Before I was to enjoy this land for even a decade, however, I was to discover a darker side. Racism – a contagion that irreparably damaged this land. Everyone–white and black–was its victim.
While I was a white person, seeped in privilege, I deeply loved a person of color. The person who raised me for the first eight years of my life, who protected me so long from this darkness, was my babysitter/housekeeper/mammy, Lee–whom I affectionately called Mammy Lee. She was an African American. Armed with collard greens, black-eyed peas and a sturdy dusting cloth, Mammy Lee single-handedly maintained this fragile world. Mammy Lee was parent, servant, and benevolent despot all rolled up into one. This 250 pound, five-foot tall, black woman assumed epic proportions in my life. Chewing tobacco, limping slightly, and occasionally rubbing a lucky Mercury-head dime tied around her foot with kite string, Lee enveloped my whole family in her arms and propelled us forward through all adversity; she protected us from reality, and gave us false security garnished with pecan pies and encouraging words. Lee set perimeters for all our lives.
I loved Mammy Lee. I can still feel her as she held me and squeezed — as if a hug and a shake could cure anything! Lee showed me where to find the fattest fishing worms; she helped me dig for pirate treasure. Lee both haunts and enriches my memory. Lee was the first anachronism that was so much a part of southern life that I met. I could never retreat into comfortable paternalism and racism again. She was a person. A real person. She was the first African American I ever loved. Thankfully she would not be the last. I had to find my way across generations of prejudice because she was all I had.
There was a desperation about Lee. She grew noticeably angry. Her world was changing quickly — too quickly — and her discomfort grew. She was mad at Yankees who came down here and made trouble for us; and she hated and feared stupid “white people†who frightened and beat her people. The Brown decision, and federal soldiers entering Little Rock’s Central High School marched through our quiet land with as much destructive force as Sherman’s march through Georgia. This appealing, seductive land was mercilessly, if slowly, being ripped open for the whole world to see. And inside this enlarging cauldron, a young white boy and a sweet black lady were growing up together–and apart–at the same time.