A Tale Told Only in Whispers Jordan Lederer

The palm fronds waved and rippled delightfully in the mild breeze. The thick even when cool humid air curled ones hair into rich tiny ringlets and rolled caressingly soothingly over the short sleeve e!posed skin like a light fragrant lotion. "et against the shimmering fronds was the pulled back hair bun on my mother#s head it was her habitual hairstyle. The intelligent eyes seemed to look as much into the reminiscences of a life time as out onto the verdant lawn that led out to the rippling water of $oberts%check bay& bay and that led the eye on to the small boats navigating the pole marked channel of 'lorida#s famous inland waterway. (t was all aesthetically framed in the video camera#s viewfinder by her eldest son yours truly. At the time perhaps in the late )*+,#s or early )**,#s such cameras were large and e!pensive. 'or someone of my means it was only practical to rent them by the day from the local camera store where they were only newly available. ( had rented one and for the last couple of hours we had been recording stories from the e!periences of her lifetime. "he paused and seemed to ponder the came to some conclusion. -er silvered auburn hair leaned forward conspiratorially. -er eyes narrowed and she firmly and insistently told me to turn off the camera. This she informed me was a story that must be held in the strictest confidentiality. The story opens about the year )*).. A female relative ( can#t remember the e!act relation ship or if ( was told at all. (t might have been one of her mother#s sisters or perhaps a cousin of theirs#. /ut regardless she was a young woman of about )+ yrs and had been due to go to the "orbonne in 0aris for college art school. /ut WW) had intervened "he couldn#t go to 1urope but all the eligible young men her age had in uniform called up to go 2Over there3 for the great war. Without any of the usual young men around to around to satisfy a free thinking young woman4s desire for e!perimentation and e!perience she ended up having an affair with an attractive colored chauffeur a black man. (n conse5uence as fate and nature would have it she became pregnant. (n the deep "outh of )*)* or in America as a whole for that matter society did not tolerate white women having and raising half black children. 6iscegenation the mi!ing of the races was against the law in many places and even Abraham Lincoln famous for his freeing slaves remarked that the thought of racial intermingling 2was abhorrent to all who considered it3 (t was a sentiment still prevalent both 7orth and "outh.

/ut she insisted that the child was hers and she would raise him % it turned out to be a boy& as her own. A sister stuck with her in this momentous decision. (t would mean that they would be almost completely ostracized for the rest of their lives by the society in which they lived and neither of them in conse5uence could ever get married. (t was well that the larger family farms of the time had the autonomy of small /aronies for it was there alone that they would find tolerance. Their decision reflected the stubborn "cottish family and 0resbyterian values of doing right by ones conscience as one#s personal consultation with 8od gave one the light to see it. The social pressures of ones time and society be damned. ( remember as a pre9teen my father of 8erman ancestry taking me to see a demonstration of "cottish pipe and drum bands. As the colorful kilts and tall bearskins and white buttoned spats of the /lack Watch flashed by one face was uni5uely and distinctively black. 6y father leaned over to me and remarked 2One thing about the "cots they always claim their own.3 0erhaps it was such a sentiment that motivated this earlier mother. 6y mother told me she had knowledge of the story because the colored girl who braided her hair as a teen was the girlfriend of the mulatto young man who had come of this union and he had become a bootlegger in the speakeasy world of the thirties. This alcohol under world seems to have been a haven for many of societies outcasts and misfits and would be an interesting one to study as a sepia rather than gray area between worlds that e!isted together closely daily but were never acceptably supposed to mi!. One can almost hear the rasping wail of /uffey "t 6aries# plaintive song 3-alf breed how ( learned to hate that word both sides was against me since the day ( was born.3 /ut ( was struck mostly by the difference in my mother#s and my own attitude toward this story a reflection how times have changed. To me it was one of a heroic stance a veritable "chindlers# list epic of doing right by ones conscience in the face of tremendous e!ternal odds and pressures. 'or me it is a story ( could be proud of. :et my mothers relationship to it had been formed in her youth and to her it remained a dangerous story. (t was a story of scandal that in her mind still remained one that still could have far reaching negative conse5uences for her family a story to be told only in the strictest confidence not even to be trusted to a homemade family video even one made by her own son a video made half a century after the fact. :et to her it was still an important story a story with an undeniable steel strong strand of family values a truth important enough to be passed on in spite of its still perceived dangers but a Tale be Told Only in Whispers.