Memaw's To Tell the Truth

At Moro school where I went to school there was a little building and big building.  The little building had two big rooms.  Each room had a cloakroom where you hung your coat and kept your lunch.  First through fourth grades went to school here.  All of the other grades were in the big building.  The toilets were on opposite sides of the schoolyard.  Boys on one side, girls on the other.  The little kids had a long trip to the toilet all the way across the school ground.  And on cold rainy days, it was pretty messy. One day I had to go real bad, and Miss E. let me go.  When I got to the toilet, the door was stuck and I couldn’t get it open.  This wasn’t a #1 job I had to do, so I pulled down my panties and did whatever I had to do.  My oldest sister V was a big high schooler then and had classes on the second floor of the big building.  P. C. told her to come look at that kid messing out by the toilet.  She came and saw me, and I’m sure she was embarrassed.  When you’ve got to go, you go.  “Right, sister D?”

Mama had a hard time fixing lunches for us to take to school.  Sometimes we would stretch one scrambled egg to go in five biscuits.  I used to envy the kids that brought a baked sweet potato to school.  We didn’t have light bread for a sandwich; we had biscuits.  One time in my memories, Mama made fried pies out of blackberries.  And at lunchtime we all went to the schoolyard to eat our lunch.  We were all sitting on the ground, and I opened up my lunch.  That blackberry fried pie was really a mess.  J. S. wanted to know if it was “cow shit.”

We didn’t have a nice warm place to eat our lunch at school, and the teachers would make us go outside at recess and lunchtime.  We’d gather on the side of the schoolhouse away from the cold wind and eat our lunch.  When the sun was out, it would be nice and warm.

Margie H. was our sex education teacher.  Her sister had a baby and Margie had held the lamp for Dr.Chaffin to see.  So she would tell us all about it.  We could hardly wait for recess so we could go out to the stile and listen to her stories.  Later Mama and I were working in the garden together.  Guess I was old enough, maybe 14.  Mama asked me if I knew about where babies come from. I said, “Yes,” and that was the end of that conversation.