2015-10-16
985
Good memories are the most precious of our treasures. They remain with us all our lives, like favourite books to be plucked down and enjoyed. But sometimes an otherwise marvellous memory brings guilt and uncertainty. This happened to me. The experience goes back 36 years to my childhood in rural Virginia.
In those soft days so long ago, my closest friends were Lou Coles and her ten children. They lived in a log cabin Within hollering distance of our house. I especially liked Louis Coles and two of his brothers. Every day we would holler back and forth urgently discussing our plans.
Lou Coles was a stout woman who usually kept her head wrapped in a kerchief. The Coles cabin had two small rooms downstairs and one upstairs. It sat on a hill among large shade trees, surrounded by acres of cow pasture. I suppose I loved the Coleses as dearly as I did my own little sister. To me, their lives seemed idyllic, even though the bigger children spent long days labouring in the tobacco fields. Their water came from a hand-dug well and their light from kerosene lamps. But there was a warmth about their lives that I longed to share — and did.
The cabin had an aroma to it that I suspect has vanished from the earth forever. Even in summer, the stove was going most of the day, as old Lou boiled and simmered and fried food for the table.
It was my good fortune to have an extraordinary mother who allowed me to spend plenty of time with the Coleses—though, in reality, she couldn't have kept us apart. She gave the Coles boys strict orders to make me take turns, share everything and act nice. In this respect, our lives seemed equal. My special friend was Louis, for he was closest to my age. The palms of his black hands were light, and I remember — that summer in the South in 1948 _ telling him the old Uncle Remus fable: Once upon a time all humanity was black. Word spread that there was a special pond in which the black could be washed off. But by the time the laziest people reached the pond, there was only enough water to wash off the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. «And that,» I explained to Louis as we waded in the creek chasing crawfish, «is why I'm white all over and you're not.» And Louis cheerfully agreed.
