Today's conversation turned to what we can't escape, that event in Charlottesville that has thrown a mirror on America's racist sinister side. My father, now 71, offers a unique perspective on the a forgotten world. His eyes first opened in the old South in Central Florida. He rode on the back of the bus, went to separate schools, and heard about people being lynched. He tells stories to us with ease, ranging from ones involving flaming bags of dog poop to that one time someone tried to shoot at him as he rode his bike as a child.
He said, "Baby, when I see those white supremacists marching around with the full support of Donald Trump...when I see the Speaker of the House proclaiming that they hold the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court...I realize that they're emboldening people to do things, horrible things, without repercussions...because they can. The police just stood around and let stuff happen.
"These are the people that I grew up with, like Miss Bess."
"Who is Miss Bess, Dad?"
"I never told you this story? Well, you know your grandmother used to work for white people across the tracks in Brewster. That was uptown for us. One of the ladies she worked for was Miss Bess."
"I knew that Grandma worked as a domestic," I replied.
"She worked for 50 cents an hour. She cooked, cleaned, and did everything women like Miss Bess didn't want to do. Sometimes Miss Bess would cut her loose early just to avoid paying her a full days wages." Dad's tone of voice changed as he talked about the memory. "One day Mama came home early. I must have been about six years old. She was in the kitchen cooking, and I was outside playing. Here comes Miss Bess up to the house. She told me to call my mother from the house."
My father went on to tell me that my grandmother greeted Miss Bess as she came out the house. "Hi, Miss Bess."
In front of my father, Miss Bess then said, "I can't believe you took that fountain pen, Cora."
My grandmother replied, "Miss Bess I didn't take a pen."
"Yes, you did. You stole a pen."
My father then told me that at that moment, my grandmother got upset and begged Miss Bess to believe her, that she didn't steal a pen. Then Miss Bess said, "If you don't give back the pen, I'm going to set the sheriff on you." Miss Bess then strode away leaving my terrified grandmother and my father in her wake.
At that moment my grandmother held her hand out to Miss Bess as tears ran down her face and panic took over. She cried and started praying aloud. She didn't take the pen, and the prospect of a white police officer believing a back woman's innocence seemed unlikely. There was no justice system in the Old South. My grandmother was a woman had childhood memories of white men shooting up her church during the Rosewood massacre as they looked for a non-existent rapist, so fear and panic were her responses.
Then Dad had stopped talking. Not realizing what was happening I asked my dad, "What happened, Dad? Did she find the pen?" There was no answer. "Dad?"
On the other end of the line my father replied through the tears of a child, "Les, let me get myself together." It was barely intelligible. At the the sound of my father's tears, I realized that he was transported back to that moment in time where he was powerless to help his mother, where he cried because his precious mother's freedom was at stake. "And I was telling Mama not to cry all while I'm crying too. My Mama prayed and cried out to God because she didn't know what to do."
A little while later Miss Bess came back to the house with an offering, a big brown paper bag full of old pots and pans for for my grandmother.
As Miss Bess offered the apology, my grandmother, with a supernatural calm said, "Miss Bess, I can't work for you anymore."
My father told me that Miss Bess started to cry, but my grandmother was done with Miss Bess. She never went back to work for that woman again. It took few more minutes for the tears to disappear from my father's voice. He said, "That kind of thing leaves a scar on your heart, a wound that re-opens when I see the stuff that's happening in this country, people fighting to return to a time when a black person had to fear everything. People walking around with guns to create fear."
I remember my car hitting a piece of debris, and then I kind of snapped out of that uncomfortable feeling that happens when you hear your father cry. Over 60 years have passed and that memory turned my father into a six year old boy who watched his mother frantically contemplate losing her freedom over a false accusation.
And now the memory of my fathers tears belongs to me.
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