I Remember when...

This semester, I'm studying African American Literature, which means I'm reading a lot of slave narratives and pre-Civil War African American literature. For an upcoming assignment, I have to listen to various interviews conducted with former slaves, recorded during the early 1900's. The audio is barely audible because of all the static and the low quality of the equipment, and most of the interviewees have tremendously thick accents and poor English so it's hard to understand them. Nevertheless, my interest has been piqued by just listening to the voices of former slaves from the area where my grandmother lived/where my mom (and later myself) grew up, down in Norlina/Warrenton, NC right across the VA/NC state line. 

Reading some of the online stories and listening to the interviews brought back so many memories from my childhood. The land on which my grandmother's house now sits--like so much of the land in that area--was owned by the Perkins family. The Perkins' owned a plantation (a bit further up the road) that was tended entirely by blacks/slaves, and later, by freed slaves, including my great-great and my great grandmother. My (paternal) great grandmother AnnaLee Scott worked as a maid on that plantation, and it is where I spent each and every summer of my youth until 9th grade. It is also where my maternal grandmother would later meet and fall in love with my grandfather (the son of my great grandmother).  Hearing the former slaves interviewed and telling their stories of picking cotton, tobacco, cooking in the fireplace because there was no stove, riding on the back of horse-drawn carts through the damn fields in the HOT ASS NC sun...it all brings back memories. I, too, picked cotton and tobacco, tended the animals, rode tractors, rode on the back of horse-drawn carts, and cleaned the Big House alongside my great grandmother. Of course, at that age, i had no idea what it was; I just knew that everyone in my family had worked for Ellen and Ann Perkins at some point so that's what I had to do too.

We had no running water so all our water came from our well. Remember the well from The Ring? Yep. We had that, from which we drew water for everything. We had no bathroom or kitchen sink. We had no stove. We did have electricity but the TV was black and white and cable wasn't available in my grandmother's area yet, so shut that down. Like the former slave discusses in her interview, we cooked our food and heated the house with the same wood burning oven in the middle of the dining room floor, just like the one in The Color Purple. In fact, one of my most hated chores was chopping wood. I finally figured out a way to suck at it so my grandfather told me to just stop doing it. (Bwahahaha!) We hunted for a lot of our food, though it's important to note that that wasn't entirely necessary; my family was just a bunch of gun-totin' carnivores. *shrug* I learned to shoot a rifle before I got my first pimple. I spent far more time than I care to recount chasing chickens, bandaging blisters from cotton-picking (damn seeds are sharp!), and cleaning the innards of animals and fish. Oh, and shelling vegetables and canning preserves. Back then, we didn't have plumbing so we used chamber pots as our relief. But when they would get full, the whole house would STANK to the high heavens, and need to be emptied. It was my job (of course) to take the pot down to the outhouse and empty it. And let me tell you, if you ever wanna see me bitch-made, take me to my grandmother's house and tell me to go to the outhouse at night. It was the country; there was no light except the ONE light pole that lit the path to the outhouse. Only problem was, the path of the light stopped waaaay before the outhouse. So, between the light and the outhouse was just...darkness. I only got there because i had the way memorized. AND it sat right under a big ass oak tree. There was a pig pen on the right side of the path, the outhouse to the left...so sometimes, you could hear the pigs making weird noises at night. Sometimes, though, they slept and made no noise...and would wake up screaming into the night as I walked by on the gravel and leaves, startled by the noise.  I killed many a snake during the day, but when night time came, it was far too dark to see any snakes slithering by. The other thing that terrified me was toads. They would camouflage themselves in the dirt in the garden so when I picked vegetables, I would reach down and the 'dirt' would hop up on my arms. At night, I couldn't see them until I walked into the stream of light on the path, but I could feel them hopping on my feet. The first time that happened, I dropped the pot in the middle of the path and ran screaming and crying back up to the house; I got a beating--with a switch--the next morning when my grandfather walked down the path and saw the huge pile of crap and yellowed toilet paper on the ground. I learned not to drop the pot after that night. From then on, I would just walk fast and cry to myself whenever I had to go out at night, trying to watch

My great grandmother wasn't born into slavery, but her parents were. She was raised with her mother--who worked on that same plantation--and she never knew her father. She could often be heard humming old hymns quietly to herself, her worn, withered face unsmiling. She rarely smiled, but she did tell me about her own childhood on that same plantation when I was little, every day as we cleaned the House. Her mother was freed but, unlike lots of other freedmen and women, opted to continue working at the Perkins'. She told me it was all she'd ever known, that she'd grown up there, and, from as far back as I can remember, it's all I ever remember her doing. She never went to school and could barely read or write; she'd learned much later in life the basics of writing but was well versed in the books of the Bible. She never worked anywhere else, or did anything else. We would arrive at the Perkins' each morning with the sun, and leave just before dark each evening, as she did throughout her life. On Sundays, she went to church, and that was it. She lived to be 94 (she died in 1988) and she worked in Ann Perkins' kitchen until her body simply wouldn't allow her to leave her home anymore. She lived out her last days in a small trailer on a tiny plot of land that she, too, never owned.

My (maternal) grandmother Martha also worked for Ann and Ellen Perkins, but because she was more the outdoors type, she worked in the fields. That's how she ended up meeting Joseph, my grandfather. He too worked at the Perkins estate and courted her--as any upstanding Southern gentleman should--until they married in the early 1950's. They were 'gifted' with the house as a wedding gift provided they tended the land--for free--for the Perkins'. The house sits on about 5 acres of Perkins land, acres of cotton, corn, and tobacco as far as the eyes could see. She never paid a dime for the house or taxes for the property, but every summer, we picked cotton, corn, and tobacco. Across the street, and behind the house, were gardens with rows and rows and rows of vegetables, fruit, and grains...you name it, it was growing in that damn garden. Next to the backyard garden was a huge tobacco shed where, after it was picked, it had to be stripped, processed, and cured. I spent so many hours cooped up in that shed smelling nothing but sweat, tobacco, and more sweat. And feet. *gag* I think that may be another subconscious reason why I hate cigarettes, lol (besides the other obvious reasons to hate smoking). 


Ann Perkins, the daughter of the duo, suffered an injury as a child and grew up paralyzed.  She could never leave a room without help: each morning she was carried in, placed in her favorite chair facing outside (so she could see all the comings and goings), and she sat in that room all day and watched TV on CBS from sun up to sun down. I was allowed to come inside at 11 to watch 'The Price is Right' each morning, and then to watch the news at 6 each evening; I had to get back to my chores immediately after. Ann was a kind, soft-spoken woman who rewarded me with peach ice cream on the sweltering days that I braved the heat on the second floor to dust The Doll Room. Servants were not allowed on the second floor except to carry her up and down the stairs, or to clean. Ann was a collector of dolls, new and antiques, as well as cats. She was the classic Cat Lady, with well over 20 cats living in the house and 20 more on the grounds outside. It was my job to dust the dolls in the doll room (which was stupid to me because no one was ever allowed to play with them so they never moved...but there was, admittedly, dust on them every now and again) and to collect the cats when they got stuck in a room or it was feeding time. A lot of times, i would spend that cleaning time pretending I was a princess who could afford to wear dresses and jewelry as lavish as those the dolls wore. They were my only real friends at that house, even though their blinking eyes creeped me the hell out, and my great grandmother always admonished me to never, ever touch any of them other than to dust them to perfection, lest I break or damage one that I couldn't afford to replace.

It was at that plantation house that I learned to fish, ride bulls (LOL), rope cattle, herd animals, and to stitch wounds (I never EVER wore shoes as a child and once, not paying attention while running from an angry pig, I stepped on a wooden plank with a rusty nail protruding through the top. She made me stitch it up myself as a lesson to pay closer attention next time, lol *you gon' learn today!*). It was also there that I was first exposed to the difference between light black skin and dark black skin. As a fairer child, I received more allowances and privileges than was typical for the servant staff. I was the only child allowed inside the Big House to watch TV; I was the only child allowed to work beside her relative, as most of the other maids had children that had to work outdoors all day. Most of the other children were boys, and were darker, and so weren't allowed inside. Ever, not even to use the bathroom. Most of the servants and their families used the outhouse anyway so it was expected of the children to use it too. I do remember using the bathroom inside, but only the one downstairs, NEVER the one that the Perkins' used upstairs. There were a few other little girls but I didn't play with them because they were mean to me; besides, I was a tomboy who played with the boys and the animals and never sat still long enough to do whatever it was they were doing. LOL. I was always in trouble for being somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. *smh* Very few servants were allowed in the house at all, namely my great grandmother, my grandmother, the young maid (whose name I keep remembering as Bet) who did the grocery shopping, and the foreman, Palmer, whenever he needed to bring in reports of whatever was going on outside.  Palmer lived on the property in one of the little old cabins which, I later discovered, served as slave quarters way back when.

One day, during one of my can't-sit-my-little-ass-still adventures, I came upon an old dilapidated barn. It looked like someone had set it on fire but the fire had been caught before it could burn to the ground. I remember it being really tall, like the tobacco sheds, and having a chain and lock on the doors. Of course, I broke some of the slats on the door and squeezed my lil hind parts in. It was pitch black inside except for what little light shown through the one window all the way at the top. There seemed to be a million birds flying around above, and there was bird crap all over the dirt floor. it smelled AWFUL. Before I could even get to look around, there was a loud banging on the door and I got called out. Palmer snatched me out of that barn so fast I couldn't see straight. He told me to never go back in there, that it had been locked for a reason and I needed to stop being so damn nosey. I gave him the full court press about why I wasn't allowed to go in there when I was allowed to go everywhere else on the grounds. It took a while but he finally, in exasperation, told me the story of how that barn used to be where slaves were taken to be whipped and hung. Said his father told him stories about it that had been told to him by his father, that everybody knew about it and that's why they all avoided it. He said he'd never actually seen anyone killed or whipped there, but he believed the stories 100% and didn't want me to get my hide whipped for snooping around. Yeah, i didn't bother to go back to that barn. Like, ever again.

There was very much a residual slave mentality on the property.  The older servants, including my great grandmother, even referred to (the deceased) Mr. Perkins as 'Massa Perkins'. I never met him and people rarely spoke of him so i didn't know much about him--and when they did, it was in very hushed tones.

My great grandmother always stressed to me the importance of putting God first, working diligently, staying out of trouble, and most importantly, keeping my head down and my mouth shut around White folks. (Clearly, she saw that I would have issues with this later in life) I think I annoyed her with all the questions of a precocious, curious child and more often than not, that got me smacked in the mouth on the REGULAR. LOL. Unlike my grandmother, my great grandmother thought it better to be unseen and unheard by White people and preferred to be left alone to quietly do her work in solitude. After she died, my grandmother began working at the House to recoup the loss of one maid. My grandmother was a tomboy firecracker who didn't bite her tongue for NOBODY and was all over the place, all the damn time. At one point, my grandmother got another job at a yarn factory and left the Perkins estate. When Ellen Perkins got sick, on her deathbed she requested that my grandmother be the one to care for her daughter Ann in her absence. So, after she would leave her full time job at the factory at 7 am, she would pick me up and I would spend my mornings with my grandmother running errands, cooking and cleaning, and entertaining Ann Perkins. By this time I was a teenager and would soon cease to spend my summers in the blazing heat of the NC country. 

I hear her voice in the voices of the women interviewed, and can see her face as clearly as if she sat right beside me today.  I can hear it in their songs, in how they tell their stories, talk about their parents and neighbors, how they seem to lace God and religion into every answer. Aside from the monotony and gloom clearly evident in their voices, it's clear how heavily they relied on God and faith to endure any given day. They spoke of life before the war, life after the war, hard life on the plantation...and though not all of them were from VA or NC, God is the one thing they all share in common. And any one of them could have been my great grandma, God rest her soul.

BD