As hard as everyone worked all week, at least in my neighborhood, over the weekend they played and prayed even harder. No such thing as casual drinking in our part of Milwaukee. From Friday evening when the whistle blew at Inland Steel—where all three of my uncles worked, Archie and Willie until they retired from there and Henry until his dying day, which came much too early—the party began and lasted until Sunday morning, when it was time to go to church and pray for forgiveness.
Between the ages of four and five, at which point I was living with Uncle Archie and Aunt TT, I’d come to appreciate the familiar rhythm of the working week. My uncle and his wife maintained an easygoing, peaceful atmosphere without too many rules. A devout Christian, TT made sure we got that old-time religion in us. Every Sunday, all day, we spent at the Tabernacle Baptist Church, and in summers we attended Bible school daily, plus we accompanied her to any and all special midweek meetings and were present for the funerals of every member of the church who ever died, whether we knew them or not. Most of this I didn’t mind so much, considering all the entertainment value as I watched the various characters from the neighborhood I’d seen sinning all week now change their clothes and themselves. I loved the singing and shouting, the feeling of heat and passion, and especially the connection to community that I experienced at a time when I didn’t know exactly who or where my mother was.
TT never tried to be a substitute for Momma, but she provided love and comfort all the same. Nobody could cook like Bettye Jean, but my aunt did make an unforgettable hot-water cornbread that a growing kid like me couldn’t devour fast enough. Nor could I devour fast enough the books that TT seemed to have limitless funds to buy for me. My mother later reinforced the importance of reading, raising me with her own credo to spend as much time at our public library as possible. What she’d say to show me how powerful a building full of books could be was, “The most dangerous place in the world is a public library.” That was, of course, only if you could read, because, Momma explained, if you could read, that meant you could go in there and figure anything out. But if you couldn’t read, well. . .
It was TT, however, who first instilled in me the love of reading books and storytelling. Though I didn’t read yet, after TT read books to me, by looking at the illustrations afterward, I could partly remember the words and stories, and I felt as if I was reading already. There were books of Greek and Roman mythology, children’s classic fairy tales, adventure stories, and my early favorite genre—tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The story of the Sword in the Stone made a lasting impression on me, setting up the idea that someday, somehow, I would find the destiny that awaited me.
