Sallie
by
Mark Anderson
We had a big house in Queens, NY, built in the late 20s. The bedrooms were all on the second floor. One of my earliest memories is bedtime. She would tuck us under the covers in our separate rooms, leave the doors open just a crack so a little light would come in. Then she would stand in the hall, and sing in her soft, alto voice songs from her childhood in Mexico and the Texas border. Quiet songs in Spanish and English: Naranha dulce ; Hush, little babies; Shall we gather at the river?
Sometimes she would tell us stories of her childhood. How her brothers brought in water and closed the gates of the hacienda when Pancho Villa and his men rode into town. The first car she ever saw: her Uncle Henry's model A Ford chugging down a dusty Texas road. She told of the hardship when she was ten years old and her father died, leaving her mother and eight children to fend for themselves, mostly on charity from the Baptist church. Years later she managed to make her way through Baylor University on a scholarship. She told me that she was always embarassed, thinking that other students might see the holes in her shoes. She would cut out cardboard inserts at night to put in the shoes. She was careful to keep her feet flat on the ground, so no one could see. Near the end of her life, my older brother and sister thought that she needed more care than we could give her at home and they wanted to move her to a nursing home after a time in the hospital. I knew that nursing home - my aunt had spent three miserable years there before she died. Eleanor and I said we would take care of her at our home. I was glad to tell her that she was coming to stay with us. I didn't mention that the others were unwilling to have her. When we were driving her to our house, Eleanor heard her say to herself: "I'm going to the poor house." And my mother was very pleased. She was only with us that last time for five days. Enough time to relax and know that she was loved and cared for. My two eldest children (26 and 24) happened to be home and found her on the morning that she didn't wake up. I picked up our youngest (9) and brought him home from school and our two middle children arrived shortly after. My youngest son and I played one of her favorite spirituals - Steal Away - on our trumpets and my middle son sang a song he had written for her just the weekend before.
Mark Anderson also has another other story in Mother Millennia titled, "Gustaava and Sigrid".
