My friend Emo posted her recent experience at a healthcare reform town hall meeting today and it's been on my mind all day. It made me think of this excerpt from Kevin Sessums' "Mississippi Sissy:"
"Did you catch the Oscars last night, Matty?" I had asked her that morning. "Can you believe a nigger won Best Actor?"
Matty May sat down on the bed. A long slow sigh slid from her. She reached over and took a sip of the Tang she liked to drink instead of a morning cup of coffee. "Oh, baby...," she kept saying over and over and running her palm along the chenille spread. "Oh, baby...." The look of sad resignation in her eyes--all slyness had disappeared from them--was the same I had seen in my mother's only the day before in her hospital room, a look of utter fatigue, defeat. "I thought you was different, child. Lawd be, if they can get you t'sayin such things, there ain't no hope. No hope." She started to cry. I sat down next to her and reached out and held her hand. I turned her palm over and, as I loved to do when taking a nap with her sitting at my side, I gently rubbed her calluses with my fingers, amazed by their toughness and how very tender they made me feel. "No hope. No hope," she kept repeating.
"Nigger's a ugly word?" I quietly asked her, trying to understand this newest storm of tears in my presence.
"Child, it's d'ugliest. Jesus never say nigger in d'Bible. God made us colored folk in His own image, too, you know. So if we a nigger, God a nigger, too. You think about that. And you think about old Matty cryin' here like this, if you ever think about sayin' that agin." I looked up at her and asked her what I should call her then, since my grandparents, careful never to curse around me, used the word several times a day within my earshot. She straightened her bent shoulders and roughly pulled me up by the collar of the shirt she had just ironed for me to wear to school. She stood me up right in front of her. She always made sure to use a sweet tone when addressing me, but not in that moment. Her voice took on a hard edge, not lashing out at me exactly, but making me notice the angry dignity with which it was suddenly imbued. "Ah-woe!" she said, that special exclamation she always used for emphasis when she wanted your attention and was sure to get it. "I got a name, child. call me by my right name--Matty May. That's got a pretty sound to it. You don't need to use some ugly name when my mama give me two pretty ones. Sometimes when I'm shopping at Paul Chambers," she said, referring to the owner of the general store where many of the country folk in the area shopped for groceries, work clothes and gasoline, "and I hear some white fool use that word around me I just say my name over and over in my head to drownt it out, Matty May Matty May Matty May. Now I got a new one I can use--Poitier Poitier Poitier," she said, practically singing the name, her face aglow with pride." Sounds almost as pretty as my own."
I helped her make up the rest of my bed that morning. "Matty May," I asked, "when somebody calls me a sissy at school, can I say your name over and over in my head to make it go away?"
Se teared up again. She offered me the last sip of her Tang. I took it, defying my grandparents' admonition never to get a colored person's germs. "Child, you can use old Matty's name all you want," she said, kissing me on top of my head. "Plenty of me to go around now that I got something as pretty as Sidney Poitier to pronounce inside myself."
President Carter's comments last night were not "playing the race card." He spoke as an enlightened man who has witnessed throughout his life the ugly, painful truth of our American story. Sessums' story serves as a reminder of how far we've come. And today's cultural and political environment reminds us how far we've yet to go.
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Your post brought tears to my eyes. How easy it was to read. How painful it was to know the pain Mattie May felt when people said nigger around her. How it hurt to know that here we are in 2009 and there are people who still wallow in festering hate. Why do they hate? Perhaps the hate is fueled by the knowledge that the treatment given to African Americans
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After reading your post, I kind of had an idea of what your friend witnessed at the healthcare reform town hall meeting. I was saddened, only for a fraction of a second, but I didn't let it overwhelm me. I know that the majority of people are not ignorant, racist, or prejudice ass hats. What I did like about your post is the similar experiences that I shared with the author Kevin Sessums. What many people don't know about me is that I have a blond haired, blue eyed uncle. We may not be blood related, but he is my uncle. You see, I was raised by grandmother. She was half Black and half Hispanic. I am not embarrassed to say that she was divorced, and raised five kids alone, and she worked her ass off as a maid for an upper white middle class family. The family she worked for had a son. I guess you could say she was a nanny to him as well. He grew up with my aunts and uncles because his parents frequently left him under the care of my grandmother when they traveled. He spent more time with my grandmother than he did his parents. My grandmother, to him, was that mother he needed so much. Over the years, my family grew to love him and see him as family, and we all accepted him for who he was, and he accepted us as well. I think he loved my grandmother because she accepted everything about him, and his parents could not. They had issues with him being gay. My grandmother died when I was a young child. She raised me too. And my best and most memorable moments are shared with her. Over the years, many people have passed on in my family, and at the funerals, I can always count on seeing him there, paying his respects to our family- my grandmother's family. He lives in another state now, and we hardly ever see him, except for the funerals, but we know, and I am sure he knows, that he will always be a part of us. I guess it just shows that love has no boundaries, whether it is color or sexual orientation. I do plan on ordering that book. And I look forward to more posts from you…and flower porn. ;)
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