Remembering Earline

Jimmy flung open the rickety screen door on the front porch and jumped off the steps into the yard. The porch was only three steps tall, but it was a big leap for a five-year-old. The screen door slammed hard and rattled to a stop almost drowning out Jimmy’s voice.

“Earline’s here!”, Jimmy yelled at the top of his lungs. Jimmy loved Earline. Earline was a black domestic whom his dad had hired to help take care of the family. Each morning Jimmy’s dad picked up Earline in the family’s ’50 Chevrolet Belair and brought her to the house. She always rode in the back seat and entered through the back door.

The Edwin Carter family lived on the corner of Elm and Magnolia Streets in McKenzie, Tennessee. They moved there when Jimmy was one year old. On one corner of the intersection was the Carter home, a frame house with a wrap- around screened porch and a smokehouse out back. On another corner was Edwin’s grocery store/gas station, and on the other was the Log Cabin, owned by Edwin and run by Clifford and Tommie Sutton. The Log Cabin was a short-order restaurant that catered to teenagers.

During the time Earline worked for the Carter’s, the elderly and invalid parents of Clella Mae, Jimmy’s mother, were living in the home. The grocery store was open six days a week and Clella Mae taught mathematics at McKenzie High School. Jimmy’s teenage brother, Harold, was at home also. Needless to say, a little help around the house from Earline was much needed.

“ Mornin’ Jimmy!” Earline hollered back from across the yard.
“Come hea young’un”, Earline half- growled. “Lemme see. Did you wash behin’ yo ears and brush yo teef this morning’?”
“Not yet Earline. I’ll go do it right now.”
“Yo betta git yo’sef in there ‘fo I gits a chance to look fo’ mysef!”

With his father at work all day at the store across the street and his mother teaching until the middle of the afternoon, little Jimmy had formed a very tight bond with Earline. She was by necessity and proximity his care provider. She prepared his meals, washed his clothes and bandaged his skinned knees. She scolded him when he did wrong, and loved him like her own.

Earline was of undermined age, possessed a no-nonsense manner and always sported a white do-rag atop her matronly frame. Earline knew her station in life as a black woman in the south during the 1950’s. She served the family first and after everyone was finished she would retire to the kitchen and eat alone. She was never told to do that. That was just the way it was done. She referred to her employers as “ Mr. and Mrs. Carter”. To everyone else in the household, including Jimmy, she was “Earline”. That too, was just the way it was done.

For all of Earline’s efforts on behalf of the Carter family, she was paid six dollars a week. Her husband, Tommie T, worked as a saw filer at Southern Star Lumber Company across the railroad tracks from the Log Cabin. He, along with a little help from Earline’s meager wages, made just enough to scrape by and provide the necessities for his family.

Edwin crossed the street to begin his day at Carter’s Grocery. As soon as his helper, JD Wilson arrived, things started hopping on Elm Street. The little store was not much over three hundred square feet in size, but there was no shortage of customers.

When Edwin counted the money from the day’s business each night, Jimmy would often sneak into the room, slither around behind the couch and pretend to “steal” some of the money. His dad would always see or hear him sneaking into the room, and sometimes would catch him and pretend to be mad. Jimmy thought this was great fun. Some of the time his dad would pretend not to see Jimmy and later feign confusion saying, “There’s some money missing! Who’s got my money?” Jimmy would run into the room beaming and waving the cash, proud that he had pulled one over on his dad. This was a game that played itself out almost every night at the Carter home. It became something of a tradition. One night the fun took an unexpected twist.

Before his dad had left for work, Jimmy had donned his overalls in preparation for the new day. He wore them over and over until someone noticed they were dirty and made him put on clean ones. Usually this someone was Earline.
“Come ova heah youngun.” she demanded, her fists planted firmly on her ample hips.
“Lemme see dem overalls. Didn’t you have dem on yestiddy?”
Her fat cheeks quivered as she shook her head in mock disgust. If Jimmy had not known she loved him, he would have been scared to death.
“They ain’t dirty, Earline! See?” Jimmy took a step back and placed his thumbs under the straps of the overalls and pushed them forward as if he were strutting like a peacock. Earline suppressed a laugh as she looked at the little boy pooching out his chest like he had just won the Nobel Prize.

It was then that she noticed a tiny bit of green protruding from the pocket in the bib. She moved over to Jimmy and reached down with her large fleshy hand. She pulled the object out of the bib just an inch or so, and in a lightning-like move that startled Jimmy, she pushed the object back into the bib and let out a whoop.
“Laud, Laud!! Precious Jesus!” she exclaimed, and took Jimmy by the hand and led him out of the house. The screen door clattered once more and Jimmy thought that Earline was going to jump off the steps the way he had done a few minutes before. She did not, but Jimmy had to run to keep up with her. He had never seen this matronly woman move so fast! Earline led him across the street to his dad’s store, where she burst through the door with uncharacteristic boldness. Edwin was waiting on a customer and at first didn’t notice the drama about to unfold. Earline stopped short and just stood there as if waiting her turn, huffing and puffing out of breath, all the time fidgeting and wringing her hands in her apron. Her white eyes, wide with fear, bulged out from under her white do-rag in sharp contrast to her dark face.
“Why Earline! You look like you seen a ghost!” Edwin said, turning momentarily from the customer.
“Wus den dat, Mista Catta! Wus den dat! Look what dis baby done got in his pocket! This is gui’n be the death of me!”
Ed was beginning to become a bit concerned, but he saw that Jimmy was with her and seemed to be fine.
“Well, what is it, Earline? Show it to me.”
“Oh, no suh!” Earline begged. “I best not touch it! You best get it outen a’ his bib yo’sef, please suh!”
Jimmy decided he would just end this drama once and for all. In fact, he was about ready to find out what was in his bib himself. He had been drug across the street at breakneck speed and hadn’t had time to investigate. He reached into his bib and to the surprise of everyone present including Jimmy, he pulled out a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill!
“Well, would you look at that!”, his dad exclaimed.
“I knew something was wrong last night, but gave up on finding it. Thanks for finding it Earline.”
“Thank you suh…yes suh.”
“ You could’ve kept this money and no one would’ve ever known.”
Earline looked down at her feet self-consciously, and shook her head.
“Oh, No suh, Mista Catta. I’d a knowed it! Dat’s yo’ money!”
That one-hundred-dollar bill was probably more money than Earline had ever seen in one place and she wouldn’t even touch it.

After Clella Mae’s parents died and Jimmy started first grade, the family no longer needed Earline’s help. Several years later she developed diabetes and had to have both her legs amputated. She spent the rest of her life in a small frame house on Randle Street in an area of town we called “Rannell Town”, named such after Randle Street which ran through the heart of the black community. She rarely left the house those last years. Edwin and Clella Mae never forgot about Earline. They always remembered her at Christmas and helped her with other financial needs from time to time.

Jimmy asked his dad many years later about the dollar a day that was paid to Earline. The change in his countenance when asked the question told Jimmy that his dad had never given it any thought.
Edwin hesitated, searching for an answer to a question that had no answer. “That’s just the way things were done back then.” he said, then he dropped his head a bit and stared at the floor.

Jimmy went to visit Earline on the weekend he had to escape Memphis following the shooting of Martin Luther King. When he entered her room, she was sitting in her bed watching television reports about the shooting and she was crying. As soon as she saw him, she said,
“ They done shot Dr. King. What my people gonna do now?”
Jimmy struggled for words that would not come.
Finally, he said simply, “ I don’t know Earline…. I don’t know.”
He hugged her and they cried. It was the last time he saw her.

Notes from the author:

Yes, Jimmy was me. The events depicted here are true as told to me by my parents through the years. Of course, much of the dialogue was made up. Much has changed. My parents and Earline are gone. I grew up and became “Jim”. While things are not right yet, they are better than they were.

The telling of this story is a bit shameful for me. While Earline was loved by my family and never mistreated in any way, she was nevertheless considered a second-class citizen.

I have given much thought to that time in history and how things were then between the races. I have come to the conclusion that for the Carter family at least, we really never did give it any thought. My parents were not known for thinking outside the box. It was, I believe, as Dad told me, “just the way things were done then.” I think that in later life, as southern culture changed, my parents experienced some remorse for the manner in which Earline was paid and how things were. Perhaps their willingness to help her in later years was in some way penance for the past. I never asked and I will never know.

For me, as a five-year-old child, I didn’t care what color Earline was. I just knew she loved me and I loved her. That was enough for me. I will always wonder if it was enough for her.