1000 words excerpt

Since I knew time was limited, I had to act fast. Grandma, I want to write about your lifes experience, Okay? She looked at me, then nodded her head and smiled. I had to speak loudly, because her hearing was impaired by old age.

Tell me about your past, Grandma. Grandma paused for a moment with her head down, then she said. I remember the good days, and the bad days. I was born in 1890. How old does that make me? One hundred and five, I replied. My parents were Jossea and Sim Dollins, and I was born on February 9, 1890. They lived on a farm in Lee County. My mother went for white, while my father was an American Indian. I knew that went for white meant her mother was racially mixed. My grandparents were slaves, and my great-grandfather was an African. My mother had her own chicken farm of three hundred chickens, which was how she made her living. She sold twelve dozen eggs a day at ten cents a dozen. It was our job to gather those eggs. Geese cost twenty-five cents each in those days, and a big goat was fifty cents. Saying that, grandma laughed softly.

Did you go to school, Grandma?

Yes, only for a very short while. I was taught by a cruel black woman name Mrs. Bluff. A big, stocky, average-height woman who never smiled. She always looked sad. When the students stood in line to enter school just before class each morning, Mrs. Bluff repeatedly yelled at them for stepping out of line, or if they made the slightest move. It was hard for us not to move with all the children so close to each other. I was the little black sheep so to speak. I received the most abuse from my teacher. I felt no one liked me because I was a one-eyed little Indian girl. Mrs. Bluff would stare at me with those devilish eyes, then yell at me out of pure cruelty, Dont you dare move Saddie or Ill get you! When I told my parents about the teachers behavior, they took me out of school, because they didnt want me to suffer anymore. I was only in school for four days. I learned to read from the almanac and maintained only a first-grade education. My parents worked in the fields and never went to school at all.

How hard was it for blacks in your time, Grandma?

Colored folks lives didnt mean a thing. They were killed like animals and left to die. One day, as my father and I walked down the road to the store, I say a black man hanging from a tree. It was very frightening. Oh, no! Dad fearfully screamed, as he fumbled in his pocket for his knife. My father knew the man and cut him down. When he fell, he grunted, and I said, Daddy, he isn't dead! He grunted. Dad tried to help the man, but it was too late.

One mid-afternoon, while the summer sun hid its rays under the patchy clouds, I took a stroll down the dusty lonely road. I hadnt gone too far from home when I heard screams coming from a small farm inside a hog pen. I hid myself behind some trees to see what was going on. A man was being burned alive with kerosene by two men. He screamed and begged for his life, but they had no remorse. I took off running back home as fast as I could with hardly any breath left in my body. I ran into the kitchen where mother was cooking. I was trying to speak, but words wouldnt come out. Whats wrong with you, Saddie? mother replied, youre running like a ghost is after you. Swiftly wiping her hands on her apron, Mom grabbed me by the shoulders trying to calm me down. I finally told her what had happened, and she forbid me to go out alone again.

As we talked, the tone of Grandmas voice was getting louder and louder, and I saw piercing anger rising inside her. She was reliving tormented experiences as though they happened only yesterday. Lots of awful things happened, my child. She shook her hung down head, and her face turned red.