Millie’s memories continue
That summer I had a babysitting
job—Monday through Thursday. Babysitting
helped me buy school clothes. One
Thursday morning as I ate breakfast, Mother asked me to take the garbage
out before I left. I went from room to
room collecting the trash and headed out to the alley behind our
apartment. Just as I dumped it into the
container, I looked up the alley and saw Robbie waving his hand from the
passenger side of his grandfather’s truck.
“Hi,” I said rather shyly as he
walked up to me. I’d almost given up
seeing him during the summer.
“How about a picnic sometime?” I couldn’t believe it. He really did want to be friends!
“Well, I’m babysitting and…” I
started.
“Yeah, I know, but you don’t work
on Fridays. We could meet at the Morgantown cemetery. How about 1 o’clock tomorrow?” Robbie knew my summer schedule!
“That would be neat. Do you like tuna fish sandwiches?” I blurted out.
“Great! I’ll bring some dessert.” And he ran to catch up with his grandfather’s
truck. I stood there not quite believing
what had just happened.
Friday morning I had a couple of
chores completed before Mother left for her waitress job down the street. Monday through Friday she put on her white shoes and crisp,
white uniform with a flowered hanky pinned to the breast pocket.
I worked without stopping and
completed Mother’s Chore List. Then I
went to my room to get ready. Just
before I walked out I grabbed a table cloth from Mother’s old collection.
The day was warm but I biked fast enough that
the breeze kept me cool. The Morgantown Cemetery was old. Some of the dates on the tombstones were the
early and mid 1800s. It was in a remote
corner of a field and couldn’t be seen from the road. I’d been there before with a friend and we’d looked
at the names on the tombstones— Abraham Lincoln Jefferson, Martha Elizabeth
Johnston, George Washington Littleton.
Robbie was already there. He smiled and said Hi as he took my bike and parked it against a tree.
“I wonder why this cemetery is here.”
I asked. “I don’t know anyone
buried here who is related to anyone in town.”
“It's a
Negro cemetery.” I was shocked. I’d never heard of a Negro cemetery.
I looked at Robbie. “Why is there a separate cemetery? Don’t you want to be buried in the church
yards in town?” The way he rolled his
eyes suggested that I didn’t know much.
He shook his head and said,
“Millie, it’s not that we don’t want to be buried in town. We’re not allowed to be buried in a white
cemetery.”
I looked at him unbelieving. “Why that’s ridiculous! When people are dead, they’re dead. What difference does the color make?”
“You’re pretty naive, Girl. You’ve lived in your little white world
without realizing there is any other kind out there.”
And this was the first of our
weekly picnics for the rest of that
summer. We talked. We ate.
We laughed. We teased. We became comfortable. We became friends. The time spent with Robbie was the source of
my true education—about life and love and hate.
It made my formal schooling seem useless. I experienced first hand another world.
To be continued...
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