Confronting the Future

Because she was 14 when she became a mother, childhood and motherhood are all jumbled up in Mary Lee’s mind.

She’s reliving both this morning, driving around the river to attend an important assembly at her grandsons’ high school.

Mary Lee’s three grandsons--17, 16 and 12--stay with her because their parents live in Mobile and can’t handle them. There were nasty scenes, she says, loud arguments, and she had no choice but to take in the boys. ‘It’s a terrible thing to be afraid of your own child,’ she says vaguely.

Mary Lee has spent her life among swarms of children. She had 16 siblings growing up. She had eight children of her own, who have given her 30 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren so far. There should have been more. She once saw herself having 15 children. Then came a hysterectomy, and seven of her unborn children were stranded, no way to cross over into this world.

With them is her baby, who died in his sleep. Mary Lee never knew why. ‘Pretty baby,’ she says. ‘Smiling all the time.’

She can see him. He always was a late sleeper, and one morning she let him sleep awhile longer. When she finished her chores and got the other children off to school, she went to wake him. ‘He had a real pretty smile on his face. And I said, ‘Boy, you better wake up!’ Then I said, ‘Boy, you better straighten out. What you so stiff for?’ Then I busted out crying.’

That boy, he’d have grown up to be sweet-tempered like his mama. Not like her grandsons, she says with a snort. Since she’s been sick, unable to crawl out of bed some days, the boys have been running wild, giving her sass. Mostly, they just ignore Mary Lee. They clod sulkily through her house, speaking only to ask for pocket money. Even when she saved enough from her $382 monthly Social Security checks to buy them a computer, their mood didn’t improve.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

"For the first time in 35 years, the children of Gee’s Bend wouldn’t be slaves to the bus.""

If they seem angry, sometimes they have cause: They spend half their day on a slow-moving bus. The 12-year-old goes to school at the top of the U, but the older two attend high school in Camden, and circumnavigating the river consumes their youth.

The children, Curl and Hilliard are quick to note, would benefit most from a new ferry. Ten minutes to Camden, 10 minutes back. For the first time in 35 years, the children of Gee’s Bend wouldn’t be slaves to the bus. They would be able to take part in afterschool plays, sports and teacher-student tutorials. To those on both sides of the river who fear the change a ferry would bring, Curl and Hilliard insist: A ferry wouldn’t be for you. It would be for the children, heirs to the civil rights movement’s bravest warriors, and such special children deserve a change.

Mary Lee doesn’t disagree. She’d just rather see Curl and Hilliard build the children a new school in Gee’s Bend. Or a community center. Or a store. Something to keep the children here, and Gee’s Bend alive.

Now, after the long drive around the river, Mary Lee settles into a chair in the high school auditorium, fidgeting, nervous to be in a school again. One of the first speakers puts her at ease. ‘Where I’m from,’ he says, ‘we take away the big words, like ‘statement of purpose.’ Instead, we say, ‘How come us here?’

Mary Lee giggles.

Parents are here, he says, to learn about stiffer state requirements for a high school diploma. Students are here because their parents made a mighty sacrifice.

You here,’ he tells the students, ‘because somebody sweated for you! Somebody dragged a long sack of cotton through the dirt!’

‘Mm hmm,’ Mary Lee moans, as though in church.

For an hour, speaker after speaker explains the new diploma requirements, with pie charts and graphs. Mary Lee doesn’t understand much of what they say, until one speaker waxes about the value of education, wounding her deeply in the process.

‘If you don’t graduate from high school,’ he bellows, ‘you spit in the face of Martin Luther King!’