My Great Grandmother has been dead for 12 years.
As a child, our interaction was amiable at best. She was feisty, and I was docile. In her day, she'd whoop your ass (and if you got close enough to her...she still would...she was blind in older age); in my day I would fight because I had to, but I really didn't want to. Two different sides of a coin-but nevertheless bonded by blood and understanding.
I think we were exactly what each of the other wanted to be. However, time and circumstance made her the tough one and me the victim. She grew up during the Depression era, the first generation of us who would become Pittsburghers. Her family had come from Montgomery, Alabama, following the seduction of steel mill jobs with decent pay. She had to make her way...she was black, poor, and a woman; the three strikes that often determine whether you make it at all. Her first child died....a boy who was stillborn, when she was 15 or 16. He was buried in a shoebox in an unmarked grave, on their property I am assuming, By 17, she was married to a man from Georgia, who was already married to someone else...she didn't know She would bear two girls by him, one of whom is my bff (my grandma) and he would leave her for a town in Ohio...re-marry and have more children. A single parent, with 3 little girls to care for in a segregated country, she struggled...but as they say "she persisted."
She was tough, but she had this sweet little voice that said "Love is Tough." One minute she might be feeling your head to feel "all that glory." The next she might call you a hussy if you sassed her and didn't do what she said in a timely manner. I got both of those. I didn't sass her, because my great grandmother scared me shitless. There was something about her that commanded dignity, respect, and honor. There was something about her that said, "if you don't follow the rules, I will make you understand why you should have." That was her way. Her "granny voice" was cute but it carried the air of an all knowing queen. We treated her as such. When she needed to go to the "Love Room" as she commonly referred to it, there was no hesitation in who would take her. Someone would link her arm to theirs, lead her there, allow her to do her duty, and lead her back down the stairs. When her glass needed to be freshened, you didn't ask if she needed ice cubes---you just put those suckers in there and filled it up with her favorite beer. Ah, yes she was a lady and a Queen, but she was no dainty flower...and she'd let you know!
Elizabeth or Liz (as she liked to be called), was a woman who had to make it on her own terms. She never talked much about growing up in her household...but mainly about school and her neighborhood on Pittsburgh's Northside. She talked about the scuffles she had been in; one in which she had a girl knock a stick off her shoulder to challenge her to a fight (a Depression era fight code)...or that time when she punched a woman off of a bar stool for trying to flirt with my (step) great -grandfather, who she never legally married because they were both still married to other people. She laughed about these things; a sweet, warm, laughter. This was her as a rogue, as a youngin', as a rebel. Yet, when she was telling these stories, she always found a way without directly saying it, to impart to my brothers, cousins, and I, that we should not behave in this way. She gave us candy and pop as an incentive for good behavior. Since she was blind, she would take her wallet from her pillow case, pull out a bill and ask which number it was. If it was the amount she wanted to give, which was always greater than $1, it was yours to keep.
When we talked, just her and I, we mostly laughed. This was of course when I got older, into my later teens. We shared jokes, stories, and she asked me about school. She always wanted to know how my grades were, what I was doing. When I got to college, she couldn't be prouder. She couldn't come to my high school graduation but she wanted to know what I wore, how my hair was styled, and what color my robe was. She was fascinated. I wish she she could have actually see me then. Our last conversation, happened two weeks before she died. We had just moved her into a new housing complex for senior citizens. She and I were sitting in the hallway chatting about...everything. Laughing about how she called Duquesne beer "Du-Quincy". I just remember her laughing, her dark sunglasses on her nose, her beautiful straight gray hair braided into two cornrows;that she always did herself. She did not let her blindness stop her from ANYTHING. There was something about her that day, that seemed so peaceful.
She died at the age of 77 in January of 2005. A shock to us, who thought our kick-ass granny would live to be 100 at least. We think she caught a cold. My heart was broken. , I felt like I was just getting to know her, really, after a whole life time of knowing her. I had so many questions to ask her, which would now be only whispered to the ears of Heaven.
My Gran, as I called her, is still alive in my heart. I hear her laugh, smile when I see her smile in my mind, and she comes to visit in my dreams. Her message: never forget who you are.
Time may pass but I'll never forget who she was and who she made it possible for me to be. She had to be tough so I could be something.
