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I'm Hadditt

~ 87 year old Marylou Shira Hadditt, born a Southern Belle-Jewish Princess, is a civil rights and political activist, lesbian feminist, mother, grandmother and writer who says, “I want to share my stories before I die."

I'm Hadditt

Category Archives: Family

Kaddish Poem

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by hadditt in Family, Memoir, Poetry

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Tags

aging, death, grief, healing, Kaddish, losing a mother, loss

July 17, 2015

The old woman looks at the calendar. A frightened child, barely 14 years old, cries within the old woman.  Crying because both the old woman and the sad little girl remember that Friday, July 17th is the day and date her mother died so many years ago. Images, sounds and smells, faces and touch surround the old woman. She finds words, words melting into childhood remembrances, twisting and turning, becoming a poem. The old woman is me, sending the poem into the ether, releasing the child for all times.

THE SCREENED PORCH EVENING

The heat of the summer day
settles down on the evening with a crush.
The child chills her thighs
against the cool of the red clay tile floor.
She chews the end of her pigtail.
Waiting.

The Grandmother sluffs the porch swing
with her slippers
back and forth
back and forth
Waiting.

The Grandfather smokes
Between-the-Acts miniature cigars
hiding,
hiding behind the
Saturday Evening Post.
Waiting.

Cicadas cry from the oak trees.
Waiting.
Lightning bugs flash a signal
an alarm
Waiting.

The screen door slams open.
The Father, immobile in the doorway,
“The waiting is over”, he says.
“She’s gone.  7:15 tonight”.
He collapses into the arms of
the Grandmother, his mother.

“She’s gone”.
The Child’s Mother.
My Mother.

I stretch my legs, my arms
my chest, my cheek.
Finding the cool comfort of
the red clay tiles.
The cicadas cry.
Lightening bugs glitter.
Only me –
Alone.
Chewing my pigtail.

Friday, July 17, 1942

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Necie, A Love Story

08 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by hadditt in Family, Memoir, Uncategorized

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NECIE, A LOVE STORY

By Marylou Hadditt

 

Necie told me she came into my life before I was born. She moved from rural Southern Georgia to Atlanta where found a job polishing silver at my father’s jewelry store. That’s when my mother met her.

“Missophie came up to me and said ‘Now, Necie, I like the way you work. And you smile friendly-like. You know, I’m in a family way and looking for somebody nice and pleasant to look after my home and my baby. ”

Mother told her what she expected in the way of cleaning and cooking, and when the baby was due. Since my mother had no experience with babies, she counted on Necie . Thus Necie joined our family, being at our home from before breakfast until after dinner. She was with us in one apartment, two duplexes, and ultimately our own house for twelve years. Twelve formative years for me.

I was never clear just how many children had been in Necie’s large family. There was a sister in Barnesville – a small town south of Atlanta full of pecan trees and cotton fields. She was called ‘Sister’ and had many children one of whom was named ‘Mary Louise’, after me. All during my growing up time my outgrown clothes went to that other Mary Louise (whom I never met). Often Necie would come into my room, and, in what I now call a blues voice, would shake her head, wave her hands across the clutter of my bedroom, and say, “Boo’sie, you got so much! Gimme some for that other Mary Louise. You don’t need all them toys.” And we would pick out things for that other child I only knew by distant reference – the Mary Louise with brown skin.

An educated woman, Necie finished high school which was rare in those Depression days. She never let anyone forget she was educated or that she came from ‘good’ stock. Her father had been a professor at Tuskegee.  Necie adored my mother, whom she called Missophie, as if Miss and Sophie were all one word. She had a hard time explaining to me, who never knew want, that my mother had grown up poor and understood what it was to be needy. Necie talked about ‘new slavery times’. the `1920’s and 1930’s and ‘old slavery times,’ prior to the civil war.

“When I talk to you about your momma”, Necie told me, “you got to listen and know I’m talking away-back times. Times when President Roosevelt was just new and Mrs. Roosevelt hadn’t even begun to speak out for Negroes and Jews. Lots of men were outta work. No jobs, no money. No houses for families to live in. And us Negroes had it worse’n anyone else. Yes, Jesus. Those were hard, hard times.

“You were too young then to understand ’bout those new slavery times. Back then, they’re weren’t many white folks ever gonna treat any Negro with respect. But your momma did. Missophie’d talk to me like I had feelings, just like she did. That I could cry and laugh and love and be mad. She even could see when I felt so sad inside that I thought I was comin’ apart. She understood all that in me. She was a great lady.

“That don’t mean she acted to me like she did to her white friends, or acted to me like I had lots of money like some folks she knew. Noooh! She always acted like I was a black woman, but she always acted with respect and manners. Sayin’ please and thank you. She’d give me days off and paid vacations that none of my friends got. Payin’ me a whole dollar a week moren’ anyone was getting. And a dollar was a lot of money in those days. ”

***

 

JUJU

Misssophie and I had our differences, but we mostly could work ‘em out. She was a real particular about her housekeeping, expecting me to keep the outsides of her pots as clean as the insides. And lemme tell you, with a gas stove they ain’t easy. She’d embroider all these fancy flowers on the sheets and pillow cases then expect me to iron ‘em smooth. Which I did. I don’t particularly like ironing, but I’m good at it.

When it came to you, Boo’sie, she went her way and I went mine. She knew I took a switch to your little teheinie, And I knew she spoiled you big,, she couldn’t do nothing but cry you misbehaved.

She was happy about you doing colored folks things , eating colored folks food, taking you home on my day off. There was one time she walked in and you and me we were just a truckin’ down that forty foot hallway for all we wuz worth. Missoophie sorta shook her head, laughed and laughed, went on back to her room. and never said a word.

We wuz getting along fine, for twelve years, till she hired that Cliffie woman to do the washin’ and ironin’. We didn’t get along from the git-go. She messed up your pretty little dresses when she ironed them, then she blamed it on me. She tole Missophie I was stealing and to this day, I don’t know why Missophie didn’t fire her.

Well now, she knows I use your Momma ‘s Kotex. Missophie told me I could and this old witch, she keeps peeking at me outta the corner of her, eye making believe she’s not looking when I take care of my female needs. I notice one day that a soiled Kotex I’d wrapped up and put in the wastebasket was gone. I didn’t think much about it then but it was strange. That ole witch done it. She up and took that Kotex with my blood on it to Mammy Oooma and got her to put a juju on it. Then when I wasn’t around, she crawled up under the kitchen, my kitchen mind you, the kitchen Misssophie made for me. She crawled up under that kitchen and put a juju on me.

That’s why that happened. I aint never gonna hit anybody over the head. Ceptin’ I did. I got so mad at Cliffie when she’s trying to tell me how to make biscuits for Sunday dinner that I picked up that biscuit sheet and Pow! hit that old witch right on the top of her head. And she being a full head taller than me, I had to reach up high to do it.

I never would of done it if that juju hadn’t been put on me. I tried to explain to Missophie about Cliffie, that it was Cliffie she should fire and not me. But she was a proud lady, your Momma was. She said aint nobody gonna tell her how to run her house. And once’t she made up her mind, there weren’t no changing it.

I called you, Boo’sie lots of times,. Don’t you remember? We both cried on the phone. I wanted so bad to work for Missophie and come back and look after my baby. She wouldn’t take me back, that weren’t what the good Lord had in mind for me.

I wasn’t about to go look for day work. Nobody’d ever treat me as good as Missophie and I sure didn’t want to get all close and lovely with another child and then have to give her up. So I went to beauty culture school and set myself up in a nice little business doing hair in my house. People liked the way I did them up and kept coming back. “God in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.”

Every Christmas, I sent Missophie some of my homemade fruitcake and she’ sent me some pretty jewelry from the store. Once I’d gotten my things outta my room, I never went back to that house.

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On Cross Country Moves

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by hadditt in Chicago, Family, Memoir, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

2013/1972
Does it really matter, like Penny said, Mom, that was 40 years ago. Forty years ago that we moved from Chicago to California. And yesterday an email from Lucia read:

IMG00401-20130923-1432≤Van pulled out @ 2:50 pm, 20 years, 10 months and 2 days after we took possession of this house that has sheltered us and kept us safe, and helped raise our children.>

I cried. First I cried for Lucia, the gentleness of saying goodbye to a house that kept her safe and helped raise her children. Then I sobbed for me. Sobbed for never saying goodbye to 50th street, that’s what we called our Chicago house. When I cried and talked go Lucia yesterday, complimenting her on her loving leave taking, out slipped from my mouth, with no forethought, “When I left 50th st, I fled. And I did. And the house we moved into twelve years before we moved out did not keep us safe, did not shelter us from the storms of our own conflicting souls and hearts and hopes. Did not keep us safe from the internalized resentment Tom and I had toward each other. Did not make a safe place to raise our children but surrounded them with our own sexual mishagash and alcohol.

I fled that house. When we moved to California, I fled that house in much the way I fled, in a hyper manic sate, after hallowe’en 1972. I was owned by the house or owned by everything in it. i remember a fragment of a poem: I was drowning in piles of Oriental rugs, piles of paper and clippings and books everywhere. A piece of the Garrick theater decor that, only the week before we left for CA, did Tom admit he never liked the thing. And how pretentiously he would point out to guests the rare Louise Sullivan carving framed over our mantel. How pretentious he was about his rugs, prints, pots. All were finer, rarer than in most museums. And for a long time, I believed him too.

1030 E 50th St. {Penny says, " the family joke is that this house is literally 5 or 6 doors around the corner from Obama House. Too bad we couldn't hang onto it, eh?"

1030 E 50th St. {Penny says, ” the family joke is that this house is literally 5 or 6 doors around the corner from Obama House. Too bad we couldn’t hang onto it, eh?”}

How much in love with him when I married him. Handsome, brilliant, melancholy Tom. I was going to make him happy. We combined my inheritance and his low GI bill loan to buy the house. We were going to make a home for all his collection: his Japanese prints, his Chinese pots, his antique rugs, his valuable books.
And by the end, most of the fine Japanese prints were sold at auction at Christie because neither of us were working and we lived on those prints. Like a house of cards, it all fell down on us. On me, on Tom, on our children.

I tried to remember my leave taking of 50th Street. Did I help pack things? Or did I just take off for California on the first plane I could get after January 1st to go to a new job, a new life. What do I remember? I don’t remember a moving van loading up like Lucia saw. I remember a tag sale, all over the dining room table;; I remember a piece of junk that had belonged to Noel sold for some ridiculously high price; I still remember the autographed White Sox ball from the year they won the pennant that Sam Bell had gotten for Steve and Steve said to sell it. Every once in a while, middle-aged Steve will mumble that he wished he had it.

I don’t even remember packing a suitcase. Getting on the plane. Getting off the plane.I remember going into the manager of the Contra Costa Times office, where they thought — from my good references from my boss
— they had a star salesperson === only my boss and I really knew my skills were limited to the Hyde Park Community. I got sent to the Valley Times. Wearing a brown knit dress which I thought would be California clothes I got from Stevie Breslauer in Hyde Park. Walking in there being terrified.. remembering visiting managers of large chain stores and not knowing what to say. In afterthought, I think somewhere along the line, i crashed, but that was long before I understood the working of the bipolar person.

And then I got fired. I don’t remember what they told me but the message was I was too hippie. I wore beads. And beads were Berkeley and free speech movement and Peoples Park. Fired: two or three months after we moved into that dinky three bedroom house, the girls shared a room, tom had an office. I had 1/2 of a double bed, 1/2 of a closet, but I did have my own towel rack.

As some point, I must have had some kind of incident or something, because I remember Tom took me to Stanford psyhc clinic, and the doctor said if I had another attack, he would put me on this new medication, Lithium, but he’d rather wait. Too bad he didn’t Rx it then.

So does it matter, forty years later, if I stayed and packed boxes, or if I left the whole responsibility to Tom. who’s been dead 25 years and to movers who are probably out of business. Does whatever happened forty years ago really make a difference today?. Do I need to feel guilty and bad mommy?. I think not. I really think not.

When we had our family meeting on 8/25 and I said I wanted my therapist to speak at my memorial service about how difficult the life of a bipolar person was, All three kids agreed it was completely inappropriate for a therapist to speak about treatment of a patient.

“ Besides, we all know you’re crazy,? mom. And they said it with love. Not with cynicism. Not with anger, They said it with love.

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Birthday Surprises

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by hadditt in Family, Memoir

≈ 1 Comment

Preface: I dislike big parties, even more so when the host
and guest of honor are the only people I know. I was doing my
motherly duty to drive seventy-five miles to make an appearance at
my only son’s 60th birthday party. Instead I had the surprise of my
life.

When I came in through the doorway Steve was playing his sax. Non-demonstrative Steve immediately set his horn aside, cried “Mom”and rushed over to give me the hugest most wonderful hug Steve has ever given me. I huggged him back and we just stood there, holding each other for quite a while. Steve was beaming. I don’t know that I’ve ever before seen him look as exquisitely happy as he looked that night.

There was music. unending, ongoing, music- varied and wonderful music. Rotating friends, musicians all, in and out with their instruments. Jazz, Salsa, Big Band – a bit of everything. I was sitting inside the music, rather than being on the outside listening. Quite an experience. Steve played his flute – on occasion switching to the sax. There was an older man on sax which made for great duets. I met one of the women with whom he plays a flute quartet … heard the two of them duet. I watched a series of different double bass players: a thin young woman half the size of the instrument; three different men of all sizes and ages, slapping that bass.

This all took place, at his girl friends’ home: a natural hostess. She did everything with ease and grace – and she, too, was beaming. This was her party for Steve and she gloried in it. For me, it was also a birthday. I connected with a small handful of people I knew: Johnny T, Steve’s mentor, Susan and Roberto who remembered me from twenty years. I gloried in shaking hands with anyone and everyone, “I’m Steve’s Mom”, I said, beaming. Beaming. I was so proud to be Steve’s mom.

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