I Hope to Shout

This post is about my dear,late cousin Henria who died a few years ago. She was quite an interesting character. The only black square dancer I have ever heard of, she lived in Idaho, where she taught, and was in Milwaukee living with her mother, my cousin Cottie. The experience meeting her was one that stays with me with such permanence because of A. the events that took place and B. the fact that she died that next summer.

It was Thanksgiving when we drove from Chicago to Milwaukee so that my grandmother and my aunt Earnestine could see their cousin, whom they had not seen in more than half a century. My aunt Earnestine maintained a correspondence with Cousin Cottie, and occassionally there were phone calls exchanged between the three. Cottie, who is about the same age as Aunt Earnestine, which would make her now about 88, moved away in the late 40s with her Lutheran minister husband, never to return to the South. There is a story there and I will get to it later.

My mother and Henria, who had known each other briefly as children, bonded immediately and hit it off so well it was like two sisters connecting with one another. Henria would do my mother's hair and they would talk and talk and talk, and take us for long walks around the parsonage where she stayed with Cousin Cottie and the Reverend, who was ill. At that time,Henria wanted to know from my mother two things-A. Was her mother's father a white man and B. What was the deep dark secret that her mother was keeping and that had kept her from going south or telling her Children anything about their family and heritage. My mother, knowledgeable about all of these things (as were the rest of us who were there in the house, except Henria-- and the little children) told her that yes her mother had a secret, but that it wasnt her place to tell her. She also told her that yes, her mother's father was a white man. (Cousin Cottie is soo fair she is almost transparent. She is one of those that is whiter than white people, and you can tell that they are mixed, although others might mistake them for white, if they don't know any better.

My cousin Cottie left the South to escape her nebulous heritage( especially with the tale tale of her color and the fact that people in the community knew who she was)as well as to escape something else. The deep dark secret that she never told her daughters and that really was the reason that she left the South is that her first cousin (also my Grandmother's first cousin), I suppose I need to stop using names, but anyway, her cousin left home and went to Florida where Cottie was living with her husband, Reverend Grigsby.

After a while, Cottie was ready for her to leave. She didn't. Little did she know, this cousin of hers and her husband, the reverend, were having an affair. She wrote endless letters to her aunt to call for this girl to come home, but she didn't leave until she came up pregnant. The child she had now lives in Colorado and does well for herself. She also, this cousin, sort cleaned up the situation by passing the child off as her later husband's( who just happens to be my grandmother's other first cousin, on her mother's side). Well, that sure made for some uncomfortable situations and also was the reason why Cottie never told her children anything about where she came from or who her people were. Alas, I am quite sure that there was some tension and some held breaths back in the mid 80s when cousin Cottie dared to go to a family reunion and who just happened to climb into the elevator with Cottie and one of her other daughters, but Cousin X and her daughter, the other daughter of the Reverend Grigsby. I find it quite sad that Henria went to her grave wondering about those things. It all does seem a bit foolish.

Alas, another situation to arise out of this quagmire occurred back in the early seventies when the other daughter of Grigsby was just out of college, had moved to Chicago to get her start and my grandmother was recruited to show her around and help her get comfortable. What happened, do you guess? Not long after that moved, the other daughter found out that Uncle Amos was not her daddy and that Reverend Grigsby was. Cousin L hit the roof and called my grandmother and blessed her out. My grandmother was bawling. My aunt Johnnie ( the vixen that she was, and that's a good thing) picked up the phone and called Cousin L and gave her a few choice words. Who might have told the big secret? Cousin L's sister, my cousin Fannie ( who is fabulous and runs the People's History Museum in Prattville Alabama. She is still going at 84 years old). What a little mess that was.

Anyway, I don't know why I blogged about this, but I was thinking about Henria. She used to have this phrase, "I hope to shout," that she would say all of the time. She was a beautiful creature. Definitely an interesting presence in the world.