The reason it’s so impossible to write about Mississippi is that everyone thinks you’re exaggerating. —Donna Tartt
Three months of summer fun came at a high price. Another 3-day stay at Aunt Rosemary’s. I wondered what I had done that was so bad I deserved this punishment. The belt, the switch, three hours alone in my room, writing a hundred times ‘I will not be mean to my sister Jo ever again.’ I would’ve endured them all in exchange. And I had turned 9, the rite of passage year, big enough to help with ‘the chore.’
Like a lot houses in Mississippi, their house made no sense. Shacks stuck together, painted the same yellow. Like that was going to fool anybody. Three front doors to choose from. Ninety percent of the grass stomped to China by a Lord-of-the-Flies mob. An interior so illogical you needed a road map.
Aunt Rosemary was a big woman, appeared to live in the kitchen, and cried at the drop of a hat. Even as a kid, I could see why. Crying didn’t mean she got to stop doing whatever she was doing. Didn’t mean she couldn’t yell at you and keep right on crying. Daddy nicknamed her ‘The Reproduction Unit’ for eight obvious reasons. Uncle Herman was skinny, with sparse hair buzzed to a quarter inch, always in a wife beater under bib overalls, accessorized with a perpetual smile. And a professor with a doctorate in chemistry who listened to opera non-stop. I could see why. He appeared to have become immune to chaos.
Their eight kids ranged from adult to baby, from socially-iffy genius to musical prodigy to most likely to be a criminal. All were whip smart, tough as nails, and body curious. Aunt Carmen’s two boys were there too, one crazy, one shy. She was Daddy’s younger sister, ‘The Holy Roller.’ I never once saw her not calm, no matter the bedlam surrounding her.
When I had asked Cassie about ‘the chore,’ she said, “Don’t worry. You’ll get through it.” But she was nearly 12. And tougher than me.
After Mama and Daddy had dropped us off and we all had PBJs, George Wayne jumped up and high-tailed it to the barn. Like baby chicks, we followed. I was so relieved there were no barn animals in there. Turns out the kids more than made up for it. George Wayne started a fire—yes, inside—so he could burn roaches, mice if he got lucky. Sara Lynn, the toddler, crawled around looking for crickets. Aunt Carmen’s oldest, the crazy one, decided it would be fun to tie the hay bale rope around Cassie’s ankle and winch her upside down halfway to the hayloft. I screamed bloody murder. “JD! STOP! STOP!” The boys egged him on.
Cassie was mad as a hornet. “Let me down, JD Cooper, or Daddy’s gonna KILL YOU when he gets back!”
Laughter and stink came from the far corner. Sue ran over and slapped George Wayne upside the head. “YOU STUPID NITWIT!” She stomped out the fire and kicked the smoking mouse to kingdom come. Cassie was lowered. Claimed her bruised ankle didn’t even hurt. My sister was always brave. I was a chicken.
Late afternoon, the older girls made bikinis out of three triangles torn from a rag, two tied together for the top and one for the crotch tied around behind. Sue, Betty, and Cassie strutted their little stuff and gyrated for us younger ones, the knobby-kneed and filthy, the mosquito-bitten and scabby, the puzzled and the pining. It was deeply unnerving in some way I didn’t understand. But I could not unglue my eyes.
At suppertime, you had to wash your hands, go back outside, and run around the conjoined shacks, or you could take the shortcut through the hundred-and-ten-degree kitchen and risk the wrath of Aunt Rosemary’s tears. Outside for me every time.
Nearly the size of a high school gym, the ‘dining room’ had a concrete floor, one long wall piled high with dusty objects of mystery, and a centerline of wobbly picnic tables with splinters that kept your ‘elbows off the table.’
At night, Linda played piano for us. At only ten, she could play any song anybody wanted, by ear, with two hands. A prodigy, everyone said. Been doing it since she was four. The cost of that pleasure followed. Baths for a dozen. Bedtime for a dozen. Thank God the shock of trauma has buried that span of time deep in my subconscious. All I remember is the one rule: Boys and girls in different tubs, different bedrooms.
When one woke, all woke. After grits with fresh cream and lots of butter and sugar, Linda grabbed my hand. “Come on, y’all! Let’s get this over with.”
“What over with?” I yelled as we ran like lightning.
“The chore!”
Behind a wall of trees sat three chicken houses—no, not like the one your woke neighbor has. These were the size of tennis courts, a feed trough running the full length smack dab in the middle. The smell alone knocked you flat. The cluck-screaming at jet engine decibels. You couldn’t see a single spot of the chicken-shit-covered ground.
I stared. And like a slow-moving tsunami, it hit me. ‘The chore’ required wading through a frothing white ocean of feathered monsters, meaner than snakes and dumber than rocks. Linda yelled over the pandemonium, “Walk smooth and slide your feet, but go fast too so your legs don’t get pecked bloody! And no matter what, DO NOT STOP! Once you’re there, they’ll focus on fighting for food, so gettin’ back is easier!” Fear turned me to stone. Cassie was ahead, but came back quick and took my hand. Their hideous red crowns, both stiff and floppy, were at my bare knees. After a few steps in, my heavy feed bucket required both hands. Cassie went on ahead. I got pecked. Screamed at the top of my lungs. No one heard. I got moving. Linda hadn’t warned me about the ones along the way pecked to death. If I fell down, that would be me. The adrenaline that thought secreted is why I’m here to tell the tale.
With pecked legs I cried all the way back to the house hanging onto Cassie’s hand for dear life, certain I would bleed to death. The boys laughed. Aunt Rosemary’s soft shushing and tender care didn’t even hurt. I was so surprised and relieved, I cried even harder, and she allowed me to stay in the one cool room the rest of the day. Her and Uncle Herman’s room was wall-to-wall books. Fat ones.
The last day finally came. It was a biggie. The one the boys had been waiting for with bated breath. Up at the crack of dawn, dewdrops still clung to anything alive and green. Excitement stabbed the humid air in high-pitched spurts. Boys and their hard edges were about to bust wide open, their testosterone leaping forward a year. The girls stared at the hog hanging from a huge hook jammed through its snout, the rope snaking up through some kind of jerry-rigged pulley system to a tripod of tall, skinny logs tied together at the top and balanced over a giant steel drum of boiling water, hot coals around its bottom. Sitting in a lawn chair, thumbs hooked in overall straps, a smiling Uncle Herman gave silent orders with subtle nods.
The boys exploded at the first squeak of the pulley, its rope controlled by two shirtless black boys with man muscles. The show had begun. My wide eyes realized the hog was going into the boiling water before my mind did. I whispered to Linda, “They’re gonna boil him?” “No, the water’s not boiling, just hot enough to get the hair off easy. Daddy says no more’n a hundred and forty degrees or he’ll cook. Boiling’s over two hundred. I think.”
Things went silent, except for the rhythmic squeaks that accompanied the torturously slow descent. When the head finally went under, steaming water overflowed as did young yelps of glorious triumph. And after what seemed like a thousand fly bites of waiting, the hog was pulled up. A gigantic wood slab with historic scars was slid over the drum and under the hog who was lowered onto it and approached by men shining with sweat, whipping out gleaming knives. In an instant, boys circled like a colony of ants descending upon a drop of molasses. I was grateful for the obstructed view, but still curious. “What’s goin’ on now, Cassie?”
She grinned. “Pork chops and bacon.”
It wasn’t long before the boys got the mysterious treasure they’d been waiting for. “Now, you boys git on outta here! Lordy mercy, y’all are a irritate’n bunch,” the old black man huffed as he held out a bloody glob. Jim, the oldest boy, jerked it to his chest and flew off like a bird dog chasing a rabbit, the others nipping at his heels.
We waited. Men grunted. Mosquitos buzzed. Hands slapped.
The boys came back at full run. Sue, Betty, and Linda slid in with them at speed. The boys threw some kind of ball back and forth. Mary Onzo, the grown-up child, told me and Cassie, “That was the original football, the pig bladder,” she said. “They just it up with mud water.” My brine couldn’t figure that one out. Why didn’t it bust, like a water balloon? Maty Onzo went on. “At suppertime, we’re gonna have your daddy’s favorite, mustard greens with ham hock and fried chicken.”
“No bacon?” Cassie asked her.
“Nah. Gotta be smoked and cured.”
“What’s gonna happen to all that pork?” Cassie was always curious about stuff like that.
“Oh, by the time everybody goes home with their share, it ain’t that much left.” Mary Onzo looked at us. “But don’t worry, Uncle Carson always gets him some fatback.”
But I didn’t see why Daddy couldn’t get bacon instead.
Football had become the usual game of boys keeping the ball from girls. Then suddenly, it got loose and came straight for me. I froze. It slapped my chest and bounced to the ground. I screamed. JD screamed back, “THROW IT, YOU IDIOT!” Cassie grabbed it and ran. The girls had the bladder.
“Please God, I beg you, don’t let anything happen to Mama and Daddy before they pick us up.”
He didn’t. They came. I sobbed. We left. After Daddy’s favorite supper, of course.
As traumatic as those three days were, it’s a mystery that I still crave fried chicken and bacon.
. . .