I ain’t never seen a house so crowded! But it was peace and happiness there. I don’t think kids could live like we did there and bein as happy, and agreein, and doin together.

And sometimes Mother would be feelin pretty good, and she’d say, “I want ya’ll to get up and sing me some songs.” And she had special songs that she liked to hear. Grandmother say, “You feelin up to it, Mamie?” “Yeah, Mama, I want to hear ’em sing.” And my oldest brother was a basser, and my next oldest brother was a lead singer. And she would have us all together and we’d sing. Sometimes they’d have other young mens come in, young boys then, would come in and sing with my two brothers—a quartet. They had a quartet. They’d get together and sing for my mother while she was sick. And when she got to where she couldn’t be goin to church, that’s what would happen. Different times, different ones would come in and sing and give her whatever she wanted to hear. They would sing for her. So, I was just raised up in that, in that bond, of givin and reachin out.

When Mama got real sick, Margie used to rub my mother and rub the pains! Margie got so she could not go and rub my mother, and Mother realized it. She was just that afraid. And then Mama had to take to me ’cause I was just the little nurse. I was that little nurse. And Mother said looked like my rubbin soothed her, because she said, looked like I was tryin. I didn’t want Mama to have no pain. And I’d be rubbin Mama, and I’d just be sayin, “God, let Mama hurt no more.” I’d just be talkin [whispers]. I didn’t want her to be hurtin. And she said that was soothin to her. But Margie, she said Margie could rub her and the pains would go away. But Margie was afraid! So she stopped callin [her].

My oldest sister had came home and been with Mother durin the time she was sick until she died. She gave up two years with her married life—she quit her husband to come home and be with Mother, because when she told him she was comin, he didn’t want her to come. Because she told him, she said, “Well, if you don’t agree, I’m goin anyway.” She said, “I can get another husband, but I can’t get another mother.”

And when she came, Mother picked up on that. After she was there so long, she would write letters, she’d get letters, then the letters stopped. And Mother [thought] it was somethin had happened, so she asked her one day, she said, “Ruth,” she says, “what about Austin?” That was his name. And she said, “It’s OK, Mama.” She said, “But, Ruth, I don’t want you to leave your husband.” She said, “Mama, you’re my mama.” She said, “You gave me life,” and she said, “I can get another husband, but I can’t get another mother.” Mother didn’t say another [word]. She said, “I’m through.” And she didn’t say another word to her about it.

And Sister went outside, and she cried and cried and cried. And I went out, “Sister, what’s the matter? Sister, what’s the matter?” She said, “I’ll be alright, I’ll be alright.” And I didn’t know what was happenin until I overheard Mama tellin somebody else what she told to Sister. She didn’t want her to leave her husband. She [sister] said, “Mama, I can get another husband, I can’t get another mother.” And she told him if she couldn’t go to her mother, if he didn’t agree, she was goin anyway. And so she came and stayed until mother passed away, and then she stayed with Papa until she thought she had him settled with the children.

My mother’s funeral was hard on me. I sit where they put the casket in the church, right in front of the little table in front of the altar. And she left a baby, two [years old] and one four [years old], and me [ten years old]. My father, I think, or one of the sisters had the baby. The casket was sittin like this, and my little brother and I was sittin behind that casket, with our back to the pulpit and our face to the congregation. And there’s mother’s casket here, and Oliver and I was sittin behind it. And that’s where we sit through that funeral. And all I could do was sit there and look. There was nobody to pacify me. See, the other sisters and brothers was with the rest of the family. They had some on one side and some on the other, as close up as they could [get] ’em in the front.

We was the smallest, and that was where they could find a little seat to put there, and that’s where they sit, that’s where Grandma put us. And I think today that if she hadn’t a did that, I coulda taken it better. Because it looked like every time I closed my eyes at night, looked like I seen my mother for a long, long time.

I used to tell Papa, “Papa, I seen Mama last night.” He said, “Oh, Baby.” I said, “Yes, I did, Papa, time I went to bed, I seen Mama.” He said, “You went to bed.” I said, “Well, Papa, I saw Mother.” And when Mother was sick, she used to tell us, when she knew she wasn’t gonna make it. She said, “I’m gonna have to leave ya’ll one day.” I said, “Mama, will you come back and visit with me?” She said, “I’ll only come back if you be doin somethin that you don’t have any business. You be bad,” she said, “I’m gonna come back. I’m gonna get you.” And that stayed with me ’cause I thought Mother—see when Mother said, “I’m gonna get you,” she meant she was gonna get you if you did somethin that you didn’t have any business. So I just knew Mama was gonna come back. If I did somethin wrong, she was gonna come back and get me. And so [laughs] I got to where night come, I would be one of the first ones that would go to bed, so I could go to sleep so I wouldn’t see Mama. But, I’ve seen her a lot of times.

People would separate the kids [when the mother died]. She’d [Mamie] told ’em, “I don’t want you to separate my kids.” ’Cause, one auntie said she wanted me, another said she wanted me. One said she wanted my sister, Mary. One said she wanted Margie. And Papa says, “I’m not gonna separate them ’cause Sweetheart”—he called my mother Sweetheart—“Sweetheart told me not to separate the kids.” So, I was the youngest girl, and I was there home with my dad the longest, with my two brothers that were under me. But when my oldest sisters was ready to go to school, [my relatives] taken ’em. The next oldest sister—the one had fixed all my school clothes—she went to my dad’s . . . one of my dad’s sisters. And she [Dad’s sister] had a son and a daughter, and she went and stayed with her to go to school.

So, I was the one left at home with my dad and both brothers! And I had learned how to wash those clothes. And I used to cry, but I was glad that I learned a lot before that happened.

Because a lot of times I was really lonely, and I used to go to my dad cryin, and he’d say, “What’s the matter?” I said, “Papa, I feel so alone.” I was the only girl at home then with my dad and brothers, and I had to wash their clothes and mine, the bedclothes. And he had relatives there that sometimes some of ’em would come and help me. Most times I was by myself. And my dad and my [older] brother would be gone to work.

My two little brothers was too small to help me wash, but they kept to the wood around the wash pot—we had those black wash pots, that was what we’d boil the clothes in. And my baby shirts. When I’d get through washin, I’d be wet from here all the way down. I’d have to go and put on more clothes. ’Cause, rubbin the clothes, I was just pickin ’em up and splashin, and I was reachin and hangin ’em on the barbed wire fence and all that.

So it was my life comin up after Mama died—it was a hectic one, yet it was a good one. Because it was the experience that I had went through with her, the experience that I went through with her death, that gave me the courage and the strength to keep doin what she and my dad had taught me.