After another few minutes, she said, “You know, Mags, I’ve been thinking, since this is my favorite holiday, I’ve decided that I want to be buried in my bunny outfit, okay? Will you see to that for me?” Maggie was taken aback. It was the first time she had ever heard Hazel mention anything pertaining to sickness or death, but she said, “Well, of course, Hazel, whatever you want, though you’re a long way off from being buried.”
“Oh, I know that,” Hazel said. “I’m planning on becoming the oldest living midget in the world.”
“You are?”
“Yes, and you know me, if I set my mind to do it, I will.”
Of course, three months later, when Hazel had died so suddenly, it had been difficult when Maggie and Ethel had shown up at Johns-Ridout’s Funeral Parlor with a bunny suit on a hanger, but last wishes are last wishes.
The day of Hazel’s funeral had been a real revelation. They had expected that all the real estate people in town and all of her friends would be there, but a good hour before the service was to begin, the church was packed to the rafters with people they had never seen before. The governor and the mayor were there, as well as all the local news media; representatives from clubs, organizations, theater groups, the fire department, the police department, and all the charities she had been involved with; and girls who had received scholarships from her. Plus, members from chapters of the Little People of America from all over the country had shown up. They said everybody at the Birmingham airport had nearly had a fit as each plane landed and all these little people came piling off by the busloads, all going to Hazel’s funeral. So many people came that hundreds had to stand outside the church and listen to the service on loudspeakers. As the preacher said, “It was a big turnout for such a little lady.” Even Ethel, who had known her better than anyone, had been surprised at the number of people’s lives Hazel had touched. That day, they heard stories about money she had lent and time she had devoted to people and causes she had never mentioned.
Poor Little Harry had been completely devastated by the loss. He had not even been able to come up with something for her tombstone. What could you possibly say about someone who had been your entire life? Ethel stepped in and took over and said as simply as possible:
Hazel Elaine Whisenknott
1924–2003
Gone but Not Forgotten
Little Harry left for Milwaukee two days after the funeral and never came back to Birmingham again. The office kept in touch through his family, but they said all he did now was sit in his room. Maggie understood how he felt. They all missed that three-foot-four dynamo ball of energy, that silly little funhouse of a human being who had kept them amused and entertained, who had pumped them up, lifted their spirits, driven them crazy, but, most of all, had made them feel special. Hazel had been that one in a million who seemed to have come out of the womb and hit the ground running; one of those rare human beings who only comes along once in a blue moon.
Brenda Reflects
Friday, December 19, 2008
DRIVING BACK TO THE OFFICE FROM LUNCH, BRENDA WAS IN A RARE reflective mood. She said, “You know, Maggie, when I was young, I used to want to be white, but not anymore. Ask me why.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then why did you want me to ask you?”
“Well … because … I’m trying to figure it out. It didn’t happen during the Black Is Beautiful thing or when Obama was elected; it’s even more recent than that.”
“Really.”
“Yes, and I’m thinking that Oprah and Queen Latifah had a lot to do with it … I mean, if they don’t mind being big and black … then I don’t mind, you know?”
“I can understand that.”
“And guess what else?”
“What?”
“I’m beginning to like being a little plump; what do you think about that?”
“I think it’s great. You know all that’s important is that you’re healthy.”
They drove a few more blocks.
“Maggie, I never told anybody this, but during the sixties, when all the marches and sit-ins were going on, with all the name-calling and the misery we had to go through, I sometimes used to wonder if it was even worth it. But not anymore.”
“No?”
“No. I feel a lot better about everything now, because if you think about it, I’m really kind of in style these days. Lord, who would have ever thought it, but I guess that’s what happens when you live long enough. Just think, not more than fifty years ago, most black women in Birmingham couldn’t hope to be more than somebody’s maid, and now one is getting ready to run for mayor.”
“That’s right,” said Maggie. “The world has changed.”
“Yeah, it’s hard for me to believe but … I guess now with Obama being elected, black is the new white.”
“It would seem so, honey.”
Brenda then looked out the window and sighed, “I just wish I could get back all those years when I felt so bad about myself. I just wish …” She didn’t finish her sentence, and tears rolled down her face. She said, “Life is so hard sometimes.”
Maggie reached over and put her hand on Brenda’s arm. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Oh, Maggie, you just don’t know how bad it feels to have people who don’t even know you hate you, and for something you had nothing to do with.”
Maggie started to tell Brenda something that she had never told anyone, but decided not to. But she did know how it felt. She knew exactly how it felt.
Brenda was right, of course; people of color were very much in style now, and as Ethel said, at the slow rate whites (particularly Presbyterians) were reproducing, she wouldn’t be surprised if in fifty years, they would be the new minority. If that were to happen, Maggie wondered if there would be a White History Month on A&E to celebrate all the old customs and featuring native dishes like tomato aspic, chocolate mousse, and dinner rolls. She hoped they would get their own month, or at least a week.
Chicago
1975
BRENDA, LIKE EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAD FOUGHT SEGREGATION, still had bad memories of things that had happened, not directly to her, but to other members of her family and to friends. After college, full of idealism, she had moved to Chicago to work as a teacher in the inner city. But most of her students raised in the projects at Cabrini-Green had seen too much too soon, and by the time she got them, she looked out on a room full of dead eyes. She tried so hard to reach them and thought she had helped a few of the girls but then, a few years later, she would drive by and see them working on a street corner, strung out on drugs. It was a heartbreaking experience. Having grown up in a nice middle-class neighborhood, she had not been prepared to deal with the harsh realities of kids who had been raised in the tough ghettos of the North. And that last year, when one of her students had pulled a gun on her after she had refused to let her go out in the hall to hang out with her boyfriend, she’d known it was time to quit. Like a lot of her friends who had moved north, she missed home, and when things eased up, they all started coming back to Birmingham. It wasn’t perfect. Just like everywhere else, there were still stupid people around, black and white. Unfortunately for Brenda, three of the stupid people happened to be her nephews Curtis, DeWayne, and Anthony.
When she was growing up, her heroes had been people like Sojourner Truth, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, but the nephews had their walls plastered with pictures of their favorite rap stars. Every one with a police record a mile long.
At present, all three nephews were strutting around town, sporting gold chains and diamond earrings, wearing baseball hats perched sideways on top of do-rags, with their underwear sticking out of baggy pants. Their grandparents and parents had been college graduates, but all three had dropped out of high school at fifteen and now, between them, they couldn’t string a sentence together. If they said, “You know what I’m sayin’ ” one more time, she would scream. Instead of going forwa
rd, they had gone backward.
She was so disgusted with them that she wouldn’t let them come over to the house anymore. Thank God for Arthur, her other nephew. He had a good job in Atlanta with CNN, and her niece Sandra, Robbie’s daughter, was majoring in history at Birmingham-Southern College. Sandra had a head on her shoulders. But the nephews were driving Brenda crazy. She wished all three had one neck and she had her hands around it right now. They might be fooling other people, but she knew darn well what they were up to. When she got elected mayor, one of the first things she was going to do was round up every dope dealer and pimp in town, black or white, and sling every one of them in jail. And if she had to build new jails to hold them all, she’d do that, too.
Although Birmingham had had a black mayor since 1979, she would be the first woman mayor, and it was about time. She had no doubt she would win. Hazel had assured her she could do anything she wanted, and Hazel was never wrong. And after she became mayor, she just might go on to become the first black governor. Some of her friends were still a little apprehensive about her getting too hopeful. They said, “Obama or not, this is still Alabama.” Maybe if she had been beaten or, like her sister Tonya, had been knocked down by the fire hoses or thrown in jail, she might think differently. Those who had gone through the marches said she had never really had the real “black experience,” and they could be right. But, sadly, she couldn’t change the past. She had to think about the present. She wanted people to do better right now.
Of course, she was angry about what had happened in the past, and she hated with a passion how her ancestors got here. But selfishly, she was glad she was here now. She loved her home, and besides that, Brenda believed with all her heart that God had a special plan for her and she was exactly where she was supposed to be at the exact right time. And who knew? The way things were changing so fast, anything could happen. A black woman from Birmingham had already been America’s secretary of state, and Regina Benjamin, a black woman from southern Alabama, had just been named surgeon general of the United States. As Hazel had said, where else in the world could a three-foot-four woman become a millionaire? Or a black woman like Oprah become a billionaire? Brenda couldn’t help but be a little hopeful. But as always, progress had not come without a price.
Another Side to the Story
IN HISTORY BOOKS, THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT WILL ALWAYS BE viewed as a great triumph, but for those who lived through it, black or white, it was not easy.
The year Maggie was Miss Alabama, she arrived in Atlantic City for the Miss America Pageant, excited and hopeful. And as the days went by, she had reason to be hopeful. In the preliminary judging, she won first place in the evening gown competition, and after seeing her for a few days, the press had already listed her as most likely to win.
Everybody had been so encouraging that when the time came to ride in the annual Miss America Parade down the boardwalk, Maggie was feeling on top of the world. It was a cool, crisp, September day, and hundreds of people had already lined up on both sides of the boardwalk, waiting for the parade to start. Every state had its own float, and alphabetically, the Miss Alabama float was always the first to appear, so naturally, they wanted it to make a big impression and be as beautiful as possible. The year Maggie was Miss Alabama, the float was particularly spectacular. A group of the top floral designers from all over the state had flown to Atlantic City the day before and had spent the last twenty-four hours decorating the Alabama float with bushels of Alabama cotton, magnolia, gardenia, dogwood, and azalea blossoms they’d had shipped in from all over the state. Then the entire float had been sprinkled with hundreds of silver stars, in keeping with their “Stars Fell on Alabama” theme song. That morning, they carefully placed her on the float and draped her white gown all around her throne and waved and cheered for her as the parade began. It was so exciting riding down the boardwalk, seeing all the people lined up on either side of the boardwalk and all the little souvenir and saltwater taffy shops. Her float had not traveled more than a block and a half when it happened. Maggie did not see who threw the first bucket, but she heard the gasps of the crowd, and when she turned to look, the contents of the second bucket of mud hit her on the side of her face. At first, it was simply such a shock, and she was not sure what had happened; it wasn’t until a moment later that she looked down and saw her lovely white gown splattered with mud and garbage. But the float kept moving down the boardwalk, and she couldn’t get off. She didn’t know what to do, so she just sat there through the entire parade, trying not to cry, trying to keep smiling, hoping that maybe people wouldn’t notice that her gown was filthy and that her hair was matted with mud.
Fortunately, the incident was kept out of the papers. Nobody, particularly Atlantic City or the Miss America Pageant, wanted bad publicity. “It was just a few crazy people trying to cause trouble,” they said. It had only happened to her because Alabama’s was the first float to go by. Everyone assured her it was just a fluke, a prank not personally aimed at her. But that was not the end of it. On the night of the pageant, when her name was called, it started slowly and quietly, and then as she walked around the runway, the boos and hisses became louder. Evidently, this had been a planned protest against the state. People had been strategically placed all around the auditorium, so no matter where she was on the runway, she would be sure to hear them. Each time she appeared onstage, she heard them, and later, during her talent number on the harp, the sounds of the booing rattled her so that her hands shook badly, and she missed a few notes and almost lost her place several times.
Later that night, after the pageant was over, Maggie could tell by the way her mother and her chaperones looked at her that they had also heard the boos and hissing and were anxious and worried that she might have heard them, but she pretended she hadn’t. However, the judges must have heard them, because they had taken an unusually long time in reaching a decision that night. The next day, a lot of people in the press said she should have won. Some said she didn’t win that year because she was from Birmingham. But nobody would ever know for sure. Everybody, including her mother, said that they had not even noticed that she had skipped a few notes in her talent number. Maggie knew, though, and she would never forgive herself for disappointing everyone.
However, a few days later, when she returned home from Atlantic City, hundreds of people met the train and cheered for her, just as if she had won. Alabama may have lacked a lot of things that other states had, but loyalty had never been one of them.
The mudslingers and the booers and hissers who had traveled to Atlantic City had been terribly disappointed that their actions had not made the papers, but no matter, they were still very pleased with themselves. They had made a statement.
’Twas the Day before Christmas
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
AT TEN A.M., ETHEL WAS SITTING IN HER LIVING ROOM IN HER lavender chenille robe, sipping eggnog and opening her last batch of Christmas cards, grumbling out loud to her two cats. When she read the card from one of her nieces, she said, “Damn it, I don’t want anybody donating money in my name to some charity. I want a present, and look at this. Thirty-seven Christmas cards and not one says, ‘Merry Christmas.’ It’s all ‘Have a Joyous Season,’ ‘Happy Holidays,’ or some such nonsense. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake! Well, you can thank the goddamn ACLU for that,” she added as she continued throwing the cards away, one after another, in the trash can beside her, until she opened one from a friend in her handbell choir that actually had “Merry Christmas” on it. “Well, finally,” she said, and she stood up and placed it on the mantel with the others. A couple of minutes later, she got up and put her new welcome mat out at the front door:
PEOPLE BRINGING TIDINGS OF JOY,
KINDLY STEP BEHIND THOSE BEARING PRESENTS.
Across town, Maggie was getting ready to go to work. Although December was known as the “dead as a doornail” month for real estate, she had decided to hold the house open through the holidays. She had hir
ed a crew to come and hang lights, and she’d had all the hedges trimmed neat and clean. And a week ago, she had hung a lovely evergreen Christmas wreath with a big red bow on the door. She’d placed little sprigs of holly on all the fireplace mantels and around the mirrors in the entrance hall and had Christmas music playing all through the house. Every day, after she lit a big roaring fire in the living room fireplace, she opened all the curtains upstairs and downstairs, and then she and the house stood ready, waiting in anticipation, just hoping for the right person to come in and see how wonderful it was. But day after day, almost no one came. Poor Crestview. It tried to be bright and cheery all day, and each night, Maggie could almost feel its disappointment as she closed the curtains and turned off the lights. It was the same today. She had suspected that the day before Christmas would not be very good for an open house, but she had hoped.
She had just finished closing the last curtain and was about to turn off the hall lights when her phone rang. It was Brenda.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come over here and be with us tonight? Robbie said she’ll come pick you up and take you home.”
“Oh, honey, that’s so sweet, but really, I just want to stay home by myself tonight.”
It was her last Christmas Eve on earth, and for once, instead of making up excuses, she had actually told the truth. It was a start. Too late, of course. But as usual, that night, she started to worry that she had hurt Brenda and Robbie’s feelings. Lord, it never ended. If you did tell the truth or if you didn’t, there were always consequences. Human interaction was difficult at best.