Emmett took his first little baby steps when he was about eleven months old. Within a few months of that, there would be yet another step forward. A big one.
At the time, I was still working as a clerk-typist at the Coffey School of Aeronautics. It was a good job and it paid well enough, even though I always turned everything over to Mama: my paycheck, as well as the money I was getting while Louis was still alive. Mama, in turn, had complete control over Bo. Then again, Mama had complete control over everything in her household, and practically every other household within shouting distance, for that matter. Anyway, when I got home this one night, Mama was telling me what she had prepared for dinner and then she glanced at Bo, measuring the distance between them as he made his busy little way around the kitchen. She turned back to finish spelling it all out to me.
“And I made some J-E-L-L-O,” she said in a hushed voice, as if spelling it wouldn’t have been safe enough.
Suddenly, from behind her came this proud little-bitty voice. “Jell-O.”
Mama turned around in shock. “He can talk.”
I was even more amazed. “He can spell.”
Now, I don’t know; when you sound out the letters J-E-L-L-O, it does kind of sound like the actual word “Jell-O” to me. And Bo loved it enough to have been paying special attention to each syllable. But still, just to be there to hear him speak his first word, and to know that he had translated it from the letters, well, it sent an unbelievable charge through my whole body and through that entire kitchen. Mama must have felt it, too, because she moved into action. Right away, as if on command, she got a bowl and went into the icebox. The Jell-O wasn’t even firm yet, but that didn’t seem to matter. Bo loved it. I mean, he would scream for Jell-O. And, from this point on, he would know how to say it as he screamed for it. For the time being, we were content to savor the special moment, as Mama served the Jell-O, and Bo slipped into baby bliss, and she and I continued to spoon-feed new words to him. Now, I would have preferred his first word to have been “Mama,” but maybe this was the next best thing. Our relationship would—well, I guess you could say it would gel through just this kind of care and nurturing and fun.
Now that he could walk and talk, there was no stopping our little Emmett. “Mama” wasn’t far behind “Jell-O” in his ever-growing vocabulary. I made sure of that. Then came “Ma-moo.” That’s what he called his grandmother. I was Mama, she was Ma-moo. I’m sure that was his way of helping us figure out who he was calling on. Probably made no difference whatsoever to him. You see, as far as he was concerned, he had two Mamas. And, as far as my mother was concerned, she had two babies. Yes, now it was two children for Mama. I was the big kid, Emmett was the little kid. And this was the beginning of the special relationship we always would have. We were so much like brother and sister, like friends back then, and it added a unique dimension to the mother-son bond we would forge over the years ahead.
“Jell-O” might have been dessert for Bo, but it was just an opening for Mama. Once she saw Emmett was ready to learn, she didn’t waste any time at all teaching him. Everything, starting with his ABC’s. She took this on with the same kind of intensity she had when she’d kept me up all night teaching me my multiplication tables or drilling me on geometry theorems until I could simply close my eyes and dream the solutions to all my problems. She wanted to make sure that Bo could count and spell long before he started school. She became his personal “Big Bird.”
Of course, Mama just loved being the caregiver. I mean, she really loved it. There seemed to be nothing that pleased her more back then than attending to every possible need her babies might have. And Mama would give Emmett everything. Her love, her attention, her devotion. Everything. Over the years, Emmett would have all that he wanted and probably more than he needed. We lavished him. And we made sure he looked good, too. Bo would always be a clotheshorse, although, early on, I guess he was just a clothes pony. I went out of my way to buy him the best outfits. The earliest ones had sort of a theme. Armed services. First, there was the cutest little sailor suit and then we turned to the army. After all, it was the 1940s. Military was in style.
Later my mother gave him a suit that, I’m sorry, I just did not like at all. It had plaid sleeves on a solid-colored body and—well, I had spent so much money on his clothes and that one, I don’t know, it just looked bargain basement to me. But then he put it on and told his grandmother he looked better than he’d ever looked in his life. And, my goodness, that was such a slap in the face for me. Even back then, it seems, he had a sense of what was important and how to make the important people around him happy. I might have been making the money, but Mama was making the Jell-O. I have to say that Bo was becoming quite the little diplomat.
It’s no wonder, then, that Mama couldn’t even think about leaving him behind when she planned to make a trip to Mississippi. Emmett was not quite two at the time, and it would be a tense trip for her, but I knew I didn’t have to worry about anything as long as he was in my mother’s care. One of Mama’s sisters, Elizabeth Wright, was expecting another child. Mama felt she simply had to travel down to Money, she had to look after Aunt Lizzy, who was the most fragile of Mama’s fourteen brothers and sisters. She had lost three of her ten kids through difficult childbirths. Mother wanted to go down there to insist that Aunt Lizzy’s husband, Moses Wright, would take her sister to a doctor. Now, Papa Mose was a preacher and a sharecropper and just as tough as Mama. If she was considered the matriarch of our very large family, then Papa Mose was considered the patriarch. He didn’t budge on his decision to use the midwife. But Mother was there to supervise, to monitor, and, of course, to holler out if things didn’t go well. They did go well. They went very well. And when the baby came, Mama was the one who came up with the name: Simeon Brown Wright.
Mama and I weren’t the only ones who treated Emmett in a very special way. Part of that was due to my mother’s dominance in the family. She just commanded attention for herself and her offspring. I was the oldest grandchild on my mother’s side and on my father’s side, and had always done so well in school that most of my relatives tended to dote on me, thinking Mamie Lizzie was the be-all and end-all. But beyond all that, everyone in our family simply adored Emmett. How could they not? He was irresistible. With his sandy hair and twinkling hazel brown eyes, he was the cutest little boy. And, by the time he was two, he had gotten way beyond all of the problems we suffered during his birth. The facial scarring had disappeared, and his legs had gotten stronger, so much so that it was hard to keep him down. He got a kick out of pulling a little mischief every once in a while, then running to hide under the bed, waiting for people to come after him, playfully. Within a few seconds, he must have felt the coast was clear and he would peek-a-boo his way out from under the bedspread, and there I’d be, just waiting for that little rascal. But then we both would have such a wonderful laugh that he’d wind up getting a hug instead of a spanking. For Emmett, pranks and hugs were inseparable, wrapped up together in one big loving bundle.
Not that anybody needed a reason to hug him. With so many relatives around, we almost had to develop a time-share plan for Emmett. My young cousin Thelma Wright was living there at the time. She was one of the daughters of Papa Mose and Aunt Lizzy and had come to stay with us in 1939, when she was in the third grade. Her parents thought she had promise and wanted to give her a chance to take advantage of everything the world outside Mississippi had to offer. She was about ten when Emmett was born and she was always there to pitch in, helping Mama with everything that needed to be done. It took a few tries for young Thelma to get the hang of changing Bo’s diapers, though; they kept falling off at first. Over the years, they were so close, talking and playing together, that Bo would come to think of “Thel-moo” as his sister, and she would think of him as a brother.
There were others. Plenty of them. We had a very big family and a lot of friends. They all were practically standing in line. Every so often one of my uncles might come by and take Bo uptown, which was only about two or three blocks away. They would walk him up there just to spend a little time and, of course, buy him some ice cream or some other treat.
Several of Emmett’s older cousins made it their business to take him out every Saturday. There was a Cadillac that seemed to get passed around them. And there was a rush to see who could get up the earliest on Saturday morning, take the keys to this Cadillac, and head to Argo. It became such an intense competition that they were getting up as early as five in the morning. On a Saturday morning. Bo was the prize, although riding around in that fancy car must have made him feel like the winner. He was just a toddler and he was already going first-class. Whoever got to our place first on Saturdays always seemed overjoyed to get to spend time with my baby. The others, the latecomers, would try to wait it out. It was like they were on the “Emmett shift,” talking to me, eating, but mostly hoping to get a turn when Bo got back. Oh, and when he got back, he would be so full of junk that he would have an upset stomach. They were feeding him all kinds of stuff at places like Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago. Caramel corn, popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, and anything else they could stuff in the poor kid. I know they thought they were doing a good thing, entertaining him, showing him a fun time, but they were making more work for the rest of us who had to take care of Bo after they dropped him off, bathing him, calming him down, putting him to bed.
Even with the upset tummy, though, Emmett was having a great time. He loved the amusement park. Later he would take on the roller coasters, but at this point, the wildest thing he could handle was the horse on the merry-go-round. And it had to be a horse, too. His cousins would try to get him onto one of the benches so they could sit with him, but he insisted on sitting on top of a horse. And he wanted to sit there by himself, although someone would always be right there next to him. Already at two, Emmett was showing signs of that independent spirit that would only get stronger in time.
There also were his little friends in the neighborhood. Mama was much more lenient with Bo than she had been with me. He was actually able to go outside and play with the other kids all the time, not just sometimes. When I was coming up, there was so much I couldn’t do. No movies, no hopscotch, no hide-and-seek, and definitely no dancing. Even after I got married. In the first six months of my marriage to Louis Till, we lived with Mama and actually asked permission to go to the show. I’m not kidding. Mama’s hold on me had been so strong that I didn’t realize that I was fully grown until I was nineteen years old and had been married for six months.
When Emmett was about three, he was either out right in front of our house or in our yard. We had an enclosed yard, and it seemed to be a meeting place for the whole neighborhood. The whole neighborhood. My mother once told me that if you put one child out in the yard, by the time you came back, you’d find a flock of children. She was right. Bo was like a kiddie magnet. They were drawn to him. I never imagined that children could find so many activities in a front yard and on a front porch. Oh, yes, and on the sidewalk. There would be so many kids on the sidewalk in front of our house that people had to step off just to get by. There was always food, plenty of games, and water. A steady stream of kids to the water fountain. At first all these children had to go all the way through our house—the front room, dining room, past a bedroom and bathroom, and finally into the kitchen. And I think we had the thirstiest children in all of Argo. Every time you turned around there was some little person asking for water. Finally we decided to tap into a pipe to install a faucet outside for all the kids. And that became a real attraction. Of course, you add a water spout to kids outside in a yard and you wind up with mud. We had mud puddles for days, but the children had good times they would remember for a whole lot longer.
It didn’t hurt that Emmett had so many toys to play with. In fact, throughout his childhood, Emmett would have everything any child might want. From the time he lay in his crib playing with the rattle I had suspended there, kicking it with his little feet, laughing, there was always something around to occupy him. Wooden blocks, toy animals, bikes, wagons. When he was about five, I bought him a Lionel train set, one with all the bells and whistles. Not to mention smoke pellets that made it look so real as it would come chugging along to the special little depot I bought, the stop where the train would pick up little passengers and cargo. It was a very nice train, the deluxe model. I don’t remember exactly what it cost, but I know it wasn’t cheap. And Emmett really liked it. At least, he seemed to like it, as he sat on the side watching all the adults play with it. I guess it was kind of hard for the poor little fellow. Whenever he would try to operate something, some cousin or uncle would yell, “No,” or “Wait,” or “Don’t touch that.” Now that I think about it, we were all much more excited about the train than he was. All my friends would come by to play with it. Eventually, Emmett lost interest. Even early on, he clearly wanted to be a player, not a spectator. He wanted to be in the game, not on the sidelines.
Besides, he was strictly an outdoor man. Mama loved to take him to Brookfield Zoo. Even when he was a toddler, we would strap him in his stroller and push him right along. It was one of my mother’s favorite activities, especially when we had visitors from the South. Mama had to take them to the zoo. It was new in those days and our relatives from the South had never seen a zoo before. Bo loved the polar bears, who would dive and box and thrill him so. But Mama’s favorite spot in the whole place was the monkey house. There always was a show with those monkeys. I’ll never forget the time Aunt Georgia came to visit us from Mississippi. I was pushing Bo and he kept trying to get out and walk. But I knew if I let him out in the monkey house, he’d wind up being one of the monkeys. I couldn’t take that chance. So, I kept him strapped in. Those monkeys were doing their monkeyshines that day. I mean, they were really showing their—well, what monkeys show when they’re showing out. Aunt Georgia had never seen anything like it and she began to laugh like I had never heard anybody laugh before, with a very loud voice, slapping her thighs and making this high-pitched sound to the point where Bo kept looking back and forth. At the monkeys, then at Aunt Georgia. He studied her so intently that he must have been trying to figure out whether Aunt Georgia and the monkeys were communicating somehow. We caught the attention of others, too, as more and more people stopped looking at the monkeys and started watching Aunt Georgia. I’ll never forget that day, when we went to the monkey house at Brookfield Zoo, and Aunt Georgia became the entertainment.
Mama thought my twenty-fifth birthday should be a memorable event. It would be. But not for a reason we ever would have imagined. The date—November 23, 1946—was approaching and Mama made sure everything was worked out. She and I planned it together, but, as always, she was in charge. She took care of everything, even all the cooking. She prepared a twin-turkey dinner. Unbelievable. Two whole turkeys. I don’t know how she did it, but she wanted to make sure everything was done right. That was a good thing, too, because it seemed like everybody in Argo wound up at our house on my special day. And it was special, too. When I was coming up, there was no music or dancing in our house. But now the whole town was dancing the night away. I don’t know how it all started. It seemed to have been a spontaneous kind of thing. I mean, it was a party, and that’s how parties can be. But I was nervous when all the dancing started. Once it did, it was hard to hold people back. I knew Mama, and I didn’t know when she was going to just lose it. As it turns out, Mama didn’t complain, she took it all in stride. But I believe she was just holding her peace. Until it seemed the house just couldn’t take it anymore. People were dancing so hard, the floor looked like it was starting to sag. I guess, after all those quiet years, that old house just couldn’t stand all this activity. Even without the dancing, though, the party went on.
At some point, somebody convinced me to try a little rum in my Coke. Just a little. Enough to smell the rum more than anything else. But why not? After all, you only have one twenty-fifth birthday. Now, I wasn’t a drinker, but it was my party and I didn’t see anything wrong with it, even though I wasn’t too sure what Mama would think. She knew about it. She knew about everything going on in her house, and then some. But she didn’t say anything about it. Believe me, that was startling. Now, since I wasn’t a drinker, I would take a little sip and then put my glass down, walk around mixing with my guests, and then come back, only to find my glass was missing. I’d get another drink and the same thing would happen again. In fact, it happened a few times before I really started wondering about it. Why did my glass keep disappearing like that? No sooner had I asked myself the question than I thought of the answer: Mama. I started looking around, but she was nowhere near me. Then I looked down. Oh my God. Emmett had been trailing me around the party picking up my “Coke” glass, drinking after his mama. By the time I noticed, he was in a pretty good mood. He seemed to think everything was funny. Well, I took him up in my arms and up to bed. He was so limber, not stiff at all, just very relaxed, passive. I saw that he was all right, and I relaxed, too. There hadn’t been much rum in those glasses to begin with. Even so, he wound up sleeping like, well, like a baby. Through the noise, the music, all the way through the night.
There was no more rum and Coke for me that night, or any night, for that matter. Even before Mama talked to me about the whole thing. Of course, she noticed. And she had a way of coming back at you when you’d least expect it. She really didn’t have to drive the point home. Seeing Bo with my glass was a sobering experience. He was only five years old. Very impressionable. And I knew that the impressions I made would be lasting. I decided that he would never see me with a drink in my hand again.
I have learned over the years that there are many ways that children learn. But one of the most important is by watching adults, especially their parents. There was a valuable lesson in this experience, a valuable lesson for me. I learned from Bo that he was learning from me and that I had better pay attention to what I was teaching him. Everything I did as a mother would have an effect on my son. And I decided at that moment that I had to set the right example for him. I would always remember that lesson. But if I ever forgot, even for a moment, I’m sure Mama would have been there to remind me.