''I Won't Be Denied''

Isn’t it amazing how the mind absorbs and projects the incidents of life?  I remember a cold winter day in Atlanta, Georgia at my great aunt’s home (Aunt Ellen) we had just finished a hot breakfast of hot biscuits, jelly, butter, streak-a-lean bacon and eggs and coffee for the grown ups when my mother’s father showed up unexpectedly.  That was the first and last time I saw my grandfather.  I was in awe of him because he was a tall, dark, handsome man that spoke in a mild mannered voice that made you want him to keep talking. I remember thinking wouldn’t it be fun to have my grandfather around me all of the time, but that wasn’t to be because just like he appeared he left the same way going back to Chattanooga where he lived.  You see my mother and father met fell in love in Atlanta where I was conceived, then they moved to Chattanooga where I was born.  When I was a toddler, they moved back to Atlanta where my brother was born.  He was so pretty, curly headed light brown skin little boy.  His name was Roy after my father’s brother whom I adored; I always called my brother “Little Brother” so the nickname stuck. 

Times were really hard, and money was very scarce.  My uncle got a job for my dad in Chattanooga (my hometown) and we moved back where we stayed.  My mother found a job doing domestic work.  Back then people rented rooms with the use of the kitchen and bathroom.  My mother was a tall, reddish brown-skinned, full bosom woman, with beautiful light brown eyes and a head full of beautiful hair. She was a vision of loveliness, but there was always sadness about her. She lost her mother at the age of fourteen years old after which she was thrown from place to place with relatives that weren’t very nice to her.  After she and my father moved back to Chattanooga she was disappointed in love because of him being young and “sowing his wild oats” as the old folks use to say.  When my mother went to work, my dad would come home at lunchtime, sometimes bringing the woman he went with along and would make us go outside to play (me and my little brother). Even then, I had sense enough to know this was wrong.  The lady where we stayed (I’ll call her Mrs. Ann) would sneak and tell my mother what had gone on while she was at work.  It would hurt her deeply, but she never said anything, until one day she just got fed up and called her step-brother (Uncle James). He told her to get a cab and come out to stay with the rest of the family until she could get on her feet and he would help her all he could.

Two or three nights before we left my dad, I had ten pennies laying on the dresser that had been given to me and I was excited about what I was going to buy with them (back then you could buy quite a bit of treats with ten pennies).  I went to bed happy and woke up to see my pennies gone.  I knew right away, what had happened to my little treasure.  My temper flared; my mother took me by the hand and said don’t say anything about the pennies being gone because your daddy will whip you. I had to keep my mouth closed even though I was upset, but even back then I vowed “I Won’t Be Denied”. When I get grown I’m going to let him know how I feel. For some reason, the time as yet has not presented itself.

 Well, Mrs. Ann came back with more news and my mother began to get very tired of this carrying on behind her back. She began to take on extra work of washing and ironing to save money so we would have enough to carry us over after moving.  In the meantime, Mrs. Ann’s brother-in-law and his wife stayed upstairs.  He was tall, thin, and good-looking with nice hair. His wife, who I’ll call (Aunt Doe), was mixed and simply beautiful; her father was white and mother black. All of the kids in the neighborhood dearly loved her because she was a caring, sharing individual, but (Uncle Lee) was sneaky, dirty-minded person that would give us candy not to tell that he was feeling on the private parts of the little girls eleven and up that came over to play with Mrs. Ann’s nieces. One day we went upstairs and asked Uncle Lee for some candy. He told us we couldn’t come in because Aunt Doe was gone to work. He hurried and gave us the candy and told us to go back out to play.  Just as we started down the steps, a familiar voice said, “Are they gone Uncle Lee”? He answered, “Yeah, they gone”, but we weren’t; we stayed quiet because we knew she would have to come out to go home, and when she did we would see her. Sure enough, out she came and when she saw us sitting on the steps, she got mad and yelled at us.  We yelled back at her saying, “We going to tell your mama, we going to tell your mama”. Of course, she didn’t want that so she buttered us up with more candy and by the time Mrs. Ann came out of the kitchen where she was cooking dinner to see what all of the noise was about, the girl had bribed us with candy and sweet words.