One Night

It was a hot sticky Southern summer’s night. In the Projects, in a one bedroom efficiency apartment, in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, where I met love...in a man’s name.

I couldn’t have understood or known how this one night would form me and carry me through 

many years of defilement, confusion, loneliness and fear. I look back now as an adult and the memories flood my soul. The journey began that night, in the heart of that five-old child.

I remember my Grandmother Elgie, with her purple rinsed hair, sometimes pink, sometimes blue, for sure a woman before fashion and her time. She was misunderstood because she “saw” things that others had no eyes to see. She was a big woman and her eyes and  face sparkled with every bit of laughter that came out of her being. Her presence would fill that small plan with such joy and peace. When she wrapped  her strong arms around me, I got lost in her soft love.  

She had a big bible. It was old, worn and well read. You know the one where the words of Jesus are red in color and your family tree was written in it? That was my Granny’s bible. It would sit on the small table, next to an old green tapestry chair. If that old chair could have talked, what stories would it have told? That was her prayer place, and from that chair she would watch, laugh and pray that night.

She lived through the Great Depression, five wars and raised three children in that one bedroom. She repaired rugs for a living, earning a meager wage to support her family. She walked many blocks to work and never missed her Sunday meetings if she could help it. 

I was so excited! It was the first and only whole night I would ever spend with my Granny. She had washed and ironed her white sheets and prepared her one bed...for me. While she would sleep on the old hard couch.

With my small hand in hers she walked me to the bathroom with tender loving care . “ Fawny only two squares of tissue for your bottom and one inch of water in that tub’’. She said.

I then bathed myself and put on my nightgown. With my bare feet I walked over her shiny wooden floors into the bedroom and I climbed up into the huge bed. Under the crisp tight sheets I went.

The air was thick and hot, with windows open and her old black fan rattling...there seemed to be no relief in sight from the heat. But to my surprise… as I wiggled my clean little toes downward, I found sweet smelling talcum! It felt like creamy cold butter, that brought up a refreshing cold chill and a belly full of giggles! Oh how she and I laughed!

As Granny stood next to the bed with much love, she began talking to me while she powdered my neck. She told me about a man who... loved me, watched over me. Then she spoke His name.

That was the night that would change my life forever. No mere man was He but God. His name.....Jesus.