Life

Chapter One

It was a hot chilly day in Madison, Wisconsin in the late days of August of 1963. Everyone with their umbrellas seating in the back yard eating watermelon with ice lemon tea. The children are laughting and running around playing with their sundresses and shack outfits on. As the elderly seat on the porch talking and humming that old great Negro Spiritual Hymn, you can hear the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I Have A Dream Speech from a house a door away, Great Grandma Edna Mae said. As the conversation grew of everyone on the porch Jane wonders in her thoughts. How come the husbands are fighting in the war? As apprehensive Jane was. It's best for them to be out there fighting for the country instead of being here treated like nothing, Mother Sarah said in an intoned voice. Now a days our husbands never did let us women work. The men only wants us to be a stay home wife and mother, to cook, clean, love them and to go to church. The Lord knows what's going too happened next.

Great Grandma always have her passions of emotions in the midst.

Jane your father never did let us help them; they always want to be the man of the house, Mother Sarah added.Why? How come the men can have regular jobs and us women have to do the house work? What about us? Jane replied. Your father feels that it's a women place to be at the house taking care of the family while they go out and make the money, said Mother Sarah. I hate feeling servile around here at the house doing these and that, Jane said. Feeling servile? What do you know about servile? Her 120 year old great grandmother said in an eagerly way. Don't you know I was a slave for almost half my life? I was ship around the country to different slave masters. You don't know how it feels servile like I did.

I was a few years younger than you during the American Civil War sometime in 1861. And every time me and some of the slaves didn't do something right, refuse to do something or try to run away we would get caught and be beatin for it. I remember once, I was beatin for trying to climb out my bedroom window. It was like our dignity was taken away. We were alive but died at the same time. They even didn't teach us how to read or write.

Read or write! I thought you knew how to do those things Grandma Mae? Aunt Bessie wonders. No child. The white master refuses to let us have teachers to teach us because of our color. Colored? What the color have to do with you learning how to read and write? They didn't care that's why. The word Negro was the only thing they knew and that they have total control of us. That was impossible. Aunt Bessie was emotionally. Did you ever tried to protest front of the courthouse? Aunt Bessie had feared. Protest for being the color of my skin or because I couldn't read and write? They also fought for their freedom and justice child. If I had I would be in the city jail fighting for my life just to get out. As least you did something for yourself, said Aunt Bessie. Did something? The only thing I wanted was my freedom and dignity but I guess that was taking away from me a long time ago. But you have it now, said Jane. But it took me a long time to get it. And now we have a color man fighting for our country's freedom and we can do anything in God's will. And that's around the same time John F. Kennedy is president. I never have been so proud in my life to see a black man and a white man working together for equal rights for everyone. You never see to many blacks and whites doing something good together without the white killing the black man.

Talk about the slavery Mae, said Granny her oldest daughter. Yes, I am sensibility to hear about it, mother Sarah added. There's nothing really to tell, great grandmother said in a soft voice.

Her head was down with a low voice. I was only ten years old and yet I was working on the plantation and during house maid at the same time. I remember whenever I did not do the Master Queen clothes right she would hit me with her cane. That cane hurterd so bad until it felt like it was made out of iron and I still have the mark on my leg from the night she had hit me. Mark? How come you didn't tell us about this? Fear was brought to Jane eyes as her great grandmother told the story. Cause you never ask. Finish the story great grandma. As Jane got into the story her mind wounded on why they did those things. Edna? Edna Mae are you ok? Said her oldest daughter who everyone knows as granny. She just went into one of her moments again, Mother Sarah remembers calling like she did when she was a child again when her grandmother would tell her stories in her life.