Almost ten months went by—a lifetime to an eight-year-old— before I had even a clue about what had happened to Momma and where she was. Then, on one of the saddest occasions of my childhood —at a funeral, as it happened—I caught sight of her standing at a distance with a prison guard at her side. Until that piece of stark evidence showed up—a major puzzle piece that was only further explained decades later—I didn’t know for those months whether or not she was even alive.
To make matters more confusing, it was about this time that Ophelia was sent away. Now the second most important person in my life was missing. Explanations, as always, were vague; but many, many years later I learned that Uncle Willie and Aunt Ella Mae had decided that my twelve-year-old sister would be better off living in a kind of detention home and school for girls who had trouble conforming to rules.
With a full house, counting me and their own three kids, it was understandable that my uncle and, in particular, my aunt saw fit to establish a fairly strict code of conduct. But compared to the easygoing atmosphere that Uncle Archie and TT had maintained, and in contrast to the chaotic drama under Freddie’s drunken reign— where us kids could do what we wanted if we stayed out of his way—the new rules presented big-time culture shock. While Ophelia initially did her best to adapt to the rules, I initially rebelled, hating that I suddenly had a bedtime and had to do chores and that there was one way to do them.
Dishes? I had to do them if it was so ordered by Aunt Ella Mae—dark, tall, and big-boned, built like one of the last Amazons —who watched over us hawkishly in her cat-eye glasses. But dishes? This went against my rules. Actually, it was the subject of one of the few arguments I ever had with Ophelia when Momma had left her in charge and my sister had tried to force me to clean the kitchen—including the dishes. The one time in my life that I ever invoked a philosophy of Freddie Triplett, I refused, insisting, “Freddie says that washing dishes is for girls.” Ophelia was ready to kick my ass, but I ran away laughing.
There was no running from Aunt Ella Mae. At one point she made me do the dishes for a month because she claimed to have spotted some grease on a glass—after I’d sworn to having washed it. She smirked, saying, “I can see grease, and I don’t even have my glasses on.” That was only the beginning.
A woman who stood at least six inches taller than Uncle Willie—who was preoccupied with much more pressing worries than the execution of household chores—Aunt Ella Mae, in my estimation, had simply figured out how to give us more work so she could do less. Plus she really took the adage “waste not, want not” to heart. To conserve milk, for example, she had all of us kids take turns eating cereal out of the same bowl, with a fork, one by one. Once I got wise to her system, I volunteered to go last, knowing that when my cereal was eaten I could turn up the bowl and drink the lion’s share of the milk.
