THIS LIFE OF MINE

No! I will not give up my baby. I said this to the nurse at the county hospital in Memphis, TN. It was the hospital for the poor. I mean to say, the hospital only blacks or the very poor whites could go. She shouted back at me and said “You are only fifteen; I don’t care if you are married. You can’t take care of a baby. Give her to a family that can afford to care for her. Someone who can give her what she needs. I woke at three with pain the morning before, pain I never thought a person could have without dying. Then I knew having a baby was nothing nice, nor was it going to be easy. The pain was so bad it was shooting up and down my small body. I was screaming so loud it woke up my aunt Bea. Aunt Bea was the women I loved almost more than my own mother. She had taken care of me most of my life, as you will see. Aunt Bea said, Girl we have got to get you to the hospital, with no car and no one around at that time of morning. Aunt Bea quickly called a cab. While waiting on the cab my pain grew more and more until I started to throw up. Finally the cab showed up and I got to the hospital. While Aunt Bea filled out papers they hurried me to the delivery room. I messed all over myself while delivering the baby. But five hours later I had the most beautiful baby girl .She looked just like a bald headed picture of her father, who had been sent to Korea to fight in the Korean War. He had been drafted about a year after we got married and four months into my pregnancy. Now I lay here listing to this woman telling me to give up a part of me. She must have lost her mine I would never do my baby the way my mother did me. I would kill her first and pay for it later if she put a hand on my baby to take her from me. My little Ginny as she would be called meant the world to me. I know it would be hard, but by the grace of God we will make a way, no matter what it would take. John White my husband didn’t get back from Korea until Ginny was nine months old. She looked so much like him. He said he was going to come to Memphis from Tupelo to get us from Aunt Bea house to take us to his family house. He just smiled from ear to ear once he looked at her, but she would not let him hold her and just cried when he tried to. It took about two weeks for her to warm to him, and then they were like peas in the pod. After John came back from Korea he could not find work nowhere but, the cotton fields he had left before he went to war. So we had no place to stay, but with my in-Laws Mary and Sam White. They lived outside of Tupelo in a place called the Black Bottoms. Mississippi was a hard place to do better for you in the 1950. We lived in a small shack with six of John’s brother and sisters and his two uncles. But for the first time in my life I felted love like never before. Having dinner with a table that only had four chairs and sometimes ten or more peoples waiting to eat was really something. Some of them were sitting on the floor others standing along the wall. We were all waiting for my mother-in-law to put the food on the table. It would be four pans of cornbread, four or five chickens with two big pots of peas or beans. I not being use to so many people at the dinner table, unless it was a holiday, would just stand back and wait for everyone to get there plates or tin pans full, than go to the table. By the time I looked to get my food everything was about gone. My Mother-in-law was watching me and mouthed girl you have to dig in like everyone else. You are only about 110 lbs. and need to eat. So she herself started putting my food up first before putting it on the table. It was so good, she really could cook. Those were some of the most wonderful times of my life. Pa Sam was a very poor farmer from Arkansans, who had come to Mississippi for a better job. The cotton fields paid more than picking beans. He met and fell in love with Ma Mary, but her parent did not like him. Her parents were well educated teachers and wanted better for her. She had been born not being able to hear nor speak, she learned to read lips and mouth back to you. But Pa Sam grew on them because he did not give up and so he begged for her hand in married. They were marry and ended up having seven children Dot, Herman, twins Lee and Lily, Hank, John and Mae. And all of them could hear and talk, which was a blessing from the lord. Dot the oldest became pregnancy and Pa Sam like to have beat her to death. Back then not being marry and having babies was a no-no. When her daughter was about two she married her father. Herman and Lee went on to move up North, sick of cotton fields. Lily went on to marry, which left Hank, John, me, Ginny and Mae with her daughter that was about one year older than Ginny. Mae had gotten pregnancy and Pa Sam did not say very much at all to her, she was the baby girl after all. Mae and I were friends before I met John from school and at church, and we would stay friends for Life. Living with my In-law did not bother me; it was just that I wanted my own place. We just did not have enough money right than, but by God’s grace we would soon I hoped. Getting up at sunrise going to the fields and working to sundown would weigh you down. The children would play under a tree not far from us, so you could watch them there. Ma Mary worked for the white family, who‘s land we lived on. Mr. Clark and his brothers own the land, the town store and everything else in the town. She cooked and cleaned for them so she did not have to go to the cotton fields.