Mixed Messages: A Southern Childhood

2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST

BY SYLVIA FREEMAN

Mixed Messages

a Southern Childhood

1

In my grandmother’s kitchen, Dora sang her favorite gospel hymns ‘He’s got you and me sister in His hands, He’s got the Whole World . . .’ she tied a red and yellow patterned scarf around her head scrambled eggs, fried bacon, made frying pan toast let me stir the grits, drop butter in to make them creamy. When I asked Mamaw why Dora always comes through the back she looked at me like I was crazy, whispered because she’s colored.

So were some of the traveling musicians in my uncle’s jazz band who came in the front door, joked with Mamaw, ate dinner with us slept upstairs in big-windowed rooms, practiced for gigs in the music room, piano, standing bass, sax ‘It don’t mean a thing If It Aint’ Got That Swing’ floated down the hallway. Dora knew all the words swung her hips side to side, kneaded biscuits to the beat.

She met the ice man, milkman, grocery man at the back door handed out food to the hungry waiting outside. I begged to go home with her, play with her daughter exactly my age but Mamaw said, No. You’d have to ride in the back of the bus walk to her house and she lives in a real bad part of town.

2

Mama worked at the front counter of a cleaners. They called it dry although I remember steamy heat fans blowing hot air both winter and summer smell of chlorine solvents that made my eyes water sweat dampened shirts stuck to the backs of black workers in the stuffy back room where they removed buttons, ornaments pre-treated garments by hand, Tetrachloromethane in the air, the water so toxic it corroded washers and dryers they loaded, unloaded.

SYLVIA FREEMAN’s poems have been published in storySouth, The Lake, Galway Review, Muddy River, and other venues. She is the 2018 winner of the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition from the North Carolina Writers’ Network, the 2018 Franklin County Arts Council Writer’s Guild Carolina Prize for Writing for Best Overall Poetry and a 2021 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize semifinalist. A native of North Carolina, she lives in Durham. Her photography – of writers and birds, in particular – has been featured in NCLR’s pages.

Pressing machine added more heat to the room pressure from top, hiss of steam underneath buttons, lace, sequins stitched back in place wedding dresses carefully wrapped in tissue for storage silky evening gowns, cashmere coats hung on tall racks rolled out front where Mama smiled, tagged clothing talked to customers, wrote sales slips. She grew fond of the workers, heard their stories met their families, told me The world’s a big place people come in all shapes all sizes all colors but inside we’re the same.

Woman Washing Clothes, 1970 (pastel on paper, 30.5x20.5) by Charles Alston, in the Permanent Collection of the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture Generously donated by Bank of America Corporation

3 In the First Baptist Church on Main Street first graders sang ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight . . .’ The Girl’s Auxiliary raised money for missionaries in Africa to spread the Word, save souls, promise them heaven but at a meeting about desegregating the church the head deacon, a leader in town, stood up, raised his fist, shouted I’ll walk out the back door if a Negro ever sets foot inside the front door. The meeting ended like all the others with 1st Corinthians 16:14 Let all that you do be done in love, and then, we sang a gospel hymn one of Dora’s favorites she sang in my grandmother’s kitchen.

North Carolina native CHARLES HENRY ALSTON (1907–1977) moved with his family to New York at the age of seven, but spent summers with his grandmother in Charlotte. He earned a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from Columbia’s Teaching College. He was an influential painter, sculptor, educator, and prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He was the first African American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration and founder of the Harlem Artists Guild. His art appears in the collections of the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.