Book Review: Yes'm by J.M. Duke

I grew up in a small southern town. The biggest events to occur there happened almost 100 years before I was born and remain the single most identifiable landmark in the town's history. Those battles of the Civil War were early steps in the long battle for equal civil rights that culminated in the fiery, passionate hotbed of the 1960's.

J.M. Duke's new book, Yes'm, could almost have been written about my childhood, and indeed, Duke and I grew up in the same town and our experiences are almost parallel. Reading her book was like stepping back into my childhood and hearing the soft southern voices of my neighbors, and feeling the same subtle confusion about the relationships I observed between the white and black inhabitants of our town.

So step back into the 1950's and see it through the eyes of a child who loves the family's black housekeeper with a child's blindness to race, age, and politics. The story follows Sammie, a girl with a mind of her own, through gentle summer days, childhood scrapes and the gentle way of life that was so comfortable--unless one looked under the covers. And Sammie constantly pulled back the covers, asking disquieting questions of her elders and Pearl the housekeeper as she tried to understand the nuances of the relationships around her. Why must the "colored" help eat their meals outside and never in the kitchen? Why was her grandmother so angry to find Sammie eating at the same table with Pearl? Why should she not speak to a black man if she wanted to?

We did not have a housekeeper when I was young, but we did have Sarah, the lady who cleaned the Catholic church. We children loved Sarah. She often passed our gate on the way to her home just a half-mile down the road from our house. I loved her soft, "Afternoon, Miz Connelly," and to listen to my mother and Sarah's conversation over our garden gate about the flowers in my mother's garden. I asked one time, "Can Sarah come in for tea?" and was taken aback by the sudden stiffness in both my mother and Sarah. "Oh no, honey, I've got to get on home," Sarah had said suddenly. Some time later we went to visit Sarah at her home. My mother insisted we wear gloves and Sunday hats. We were very much the genteel ladies coming to call. Sarah was gracious and welcoming and I will never forget her beautiful gardens overflowing with flowers, and the beehives in the center of it all. It was years later when I was an adult that I understood the significance of that visit--white ladies visiting a black lady's home. Surely my mother had many soul-searching moments before she took that step.

My parents, like Sammie's, were not in favor of civil rights. They were, like the adults in Sammie's world, products of a segregated world where the lines were clear and not to be crossed. Sammie's story follows the historic events of the 1960's placed in the context of a child-becoming-young-woman's world. Sammie's parents gave her one great gift: they did not pass their prejudices on to her (and I am grateful to my parents that they did the same).

Sammie grew up wrapped in the arms of her beloved Pearl, asking questions that often were left unanswered or unsatisfactorily answered, leaving her to form her own opinions and to judge people based on who they were and not on the color of their skin. It could have been a dangerous path for a young girl in those troubled times, as her cousin discovered when facing the wrath of her family because of her friendships with her black schoolmates.

J.M. Duke has written a book that resonates with those of us who lived through the civil rights era, but it also speaks to today's generations as the world continues to struggle with racial tensions, civil rights issues, and suspicions of anyone "different" than ourselves. Duke's voice is clear, her descriptions right on the money, and her portrayal of a child's efforts to make sense of an often nonsensical world makes Yes'm a story worthy of personal reflection, and well suited to exploration by book discussion groups.



Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Into the Leaves of Memory

Along the road home

Fall and falling leaves bring so many memories:

• shuffling through dry leaves that covered sidewalks as I walked to school
• raking huge piles of leaves and then jumping into them until they were reduced to mulch
• or raking the leaves into "rooms" to make a playhouse that provided hours of entertainment
• wandering through the yard collecting pretty colored leaves to dip into wax and put onto a straw wreath for a door decoration
• putting red and yellow leaves between two sheets of wax paper and ironing the paper to preserve the color for a least a little while
• gathering acorns for my mother, who carefully put them into pretty dishes
• looking for wooly worms and predicting the weather by their stripes
• blowing milkweed seeds out of their pods, then bringing the pods inside to make decorations
• looking for ripe persimmons
• searching roadsides for the orange bittersweet berries
• finding my knee socks and cardigan sweaters
• watching shadows stretch across the yards as dusk returned
• gathering clothes from the clothesline in near-darkness as autumns' winds blustered

I am sure I can think of more to add to the list. But what about you? What memories do the falling leaves trigger for you?

Further along the road, and closer to home

The Five and Dime

To a kid, it was heaven. A candy counter filled with candy of all kinds, much of it within the budget of a child who relied on cashing in pop bottles for spending money.

Rohr's was about a half a mile from our house, but in the 1950's and early 60's no one thought anything about young children walking that far by themselves. We had a few shortcuts, some that our mother didn't like--through the "colored" neighborhood, and by some low-income apartments. When I type this, I think how odd it sounds today but that was my mother's reality at the time. What is really funny is that we certainly qualified as low income but Mom never saw us that way, and we never felt that way either. Our home was filled with books and records of classical music and popular musicals. The neighborhood was genteel and elderly, with Victorian 4x4 houses lining the street and sporting their gingerbread trim. Everyone had vegetable gardens, fruit trees and flowers, and some had chickens and bees. It was not what you might think of as low income and the neighbors were certainly not. But with 13 children and a lineman's salary, Mom stretched dollars to the breaking point.

Allowances were out of the question. There wasn't enough money for that. So pop bottles it was and we scoured the neighborhood and side streets for gthe precious glass bottles. A bottle was worth 2 cents, and 2 cents could buy 2 pieces of penny candy. Three bottles provided enough for a small bottle of Coke or Pepsi and a piece of candy. Five bottles could buy a pop and a Hershey's bar. Or a pop and a popsicle. Or 10 pieces of penny candy--heaven!

We took our bottles to the local market to cash in. Manassas Market actually delivered groceries back then, in a 1957 Chevy panek truck. The owner, whose name I do not recall, patiently took in or bottles, only objecting to the ones that were muddy or not a brand he could take. Once we had our cash in hand, we walked to Rohr's--it was shopping time.

My favorite kinds of penny candy had to be Kits. Why? Because you got 4 pieces of candy for your penny! Red Licorice whips, jawbreakers and Tootsie Rolls were favorites, too. And of course Double Bubble bubble gum with its comic strip inside. If I was lucky enough to have a dime, the choices were huge. Cracker Jacks and a pop? Twinkies? Candy bars, ice cream, or a little bit of something from the glass cases? A dime could buy a quarter pound of several things--chocolate stars were my favorite.

As I got older I learned that life held something other than candy. For 19 cents I could buy a tiny bottle of perfume called Atom Bomb--and yes, it smelled that strong. I could buy the prettiest hankies for a dime and Tangee lipstick for 39 cents. Pencils, pens, cheap toys, and many other things could be bought for under 20 cents.

I also learned to save at least a little of my precious pennies for Christmas gifts. One year I bought my mother a golden, round glass pitcher for 69 cents. I struggled to buy something for everyone else in the family with the little bit of money I could save. All of my brothers and sisters did the same. The pitcher I bought my mother, I now know, was a pattern called Lido by Anchor Hocking, I believe, and today it sells online for between $10 and $25. Mom was thrilled and astounded that I could afford such a thing. I wonder sometimes if she ever knew how hard we tried to get money and how much we enjoyed buying pretty things for her.

Eventually my sister would work at Rohr's, even behind the candy counter, while she was in school. I was not allowed by my parents to have a job--as the oldest daughter, there were many barriers in my way back in those days. But Judy, only a year and a half younger than me, was able to break some of them down and got her driver's license (another no-no for me) and a job. (Mom, I think, realized that it was helpful to have someone who could drive around--the older brothers were seldom home because they had jobs, and well, they were boys and had a lot more freedom to get out. A each sister reached teen years, the limits softened and they had much more freedom than was allowed to me.)

I do not know if Rohr's Five and Dime still exists, but I kind of doubt it. But the memory of the time I spent walking across its squeaking floors and being amazed at what was within my purchasing power is still strong. I doubt the malls of today provide that same level of excitement as the old five and dimes of my childhood.