Time and time again, Great-Grandmama Laura Mae would refer to that torturous journey as The New Flood Days, and everybody who heard would nod, look at one another, and sigh knowingly. That journey tested us all. The torrential rains kept coming. The clouds of circling, biting mosquitoes; the slithering snakes; and sodden, fallen branches were everywhere.
All through those first awful days, Granddaddy Saul wandered off the path and couldn’t keep pace with the group. At first, my cousin Lemiel was told to watch over him. He had to go fetch him from his wandering. But after a time, with all the mosquitoes, snakes, and panicked stray animals, and with more people joining our trek north, it got harder to keep track of Granddaddy Saul. Twice my cousin went looking for him through the crowd, which grew ever bigger, more raggedy, and disorganized. Luckily, my cousin found a local farmer who allowed Granddaddy Saul to ride on the back of his mule-drawn wagon.
But then someone noticed that Saul wasn’t riding anymore. What had happened to him? Where had he gone? Nobody knew. We all searched frantically, but there was no trace of him. Later, someone found his cane alongside a gulch. No one was surprised that there was no trace of him in this torrential rain. No footprints, no clothes, no body—nothing. Only his cane, lying there by itself on the stream bank.
When I saw the cane, I knew that something bad had happened to my granddaddy, but nobody told me anything. I cried and screamed until they gave me the cane for comfort. For days I lugged it along with me, urging it to talk, fluctuating between asking it to tell me where my granddaddy was and imploring it to tell me more stories of Afrique and the warrior Shakti Binga. I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. I was lonely and listless, watching, listening, and waiting.
One night while I was asleep on the march to Alabama, the women in my family banded together and took the cane away from me. “For your own good,” they said.
I grew silent. I withdrew. It just wasn’t worth trying to talk about it. The loss of my beloved Granddaddy Saul and the magical cane was simply too much for me. Even though I was only four years old, I grieved deeply. I was inconsolable.
Then one day, I began to sing. No one had heard me sing before except my granddaddy. Great-Grandmama Laura Mae, Grandmama Minnie Green, and my mother all looked at me and at each other. I sang the songs I had sung with Granddaddy Saul and the magical cane. I didn’t really know what I was singing about or whether my songs made sense to anyone. I sang because it eased my pain. Singing, I found my Little Buttercup self, my center, my home. It was Granddaddy’s legacy: I was singing the music he taught me, the music of the cane.
WHILE I WAS GRIEVING FOR MY LOST GRANDDADDY, our group traveled a long way. I had heard the talk. People said Alabama enough times that I wondered if it was a new world. Where and what was Alabama? They said I was born in Alabama; we had left when I was too little to know.
I heard my daddy say that he knew people and had a few relatives in the area. He felt that our family could make a fresh start working in the factories and that he could give up farming. Willie Son had a plan for himself and his family.
Some members of the clan knew they weren’t going back to Meridian, Mississippi, again anytime soon. There was talk about how bad it had gotten. They’d heard news from the area. The floods were worse than anyone had seen. It seemed we had all been lucky to leave the Old Homestead when we did, lucky to get out with our lives and what few belongings we had. Word among the clan was that the Old Homestead was no longer even there. The relentless rains had washed it from its moorings. They said it seemed like it just floated away. No reason to go back—no love, no land, no house, no loss.
For days the motley, undisciplined caravan continued east until it eventually came to rest at a village called Aliceville. Some wanted to settle there. Others were still eager to move on, maybe north. The Sanders-Scarborough clan decided to meet and talk it over. The rain had stopped. The sun had come out. People hung their wet clothes on dry branches and sat down. The old folks smoked, and everybody relaxed. Everyone knew that we couldn’t continue to travel and live a nomadic life much longer. It was beginning to wear all of us down.
My daddy finally spoke up. He had some people in Tuscaloosa who had come up from Mobile and Baton Rouge, and they were now doing very well working in the sawmill and furniture factories of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. Daddy had been itching to go back there and work and live. He and Mama had lived there when they were first married, but Mama had made him bring her, my brother, and me to Mississippi, to her own people. He wanted to go back to Tuscaloosa. He was sure they could all find work there. He didn’t see a future for himself and our family in sharecropping. He wanted to explore something else.
As the family sat around the low, gently snapping campfire every night, everyone was uneasy with the uncertainty they faced. They wrestled for days with the thorny issue of what to do next and how best to do it. Ideas were thrown back and forth for quite some time before they reluctantly consented to give my daddy’s idea number one priority. Without exception, they had misgivings about moving to another strange city and attempting to make it home. Some said out loud that they just might be better off staying exactly where they were. However, that idea was soon dismissed. It was finally decided one evening that my daddy, accompanied by Cousin Lemiel and Uncle Josiah, would go to Tuscaloosa.
OUR HOUSE WAS NOISY. I HATED THE NOISE. I USED TO go outside and sing to myself. At first, I sang quietly, but the farther I got from the house, the louder I sang. I sang all the way to Big Mama’s, Minnie Green’s, house and then she sang with me. In no time, I forgot about the noise in my house and my parents’ frequent arguments. I never told Big Mama they were arguing. I knew she wouldn’t like it, so I sang and pretended I was happy.
In those days in Tuscaloosa, Big Mama would ask me to sing for anybody who came by the house. When she would take me back home, nobody was arguing, and I could pretend I was happy again. It was during those times I would think about running away to Big Mama’s house forever. But no matter how much I sang, she kept taking me back home.
My brother, my sisters, and I were sleeping one morning when we were suddenly awakened by a horrific scream. I sat up in my bed and remained perfectly still, listening. The scream came again and again. It was my mother calling for help. I heard another heavier, deeper voice yelling something I couldn’t quite make out. It was my daddy. He sounded equally upset and angry.
The loud commotion and the sound of breaking glass terrified me, and I began to cry. Willie Jr. dashed up from the bed and ran to the bedroom door. The next thing I knew, my cousin Dina Mae and my aunt Minnie Laura came rushing in. They scooped my sisters and me up with our blankets still around us, took Willie Jr. by his hands and shoulders, and rushed us out of the house. I kept asking what was happening and calling for my mother. I saw the flashing lights of the police cars and people beginning to gather in front of my house.
Aunt Minnie Laura and Cousin Dina Mae ran as fast they could to get us away from the house. We didn’t talk until we arrived at the house where Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and the rest of the Sanders-Scarborough clan were living.
Great-Grandmama Laura Mae finally quieted everyone down, and Cousin Dina Mae and Aunt Minnie Laura began to recount what had happened. Over the years, I would hear the story many times from many mouths; it became part of our family’s least favorite memories.
Mama and Daddy, along with several of their kinfolk, had gone dancing a block or so down the street at a local juke joint called Joe’s Cradle Rocker. The place was crowded, and people were having fun. One of the locals named Johnny Damon started flirting with my mother and asked her to dance. She declined and told him she was married. At the time, my daddy was at the bar getting something for them to drink. When he came back to the table, Johnny Damon excused himself and said pointedly to my mother that he hoped to see her