A Nickel and a Prayer

CHAPTER 7. The Death of My Mother

CHAPTER VII The Death of My Mother “Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing.” 1 I had won a fair measure of success. The farm girl who had stripped the fodder in the fields, and fallen asleep at night on the plank floor, covered by quilts in her aunt’s cabin, had become a useful woman in her profession, loved by many friends, respected and honored. Best of all, she had the wisdom that is born of suffering and a keen sympathy for the people of her race. “Old, unhappy, far-off things”2 were faint wraiths looked at from the sunny slopes on which I had set my feet; no premonition warned me that the moment was at hand when the most important person in my early life, my mother, was to be taken from me. My childish vindictiveness toward her, arising from her battles with Father, my later disgust when she married again six months after his death, rebellion against her punishments, the resentment of her opposition to my hunger for education, the bitterness at being coerced into a loveless marriage—all these had softened with the lapse of years and the coming of maturer understanding. I had long since learned to see Mother against her background; to realize that both her faults and virtues were the product of that background. Throughout life she had remained a child—happy, fun-loving, but with the limitations of childhood. At hide-and-seek she was as carried away as any 76  The Death of My Mother 77 child; and when I visited her after I was grown, it was not unusual for her to romp with me as she had when I was a little girl. From her father she had inherited slave-driving energies. Hard work she knew and practiced, and so should her children, aided by the stimulus of switches. That the Negro could possibly better his lot, she thought only by hard work. She had little sympathy with Father’s desire to educate the children. With these limitations she had energy and decisiveness of a positive character. Nothing could deflect her, once she had reached a decision. Her zest for life was insatiable; I can still see her dancing the Virginia Reel or the Quadrille3 at “hot suppers,”4 her cheeks glowing, her eyes twinkling; returning home, the festivities over, her apron full of sweet potato pies—favors bestowed upon her by admiring partners. Her warm generosity exerted a compulsive power on all who knew her and made them love her. With what care she prepared my favorite dishes— rice cooked in chicken broth, okra purloe,5 mallata rice6 cooked with tomatoes and bacon fat—the most delicious and famous Southern dishes of today. If I failed to eat all that had been placed before me, she would go out in the yard and urge the balance upon the first pedestrian to come along. Mother loved to give; she would have given her head away if she thought it would help someone. While in Charleston I thought up a plan whereby she and I might have an opportunity to know each other better and come to love each other as a mother and daughter should. I would bring her to Charleston for a visit; perhaps she would like it and decide to stay. The plan did not work. After three weeks, she became homesick for familiar scenes, and decided that the climate of Charleston was injuring her health. So, for the sake of peace and her health, I bought her a return ticket to Clemson. My visits to Pendleton had been infrequent. I could not be happy in the crowded conditions of her two-room home; and while I felt a twinge of remorse for feeling so, the fact remained that I felt superior to the old surroundings . In the summer of 1909 I bought an acre of ground in Pendleton—a 78 Chapter XII stone’s throw from where her favorite sister lived—planning to build a cottage in which she might spend her declining years in peace and comfort. But my gesture came too late for realization. In June of the year following word reached me of her sudden death. The news was unbelievable; for I had seen her a few short weeks earlier, and she had looked the picture of health, young and beautiful. Thinking that the wire must have referred to Grandmother , who was eighty...