Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul Read online

  I thought about how she used to lean out of windows to watch me play hopscotch and hide-and-seek, smiling so much I worried that she would crack her face. I remembered all those pork chops and slabs of chocolate cake she’d stuffed into my lunch boxes. And the fact that she and my working-class dad had paid for my weekly piano lessons and sent me to a tuition-charging Catholic school.

  I also thought about all those evenings when Mama had taken me to the movies, too weary from hours of maid work to stay awake but determined to give me a shot of joy. Daddy, who read Bible stories to me at bedtime and combed my hair on Sunday mornings, had been my heart. But Mama, I now realized, had been the person who made our little family possible, sheltering a youngster she could easily have despised.

  “I’m your daughter,” I said one day after stopping by Mama’s apartment to drop off bags of groceries. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes told me that she knew why I’d never gotten around to taking that trip to Alabama to search for traces of my unknown family. My only regret is that I never really thanked Mama, in clear, direct words, for all she’d done.

  When she died, I had engraved on her tombstone, “You taught me everything that matters.” One of the things she taught me is that life isn’t some big-screen drama in which families thrash out all their differences in two hours and then blend their voices in a symphony of joy. Sometimes love is just a lunch packed with extra care, a shared dish of ice cream, a jug of homemade lemonade or a mother who fills her daughter’s head with a stream of constant dreams.

  And family? I know what that is, too.

  It’s whomever you’re lucky enough to love for a lifetime.

  Betty DeRamus

  Getting to Know Miss Gladys

  It’s good when you’ve got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

  Toni Morrison

  I recently remarried at age fifty after being divorced for fifteen years. My new husband had been divorced for twenty-five years, so it was not something we entered into blindly.

  I married the first time at age nineteen, and my mother-in-law played a very traditional but special role. “Mother,” as she was called, was a strong matriarch. She was older and more domestic than my mother. She taught me how to cook, clean, take care of my baby, make herbal potions for everything from colic to cramps, to be a practical, functioning wife and mother at such a young age.

  During our courtship, my second husband-to-be took me to his hometown in southern Virginia. He had told me his mother was in a nursing home, but when we arrived, I was emotionally unprepared for what I saw. A very small, frail body in a fetal position, a tiny childlike face with penetrating eyes lying on a pillow with a pink bow in her hair.

  She had not spoken in three years. She had recently celebrated her eighty-ninth birthday, and her room was full of balloons and birthday cards. Above her bed was a loving collage of the many people in her life who wanted to acknowledge her and be remembered in some small way. It was obvious that she was loved.

  We visited her quite regularly; her eyes followed me wherever I went.

  I learned that she was able to communicate her likes, dislikes and even her opinion about things with those deep-set eyes. When my husband-to-be proposed, we went to tell her the news. When we arrived we thought she was napping so we sat, talked and waited for her to awaken. My husband gently stroked her cheeks and hair as you would a sleeping newborn and whispered softly into her ear how much he loved her. Her eyes slowly began to open and look around, and I realized she had not been sleeping but had been playing “possum” to hear what was being said while people thought she was asleep—something she was known to cleverly do.

  I walked over to her bed and stood directly in front of her and said, “Miss Gladys, I am going to marry your baby boy, Charlie.”

  Her eyes widened, and I saw a flash in her stare that only a powerful black mother can give—a look that at once warmed me and warned me.

  My husband saw it, too, and commented, “Did you see that look Mama gave you?”

  I not only saw it, I also felt it; I just wasn’t sure exactly how to interpret it. I think it was a dual look of acceptance: “So you are the one that got him—okay, I like you,” mixed simultaneously with caution, “You’d better take care of him, ’cause he is my baby.” She let me know her expectations all in the flash of her eyes.

  As we prepared for the wedding, we knew she would not be able to attend and thought to include her and my deceased mother in our celebration, so we planned to put a picture of each of them and a bouquet of flowers on their seats in the church. Two weeks before our wedding we learned Miss Gladys had taken a sudden turn for the worse. When we got there she was in the hospital surrounded by several noisy machines. Her eyes were closed, her breathing raspy. No “possum,” this time. She was passing away. My husband-to-be was shattered and began making arrangements for her funeral, to be held exactly one week before our wedding. While I didn’t really know her well, I felt I was losing a wonderful mother-in-law for the second time in my life and wished that I had had the chance to learn from this woman. I knew that to be so obviously loved by so many, she had a wealth of wisdom to share.

  For many weeks after our beautiful wedding and honeymoon, my new husband was quiet and withdrawn, had erratic sleeping habits and was always looking for something to do so that he wouldn’t have time to think.

  One rainy Saturday morning, watching him struggle, I asked, “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  He replied, “Nothing.”

  I said, “You are grieving for your mother.”

  He looked as if it had never occurred to him, “Is that what this is called? I thought that happened at the funeral.”

  As if we had opened the floodgates, he opened up and started telling me story after story about “Mama,” Miss Gladys Gramps, Auntie, Sister Glad—any one of the affectionate names she had earned.

  Every story was like opening a present; some were funny and involved him, his brothers and sisters, and her method of discipline. Others were about him and his special love for her as only a son could see his mother. Many were about her wisdom and levelheadedness in dealing in the world without being able to read or write in the Jim Crow South of the twentieth century. Story after story cascaded from him when we were riding in the car, taking our walks, waiting in line at the store, falling asleep, every day some mundane situation would bring a story that started “I remember when Mama . . .” and he would sink into that state of peace and comfort where fond memories take you like a feather bed. I would soak the stories up as I got to know the woman with the penetrating eyes.

  Once my husband began sharing his stories, I could see his grief lifting.

  I learned that Miss Gladys was born in 1913 in Virginia to a white mother and a black father. She was not schooled past the third grade. In 1931 she married and had eleven children. During the course of their marriage her husband would go back and forth between Virginia and Philadelphia every two years leaving her pregnant after each “homecoming.” My husband was “homecoming” number nine, and after number eleven she never let his father return. She did domestic work, picked cotton and tobacco. Her greatest personal pleasure was gardening. She would spend hours tending perfectly straight rows of seasonal vegetables. My husband laughs saying that he was a vegetarian until he was twelve and never knew it.

  I learned that Miss Gladys prayed all day on her knees—in the kitchen, bedroom and in her garden. By any account she did an incredible job raising her children. When my husband became an adult, he asked her how she fed, clothed and cared for eleven children with no visible means of support, and she replied, “On the arms of Jesus, son, just leanin’ on his arms.”

  When one of her daughters was murdered by a serial killer, Miss Gladys, age sixty-four at the time, took custody of her four-year-old granddaughter and raised her until she successfully completed college.

  In her seventies, my husband asked, “Mama, why are you always so tired?”

  She said, “Son,
when you climb up to this age you are going to be tired, too.” Her journey through life was certainly an uphill climb, and even her valleys were bumpy, not smooth, flower-filled, softly paved paths.

  It has been three years since Miss Gladys passed. Still, on Sunday afternoons my husband takes a seat in his favorite chair by the sun-filled bay window and talks on the phone for hours to his sisters. The stories and the laughter start swirling in the room as they reminisce about Mama. I lie on the couch nearby playing possum and listen quietly as I get to know and love him and Miss Gladys a little more with each telling.

  Bari-Ellen Ross

  The Ring

  Itwas January, and the birthday cards were already starting to arrive.When my mother got the first one, I turned to my sister and said, “It must be from Aunt Kat. You knew she was going to be the first to get her teasing in.”

  My mother’s birthday wasn’t until October. As she read the birthday card a full grin broke out on her face. Aunt Kat was well known for sending humorous and sometimes obscene birthday cards. This was the year of my mother’s fiftieth birthday, which meant the year of the ring!

  My grandparents had eleven children. There was Mary, Kat, Alice, Regina, Elaine (my mother), the twins Joyce and Janice, William Jr., Randy, Pamela, and last but not least, Terri. Yes, I would say my grandparents’ quiver was full! Amazingly, over the years they all managed to stay close. They survived trials, fights, different opinions, religions and hundreds of miles between them. Their bond couldn’t be broken. When Mary, the oldest, turned fifty, it was a major marker in all of their lives. For her it was like achieving another level in life, a kind of crossing over into ever after. For her younger sibs, it was a milestone of achievement and a cause for celebration. They all got together and bought her a diamond pendant.

  Next it was Aunt Kat’s turn, and despite the fact that she still claims to be twenty-five (and at first glance you might be inclined to believe her) she accepted her fiftieth birthday with grace and grandeur. The night of her party she was guided in on the arm of her husband, Uncle Joe-Willie. To this day I still say she floated into the room. The evening was perfect, just as long as no one mentioned her age. She was the first to get a ring. A few years later they decided to make the ring a part of the celebration. Aunt Mary traded her necklace in, and it was official. On their fiftieth birthday, each would receive a ring. This year was my mother’s turn.

  My mother is the mother of four, two boys and two girls. She’s always been a single parent, so she worked very hard. I remember there was a time when she worked three jobs. She was a head nurse on the children’s ward in one hospital, on call for the emergency room at another, and she did home visits three to four times a week. My mother worked hard all of her life, all just to make sure we had the same chances everyone else had—even when she herself did not always have the best. So after her forty-ninth birthday, my eldest brother had a meeting with us and said that no matter what her next would be a birthday she wouldn’t forget. Unlike the sisters before her, she didn’t have a husband to throw her a fiftieth birthday bash—we were all she had. So we began planning, sneaking, saving and pooling our resources; her ring year would be her best.

  All that year cards came reminding her how old she would be. She would just laugh and light up. Just the thought of getting her ring and joining this “elite” club would tickle her so.

  As her birthday neared, there was a light in her eyes and spring in her step, and she always looked like someone had told a joke that no one got but her. Everything was set, even the decoy. Her birthday fell on a Thursday, but the real party was set for Saturday. On Thursday, we had a little party at our house with just her children and their families. It was her fiftieth year, and she was having homemade tacos. She didn’t care; my mother never asked for much.

  On Saturday, she was still unaware of our plans. I bought her a formal dress to wear to the party. It was a black velvet, two-piece after-five. It had sequins and a split that was a little high, but she could pull it off. After all, the theme of the party was “fifty and fine.” The day of the party my sister drove her around pretending to be lost trying to find this new restaurant where we were all supposed to meet. Then they arrived. She started to giggle as she walked down the hall to the surprise party that awaited her; she had started to get suspicious.

  “Surprise!!” We all shouted as she looked around the room, amazed to see all of her family and friends smiling back at her. She was speechless with tears as her first born son, now married with four children of his own, led her to the center seat at the head table. My Aunt Kat took the microphone as the emcee, and the roast began.

  After the dinner and the dance tribute performed by three of her four granddaughters, a tape recording was played of her youngest granddaughter and namesake, Alaina, who was in Atlanta and couldn’t make it, singing “L Is for the Way You Look at Me.” Once we had laughed and cried and laughed again, they brought out her ring. It was beautiful and elegant, nothing like anything she would have bought for herself—not that she wasn’t an elegant woman; she practiced being a well-rounded lady. She just seemed to always have other priorities when it came to indulging herself. The ring fit her pinky just like everyone else’s, and then she began to beam—not just her smile on her tear-stained face, but from the inside. I had never seen her so bright.

  Once it was all over and we got home, I asked her, “Are you happy now that you have your ring? That’s all you’ve been thinking about this year.”

  She said yes, with a smirk and a chuckle. Then she looked at me with glassy eyes and told me what really made her beam with pride was seeing her four adult children, happy, healthy and prospering. She said looking into our faces made her life make sense. “The four of you are the diamonds in my ring!”

  That got me thinking; maybe it wasn’t the ring after all.

  Maybe it was that, at fifty years old, she could look back and smile about a life well lived.

  Monica Montgomery

  Just Like Mom

  Inside every older lady is a younger lady— wondering what the hell happened.

  Cora Harvey Armstrong

  All my life people have told me I “look just like” my mother. When I was young I paid it no attention at all because I simply did not believe it. As a teenager when I heard the words “You look just like your mother,” I would respond with “No, I don’t. She’s an adult and I’m not.” After all, what teenage girl wants to be told she looks like her mother? Then, I would run to look in the mirror to make sure I had not changed since the last time I had looked. Relieved that it was still me in the mirror, I’d exclaim, “Whew, that was scary.”

  When it happened at twenty-five I would respond with, “No, I don’t. She is old, and I’m young” and again I would reach for the mirror to make sure things were as they should be. Relieved yet again, I’d mutter under my breath, “I don’t know what those people see; they must be blind. I definitely do not look anything like my mother.”

  By thirty-five, maturity had set in, and I would not respond at all when I heard those intrusive words, “You look just like your mother,” but my thoughts were, Oh no, you see her hair is thinning and turning gray, her midsection is spreading, and her walk is slowing. That definitely is NOT me. I can walk a fifteen minute mile, I work out every day, and my steps are quicker than they were at twenty-five. No, I definitely DO NOT look like my mother. I’d still sneak a peak in the mirror, just to be sure.

  As I prepared to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, I woke up excited and happy to be alive. As I passed the full-length mirror in the corner of my bedroom I caught a glimpse of a startling figure. I stopped and took a good long look. I could not believe my eyes. There she was staring back at me—my mother. When did this happen? As I looked, rather than being upset or in denial over the remarkable resemblance that had somehow eluded me all these years, I found a strange comfort in looking at my mom’s and my image comingling in the mirror.

  Suddenly, I saw something more
than just our physical similarities. I saw beyond the thinning of the hair and the expanding midsection to the strength and courage she had always displayed in the face of tragedy—and that she had given me. I saw the determination that had helped her break free of the shackles of poverty and pain—a determination that she had given me. I saw her spiritual teachings—the ones that helped to shape and mold my own values and beliefs. I saw her commitment to hard work—the commitment that she taught me so that I could achieve my goals and dreams. I saw the love and appreciation that she held for her family that she passed on to me so that I may honor and cherish my own family. Yes, as I looked in the mirror, I realized that it was her love of life that taught me to live my life to the fullest and that allowed me to wake up that very day thankful to be alive.

  Today, when I look at my mother, I am amazed at how much she looks like her mother and yes, how much I look like her.

  Now, when people say to me, “You look just like your mother,” a loving warmth spreads through me, and I simply smile, nod and proudly say, “Thank you.”

  Linda Coleman-Willis

  Mama’s Hands

  When I was a child, I thought that my mama had the prettiest hands. They were brown and smooth, the fingers long and slender. Her nails were always perfectly rounded and polished a bright shade of red. I never once saw her polish them, but I know that she did. Even before the days when there were nail shops in every strip mall, beauticians gave manicures—but not to my mama. She never indulged herself in things just for herself. Her every indulgence was for her family.

  Mama still has the prettiest hands. Her nails are still perfectly rounded and polished a bright red—these days by a manicurist. Her hands are no longer smooth. Time has added wrinkles and a spot or two, and veins more pronounced. Hers look like the hands of a fifty-year-old woman—a woman my age. Mama is eighty.