The Queen of Palmyra (41 page)

Sometimes, though, such conversations give me pause. They make me think my mother wasn’t so bad. She was just always wishing for snow and usually it didn’t come. And when it came, it didn’t stick.

One friend was adopted. In my opinion, she had a perfectly good mother and father. Why trouble the waters? They were crusaders for civil rights during the fifties and sixties. Their lives were threatened and crosses were burned on their property. They were parents to be proud of. I wished they were mine. When my friend got older, she wanted to find her birth mother. Her adopted parents, being the good people they were, gave her the information she needed and she found her mother and her sister. Both were schizophrenic. Now I know why I’ve felt so crazy all my life, she says; it’s kind of a relief.

A colleague tells me that, when she was four, her mother, who was an alcoholic, almost killed her two-year-old sister by starving her to death. My friend remembers the doctor storming into the apartment and yelling at her mother: “You’ve got to feed this baby or I’m going to take her away. You’ve got to
feed
this baby!”

Another friend believes that she was tortured by her father and some other people in secret ceremonies associated with their church in a small western town. When she was little she would be awakened in the middle of the night and taken from her bed to a room with bright lights. Her mother, she remembers, was always watching. Now my friend is afraid of electrical wiring. She remembers something about fur and feathers.

On the Death of a Bluejay

Dear Erin the poet, Dear Mama, I tell you if I had had to choose a crazy mother it would have been you.

I will be forever grateful to Jill McCorkle for her extraordinary generosity along the way, and especially for helping make this a wiser book. Heartfelt thanks go to Leigh Feldman for her boundless enthusiasm, wit, and sagacity, and Carrie Feron for her astute, respectful editing and bedrock belief in Florence’s story. I appreciate Tessa Woodward’s ability to make the production process seem effortless.

I am very much indebted to Grace Bauer, Susan Dever, Julie Mars, Margaret Randall, and Sharon Warner for reading the Whole Thing and offering a wealth of insight. Micaela Seidel and John Randall offered early support. Ellis Anderson provided a room, a desk, and a magnificent live oak. Mary Alice Kirkpatrick did detective work. Bill Andrews told about encyclopedia sales.

I thank family members for loving support: Carol and Shaun Leverton, Lynn Holland Brasfield, Shannon Grannon, Linda Jane Barnette, and Nicolle Salvaggio. For sage counsel and support, I’m grateful to Marianne Gingher, Lawrence Naumoff, Beverly
Taylor, and Linda Wagner-Martin. And thanks to the cheering section: Barbara Bennett and Fred Hobson, Angela Boone and Mary Bess Whidden, Karen Booth and Elyse Crystall, Barbara Ewell and Jerry Speir, Rebecka and Ed Fisher, Harolyn Cumlet and Patrice Waldrop, Rebecca Mark, Donnie McMahand, and Kevin Murphy, Sylvia Rodriguez, Judith Sensibar, and Marta Weigle.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to have read from early versions at Purdue University and the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. For their perceptive commentary, I thank members of the Global South group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And I appreciate funding from UNC and the Kenan research fund for travel related to the book.

My greatest debt is to Ruth Salvaggio, who offered a skeptical eye and an open heart—the best of all combinations in a reader.

Millwood, Mississippi, and the characters of this book are fictitious. I have made every effort to be accurate about actual places and historical events. Sources that have been helpful and, in some cases essential, include the following:

Chafe, William H. et al, ed.
Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the South
. New York: The New Press, 2001.

Cobbs, Elizabeth H./Petric Smith.
Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked the World
. Birmingham: Crane, 1994.

Dennis, Jana.
Palmyra Street.
New Orleans: Neighborhood Story Project, 2005.

Dittmer, John.
Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Ezekiel, Raphael S.
The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen.
New York: Penguin, 1995.

Garis, Howard.
Uncle Wiggily’s Travels.
New York: Platt & Munk, 1939.

Gates, Henry Louis.
Colored People: A Memoir.
New York: Vintage, 1995.

Harris, Trudier.
Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South.
Boston: Beacon, 2003.

Hendrickson, Paul.
Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy.
New York: Vintage, 2004.

Hudson, Winson and Constance Curry.
Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

The Clarion-Ledger; Jackson Daily News,
June–August, 1963.

Kennedy, Stetson.
Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was.
Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic Univ. Press, 1990.

_______________.
The Klan Unmasked.
1954. Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic Univ. Press, 1990.

King, Larry L.
Confessions of a White Racist.
New York: Viking, 1969.

Massengill, Reed.
Portrait of a Racist: The Man Who Killed Medgar Evers.
New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.

McDowell, Deborah E.
Leaving Pipe Shop: Memories of Kin.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

McIlhany, William H. II.
Klandestine: The Untold Story of Delmar Dennis and His Role in the FBI’s War Against the Ku Klux Klan.
New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1975.

Moody, Anne.
Coming of Age in Mississippi.
New York: Laurel Books, 1968.

Neilsen, Melany.
Even Mississippi.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.

Rockwood, Roy.
Bomba the Jungle Boy: The Swamp of Death.
New York: McLoughlin, 1929.

Salter, John R. Jr.
Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism.
Hicksville, NY: Exposition, 1979.

Sims, Patsy.
The Klan.
Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Taulbert, Clifton L.
Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored.
Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1989.

Vollers, Maryanne.
Ghosts of Mississippi.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.

Cover design by Robin Bilardello

Cover photograph by Roger Charity/Getty Images