How the Soul Sings

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

            My mother, Aunt Loraine and Willa Jane went all out trying to make this Christmas unusually special, since it would be the boys' last one at home for who knew how long. There was a decoration on just about everything that wasn't nailed down and Christmas lights everywhere. Momma and Aunt Loraine forwent the usual fresh cut tree this year and went out and got one of those god-awful, fuzzy white aluminum trees from Woolworths, which are supposed to convince you that it was a snow covered pine. Lord help you if you weren't in the festive mood; you were going to be one way or another, if you liked it or not. This included Cousin Daniel. Those three ladies were conspiring to force feed Yule time happiness to him, even if it meant physically shoving it down his throat.

"Do you think that if I slipped him an extra shot or two of rum in his eggnog that it would make him lighten up enough to come out of his room?" Aunt Loraine posed to my mother and Grandma Evee.

"Oh Lord have mercy, I think you ladies are takin' it a bit far. Last thing we need is that boy drunk, 'cause he'd be a mean one, I tell you." Grandma Evee says shaking a wooden spoon at Momma and Aunt Loraine, midway through making a batch of Christmas cookies.

"Oh Evee, I'm not talkin' about getting' him DRUNK; I just want him to be a little more sociable, you know what I mean?"

"Uh-huh, but what for? I'm figuring that he's believin' that his life is ova, that no woman gone wanna man without no legs that work, now. An' how can he salvage what he got left as a man if you all keep coddlin' him like he's some broken baby that fell outta his crib?" Aunt Loraine says nothing. You'd think she'd be shocked about what just came out of Evee's mouth, but really, it was to be expected from her. And generally, Evee was right. You learned to hush up and listen closely to everything she said. "You wan' him to be mo' sociable, then give him a reason. Treat him like a man an' stop focusin' so much on how he cain't use his legs anymo'. Jus' treat him like you used to an' jus' pretend that there ain't much different about him, no mo' than if you changed the rugs in a room. It still the same room, jus' slightly dif'rent. An' ya still gone do the same things in it as befo'. You all jus' too afraid of how he gone react. He gone keep on the same as long as you let 'im. Uh-huh, yes ma'am, he will."

Grandma Evee had been around long enough to know people and to know them well. There was a lot of wisdom let loose in that kitchen over the years, so much that I think most of it is still crawling around the yard and pecking at the ground like the chickens. Every turn of a corner, crack in the floor or split piece of Formica in the counter top, it reminds me of something she has said. Her words wore a path inside my ears.

       

          Our families, the Hutchens' and my own, celebrated a lot of holidays together. Neither one of us had any family outside of who all lived on this road, so I guess it just made sense. Though, back then, it wasn't common to see white folks and colored folks spending time together on holidays outside of the colored ones being around as the hired help. It wasn't like that for us and I think it was that way just out of habit. Grandma Evee knew my grandparents since she was young, but her family was the help, but she said they were never made to feel like they were nothing more than that. "The Lawson's, they been real good to me for all my life." Evee told. The house the Hutchens' lived in was sold to them by my great-Uncle, Vernon, for a fair price, Evee said. All these people are the only family I know of. But I knew nothing of my father and his side. My mother just simply explained that they were married for a while, then he left one day and never came back. My Cousin Daniel's father was killed in the Korean War. So practically being two widows, Momma and Aunt Loraine turned to each other to help raise their children on the old family farm that my mother had inherited. I wasn't sure how Loraine was my aunt, if it was through my mother or my father, but I'd always just assumed it must have been through my father's side since Momma and Aunt Loraine never talk about when they were little and growing up together.