Mary

Her plain, homemade dress may have been a bit tattered but it was clean. Her black hair was graying and done up under a do-rag. Behind her pleasant smile, her unmade-up ebony features were nondescript. She was humming as she worked the string mop and foot tub around the splintered pine-wood floors of our old house, her plump five-foot frame swishing with every stroke of the mop. And I, barely one year old, was toddling underfoot with Mary’s every step. As she stepped back, so did I, plopping hind end first into the tub of hot, soapy mop water. Quick as lightning, Mary scooped me up and wrapped me in her apron and her arms, consoling me of my startled wailing. And Mama, on the other side of the kitchen, burst out laughing. Seeing that I was alright, Mary chastised Mama saying, “Miz Lott, you shouldn’t be laughing—that water’s hot! This baby could’ve been scalded.”

Obviously, I don’t remember the incident, but that’s the way Mama told it. However, I do remember Mary Fairley. For many years she was the only black person I knew. She became our cleaning lady shortly after Daddy and Mama bought our 40-acre farm in the upper Big Level community and moved out there from Wiggins in the spring of 1953. By that time, Mama had her hands full with two preschool-aged children, my older siblings Judy and Keith. And now she had a garden and a house and farm, plus she was pregnant with me—I was born that fall. As tight as Daddy was with his paycheck, he realized Mama needed some help.

Mary didn’t drive—like my Lott grandmother, she probably had never learned—so either Mama or Daddy would drive out to get her one day a week at her home in the Fairley Community up near Black Creek in the northeast corner of the county. Thursdays were her days to come, to mop and scrub, wash and iron, and do whatever other household chores Mama had saved up for her. If the garden vegetables were coming in, she would be out on the porch or in the yard under the shade of the pecan trees helping to shuck corn, snap beans, or hull peas and butterbeans. She would also occasionally feed and diaper us little ones and sometimes find the time to bounce us on her lap.

Though she was only about ten years older than Mama, Mary always seemed to me to be much older, grandmotherly-old. However, her age didn’t slow her down, and she certainly wasn’t afraid of work. She started working as soon as she arrived and, except for a brief rest for lunch, she didn’t stop until the day’s chores were done. She worked for us off and on for twelve or more years, all the way though the birth of my three younger siblings.

I sometimes wondered how we could afford a cleaning lady. The piddling amount we paid her for a day’s work was hardly enough, but money was tight in those days. After I got older, I found out that Mary worked for a few other Big Level families on the remaining weekdays, sometimes for Grandma and for Aunt Reicey. I supposed Mary’s family needed the few cents an hour she earned. I hope they appreciated her sacrifice and how hard she worked.

Often Mama would use Thursdays to go to Wiggins for groceries and to run other errands while Mary stayed with the babies. I vividly recall one such occasion when I was 7 years old. After lunch was over and Daddy had gone back to work, Mama loaded up us older kids for a trip to town while Karen, not yet one, stayed with Mary. It was one of those hot, early summer afternoons when a huge thunderstorm passed through the area giving us the heaviest downpour in a stretch of several consecutive rainy days. By the time we got back out to our road, we were astonished to see that Kirby Creek was out of its banks and that our little lane was impassably flooded. Mind you, water coming up on our road was not that uncommon, but Mama said that it was higher than she had ever seen it. As it was getting close to 5 o’clock and she didn’t dare try to drive through it, she decided that we should go over to Aunt Reicey’s and wait for Daddy and Uncle ’Nell to get in from work. When they came in 30 minutes later, Daddy confirmed that the water was too deep to drive through, even with his pickup, and it was still getting higher. But now that it had stopped raining, he felt sure the water would go down in an hour or so. We could just wait a bit.

An Almy stock photo I crudely edited to approximate Punk Lott Road flooded as I remember it.

Waiting was no problem, particularly not for me and my brothers. We had already paired off with our cousins Mike, Jerry, and Ken. But Mary wouldn’t wait, she was adamant that she had to get on home. She was sure her family would be worried about her and anxious to know why she was so late.  While I wasn’t party to the conversation, Daddy and Mama decided, or maybe it was Mary’s decision, that she should bundle Karen up and walk the half mile down the lane to where it was flooded and then wade across to where we would be waiting for them. Whoever came up with the plan, that’s how it happened. I rode with Daddy back over to our road in the pickup, and Mama and Judy followed in the car. Keith and John didn’t go, but I don’t now recall why. They must’ve stayed behind with the cousins.

After a brief wait, here came Mary in her bare feet, trudging through the mud, holding Karen in one arm and toting a paper sack containing her purse and shoes and maybe a diaper or two in her other arm. It was quite a sight! Had I not been caught up in all the drama and anxiety of the moment, I might’ve laughed.

The water had risen at least a foot in the hour since we came from town and now covered about 25 or 30 yards of the road. At its edge Mary hesitated saying “It sure looks deep.” With some coaxing from Mama and Daddy, she waded in. About a quarter of the way across, she stopped. At that point the water was already waist high on her short stature. With trembling in her voice, she declared, “I can’t do it, Miz Lott, I just can’t!” She then turned around and went back to the edge. With that, Mama turned to Daddy and said, “Honey, you’ve got to go get them!” He then pulled off his shoes and waded over to the other side. With Karen now on his shoulder and with one arm around Mary while she hoisted her sack over her head, they proceeded to make the slow walk across. When they reached the middle, with water chest-high on Mary, she hesitated again. We all assured her that she could do it, that it wouldn’t get any deeper. With that, she continued, much to our collective relief.

Safely across and all together again, Daddy said, “Russell, come go with me while I drive Mary home." I really wanted to go back to Aunt Reicey’s with Mama and Judy and Karen, but I didn’t dare protest. He helped Mary into the pickup, and with me in the middle we made a 30-minute trek over the muddy back roads of the county to the old Fairley place, taking a roundabout way to avoid both Bluff and Clear Creeks, which were undoubtedly also flooded. As we pulled up to their house—a shack really, small and unpainted with a tin roof—Mary’s husband, Hardy, was in the yard watching for us. He’d probably been out there for a couple of hours at that point, filled with concern and some consternation, as they had no telephone and we had no way of letting him know why we were so late. Daddy and Mary hopped out of the truck, both still wet, and proceeded to fill him in.

And with that, we made our way back to Aunt Reicey’s, where she and Mama had supper waiting. About 9 o’clock we drove home, finding the road now passable, the floodwater having receded almost as quickly as it rose.

AFTERWORD

A few weeks ago, as I contemplated relating this story, I began to ponder a detail I’d never examined before: Why did Daddy ask—insist almost, now that I think about it—that I accompany him that evening? The answer came as something of a revelation when it occurred to me. Whenever we would pick Mary up and drive her home, given the norms of segregation during that era, she would always ride in the back seat of our car, no matter who was driving. I don’t guess she’d ever been in our pickup. When Daddy and Mama decided that evening how we were going to get Mary home, he knew that it wouldn’t be right for a black woman to be alone with a white man in the cab of a pickup—he would need a human buffer to go along. He also knew that Mary wouldn’t agree to the arrangement otherwise. He knew that Mama and Judy would need to stay behind to tend to Karen and to supper. He could’ve asked Keith or John to go, but they weren’t around at the crucial moment. Thus, I was the one he chose. It amazes me now how quickly, maybe even without conscious thought, he came to that solution. I realize that that’s just another subtle indication of the insidious way the racial divide of the segregated South has permeated the very fabric of our being. But that’s how we all grew up. That, and a myriad other examples, still resonates and haunts us today.

Fairley Cemetery, Stone County, Mississippi (https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/59243/fairley-cemetery/map)

A Word to Ponder

in·sid·i·ous (adj): proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, with cumulative and harmful effects.
www.merriam-webster.com

Song of the Day

“We Ain’t Afraid of Work” by the Waymores (The Waymores, 2012)