As a child, I wielded more power than a grown Black woman.
Margaret was beautiful and beloved, yet tough as nails. Keeper of the switch. Overseer of the kitchen.
But despite her necessity to my grandmother's well-being during summer months in Tennessee, her room was downstairs. It was never discussed but always understood, Margaret was different. We were 'above' her.
Every day Margaret would wear her crisp white uniform she’d brought from Inverness, Mississippi that would inevitably catch the popping grease of the fried chicken she’d cook for hours on end. There was no one’s chicken like Margaret’s chicken – or okra, or green beans, or cornbread, or any number of other things she’d make.
As a child I kept time by our main meal at noon. Every weekday cousins, aunts and uncles would pile into my grandmother’s dining room and we’d sit around a fully dressed table. Salad fork, dinner fork, desert spoon, cutting knife. Cloth napkins. And sweaty pitchers of sweet tea.
It didn’t matter if it was uncomfortably hot or if it was pouring rain on the other side of the screened-in porch. We were there to fill our bellies, mind our manners, and spend time with one another.
Margaret would walk around the table, serving us on the left side with platters overflowing with goodness she had spent all morning making. One by one we’d take two silver serving spoons in our hands and carefully transfer food to our plate. All the while, Margaret would smile with her mouth closed so we couldn’t see her teeth worn down by chewing tobacco.
This delicate dance of serving us without joining us at the table was my first introduction to southern racial norms. I didn’t understand why my needs, along with my brother’s and sisters’, would take priority over Margaret’s. Or why she couldn't sit down with us at the table.
But in my grandmother’s house, you didn’t ask questions. You obeyed the matriarch and fell in line.
Decades later the details are hazy, but I’m still trying to parse out how the color of your skin signaled how people should treat you. And why, by the luck of the drawl, I was born into privilege.