Unto Us Is Born

© 2011 J. Benton White. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 02/11/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8707-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8708-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8709-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010915337

Printed in the United States of America

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Amanda

Mary

Norm

On this day was born…

The Dream

The First Days

Going it alone

An extraordinary ordinary life

Birmingham

Breaking up is a hard thing to do.

Life in the U.S.

The Dream Returns

Strange Bedfellows

The Secret

Growing Up

And Then There Was Joey

A Time for Everything

Close Encounters

More About the Dream

Just Another Game

In Other Places

In the Eyes of the Beholder

Same Day - Different Folks

Not So Equal Justice

A Hole in the Dam

No Person Is An Island

Ripples in the Pond

Loose Ends

Ladies Included

The Event

More of the Same

All Hell Breaks Loose

An End, A New Beginning

Focus

Dream On

All Not Quiet on the Front

Life Goes On

To Gavin and Abbie who have made their grandmother’s and grandfather’s later years a special joy by their presence in our lives.

Chapter 1

Amanda

Why would anyone care about the fate of a young pregnant Black woman, poor, unwed and still in her teens, and on the eve of the birth of her first child out of wedlock? Even her own family had pretty much abandoned her in these last days. The fact that she had survived the last month seemed miraculous to anyone who had even bothered to pay attention. Her own family had become somewhat indifferent, never sure how she had gotten in this situation in the first place. Was she really raped as she had claimed, or was she at least partially responsible? The fact that she was surviving at all was probably due to her strong constitution, her will to survive, and the benevolence of a neighboring family who had given her space at the edge of the small stable that housed the family chickens and goats. Many like her had perished in lesser circumstances than she now endured. That prospect had not eluded her. Now it was almost Christmas and she could feel the pangs of pain pulse through her body. Fear gripped her as she wondered again about how her soon to be born baby could survive birth in such harsh surroundings.

She had spent her last days trying to endure until the life inside her escaped into the world. It had not been easy. She has most recently been driven to sifting through the neighborhood garbage to find enough nourishment for herself and the ever-growing fetus inside her body. Nothing came easily. Sometime nothing came at all. There were days when she did not eat. She had been fired by the two families on the hill where she had done ironing for more than 2 years as soon as she had begun to show. While both families had daughters who had taken extended trips out of the country before they were 20 to avoid the scandal that might have been created by their own sexual misdeeds, those same families could not tolerate a servant girl bringing disgrace to their household by having a child out of wedlock. But what could you expect of those people? they mused. They live like animals you know.

She had survived by filling in for others who did not know her and did not know her real circumstances. Few knew or probably cared that she did not know who the father of this child that was growing larger and larger inside her was. It was not a child planted by choice, but an issue created by the brutal act of rape. This beautiful seventeen year old woman-child had been a virgin by choice. She had moral convictions in a world that did not always value such attributes as did she. Nevertheless she was ravaged by a band of white youth who had been stalking and taunting her for months before they got up the nerve to commit their own final plunder.

Those school boys from the proper families on the hill where she worked saw her daily as they went to school and as she went to her housekeeping in the homes of their parents. Their crude remarks had grown bolder and both she and they began to show signs of their physical maturity. Those budding breast silhouetted through her blouse did not escape the notice of those brazen young men. The crude remarks first came in whispers among themselves, then louder as their lust became more embolden and their numbers created more courage. Her response was fright, then terror, accompanied by hatred toward those she could not control. She sought ways to avoid those encounters, but just when she thought she was successful they would reappear. It was as if she and they were in a deadly game of chess. They had become an obsession for one another. In the end the boy men prevailed. They had lain in wait in the dust of that March evening to have their way with her, to satisfy their own growing lust.

Amanda was no ordinary girl by anyone’s standards. More beautiful than most, her skin almost white, she had the best features of the mixed racial heritage that resided in her genes. No one quite knew what to do with the budding beauty that did not seem to fit comfortably into anyone’s world. She was resented by her darker brothers and sisters, shunned by others in the ghetto either for being too pretty or to bright, and hated by the whites who in her physical presence were reminded of their own sins. Her mother did her best to make her a part of the family, yet those physical features always remained a reminded of the way Amanda herself was conceived.

That conception was an act of lust no less brutal than Amanda’s own recent experiences. Her mother was impregnated by the white master of the farm which she and her then new husband had resided some eighteen years ago. Once Martha had begun to show the first signs of her pregnancy the white master of the farm on which the couple worked and lived expelled them from the farm. He did not intend to let a child be born that would expose his rich and jealous wife to the question of who might be the father. Martha and Aaron ended up in the ghetto of the city where they still lived. They had children of their own. Amanda had always felt a bit like the outsider in the family where everyone else was a bit darker than she.

She had only learned recently herself of the story of her mother’s own brutal assault. While she had always felt somehow different she did not really know why. After all she was not the only light skinned child in the compound. Though she knew there was some white blood somewhere from the past she had no clue of how or under what circumstances that happened. Those were not usually shared stories among families. Only after her father had slapped her once again for some minor indiscretion, a punishment he used only on her among all of his children, her mother explained why her father seemed to treat her differently.He just can’t forget, her mother told her, that someone else had me. He has never been sure that I was not part responsible. It was then Amanda learned she was paying the price for something over which she had no control and that there was never a way that she could make things right with her father in that regard.

She had no control over her beauty as well. No matter what she did to make herself less attractive the natural beauty still prevailed. It was not just her physical features. There was an inner beauty as well. It had always been there. It was that feature that seemed to make some more resentful than anything else. She was what some might call self possessed, or as some said Uppity. That quality had brought the resentment of her siblings and it was being tested more and more. Try being ‘uppity’ when you are nine months pregnant, living in a stable, and when you have no one you can depend on a sister had recently taunted her with some delight. She felt little sympathy from anyone except her mother as her time drew near.

She might not have even survived those terrible times had it not been for what she always called the dream. The dream seemed to make everything else bearable even when reason would suggest it was not. She could not have gone on without the dream. The dream became her friend, the only friend she sometime felt she had. It gave her purpose. It helped her to survive.

There was time in those dark December nights to ponder. Too far along to work, isolated from her family, she thought a lot about the past. Her memories were not stories of a rich heritage upon which to draw, but stories about survival. While her family had indeed survived South Africa’s cruel white supremacy, she herself realized that she knew only part of her own past. She would never know about the other half of her ancestry, what genes she carried for future generations. She had time to ponder the abuse her ancestors had endured for so many years, the oppression of the white’s over the blacks’ that had been going on for too long. She knew that her own family had little opportunity to live up to their own potential in a system they did not control. It did not matter that white folks were a small minority, it did matter that they help the power. She did not want the child she was soon to bring into the world to experience the desperate life she had to endure.

In the ghetto Amanda had felt discrimination from both worlds’ she had been forced to occupy. Her light skin had set her apart and the circumstances of her current predicament just added to the burden. It was the young Anglican priest from England that had been the one who had showed her a way to cope, given her a new sense of herself. He had also given her a new sense of herself as a person. He had not only seen the physical beauty but the spiritual depth of this precocious child who followed in the shadow of her mother’s coat tails’ as she made her daily rounds to wash and iron in those homes on the hill. It was the priest who taught her to read while her mother worked, and the priest who gave her the Bible from which she could practice her reading. It was the priest who treated her like a human being, the first white person who ever had done such a thing for her. It was the priest who told her God loved everyone equally and that whites were no better than people of color despite what it seemed.

It was in those two years that her mother washed and ironed for the family with whom the priest lived that she got the vision. That vision was what she would share with whoever would listen, and it was the vision that made some think of her as uppity. She had carried that vision on until these most difficult times. It was the vision that helped her survive, the vision and the dreams.

How does one describe the vision? How does one describe a religious experience? How does a woman too young to be called a woman bear all that she had to bear and survive? God loves you, the priest told her one day. It is just that simple, God loves you. These people can do whatever they want but they cannot take away the fact that God loves you. He loves us all, and the color of our skin or the amount of our money doesn’t make a bit of difference. God loves us all without reservation, without condition. Just know, God loves you!

That episode was the climax of their relationship. The priest had been under increasing pressure from the small congregation that he served to remain aloof from the Black servants that had increasingly become the focus of much of his attention. Fresh out of seminary he had come to South Africa because he felt a calling. Appalled at what he found he wanted to show that if one educated the natives given the opportunity they could and would do as much as anyone. Treat them with dignity and they will display dignity, he suggested.

Amanda had become a special project for him, this beautiful young girl who could pass for white were she somewhere else could be a perfect example. Though she had been deprived of even the most meager elements of a formal education it was clear to anyone who bothered to get to know her at all that she was a gifted person. She was an eager learner, brighter than anyone he had encountered in his own young life. Not only did she take to reading more quickly than anyone he had ever known, she devoured anything he gave her to read. She understood more than anyone her age would suggest she could, and she came to love the Bible. She alone, he would later recall, made his two years in South Africa seem worth while, though the truth is he would never know the total depth of his influence on her and those lives she would later touch. He had given her the vision, and without the vision the dreams would have made no sense. She clung to the vision and was sustained by the dream.

Little did he know, or would he ever know, how much trouble he would cause by taking this precocious young woman under his wing. Though years later he would read of events in Alabama and gave a little cheer of what was becoming possible in the Southern United States he could never guess that anything he had ever done had any influence on the events he now applauded.

His friendship with Amanda had really led to his early return to England. His own parishioners had come to feel he was a troublemaker, paying too much attention to the Blacks, treating them as if they were of equal worth. The congregation wanted a comforter, not a zealot, and his constant theme that Black folks were included equally in God’s gratuitous love was more than some could bear. That same message had a tendency to separate Amanda from her family and friends. The very fact that she could read separated her from any of her family and friends, and the fact that she truly believed God loved her as much as he did the people on the hill put her in conflict with her own people (whoever they were) and the world in which she was being forced to live. Even the fact that she was having a child as a result of having been raped brought her little sympathy. Perhaps this seed growing inside her could give her the feeling of love that she felt she was being denied because of her own beginnings. And then there were those dreams.

Life after the priest had left was not quite the same for Amanda. Though she was now armed with the gift of reading that no one could take away there was no one around to encourage her about the vision. For a while it remained dormant only to be rekindled by the dreadful events that were now bringing the child. Without the priest to tutor her she learned to iron, and rather than continue to trail her mother around she found her own households where she could earn her way and contribute to the family income. She kept the vision quietly, she read the Bible, the only real literature a girl from the ghetto had available. As she read her Bible the reading sparked the vision and she miraculously felt enfolded by love. That enabled her to endure.

The labor pains became real on Christmas Eve. She grimaced in pain, and then she would remember the dream.

Chapter 2

Mary

Life had begun for Mary with great expectations. Born into a family of privilege she anticipated the time when she could take her place in the polite society in which her family had always been a part. Few others she knew could claim that they were direct descendants that had come on the Mayflower so long ago, or that in ensuing generations had one family been so much a part of the country’s political or social elite. As shy as she was inclined to be, she still took pride in the family stories that reminded her of the historical prominence that the name suggested.

The name Bradford meant less in her Southern surroundings than it would have in Massachusetts, a place where people honored such things. The fact that her family even dared reveal that their roots were long settled above the Mason Dixon line actually was an affront to some she had met. She was used to being treated as an outsider by many who appeared to be still fighting the Civil War almost 100 years after it had ended. For some it had never ended, and would not end until the South got its way. Those prejudices just added to the isolation she already felt, an isolation that had been created from her own personal story.

The fact was that Joe had not turned out to be what he had seemed to be when she was introduced to him by her sister soon after her parent’s death. He was the most eligible and sought after bachelor in the small Tennessee town Mary had visited so often to be with her only sister. Every single young woman in town had at one time or another actively pursued this young, handsome lawyer whose father was the most prominent person in that section of Tennessee. Despite the attention from others Joe soon became enamored with this shy young visitor from Nashville. She was the only one who had seemed indifferent to his presence when they happened to be together at some affair. When he did approach she seemed to have been swept off of her feet by his attention. She would have said Yes to his proposal much earlier had it not been for the responsibilities she felt toward her role as companion to her two aging parents. A quiet wedding in the parlor of her sister’s home a few days after Christmas seemed almost anti-climatic to what seemed like a whirl wind romance that had happened since her parent’s recent death.

Now a scant 4 years later Joe had joined his uncles in the lumber business in Birmingham. The journey to that point in their lives had been fraught with anxiety. It had not been a move of choice, but rather one of circumstance. He had been caught up in the legacy of his father, probably the most prominent political voice in Southern Tennessee. Unlike his father however, he lacked the maturity to handle the responsibilities or temptations that came to him after his father’s untimely death. He held both elective and appointed offices that gave him tremendous influence for someone not yet 30. His last decision to turn his back when he discovered the practice that had been so common in Southern politics for so long, the voting of tomb stones they called it, a guarantee that the party in power would stay in power. He had inherited his father’s role as Registrar of Voters among other things he was doing. When his misdeeds were discovered he had the choice, because of who he was, of either leaving the State and giving up the practice of law, or going to jail when his crime was exposed. He moved his family to Alabama and joined his father’s 2 brothers in a thriving oak flooring business located in Birmingham rather than try to clear his name.

Mary found herself moving, as she had so much of her life, to a place where she felt the social isolation that had been so much a part of her entire life. Daughter Sarah was born soon after their arrival, and in another year she was pregnant with her second child. She had not been able to make many friends since she arrived, and with her new pregnancy her sense of isolations continued to grow as they moved from house to house, always looking for a more suitable place that would accommodate their growing family. Devoted to Sarah, Mary found both comfort and a new sense of worth in the infant’s utter dependence on her. It was a sense of worth that the rest of the world seemed to be uniting to steal from her she sometimes felt. Now there would be another she could nurture as well and that seem to give her a new sense of purpose. And then there were for her as well the dreams.

Having been the daughter of a career officer in the army she had a lonely existence as a child. Her parents had a stormy relationship as long as she could remember. The youngest of three surviving children she and her older brother seemed to bear the brunt of the continuing family turmoil. He older sister had escaped by being with her mother during the periods of separation from her father, something which occurred more frequently the longer the marriage lasted. Mary and Doug were carted all over the country as reassignments were more frequent in the army at that time. In the absence of their mother there were the ever present nannies, really housekeepers who seemed more interested in snaring the Colonel than in caring for his children. That reality did not build confident personalities for either child. Mary and Doug were to show the insecurity that grew out of that upbringing for the rest of their lives. Being constantly reminded of their lineage did not have the positive effect or build a confident personality in either that was intended. Knowing one came from descendents of the Mayflower, that her grandfather was a U.S. senator and a governor, an uncle a Civil War general, or that others had founded towns, did not reinforce a sense of self worth in either child. As a matter of fact when her caregivers learned such things they used it to put both children down, telling them that just having famous people as their ancestors did not grant them any status. Mary quit even telling anyone the family stories on which she had been raised as it just seemed to create resentment toward her by those she told. Life was full of contradictions. Being told on one hand that you should be proud of your family history was offset by being resented because you were indeed self aware. It was particularly difficult for Mary as she did not handle it was well as did her older sister. It pushed her more deeply into the sense of personal isolation that characterized her entire childhood and would follow her into her adult life.

Mary did find some solace in her lonely life through the religion to which she was periodically exposed. While she never personally got close to the ministers who preached about God’s love and human worth she did find real comfort in the message itself. She actually believed that God loved her even if no one else did. She was not at all sure that anyone other than God really cared. That led to a lonely life.

She read the Bible regularly; she attended chapel or church as often as she could under the circumstances of her life situation. It did not seem to matter what church when she was a child, for military chaplains were of many denominations, and she had little touch with civilian life. The message she heard seemed pretty much the same no matter who was delivering it and it brought comfort to her life. What she remembered was the stories about God and Jesus the preachers told. She found something warm in them, she was made to feel accepted someway. It was the stories she decided that prompted the recent dreams she was now having, dreams about which she did not have the nerve to share with anyone. They gave her, however, a strange sense of peace she had not experienced before they came.

One could tell her childhood experiences had left a mark on her. Though she had been devoted to her older brother she had learned fairly early in life that she could not even totally depend on him. The stump that was the second finger on her right hand was a constant reminder that one had to look out for one’s self. She and her brother had been sent to a farm in Nebraska by her father when he was given an assignment to the Far East. On an early summer day they wandered to a nearby meadow to sit near the pond and perhaps do a little fishing. They became thirsty but knew that they could not drink the pond water as they had already seen the cows empty their bladders as they wadded the shallow shore. The windmill that supplied water to the trough where the cows usually drunk was spinning in the breeze but no water was being pumped to the trough. The children had been taught to make the pump work one had to insert a bolt into a pipe so the pump would do its job. Having searched for the bolt to no avail her brother finally suggested that she use her finger to replace the bolt so water could be pumped into the trough. She did as she was told. As soon as the finger went deep into the hole in the metal pipe she felt a terrible pain. Pulling her finger out of the pipe she could see that it was more than half gone. Rather than express sorrow her brother laughed a hearty laugh and said to her, How could you be so dumb as to do that? That finger she told people later was always a reminded of a cruel lesson, You can’t depend upon anyone entirely. You have to look out for yourself because nobody else really cares. She repeated that story to her children as they were growing up, not once, but several times. Trying to help them understand what she believed, You only have yourself when push come to shove. People understood that Mary did perceive the world as a bit hostile as they came to know her. They also knew she was deeply dedicated to her family at the same time.

Mary sometimes wondered if she could even always trust God, for her life seemed to reinforce her perception that at least the only human being that ever had been fully reliable in her life adventure was herself. In spite of that, she did seem to have an abiding trust in what she called God, the only one would never let her down, would never play cruelly tricks. It never occurred to her that as some might do she could blame God for her sense of isolation, or the bad things, the loneliness, the sense of isolation, the sometimes betrayal she had experienced in many of her life encounters. There were surely a lot of villains to avoid, but God never became a villain to her. God was the escapee from villainy. She did not know how she knew this, but she just did. That too had something to do with the dreams.

The only social life Mary had since moving to Birmingham was in going to church. Joe spent less and less time at home and church was a place she felt secure, perhaps the only place she seemed totally comfortable in her contact with people. Church was her safe haven. Church, and the ideas she got as she sat in the pew and pondered her life, is what sustained her in the worst of times.

It was only weeks after the churches’ annual revival (it took place during Lent for the first time in her memory) that Mary learned she was pregnant. She had been comforted by the revival meetings and from the messages of the young minister who led the meetings. Sitting alone in the pew, and later praying at the altar, she felt once again in control of her life. She was sure again, after a period of doubt, that God would help her survive. Still she was not overjoyed at the news of her pregnancy as things had not been going well with her and Joe. The thought of bringing another child into such an uncertain world was worrisome. She had few friends with whom to share whatever feelings she had. She was pretty much left with her own introspection. Church, reading, and thinking were her solace. And then there were the dreams to ponder.

The dreams had begum the week before her visit to the doctor. The first dream felt to her like a message, not a regular dream. While she could not remember a lot of its details she awoke with a deep sense of peace and intuitively seemed to know that she was pregnant. Joe was not there, he was out again with his buddies or a lady friend, she did not really know. She had no one with which she could discuss the dream. She just kept it to herself,

The second dream was more vivid, more than a premonition that she was pregnant, but she was still not certain what it was telling her. That was to come later. It was still just a dream, a dream that seemed to confirm what she was now already suspecting, that she was going to have another baby. The trip to the doctor was almost anti-climatic, so strong was that sense of assurance she already had. After the confirmation by the doctor the dreams came more often, they were more vivid, they became clearer, and they became her friends.

December was particularly gray and dreary in Birmingham in December of 1931. Perhaps it just seemed that way because the mood in the country was one of measured despair. Almost no one had escaped the devastation of the crash of 1929 and not even what should have been the happiness of expectant parenthood could temper the sense of hopelessness that pervaded the entire South. Mary vacillated between joy and despair as she anticipated the arrival of another child. The doctor suggested that it might even come on Christmas day, an idea which seemed a bit ironic to this young, shy woman, who was still trying to cope with those strange dreams which were now occurring regularly. The entire situation was one that left her puzzled, even a bit frightened. She had a sense of total isolation from a world with which she dared not share what seemed to her to be very real experiences. She was certain they would think her mad if she told the content of her dreams.

Joe might be the one with whom she could talk but he had become more and more removed as her due date drew nearer. He gambled more, drank even more, and came home at times smelling of someone else’s perfume more often than Mary wanted to admit. Her circumstances left her feeling totally alone. She vacillated between despair and that strange hope that had been fueled by her dreams. There was little she could do to alter her circumstances, but she could and did ponder her dream.

Chapter 3

Norm

There was nothing unusual about the Culleys. Being poor was a normal thing in the depression years, and they certainly qualified as poor. The baby that was growing in Norma was their first, and it was coming sooner than they had planned. They had talked of taking time to adjust to be being married before they had children when they discussed such matters at all. It would not have occurred to them, however, to have done anything to prevent the pregnancy, nor were they upset because their first Christmas together might be spent in the maternity ward rather than before the fireplace in their tiny apartment.

Getting married and having children was what Norma had always wanted. Chuck did not really plan about things like than when he was young. He just let things happen. Getting married is what he always assumed would happen, and he believed, as did most, that if you are married you have kids. It had been that way for generations in his family as far as he knew. You have as many as you can afford, people would