"Don't pay no 'tention tuh yo' mama…she ignut." Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD! You do not have to be a Rhodes Scholar to have the wisdom of a Rhodes Scholar!
I loved my grandfather's vernacular. Syllables he didn't need, he quickly dispensed with. "You wa'sum'n'tet?" [translation: Do you want something to eat?]
You had to have a quick ear to pick up on his patois, southern dialect. Society would label my grandfather just another dumb dirt farmer. Wrong!
Jerome Walters was an unsung hero, a martyr. A good Christian man MURDERED by his despicably evil diabolically malignant narcissistic daughter! A woman that got away with the most repulsive crimes unimaginable FOR 87 YEARS because she was beautiful, a brilliant liar, and a brilliant actress, that was stellar in her cunning, gifted in witchcraft, exciting and persuasive in her phony "preaching".
satan transformed her into a beast so terrifying she had to die to be approached! I do believe my mother was well aware of her illness, sickness, affliction, of her disgusting repugnance. She knew! And she knew I knew. (No, I didn't know it all, but I certainly knew enough to never fully trust her.) That is certainly why she cursed us and threatened us every day of our lives.
Unfortunately it was a repugnance that she wanted, that she preferred. She was not ashamed of her decision, of her impulse to take on multiple young lovers in my presence, in the broad open day room in the broad open day light. She was "pissed" with me for making such a big deal of it. For my screaming and carrying on like she had done something wrong. I was a 19 year old "goody two shoes", what did I know?
There was nothing I could do. Martha refused to talk to me, to accept responsibility. At least she didm't lie this time, didn't curse me out, didn't threaten to shoot or stab me. No, I left it (her carnal nature) alone. I knew better than to ever bring it up again. I knew to just forget it immediately. I knew this was just something else in Mathy's long list of things and deeds in her personal "sea of forgetfulness".
"I threw that in the 'sea of forgetfulness' "; was Martha's favorite quote when corned too long for some cruel misdeed. Never an apology, never an "I'm sorry". It was always; "You duh fool! You let me!"
"Leave heah and don't nevah come back!" were the words of my grandfather to me, to us, when we were still teenagers, still trying to survive her, still trying to graduate high school. (No shoes, no clothes, no money, no love…all the while placated by her decision to let us drive her long sleek Cadillac to E.E.Smith High School, posing as some "ballers".) Also terrified, also conditioned, he (granddaddy) could not dare tells why.
"We will understand it better, by and by."