Memories of a Lady



 

Maycomb, Alabama; October 23, 1976

 

Dear friend,

 

please forgive me for calling you a friend, since we haven´t even met jet, but maybe it isn´t about knowing each other well.      I need somebody to talk to and got the feeling you could be the one. Please take your time and try to see me and not the person you maybe think I am. Don´t see just a girl who is caught up in dreams and fantasies. Try to see the girl between these lines. A girl with fears and weird thoughts, with a past, a present and a future. A tomboy and a lady. Maybe you think I´m crazy, because I didn´t pretend to be normal when I´m writing to you, but you don’t know me at all, do you? This isn´t a problem. You´ll get to know me very well when you go on reading.                                                                                   Besides, my name is Elizabeth Blackbird. My brother used to call me Trace, but this time is over now. Not because I wouldn’t make an effort to trace or discover something, nowadays, no, he just isn’t there anymore to call me so. And I would never allow anybody to do it in his place. The doctor said the pneumonia wouldn’t give Joe much longer than two weeks. After the first week he passed away peacefully. It was the first time someone died before my eyes. Can you imagine this feeling? When the room keeps spinning and there is no longer a ground under your feet. It´s worse. And I had told him to wear a scarf in mid-winter bleakness. I never thought about the fact, that he might die before I will, and that I would still be here. The winter had stolen him from me but not from my heart. Just because they´re dead, they don’t have to be. And neither do we.                                                                                                                                                         When I was seven I was engaged with a boy named Joy. I agreed because he asked me, to make you understand things right. Sam, though, is my day- and moonlight, a safe harbour in times of stormy trouble. Without any regret I can say, that I love him without reason. He clears my mind like fresh water and keeps telling me that everyone should accept, that you can´t know and control everything. You don’t know when you are in pain or love sometimes. We must feel those things, because this means to be alive. He understands my thoughts about dying and my reasons to be alive. That I miss pieces of the past but am excited for the future, as well. He is in every way all that anyone could be and if anybody can save me from myself it would always be him. Aunt Beatrice would turn around in her grave if she would find out, that he belongs to the coloured folks.

I´m pretty sure you are frowning at this moment, because you certainly know that interracial marriage hasn´t been overturned in Alabama by now. But our love stands every single law in this cursed proclamation of segregation. We don’t hide in the dark where nobody could see the shame we, not to say I, bring over this country. There are many people who think like that. They don’t understand things well, don’t they? What matters all this talk about breeds and skin colour? Isn´t every man created equal? You can´t even guess how happy we were when we heard from a man named Martin Luther King, who stands for our rights or from Rosa Parks an African American woman, who didn’t stand up in the bus, to clear her seat for a white man. Not that we couldn’t fight for ourselves. You would be surprised about my countless attempts to convince the people in Maycomb, but still they are as stubborn as in my childhood. But this man seemed to get something big moving. When he was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis in the evening of April 4, 1968 I cried. Not even my brother Joe told me not to waste my tears on a man, I don’t even get to know. But as I said, it isn’t about well knowing somebody at times.

Isn´t that crazy? As we first met, Sam couldn´t sit on the same park bench holding my hand. We had to meet at night under a tree away from town. Words whispered into shadows. I told you that our love is stronger than every law, but nobody can break or bend the law without feeling the consequences. People spat at me by daylight in the marketplace, one woman told me to hold my dignity. I answered that they don’t even know what this word means. A man utters I was no better than a black whore. Some of them were the same men, whose fathers protested against the abolition of slavery years ago. But we´ll go on fighting. I moved to Sam´s farm as things heated up. Joe and father supported me, but we all could feel it.                          When I think of it, I feel returned in the summer, when I discovered that most people were really nice when you finally see them and that there isn´t a problem with being different in color. Sorry, I forgot that you don’t know about the things that happened.

Let me explain: Imagine men eat all the time the same meat because they like it and don’t get tired of its taste, they would react bewildered, if there were Brussels sprouts instead of meat next day. Some of them would try it out and maybe like the vegetable and some of them wouldn’t, not because of its flavour but because they want to eat meat, like every day before. They don’t give novelty any chance, don’t want to get used to it and attempted to get rid of it, by talking badly about Brussels sprouts and by standing against the people, who plant these vegetables and like eating them, too. You can imagine a situation like this, when my father took over the case from a Negro, who was accused of raping a white woman and Joe and I had to deal with the gossip of the town. It wasn’t nice, but we got through it. A friend of mine told me that many of those men believed in the things they said or did. And with the Bible in one hand and a truncheon raised in the other they were so busy worrying about the next world they have never learned to live in this one. With compassion, love and peace. They don’t understand. Swearing their holy words on a man, who would have been ashamed of such a behavior, surely. I don’t get their idea of the better place, when their thoughts are full of hatred and intolerance. Shouldn’t we aim at a life in peace?

Maybe if we could fly we would see, were this will end. The second world war was nearly over, when we got trapped into the next war. This time with much more losses on our side. What is this all about? More than a century ago, we faced our enemy with weapons, that would tear the earth under our feet to pieces, like a cat playing with a ball of wool. When did all this happen? Have I missed some pages? Seven years ago, the first man landed on the moon. Is it the same moon I see through my window tonight? I can’t even imagine. And with one foot in the next war, this time it was in Vietnam, and the head above the sky they told us not to worry. But of course, we worry, because this is the planet of our children and our future. I guess, in a few years they will search for a new world, already, a new place to live, because human beings must reach for the stars, even when they have bound them with ropes to the earth a long time ago. So many voices, opportunities and visions. New fears and hopes, ideas and regrets. On and on. Maybe they don’t even know where to go. Maybe we are all a little bit lost. Lost stars in a universe too big for giving it into human hands. I could ask you who you are. Would you know it? Could you give me a clear answer? Certainly not, because you don’t just consist of a few words, but of a mass of them. Even when there isn´t a meaning, we can try to do better. We can try to light up the darkness in times of obscurity. We can laugh and tell us things, we never told anybody, because we want to feel lighter afterwards. We can dance under the blue sky smiling at the rain dropping over our faces and wondering why we are happy. But we are, and this is what matters. These are the moments that count. When you feel so alive that it hurts you.             

There will be times when you feel bad and everything will seem heavy and unbearable. But then there will be a light.             The days will get brighter, you will learn from your mistakes and get along with it. Trust in you and maybe even in fate. Search for it when you can´t get up in the morning and can´t sleep at night. It´s might be a flash of kindness which scurries over a face, a simple smile in the corner of somebodies’ lips, a sparkle in somebodies’ eyes.  

When you read these last sentences, you are nearly through a big section of my little lifetime and hopefully learned something from it. I hope you´re doing well and try to see things finally.  

 

Love, Elizabeth