Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [136]
“Yes. As far as I know, she is.” Aunt Mabel walked out of the kitchen without saying a word. She returned with a large photo album. Using her apron, she dusted the cornbread crumbs off the table, put the album down, and began to give me my history.
Aunt Mabel had pictures of my mother’s side of the family dating back to the early 1900s. She was quick to point out all of the “real Africans.” Some of the pictures looked like they had been drawn and then photographed. Looking through that album, I met my maternal grandmother, Elizabeth. Her mother, Hortense. I met my grandfather, Samuel, and his mother, Francine. I met cousins and aunts and uncles, and then, I met my mother, Sarah Elizabeth Jefferson. She looked like an older version of Gemmia.
Sarah was five feet eleven inches tall, which made her three inches taller than Daddy. She was slender, with very large breasts. There were pictures of her with shoulder-length hair, but in most of them, her hair was pulled into a bun that sat on top of her head. I saw pictures of her with my father, with her sisters, and with her mother. In some she posed on cars, in others she was standing on steps, or next to trees. When I saw the picture of my mother holding me in her arms, I fell to pieces. I knew then that the lady in the hospital room, at the cemetery, in the kitchen had been with me all of my life. I had a mother who loved me. She was real and she loved me.
Aunt Mabel told me all of the family stories and secrets, who begat who, who begat and lied about it, who begat and gave away. She had told me an hour’s worth of hilarious stories before she told me my parents’ story.
“Your mother fell in love with a married man when she was sixteen years old. She was headstrong. When she made up her mind, it was made up for good. Anyway, this guy ups and moves from Mississippi to New York, so your mother decides that she will follow him. She got a job working with the Pennsylvania Railroad as a porter. That way, she could travel back and forth to see him without havin’ to pay. Half the time, when she got to New York, he wouldn’t even see her, and that made her sick. When she and her girlfriends had time off, they would go partyin’ and drinkin’, tryin’ to help your momma get over her broken heart. Them friends was Dora and Nadine.
“Anyway, they was dancin’ in a club one night. Your momma sho’ could dance. She would swing her little skinny-legged self all over them guys in the club, and they loved it. One night she met your daddy and forgot all about that other no-good-fo-nothin’ man. Your daddy was a big-time gambler, and he was pretty. Sarah said she wanted a pretty man to be the daddy of her babies. She decided that your daddy was pretty fine. She called me and told me he was pretty enough to give her some babies.
“Nadine and Dora stopped workin’ the trains to get married. Your momma wanted Mr. Pretty Man to marry her, but he wouldn’t. We didn’t know he couldn’t ’cause he already had a wife. He would meet your momma every time she came to the clubs. But just before your brother was on the way, she took sick, had to stop workin’, and was stuck in New York.
“When she found out Ray was on the way, your daddy took her in, wouldn’t marry her, couldn’t marry her, but he took her into his mother’s house, right around the corner from where he lived with his wife. When the railroad told Sarah she had to come back to work, she was too sick to go. She had been workin’ for fifteen years, but they fired her anyway. Didn’t give her no kind of pay or nothin’, just fired her. It was when Ray was born that they told her about the cancer in her blood. She didn’t pay them doctors no mind. She kept on drinkin’ like nothing could ever stop her. By the time she had you, the disease was all in her breasts. Do you drink?”
“No. I never have.”
“Well, I guess not. Your mother drank so much carryin’ you, you could be drunk for the rest of your life. I think she drank because of the pain. She was always in a lot of pain. Maybe that’s why she fought all the time. She was a fighter, you know. We never