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| Jacqueline Woodson: When a Southern Town Broke a Heart | Jacqueline Woodson: When a Southern Town Broke a Heart |
| (14 days later) | |
| This is part of a series of articles devoted to summer vacations that had an enduring impact on a writer’s life. Other contributors include Sara Novic, Dominique Browning and Francine Prose. | |
| Greenville, S.C., in the 1970s is a rolling green dream in my memory now. Always in that memory are the smell of pine and the red dirt wafting up around our summer shoes — new blue Keds with thick white soles, red by the end of our first day “home.” Because for me, South Carolina had always been home. Even years after my family joined the Great Migration and my mother moved us from Greenville to Brooklyn, each summer we returned to the Southern town of my mother’s childhood. | Greenville, S.C., in the 1970s is a rolling green dream in my memory now. Always in that memory are the smell of pine and the red dirt wafting up around our summer shoes — new blue Keds with thick white soles, red by the end of our first day “home.” Because for me, South Carolina had always been home. Even years after my family joined the Great Migration and my mother moved us from Greenville to Brooklyn, each summer we returned to the Southern town of my mother’s childhood. |
| There, the friendly neighbors who knew us before we “were even a thought” and remembered our mama “when she was a little girl in pigtails” opened their arms to us every summer, welcoming us home. Vegetable gardens filled with collards, berries, pole beans and cucumbers grew beside the small houses. Raised flower beds brightened front yards. And, always, the smell of honeysuckle beckoned my siblings and me to its vine where we sipped sweet nectar from the flowers until, as always, my grandmother called from the kitchen window, “Let that honeysuckle grow like y’all trying to grow,” and we ran off to whatever next thing the summer brought us. We were safe. We were home. | There, the friendly neighbors who knew us before we “were even a thought” and remembered our mama “when she was a little girl in pigtails” opened their arms to us every summer, welcoming us home. Vegetable gardens filled with collards, berries, pole beans and cucumbers grew beside the small houses. Raised flower beds brightened front yards. And, always, the smell of honeysuckle beckoned my siblings and me to its vine where we sipped sweet nectar from the flowers until, as always, my grandmother called from the kitchen window, “Let that honeysuckle grow like y’all trying to grow,” and we ran off to whatever next thing the summer brought us. We were safe. We were home. |
| But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place. That summer, like other summers and many Brooklyn children, we left the city only days after school ended. | But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place. That summer, like other summers and many Brooklyn children, we left the city only days after school ended. |
| My mother was a single mom whose days were spent as a customer service rep at Con Edison in downtown Brooklyn. When school ended with a half-day party of sugary Kool-Aid, cookies and report cards, my sister, brothers and I took the No. 52 Gates Avenue bus to downtown Brooklyn, waiting outside of J. W. Mays until my mother, nearly six feet tall, appeared in the crowd of people moving along Fulton Street. | My mother was a single mom whose days were spent as a customer service rep at Con Edison in downtown Brooklyn. When school ended with a half-day party of sugary Kool-Aid, cookies and report cards, my sister, brothers and I took the No. 52 Gates Avenue bus to downtown Brooklyn, waiting outside of J. W. Mays until my mother, nearly six feet tall, appeared in the crowd of people moving along Fulton Street. |
| Mays was a discount chain that eventually, like other discount chains — Orbach’s, Korvettes, Alexander’s — went out of business. But back then, it was an affordable one-stop shopping spot where my mother, in anticipation of our trip home and wanting to make sure her four children represented what it meant to leave the oppressive Jim Crow South for the economic and educational opportunity of New York, filled a cart with blue Keds, cotton dresses, T-shirts and underwear. We would return home well-dressed and well-spoken, products of the North’s unbroken promise. | Mays was a discount chain that eventually, like other discount chains — Orbach’s, Korvettes, Alexander’s — went out of business. But back then, it was an affordable one-stop shopping spot where my mother, in anticipation of our trip home and wanting to make sure her four children represented what it meant to leave the oppressive Jim Crow South for the economic and educational opportunity of New York, filled a cart with blue Keds, cotton dresses, T-shirts and underwear. We would return home well-dressed and well-spoken, products of the North’s unbroken promise. |
| In other years, we had traveled back to Greenville by bus, but that year, for the first time, we took a train home, our uncle accompanying my sister, brothers and me. For the four of us, an overnight train brought a freedom we’d never dreamed — our overly permissive uncle letting us run from train car to train car, eat the small bags of candy he’d bought us before we even pulled the waxed paper-wrapped sandwiches and fruit my mother had packed from our new school bags. | In other years, we had traveled back to Greenville by bus, but that year, for the first time, we took a train home, our uncle accompanying my sister, brothers and me. For the four of us, an overnight train brought a freedom we’d never dreamed — our overly permissive uncle letting us run from train car to train car, eat the small bags of candy he’d bought us before we even pulled the waxed paper-wrapped sandwiches and fruit my mother had packed from our new school bags. |
| The train left New York in the late afternoon, arriving in Greenville before daybreak. As we disembarked, my sleepy-eyed siblings and I exaggerated deep inhalations of “country air.” | The train left New York in the late afternoon, arriving in Greenville before daybreak. As we disembarked, my sleepy-eyed siblings and I exaggerated deep inhalations of “country air.” |
| The fleeting moments of childhood are etched deep in my memory — the salty indentations of baby teeth newly gone, the tug of hairbrushes through knotted hair, the heat and smell of the straightening comb, my mother’s broad shoulders and easy smile — and a summer in South Carolina, when the deep green beauty revealed my place and time in history and laid claim to that moment all children know, when the tendrils of adulthood move toward us, showing themselves long before we are ready to see. | The fleeting moments of childhood are etched deep in my memory — the salty indentations of baby teeth newly gone, the tug of hairbrushes through knotted hair, the heat and smell of the straightening comb, my mother’s broad shoulders and easy smile — and a summer in South Carolina, when the deep green beauty revealed my place and time in history and laid claim to that moment all children know, when the tendrils of adulthood move toward us, showing themselves long before we are ready to see. |
| For so many summers, we’d been warned to stay away from the small patch of poison ivy that grew around the base of the one tree in my grandparents’ backyard. But until that year, the consequence had been as theoretical as the segregation surrounding us. We saw the white people when we went downtown or as we drove through their neighborhoods on our way to visit relatives. | For so many summers, we’d been warned to stay away from the small patch of poison ivy that grew around the base of the one tree in my grandparents’ backyard. But until that year, the consequence had been as theoretical as the segregation surrounding us. We saw the white people when we went downtown or as we drove through their neighborhoods on our way to visit relatives. |
| We knew the ones our family members worked for as maids and handymen and how they sometimes sent home bags of not so gently-used clothing that were thankfully accepted then redonated. A “No thank you” would have been as unacceptable as leaving off a “Ma’am” or “Sir” or heading downtown to march against Jim Crow. The poison ivy crept up the base of the tree on the roadside but grew low to the ground on the house side. “Don’t go on the other side of that tree,” our grandmother warned us. “And don’t touch those leaves.” | We knew the ones our family members worked for as maids and handymen and how they sometimes sent home bags of not so gently-used clothing that were thankfully accepted then redonated. A “No thank you” would have been as unacceptable as leaving off a “Ma’am” or “Sir” or heading downtown to march against Jim Crow. The poison ivy crept up the base of the tree on the roadside but grew low to the ground on the house side. “Don’t go on the other side of that tree,” our grandmother warned us. “And don’t touch those leaves.” |
| I would love to write that I remember the tree — that it was an old, solid oak or a stunning pine tree. Or one of the beautiful willows that seemed to weep all over South Carolina. I would love to bring the metaphor sorrowfully back somehow to Billie Holiday’s ”Strange Fruit” or Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Tall Trees in Georgia.” | I would love to write that I remember the tree — that it was an old, solid oak or a stunning pine tree. Or one of the beautiful willows that seemed to weep all over South Carolina. I would love to bring the metaphor sorrowfully back somehow to Billie Holiday’s ”Strange Fruit” or Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Tall Trees in Georgia.” |
| But what I remember of that summer is not the actual tree but the sap running from it, the thick shine of it moving along a gnarled and blackened trunk. And at the foot of that trunk, the poison ivy’s oily leaves circling the base then climbing up into the tree on the road side. At 5, 6 and 7, I spent long periods of the day bent over the ivy, fascinated by the promise of its danger — a danger I believed I was protected from — and would continue to be. | But what I remember of that summer is not the actual tree but the sap running from it, the thick shine of it moving along a gnarled and blackened trunk. And at the foot of that trunk, the poison ivy’s oily leaves circling the base then climbing up into the tree on the road side. At 5, 6 and 7, I spent long periods of the day bent over the ivy, fascinated by the promise of its danger — a danger I believed I was protected from — and would continue to be. |
| But that summer, the poison ivy found its way to my older brother’s legs, then along his hands and arms. As he suffered what we discovered was an allergic reaction to the ivy, the clammy heat rose in South Carolina and a fiery rash settled itself over my brother’s neck and throat until, finally, my grandmother took him to the one white doctor who would treat black patients in our segregated town. | But that summer, the poison ivy found its way to my older brother’s legs, then along his hands and arms. As he suffered what we discovered was an allergic reaction to the ivy, the clammy heat rose in South Carolina and a fiery rash settled itself over my brother’s neck and throat until, finally, my grandmother took him to the one white doctor who would treat black patients in our segregated town. |
| Dr. M. had a jar in the reception room filled with rock candy that he gave out to both his patients and their sugar-loving siblings. He’s a kind man, my grandmother said. Other doctors wouldn’t even look at colored people, let alone treat them. It was the early ’70s. In our Brooklyn school we were being taught that segregation was a thing of the past, that what King and Parks, Tubman and Turner, Phillis Wheatley and Crispus Attucks had struggled for was all behind us. But in Greenville, we lived in Nicholtown, a segregated neighborhood inside of a segregated town. I realized that either Greenville was cheating or Brooklyn was lying. | Dr. M. had a jar in the reception room filled with rock candy that he gave out to both his patients and their sugar-loving siblings. He’s a kind man, my grandmother said. Other doctors wouldn’t even look at colored people, let alone treat them. It was the early ’70s. In our Brooklyn school we were being taught that segregation was a thing of the past, that what King and Parks, Tubman and Turner, Phillis Wheatley and Crispus Attucks had struggled for was all behind us. But in Greenville, we lived in Nicholtown, a segregated neighborhood inside of a segregated town. I realized that either Greenville was cheating or Brooklyn was lying. |
| Coming home from Dr. M.’s my grandmother trailed the four of us to the back of the bus where other blacks had settled themselves. I sat, as I always did, in a window seat leaning into my grandmother — for safety? For assuredness? For comfort? For love. I watched downtown Greenville become Nicholtown again. We had left “home” the first time with my mother for the dream of New York. At 9, I felt as though home was turning its back on me now without so much as a wave goodbye. | Coming home from Dr. M.’s my grandmother trailed the four of us to the back of the bus where other blacks had settled themselves. I sat, as I always did, in a window seat leaning into my grandmother — for safety? For assuredness? For comfort? For love. I watched downtown Greenville become Nicholtown again. We had left “home” the first time with my mother for the dream of New York. At 9, I felt as though home was turning its back on me now without so much as a wave goodbye. |