Just across the state line sitting at the Starbucks drive-thru (I-75 exit 18), I checked e-mails. I opened a note from Dad, “James, shortly after you left, we received a call that Alease passed away this morning.”
I typed, “So sorry to hear about Alease. She was the best. At Starbucks, Valdosta, love.”
Grabbing the coffee, I paid the woman and smiled, turning back onto the interstate. And picking my way through the construction up middle Georgia towards Madison, I remembered Alease – and it was good.
A mountain of an African-American woman, Alease worked for our family and was family. Before I sensed anything, she picked me up, carried me to and fro and diapered my bottom. Brawn and pure, scented anything sudsy and slightly-disinfectant, warm and wonderful. Pastel-print cotton dresses and gargantuan hugs burying my neck down in her goodness, her strength, her beauty.
She hummed hymns as she worked, almost trance-like. I imagined her holding church all by herself.
As a child, I favored spanking as punishment. The sharp sting quickly over and with the debt paid, I was free to carry on mischief. One day with a spanking imminent, I ran outside. As fortune would have it, the mailman stood at our box. I loudly announced, “Alease is beating me!” The dutiful civil servant walked me back to the door. Alease replied, “Her mother gave me permission.” The man looked at her, then over to me…then he nodded and left. RATS.
Being five years old with waist length hair equaled a tangled mess. Sitting on the tub, Alease worked through my matted mane with a wide-tooth comb and…vinegar. I don’t know if little African-American girls’ hair has a magical reaction to vinegar, but it did nothing to ease the PAIN for this little white girl’s head of hair, except make it smell of vinegar.
But sitting there as she tugged and tugged, I trusted Alease – like no other being next to my parents. If her largeness was a tiny pool of water, I would have sailed off the highest cliff knowing that somehow she would have caught me and everything would be all right.
I loved her terribly; the kind of love you don’t want to think about too long. Feelings formed in your very beginning, your foundation. Ones wrapped up in one extraordinary woman and when you start remembering things; it all becomes too much.
It’s impossible for me to know how difficult her life was – unbearable at times; personal hardships and so many vistas barricaded because of skin color. Yet in a lifetime of injustice, she remarkably carried no bitterness. Alease Holmes was strong, smart, determined, just, merciful and full of laughter. Never bitter.
And she loved me so.
