Southern Legitimacy Statement: I ate grits for the first time when I was eighteen and a starving university student in Tallahassee, Florida. Grits filled something deep inside me as did the intoxicating perfume of a rainstorm during a summer afternoon and the sight of Spanish Moss dripping from the Live Oak.
Ms. Carrie Survives Heartbreak and the Spanish Flu
Daddy didn’t like him cause he was a Yankee, come from Ohio to work in railroad management. But I married him anyway. At the time I couldn’t imagine living without him. I was very young.
We set up housekeeping in Charleston. Oh, I was so happy! I expected we would have a baby soon cause that’s what happens when you get married. I didn’t know nothing else. But then she started coming around, wearing her fancy hats. She would come right to the door and ask for my husband. I knew good and well she had her own husband, I don’t know why she needed mine.
Then one day he just up and packed his bags, said so sorry and left. I had no choice but to go back to my parents’ homeplace. I sat on the back porch and stared at the blooming azaleas all spring, not seeing any of their colors, a soon to be divorced woman. That was worse than death back then.
Daddy never said I told you so cause Daddy was a loving and kind man. He rode back with me for the funeral and held me up when I grew faint. Spanish flu is what killed my young husband, my beloved for all eternity.
She was wearing a hat with a black feather that reached the sky. But she wasn’t his wife. I told her that was my husband who was put in the ground not yourn. Now I am a widow woman. And you are just a damn whore.
