as told to Jack Silbert
Grandma Lucy was, I guess, half American Indian. She worked at the Warren Green Hotel as a chef; I have a picture of her. And I think Mama’s father was an American Indian, but I don’t think my grandmother was married to him. Mama had two sisters, Aunt Helen and Aunt Annie. We knew Aunt Annie very well, because she lived not far from us. Mama said that there was no place for them to go to school, so her mother taught them a little bit at home.
When she met my father, he had come to date my mother’s mother. He was interested in Grandma Lucy. Mama said when she first saw him, she knew then that she was going to marry him one day. And her mother sat her down and talked to her about it. She told her, “Now you know, you only get married once.” Little did she know—she never met Elizabeth Taylor! But the other expression her mother used was, “If you make your bed, you’ve got to lay in it.” But my mother really wanted to go out with him, and he felt the same way about her. My grandmother let them go out together.
Not long after that, they got married. He was 30 years old, and she was 15, and that’s how they started their lives. She didn’t have an awful lot of time as a young girl growing up.
My earliest memories of my mother are her sitting in her rocking chair in the kitchen with… somebody. There was always a baby to take care of.
Mama was almost in Daddy’s shadow. Daddy was a very strong person. He was definitely in charge. Now, what happened when the two of them were alone, I don’t know. Mama would never say anything that would go against anything that he said we should do. But I do believe that she talked to him about things she felt were too harsh. Or if somebody wanted something, we knew enough to go ask Mama. Mama couldn’t tell us yes, but Mama could kind of soften up Daddy! Mama was always there for us.
If you wanted her opinion about something, it was better to talk to her when she was by herself. Because if Daddy was around, she wouldn’t have too much to say. It was almost like he was speaking for the two of them.
She always seemed to be happy. She never seemed to be depressed or discontented. My father would get upset with us occasionally, because we would want to take her places and show her things. And he would say, “You want to make her unhappy.” I asked him what he meant by that. He said there were so many things my mother has never seen or never experienced. I think he was a little bit afraid that she would change from the person she was. But he had nothing to fear, because she loved him so much. The thing that impressed me the most was how much she really loved him.
And she had unshakeable faith. Until I was about 12, nobody ever went to church. There was only one church to go to, the Baptist church. My father didn’t allow us to go to Mount Zion. Looking back now, I suspect that the pastor was a kind of a ladies’ man, and Daddy didn’t want us around him. The other church we could go to was First Baptist. Reverend Bass was so old, I’m surprised he was able to get up in the pulpit! But my mother had unshakeable faith. She did not go to church. But she talked about, “God will provide.” She always said, “God will provide.”
She was very calm, very patient, and very loving. She loved everybody, and everybody loved her. When children would come to visit—children of neighbors or friends, 5 or 6 years old—they would hop up on Mama’s lap. She would hold them and talk to them. I remember being a little jealous, thinking, “They’ve got their own mother. Stay away from my mother!”
We lived up on a hill. There weren’t a lot of houses close to us, because we had a fair amount of property. My brothers used to play with some boys who lived down the road. It was a white family, and they had a little kid who they called the Little Runt, because he was so small. My brothers and the older boys in this family would go—I don’t know what boys did—they would go out playing. And they didn’t want Little Runt to go with them. And he would come running to my mother. She would take him to the kitchen and give him something to eat, and sit him at the table, and talk to him. Sometimes he would get in trouble with his brothers and my brothers, and they’d go chasing him. And he’d come running into the house, and run to Mama! She would tell them, “Go away, leave him alone!” And he would sit there and cry, and she would talk to him, and calm him down. He knew as long as he was with my mother, they couldn’t hurt him.
And that’s how we kind of felt. Mama was always going to be there for us. The one great day in her life was when somebody came back home. When one of my brothers was in the service or had gone away on a trip, she would just wait for the day when they came back home.
As I got older, and left home, I guess I fell into the same pattern as the other children did. I would go home to visit, and take her things, and do things for her. I don’t remember, though, confiding in her, as much as some daughters confide in their mothers. I would always talk to my father. And things I couldn’t talk to him about, that I didn’t feel were appropriate, I would talk to my oldest sister, Lucy. It was almost like, I didn’t want to bother Mama about things.
But when my mother passed away, I regretted that. I wished I had spent more time talking to her and getting to know who she was as a person. I did that a little bit when she was ill, and I was surprised. Because my mother didn’t know how to write. And none of us thought about teaching her how to write until my youngest sister went to school. And she used to bring those tablets, where they would have the alphabet, and she taught my mother. We never knew she didn’t know how to write! And one of the things she wanted to do was to write poetry. I have about a dozen poems that she did after learning to write. Very serious topics. It wasn’t humor! It was more, what life is all about. She talked about love and devotion. She loved writing poetry. She had much more to give than I recognized.
She was a beautiful woman. Long, straight, black hair. Very expressive eyes. Never wore makeup her whole life. When she died, her skin was as if she was 20 years old.
My sisters and I decided what would go on her tombstone. And my suggestion was, “A woman of unshakeable faith.” And everybody agreed with that, so that’s on her tombstone. A woman of unshakeable faith.
Jack Silbert, curator