Mamma Hattie and Annie Bell... Southern Belles and Patron Saints to Guide Us

(Writer's Note: This is a journal entry I made in late 2001. I ran across it over the weekend and thought it worth sharing. I hope you enjoy.)

“And they themselves were a part of the confluence. Their own joint act of faith had brought them here at the very moment and matched its occurrence, and proceeded as it proceeded.” from The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty

My Grandmamma was Hattie Ross Mitchell. My nanny was an African American by the name of Annie Bell, Annie Bell O’Bannon. They were both of the same generation, born in the first decade of the 1900’s. They were both from the back roads of Mississippi. Both of them were Southern Belles.

Annie Bell was barely removed from the institution of slavery; yet the unpainted shack of the cotton field where she was born and raised, the dependence on white landowners, and a life never existing above the poverty line sustained a different form of slavery. She was in her sixties before she ever had the right to vote. And she lived in a place that flew a flag that had flown over the people who enslaved her ancestors, the Stars and Bars. A flag that stood for a heritage that was hard, disenfranchising and racist.

Mamma Hattie grew up in the home of a sharecropper. She also spent her life under the poverty line, and under the same flag that represented Annie Bell. She was white so her family voted and could get jobs that paid marginally better than black jobs. She grew up picking cotton by hand and washing clothes in a tub in the yard. Mamma Hattie, by thousands of standards, had a hard life. There was no moonlight and magnolias in her heritage. Mamma Hattie’s front porch wasn’t for Mint Julep sipping. Her heritage was not glossed over in myth; it was one of hard work and meager means.

I was present during the confluence of their lives. Maybe I was the reason for this confluence. Annie Bell came on as my nanny in 1969 when I was three years old. We lived on Third Street in Grenada, Mississippi. My father was a cotton planter and the county Sheriff. I called him what everyone else did, Big Daddy. My mamma ran my father’s office. Mamma Hattie lived next door to our home, in a house also owned by Big Daddy.

So there I was growing up with a nanny and a Grandmamma at my convenience. My heritage comes from their existence.

Annie Bell and Mamma Hattie read their Bibles feverishly. Their faith led them to pray whenever storm clouds came near.

Their literal view of the Bible gave me a simple lineage dating back to Adam.

I shelled peas at their feet during thick August afternoons from the front porch. Annie Bell taught me how to clean a fish with a spoon and Mamma Hattie coached me on how to play baseball. She always told me that my grandfather would have been a professional baseball player had the opportunity existed out in Beat 4, Grenada County during the 20’s and 30’s. I have no reason to doubt her to this day.

For purposes of correction when I did wrong, like sneaking off to the train tracks two blocks to the east to watch the massive Illinois Central trains rumble past, Mamma Hattie used the basic switch cut from a bush. Annie Bell used a hairbrush on the up-turned palm of my hand. She believed a young boy’s kidneys could be injured by traditional spanking methods. Annie Bell would hold my hand still and pop it a time or two while the rest of my body danced and twirled, trying to gain freedom.

In the mornings, by the time I was usually roused from sleep, Mamma Hattie and my mamma would be out in the yard watering flowers and looking at blossoms in the cool of the early hours. Annie Bell and Big Daddy would be in the kitchen. Annie Bell still cooking breakfast, Big Daddy eating and both of them having a shared morning Bible-study. If the Bible said the moon turned to blood, well, for Annie Bell, it did! Big Daddy would laugh and tease Annie Bell. And Annie Bell: “Now Sheriff Strider, that’s just what the Holy Bible says.” They always prayed before Big Daddy headed off to fight crime and look at his cotton.

Mamma Hattie came from a huge family. The Ross family dominated our corner of Grenada County in population where our family’s farm was located. I got to know Uncle JD and Aunt Sarah Lee, and Aunt Ruby and Uncle Tom James and countless others by often traveling out to the country. Mamma Hattie never drove a car, but mamma would take her, I would ride in the back seat. Mamma Hattie wore a big, floppy straw hat and plastic shades affixed over her regular eyeglasses.

Annie Bell lived on the other side of town. Sometimes I would ride with my mom real early in the mornings to pick her up. The houses would turn from large, painted show places to dingy unpainted shacks. Annie Bell was always on the front porch of her shack, waiting. The lady who lived next door to her was Magnolia. I couldn’t understand Magnolia to save my life. I would look at her as only a little boy could, with turned head and big eyes. I thought she spoke a foreign language. I would mimic her sometimes with a quick retort of sounds and noises.

Annie Bell would throw her head back and laugh so loud some dog off on the side walk would bark.

Whenever I cut myself, or a bee stung me or I fell from a tree I would run to the nearest one of the two for help, Mamma Hattie or Annie Bell. Either would do because their open arms were full of love and care. Their soft words were full of comfort and ease. They were saints and I had all their patronage. Once, I fell through the front door window because I was playing where I had been told not to. I was so startled and upset that Annie Bell hugged me and said all would be fine; she didn’t even reach for the hairbrush. And she called my mom and told her it was an accident. Mamma Hattie loved to clip the end off Aloe Vera plants whenever I burned myself. She would coat the burn and soothe my cries.

Mamma Hattie died in 1984 when I was a senior in High School. She had had a stroke several months before and even though Annie Bell had been retired for a few years she came everyday and sat in a bedroom of our home we had fixed up for Mamma Hattie... she couldn’t get out of the bed; she couldn’t talk. Annie Bell would read her the Bible and sit calmly and tell her stories. She’d hold Mamma Hattie’s hand and pray.

They were friends in their twilight. The confluence of their lives created a bond and a familiarity that is rarely encountered. Their experiences were much more common than different. They prayed, they planted the same vegetables, they both knew that if you killed a snake with your garden ho make sure you don’t leave it belly-up or it would come back to life at sundown; that’s what they told me. Nothing really made them different from one another. I can’t imagine anyone trying to tell me one should matter more because of skin color.

Annie Bell looked like the singer Leontyne Price and Mamma Hattie look like Miss Clara on Andy Griffith. Mamma Hattie made the best biscuits and gravy, while Annie Bell made the best-fried chicken. Annie Bell was partial to the soap opera called Dark Shadows and Mamma Hattie watched General Hospital.

They both knew God and God knew each one of them, by name.

Being present during the confluence of their lives forever convinced me that skin color doesn’t matter. A great hoax has been played on way too many people; a great hoax that says skin pigment defines people. It doesn’t. I have Mamma Hattie and Annie Bell to prove any such argument blatantly without merit.

When debates arise over symbols and heritage and identification I am infuriated that the great hoax seems so alive. We can’t have one nation when we embrace symbols that reflect a tense and asymmetrical heritage. It’s a false heritage we seek to elevate when our symbols divide rather than include. Our energy and spirits are washed down into the gutter when we fight to uphold a heritage that seeks to alienate rather than embrace. Some of our heritage belongs in museums. We have plenty of nobility and decency to embrace and stand on, stand on together without the insecurities and ignorance of racism.

Annie Bell passed away in 2001. I was driving down Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC when I got the news over my cell phone. I was headed home from my job on Capitol Hill. Annie Bell never drove down Connecticut Avenue or visited Capitol Hill.

I’ve worked with many great leaders, elected Members of Congress and the Senate being a few. Anne Bell never met a Congressman or Senator.

But when Annie Bell died, I knew that I would never again meet a person as great.

When Annie Bell died I knew that the confluence of two great saints had once again occurred. Mamma Hattie and Annie Bell were once again somewhere on a front porch shelling peas, and talking about the flowers, and the windows that needed washing and maybe doing a little grocery shopping later in the day. When Annie Bell died I cried a river of tears because the last of my two saints had crossed over Jordan to their place in Glory.

Everyone needs an Annie Bell and a Mamma Hattie. Everyone needs a heritage that is real, and true and personal; for me, it was the confluence of Southern Belles – my patron Saints.