The Gathering

Rev. Douglas Whitmore raised his five daughters alone following the death of his wife, Alma. She was the green pastures and still waters to his fire and brimstone. “Daddy preached hell and damnation, while Momma clothed the damned and fed the hell-bound,” my mother explained. “She didn’t deserve to go the way she did.”

My grandmother died in a house fire trying to save her infant son, Douglas Whitmore, Jr. My grandfather had taken his girls to town to get ice cream. Someone told him they’d seen a fire truck headed down his road. By the time he got there, flames were shooting through the roof of the wooden shotgun house and the walls were collapsing. Three men from the volunteer firemen’s brigade held my grandfather down to keep him from running into the house. His girls, the oldest only 12, sat on the ground, pounding the dirt, crying and screaming, “Momma!”

Forty years had passed since then. The bond of the Whitmore sisters, forged in the fire of that day, had been tested often, but never broken. Sometimes it was painful to see them verbally nicking and scraping each other. They all had daggers for tongues. However, no one was ready for the hell unleashed on a soul who dared try to harm one of them. Anything that concerned one, concerned all, and when they came together, the force of a thousand winds could not stop them.

On this particular evening in June of 1970, the aunts had gathered around the table in my mother’s kitchen. At the head of the table was the oldest, Aunt Lucinda, everybody called her Lu. To her right was Aunt Aretha, younger than Lucinda by 14 months, and next to her, Aunt Doretha. Across from Doretha sat the youngest Whitmore sister, Savannah, nicknamed Sassy. My mother, Amanda, who was between Doretha and Savannah in the birth order, stood at the stove frying catfish.

“Don’t fry that fish hard as you did the last time,” Aunt Lu said, as she skimmed through a Sears catalog. “That fish was not too hard, Lu,” my mother countered. “Didn’t nobody complain about the fish but you, the person who puts too much salt on EVERYTHING! “You are heavy-handed with the salt,” Aunt Sassy chimed in. “Food taste salty to you, Sassy, because you used to your bland cooking,” Aunt Lu shot back. Momma filled up the tea kettle and placed it on the back burner of the stove. 

Whether the discussion started at a family reunion, a wedding or a funeral, it always seemed to come back around to the same few subjects. Cooking. Wayward children. Wayward husbands, and who stole whose boyfriend in high school? Despite their repeated treks across terrain that had to be worn smooth by now, inevitably Aunt Doretha’s middle child syndrome would kick in and she’d rant about how none of her sisters really cared about her. Aunt Lu would demand that everyone shut up. Momma would make them all chamomile tea. Aunt Sassy would pour Jack Daniel’s into hers, and then slide the bottle to Aunt Aretha.

But whenever, the aunts gathered at my mother’s house around her kitchen table, the subject required more than just talk. Decisions needed to be made. Actions had to be taken.

I knew that Friday that they were there for something important. I just didn’t know what. I tried to squeeze my skinny 10-year-old self into a corner of the kitchen between the chest freezer and the refrigerator. My mother spotted me. “Loretta!” she yelled. I jumped. “If you don’t get yourself out of this kitchen and up in your room, you better. I’ve told you about trying to look in grown folks’ mouths when they’re talking!” 

I ran upstairs and opened my room door. I closed it loud enough for my mother to hear, and planted myself at the top of the steps, but out of sight of anyone directly at the bottom. It was the perfect perch to spy on the front door. About five minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was Cousin Lisa, looking like something the cat dragged in, as Momma would say. Her hair was a teased up bird’s nest. She had dark circles beneath her red-rimmed eyes. Had she been up all night crying? I wondered.

Four years prior, I had been the flower girl when she married Aunt Aretha’s son, Gerald. His eyes welled up as she came down in the aisle in a cream wedding gown with the bell sleeves, her brown hair in a top knot with little side curls hanging down to her shoulders.

The sisters had gathered to plan the wedding just two weeks before.

Aunt Lu spoke first, as usual. “Y'all know I’m not prejudice. But out of all these beautiful black girls out here, Gerald couldn’t find one?”

“Well, I don’t care who he marry, I’m just wondering why the rush? Why they gotta get married in two weeks instead of giving us time to properly plan?” The other sisters looked at Sassy and shook their heads at her naiveté.

 “You know why?” Momma replied, cocking her head to one side, an indicator that someone had asked a dumb question “Ohhh,” Aunt Sassy said, her eyes widening. She’d finally caught on.

 “There’s nothing we can do about that,” Aunt Aretha said. “But we need to plan this wedding, quick fast and in a hurry because you know her mother and father are not going to do it.”

Barbara and Larry Winston had offered their 19-year-old daughter, Lisa, the trip to Europe that she’d always dreamed of, if she called off her plans to marry that “colored boy.” They weren’t rich, but had talked about cashing in one of their insurance policies.  Her mother dropped a stack of freshly washed plates in the middle of the kitchen floor when Lisa told them she was pregnant. They told her that she could no longer live in their house. She needed to be gone before their youngest daughter, Lauren, got home from cheer leading practice.

“I’m sure as hell not going to have you around a 12-year-old, infecting her mind!” Lisa’s father said, following her from room to room as she gathered her things. “This is an abomination!

Larry Winston used up all the words in his cussing vocabulary that evening. He punched a hole in the dining room wall, and would have stomped on the dog, had his wife not stopped him. “See what you’ve done,” her mother screamed as Lisa headed out the door. “Your father almost killed Coco.”

Aunt Aretha had relayed the whole story to the sisters prior to the wedding. I was in the backyard and could hear everything as I sat in my sand box beneath the kitchen window. Six months later, Lisa gave birth to a boy with big blue eyes and sandy hair. They named him Gerald, Jr., although he looked nothing like his father. Two years later, their daughter Justine came into the world with hazel eyes and the biggest baby afro I’d ever seen. Aunt Aretha always smiled when she talked about Gerald and “his little family,” as she called it.

As soon as Lisa headed toward the kitchen, I snuck back down the steps into the dining room where I could hide beneath the table, which was covered by white table cloth that hung down far enough to conceal my presence.

“Aint no need in crying now,” Aunt Aretha said, pacing back and forth, smoking a cigarette. “I can’t believe you did this! That boy is over there risking his life in a war and this is what you do?”

Lisa rocked back and forth, wailing like a mourner at a funeral. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, her body heaving and shaking. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” 

Feeling lonely and afraid three months after Gerald was shipped off to Vietnam, Lisa called an old boyfriend. They only spent one night together. Now, she was two months pregnant. Not knowing what to do, Lisa confided in Aunt Doretha’s daughter, Carol, who told her mother.

“What are we gonna do ya’ll?” asked Aunt Lu, whom I was sure already had an answer.

“We could always call Miss Delaney,” said Aunt Sassy. “I know some of y'all don’t like that but it is an option.” 

My friend Carla had told me who Miss Delaney was one day when we were playing jacks on the back steps.  “When a lady has a baby that she doesn’t want she goes to Miss Delaney and Miss Delaney makes the baby disappear,” Carla explained. “How?” I asked. She never answered my question.

Aunt Doretha stood up and slammed her hand down on the table. “I am not going to hell with ya’ll over this. We are not calling Miss Delaney. You know Daddy would roll over in his grave if he knew y'all were even thinking about something like that.”

My mother asked Lisa how far along she was and if there was any chance the baby could be Gerald’s? “Maybe you could tell him, you got the dates mixed up and he wouldn’t even have to know that there was any question about it,” Momma rationalized. “That won’t work,” Lisa countered. “My old boyfriend is white.”

“Jesus, Joseph and Mary,” yelled Aunt Aretha, who jumped up as if she were going to reach across the table. She glared at Lisa, while Aunt Sassy took the wayward daughter-in-law’s hand, led her into the dining room and brought her a cup of tea, before returning to the kitchen.

Aunt Lu, who had not said a word, since her initial inquiry, finally put forth her solution. 

“We’re gonna send this child down to Aunt May in Quitman. She can have the baby there and come back. She wouldn’t be the first little white girl, Aunt May has helped.” 

Aunt May was my grandmother’s 85-year-old sister, who ran a home for unwed mothers in southern Georgia. Most of them were young black girls, often related to her in some way or another. Occasionally, a family member, whose white co-worker had a daughter in trouble, would recommend Aunt May, who never married and never had any children of her own.

Aunt Lucinda knew it was the only way, but as was their custom in situations like this, the sisters had to vote. Aunt Aretha was wholeheartedly for it, as was Aunt Doretha. Momma worried about the repercussions if Gerald ever found out what they’d done, but couldn’t bring herself to side with Sassy, who was still pushing for a visit to Miss Delaney. Eventually, Sassy acquiesced. The decision was unanimous.

Momma walked into the dining room and gently shook Lisa, who’d fallen asleep at the table. “Come on in the kitchen, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be all right.” A few minutes later, my mother returned to the dining room, lifted the table cloth and said, “I will deal with you, later.”