Aunt Iccie’s Portrait

On her bedroom wall, next to the door that led to the front porch, my paternal grandmother kept a picture of one of her daughters. From an early age I knew she was my Aunt Iccie Joan for whom my older sister, Iccie Jean, was named. My sister was the third person in the family who carried this name. Aunt Iccie had died in Africa, I was told. As family members told her story at different points of my childhood and teens, she was a teacher or a missionary whose body was not returned to her family for a “proper” burial when she died. Some relatives concluded something horrendous had killed her – a lion or some other wild animal– and a couple of other relatives opined that her body was eaten rather than buried, although this last was not a popular opinion.

After my grandmother died, the picture was moved to the living room wall in my Aunt Evetter’s house, next door to where my grandmother had lived. Aunt Iccie had a resemblance to Aunt Evetter but as my sister Iccie and I grew to adulthood, my sister looked increasingly like the portrait of Aunt Iccie.

When I returned “home” for my Aunt Evetter’s funeral, the only thing I requested from her daughter was her Bible and Aunt Iccie’s picture. Both were in bad shape. In her declining years, Aunt Evetter could not and others did not care for most of her house.

There was bug and water damage to both Bible and portrait. In addition, the portrait had pieces broken around the edges with the bottom edge torn off, and a rip running down Aunt Iccie’s face. The frame was so damaged that when my cousin took it from the wall it broke into pieces. I took only the glass to protect the portrait from further damage as I flew home.

Through the years I thought about repairing the portrait but the quotes I received were more than I could afford. I put it on the top of one of the bookcases in the living room out of harm’s way. Every few years as I recounted Aunt Iccie’s story I would take out the damaged picture to illustrate the telling. But my faith in the family lore suffered the same damage as the portrait – frayed at the edges, torn in pieces, and ripped down the middle.

Then in 2018, amid immigration fears and demonization, someone in a closed Facebook group posted a picture of four generations of men in his family along with a heartwarming immigrant story. His many times great-grandfather immigrated alone from a European country when he was not yet 20 years old. With no marketable skills, he found a low-wage job and eventually married. Each generation moved up the salary mountain until the Facebook poster’s father who was the fourth generation and the first to attend college. A heartwarming American immigrant story that many people responded to with similar stories of their own families.

I responded that most of my ancestors were “unwilling immigrants” and many of the rest were immigrants who owned them. I also expressed my ignorance of my Native American heritage even though I knew there was some.

Rae responded to my post by saying she could help me find that missing heritage. My response was thankful but don’t bother because I knew it was untraceable. Rae was insistent. She had access to African American databases and knew she could help me if I would just provide her with a bit of info. I responded with a link to a long post I had placed on Ancestry.com in response to a request for information about African American family members with the last name Durr. And I gave Rae access to send me a private message.

Not many hours later, in a private message, Rae responded with a genealogy and supporting documents. It gave me chills to see a 1920 United States Census listing the names of my father and his siblings as children living with my grandparents. 

The other documents – phone book listings and draft registrations – were interesting to see but everyone on that census list has died:

• Leffie and Vashtie Durr, my paternal grandparents
• Aunt Iccie, their oldest daughter who died before her parents did; my sister was said to resemble her
• Aunt Evetter, 3 years younger and the last on the list to die
• R.T., my father who would later name himself Rip Timothy, 2 years younger than Aunt Evette; he and Aunt Evette were the last two siblings left alive for most of my years
• Jezebelle, my Aunt Jezzi whom I never knew; she died before I was born but I was told I looked like her
• Uncle L.F., 4 years younger than my father; he was named for my grandfather Leffie which is why he is listed as  “Jr” but my grandparents gave their sons intitials rather than names so they could name themselves when they were older; I knew my Uncle L.F. as Lafayette Durr and my cousin Sonny was his “Junior”; I was an adult when Uncle L.F. died.
• Aunt Rosie, spelled Rosey on this census report; I never knew she was the youngest child, 2 years younger than Uncle L.F.; she died when I was about 3; hers was the first funeral I’d ever attended and it was most memorable because it was the first time I saw my father cry deep sobs of sorrow.

The one document that made tears stream down my face was my Aunt Iccie’s death certificate. She had died in Africa, Liberia specifically, just as the family story said. But she died in childbirth. Her body was claimed by her husband and buried in Liberia because of “local custom.” They would not have had the ability to preserve a body long enough to ship it all the way back to Mississippi. Aunt Iccie, indeed, had been a teacher and a missionary at a Baptist school in Clay Ashland, Liberia.

Aunt Iccie now lives in my memory as more than a story that was hard to believe but a real person who died in a place that actually exists, in a way that makes sense yet still gives credence to those old family stories. I mourn and honor her.

After tears were shed and dried, after I had restored Aunt Iccie from family lore and incredulity to a flesh and blood relative in family history, I started looking for a way to restore Aunt Iccie’s portrait. After a little research, I went to Thumbtack, one of those sites that help you find “skilled pros” to do jobs. I chose Mariya Anderson, the first one to respond. First, she seemed to really care about doing well with my portrait. Also, I liked the examples of her work she had posted on her website. Finally, she promised a two-week completion date and the price was right!

I packed Aunt Iccie’s portrait along with the curved glass in about a ton of bubble wrap and sent her off with a prayer.

Almost two weeks later, I got an email to say it was done and since her husband was coming to my town, he would drop it off to me. The returned package included the original with the curved glass and two restored copies. She had even framed one of the copies!

I plan to search for frames and will gift my nephew with one along with this story. Aunt Iccie, with his mother's face, has been restored.

Poetry Half Marathon

In the midst of other busyness and feeling as exhausted as I can be without collapsing, I completed the 2016 Poetry Marathon last Saturday. Well, half of it. 
I think this is some of the best -- and worst -- writing I've done for a long while.

Click the link underlined above to see my collection of poems from the marathon. 

The last poem I wrote shows first. You can see a list of my other poems on the right. Below that are the prompts. Remember, I did only the first 12.

The Watchman on the Shelf

For thus the Lord said to me: “Go, set a watchman, let him announce what he sees. When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs, riders on asses, riders on camels, let him listen diligently, very diligently.”

Isaiah 21:6-7 (RSV)

I bought Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman the day it came out but, months later, I’ve yet to read it. My reasons fall into three areas.

First, I always treasured To Kill a Mockingbird as a Great American Novel if not the Great American Novel. In many ways it addresses American’s issues with race, class, and gender which have not changed much since Mockingbird was published in 1960. Just check out today’s headlines: isolated enclaves where the select erect barriers against the “other” who is not one of “our” kind and where they imagine grievances that affirm their opinions of people they don’t know. Even when faced with evidence that they got it wrong, they cling to their “truth” until it hurts. We still have lessons to learn from To Kill a Mockingbird about our history and our present lives.

Even if the themes did not resonate across two centuries, Mockingbird is literarily rich. When I teach the novel, I always read aloud the beginning of the first chapter – using the last vestiges of my Mississippi accent overlaid with exaggeration. When the class has ended the novel, I read aloud the end of the last chapter and immediately re-read the beginning of the first chapter again. Full circle! Don’t you love it?

Then there’s the complication of narrator and point of view. I lead students to distinguish Jean Louise Finch, the adult narrator, from Scout Finch, the child from whose point of view we experience the story. Jean Louise has an adult’s vocabulary, prospective, and insight into what connects people and events across time. She knows how the story will end and so is careful to recount what really matters so we can understand as much as possible about what it all means. Scout is only six as the story begins and, I believe, eight by the end of the novel. She does “listen diligently, very diligently” and notes rich details of her experiences. We can  understand more than she does about what it all means only because of the rich details she gives us.

Unfortunately, some schools fail to see this distinction of point and view and narrator. For those without vision, it’s a child’s story and when students read it when they are too young to “get” what Scout misses, it remains a child’s story and they never arrive at what really matters. Was it Boo Radley’s coming out? Was it Bob Ewell’s poverty of self-worth? Was it Tom Robinson’s tragic ending? Was it Mayella’s pitiful existence? Was it Atticus’ parenting skills? Was it Scout, Jem, and Dill’s loss of innocence? Or was it the mockingbird that symbolizes each of these characters? (Guess which one I think matters most?)

I read the online free first chapter of Watchman before the book was released and did not get that chill as I did with the first sentences of Mockingbird. There was nothing special in the language and I was not inspired to take on a southern accent and read aloud. By the end of that sample, I was nearly bored and didn’t really care about Jean Louise’s fate. I really didn’t want to read any more. That is why the novel stares at me from my bookcase rarely tempting me to dive in.

My third reason for not yet reading Watchman is on a lighter -- and yet more serious -- note. The pace of life in Maycomb and the people who populated Harper Lee’s fictional town resonated with memories I have of my childhood in Jackson, Mississippi. The Radley house was much like my Aunt Sarah’s, with rumors of a specter who came out when no one was watching to do unmentionable deeds. Like Scout, Jem, and Dill, my sister and I daily dared each other to touch Aunt Sarah’s front steps, her porch, her door. Both of us would run screaming with laughter if we caught any movement of a shadow in the window. But there was no Nathan shutting her in the basement, away from the world.

When she finally emerged into the light of my grandparents’ living room, Aunt Sarah smiled and offered us sweet treats with bright innocent eyes. Like Boo Radley, Aunt Sarah kept to the shadowy corners of rooms when adults were present but relaxed her guard with children.

When I eventually was given her permission to enter Aunt Sarah's little house down the road from my grandparents, I glimpsed a solitary life in a one-room dollhouse. The one room was clean and orderly with neatly groomed dolls filling every room much like my home is always filled with books. Dolls posed on chairs, propped on shelves, relaxing on the bed, and even tenderly placed against furniture on the floor but not too close to the wood-burning stove. There were no fewer than three dolls in each spot.

Even when I was young, I knew Aunt Sarah had a problem (one I could never name) when I saw her holding a conversation with a roach crawling up the wall. Aunt Sarah died before I heard her story but I never doubted there was one as full as Boo’s with sorrow and regret, mystery and borrowed joy.

When I read that first chapter of Watchman, nothing resonated. In fact, I experienced the opposite. Jean Louise already the "watchman" looking from the dining car, her arrival at the train station and everything that happens after she gets off was alien to my childhood in Mississippi. First, the trains were segregated and we were only allowed in the dining car to serve. Pound cake and fried chicken in a shoebox were always part of our journey from Chicago to Jackson. Getting home from the train station was nowhere near as pleasant for me, scrunched in an overcrowded cab with eight other “Negro” passengers and carrying my own suitcase. I found no points of identification with this stranger and the people she met on her way.

It doesn’t bother me that Harper Lee writes about a white experience. What else could she do but “announce what [she] sees” and hears? The experience of growing up white in the south is her experience. In fact, I appreciate the fact that she does not write much about the Negroes of Maycomb. When I teach the book, I spend a good amount of time on the scene when Calpurnia takes Jem and Scout to her church. Our only glimpse into Negro life may very well have been part of Harper Lee’s childhood experience, which explains why it’s part of Scout’s. The only other scene set in the Negro part of town was when Atticus goes to tell Helen Robinson of Tom’s death. In the book, Jem recounts his experience to Scout because she wasn’t there. It is likely Harper Lee had no direct experience of visiting a Negro neighborhood and there are only murky details mediated through Jem’s sleepy memory.

This leads me to the questions that occasionally tempt me to pick up Watchman. Do we learn more about the Negroes of Maycomb? Does Jean Louise venture where Scout did not/ could not? Do we learn what becomes of Helen Robinson and her children? Is Calpurnia still part of the Finches’ lives? What becomes of Dill? Does Jean Louise see Atticus with the same rose-colored glasses Scout wore? Has Maycomb changed in any significant way – as the result of world events if not the events we read about in Mockingbird? How does post-War War II Maycomb differ from post-Depression Maycomb?

If at least some of these questions are not addressed, I know I will be disappointed. Is it better to leave me with the satisfaction I gained from Mockingbird or to instill bitterness for Harper Lee’s failure to live up to the promise of her first novel?

More to come.

Dressing on the side: Another story in progress

            Brea was the kind of Minnesota woman who went from sandals to boots with no other footwear in between. In October, in a nod of acknowledgement to the climate, she’d wear long sleeves with her shorts and sandals, adding a jersey hoodie and boots to her longer shorts the closer the month moved toward Halloween. She rarely wore a winter coat before Thanksgiving, complaining along the way of the cold winds and snow. Her sweater and boots and jacket should have kept her warm.

            Brea was Rebecca’s wild child. She’d kicked off whatever southern heat might still cling to her genes and rejoiced in the ice of the land of a thousand lakes.

            Trish consumed sunshine through her skin. She gloried in the rays and the warmth, thinking of winter even in August as she stored memories along with the thermals. She divided her clothing into three seasons: summer, winter, and the in-betweens of fall and spring. She didn’t wear boots until the snow fell but by October, she’d stop wearing sandals and sleeveless tops. Everything in its season.

            Trish was Rebecca’s mild child. A person might think she carried the South in her veins and sought to thaw Minnesota from her blood.

            You’d think Brea needed taming, and you’d be right. But Rebecca heeding the warning about still waters knew it takes more than boots and clothing to regulate temperament. And Trish called herself a hot blooded woman.

Furious

To end your happiness

The gods will send you deep despair

They will conjure up horrors to haunt your dreams

They will shrink your joy

They will call out the  furies to torment your waking

To  feed you venom

For

Only gods may feast on ambrosia to satisfy all hungers
Only gods can savor nectar that quenches all thirst

The gods will not grant grace to  mortals

They will not salve you with balm 

They will not soothe your sorrows

For

The gods are jealous

They aim to kill your soul

Song for Marguerite Ann Johnson, A Free Bird

Are you singing

Now that your prayers are answered?

Is it for merriment and angelic choirs?

You’ve risen to the highest bough

And now

You can defy what is known

And soar through the night and the rain

You can sing at sunset

You can bathe in the Sargasso Sea

Or does sorrow yet plague you

Because you see us still searching for our diamonds here in the dreck?

Do you yearn to reach us again with your warmth?

With your voice

You healed our battered wings

With your words

You beat back our fears

With your life

You told us

That we, too, would rise

The cage door is open.

Go and breathe in the day

And watch your smile shimmering in the sun

As you rise above the river.

You can sing softly at midnight

When fears and doubts take wing,

You can sing us songs

Of heaven’s dawn

That carry us through our dark days,

Or you can rest.

Listen as heaven sings praise

To a weary soul at rest.

You are the reason

And the song.

2 June 2014

Pasodoble

Remember

When you wrapped me around your shoulders and

I hugged myself to you

like a consuming fire?

As we floated above the floor

I inhaled your air and exhaled my smoldering flame.

Until

You felt my love a dousing rain

Assaulting your blazing light,

smothering your cool points

You twirled a pirouette into a revolution

Entwined in your heat

I followed your rhythm

Did you know:

You carried me and the fire

As I leaned into your kiss

Your killing blow

hidden in the heat

hiding in the beat

Found my heart

I smoke at your feet

holding on to passion

drowning in the rage