My Mary

It’s funny how memories pop in your mind. After finishing the book “The Help”, I suddenly remembered what I think may be my earliest memory.  I am very little and it is very cold outside. Our “help”, Mary, puts my red coat on me and literally stuffs me in a light blue stroller. I am maybe two, and so happy, we are going outside, even though she said it was too cold outside for me. I suspect I pitched a fit and she gave in. :0)  We go out the door and down the long driveway and hit the road! She pushes me down the road, about a mile, down the hill to my Uncle Mercer’s store. It was a little country store – dark brown wood on the outside, nice and warm on the inside. My Uncle Mercer goes over to the cooler and gets me chocolate milk, “Borden’s”, in the brown and white carton. It was so thick and sweet! Lord it’s no wonder I’m a diabetic now! Then Mary gets me M&M’s. She digs her money out of her bra, pays and off we go! I munch on M&M’s and she pushes me back home, around the sharp curve on Longstreet Road, uphill this time. She is huffing but we make it home safe and sound. Later I remember mama telling Mary to stop spending her own money on me – that she would leave her some money for my “snacks”.  My Mary, our “help”.


We were NOT rich, but back in the day, almost everyone had a maid or babysitter. My mama worked on the Base in Warner Robins and to my knowledge there were no daycares back then. Mama picked Mary up every morning and took her home in the evenings. I would ride with mama in the afternoons to take Mary home to a little wooden shack just up toward Danville. Mama used to tell me that it would sometimes make her feel sad because I would cry when Mary got out of the car.
Mary loved to watch “Dark Shadows” and I wanted to watch it with her - but it scared me to death. (I’ve always been a scardy cat.) Mary would make me a “tent”, a sheet draped from the coach to the coffee table and I would peek my head out, watch a little and then jump back under the tent when Barnabus Collins “woke up.”

She sang to me and taught me lots of songs. One of her favorites was a song that went, “Will the Circle, Be Unbroken”. She’d tell me to sing it and then she’d clap and tell me how pretty it sounded. She actually brought a tape recorder (those were big back in the 60’s) and taped me singing it! She said she wanted her children to hear how good I could sing! Now I wonder, maybe they giggled a little bit at this little white girl singing to the top of her lungs. All I know for sure is this - she made me feel special.

If I think hard, I can still smell how Mary smelled when she held me and sang to me. She smelled like Starch, fresh and clean. She could iron like no one I’ve ever seen. Even as I got on up older, she would be at my house waiting on me when I got off the school bus. That ironing board set up in the living room and her stories on the T.V.

Now, you talk about somebody that could cook – my Mary could cook. She made dinner for us every day. I can literally taste her country fried steak to this very minute. She’d make the gravy and then put it all in the black frying pan and let it cook on low all afternoon. Country fried steak night was all our favorites. When I got older she taught me how to make spaghetti and chocolate fudge.

Now my daddy, he was mean most of the time, and took to the drink if you know what I mean. My daddy used the “”N” word like it was nothing and even from my earliest age, I remember how it disgusted me. I always knew it was wrong and that he was ignorant. The way he talked made me nervous, nauseous and embarrassed. I hear people say that folks can’t help how they are – that they were “raised up that way.” I don’t believe that. I have to believe that my Mary taught me that the color of your skin meant nothing if have love. Today I realize that maybe my Mary was doing the same thing that Aibileen, the character in the book, did for her baby girl – speak good things to her every day and teach her about love.

It never occurred to me that Mary may have felt used or unhappy. I hope I was never bossy or acted like a little brat to her, but I bet I did sometimes. She was never anything but good to me. I loved her and I knew she loved me. As I got older, mama let me go home after school alone and even though I thought I was all grown up, I remember being real lonely. I missed Mary but was too proud to say so.

Racial problems and prejudices are certainly better now than they were in the 1960’s, but we still have a long way to go. One of my favorite lines in the book was when Skeeter says, “we are just people, not that much separates us.” I believe that whatever does separate us, can be filled with love and that love can make us one. And I believe that my Mary taught me that a long time ago.

(Me when I was a little over a year old)