Copyright 2009-All Rights Reserved
Annie E. Reynolds (birthdate? –1970’s)
Annie E. Reynolds (birthdate? –1970’s)
(Note: Auntie is pictured with Mama embracing her as they stand in the back yard of Auntie’s Alcoa home.)
On my mother’s side of the family, by the time I was born, there was only one relative: Annie E. Reynolds. Mama called her Sister. Daddy called her Mrs. Reynolds. I called her Auntie. Sometimes Auntie would come from Alcoa to babysit me at the Mee Street house, though I can’t imagine how my mother got her to do it since I was told, years later, by one of my no-relation aunts, Teri Lenoir, that Auntie didn’t like me.
According to Mama, Auntie, like Grandmama Lennon, had had two husbands, the second of which, I was given to understand, left her. He left her—Auntie said, repeating this mantra for years—because of my mother-- that is, because Auntie had to raise my mother after pledging that she’d do so to her own dying mother. I don’t know if I believe that he left her because of that. It sounds so extravagantly dramatic, that line. Dramatic and manipulative. It casts Annie Reynolds—a young Auntie—in a circa 1940’s Hollywood movie as an unselfish, sacrificing, noble woman who utters the line: I gave him up to raise you. Music up. Handkerchiefs out. Cut and print! This is just the kind of line that somebody would drop at the just the right time and in just the right situation to work a person. You know? And work Mama it did. On my mother’s lips, the line morphed into: “She gave up her marriage to raise me.” Mama used to repeat it a lot to justify why she went to such exhaustive lengths to please Auntie.
Auntie did not approve of wild things. But, according to my mother, she had been rather wild, as a young woman. Party girl? Auntie? I could never feature her as a party girl. For that matter, I could never feature her as a carefree, young woman. Because as I knew her, Auntie was heavy-duty into the kind of religion that requires you to endure life, rather than rejoice int it. I guess, by then, she had repented her "wayward party-girl life" and was doing penitence for it. She was Baptist, but she seemed more to me like the stricter type of denominations—all straight and narrow, all grim and granite hard. The in-your-face type of religious person that constantly screams: Repent! Or face the everlasting fires of hell!
I remember the first and the last time I went to church with Auntie. It happened because the person who ordinarily took Auntie to church couldn’t pick her up one Sunday. I had my driver's license, so I had to be in high school then, and Mama decided I’d have to drive over to Alcoa and take her to church that Sunday. Auntie was a Baptist. (Before Mama married Daddy, she was a Baptist, too.) That meant Auntie's church was different from mine. Way different, I soon discovered. Their style of worship service wasn’t what I was used to. My church was Methodist…bland and very, very quiet. Auntie’s church had a spicy flavor. And it was noisy by the standards I was used to. People were saying Amen left and right…talking out loud, responding with a happy liveliness to whatever was being said from the pulpit… whether it be the deacon’s announcements or the preacher’s prayer. At my church, you did not do that.
At my church, the choir sang very "White" Methodist anthems—not music to call up the spirit, nor to clap your hands to. Definitely not music to set your feet adancin’ that holy ghost dance. But here, at Auntie’s church, they moved, so to speak, to a different rhythm. Their music was a little "bluesy." Africa had stepped into the mix and changed things… from the vocal arrangements and the minor key of the melodies, right through the beat taken up by tambourines and piano.
That sunday, the music got people Amening, and rocking. I looked around at the sea of Black people moving like rippling ocean waves. I started to feel a little tense. And I wondered what was going to happen next. Just then, Auntie jumped up, screaming: Oh, Jeezus, have mercymercymercy!
Astonished, I looked over at this little old, white-haired, wild woman jerking and throwing her arms. My mouth, I’m sure, dropped open. For I’d never seen Auntie lose control. I’d never seen emotion sweep her up like a tornado and throw her about like a puppet. Women with nurse’s caps on their heads ran to her with fans and handkerchiefs in their hands. I scrambled out of the way, not wanting to be rolled over and mashed flat. Her shouting set it off. The whole church began to get the spirit and folks started shouting, moaning, screaming, and falling out in the aisles. Because I had no reference point for this kind of church service, for the meaning and history of this ritual in Black culture, the whole thing simply scared me to death. It was not until years and years later that I began to learn, to understand, and not be frightened by something that we Black folks brought across the ocean and cultivated, like precious seed, to see us through on our hard, soul-testing journey in the Americas.
That sunday, the music got people Amening, and rocking. I looked around at the sea of Black people moving like rippling ocean waves. I started to feel a little tense. And I wondered what was going to happen next. Just then, Auntie jumped up, screaming: Oh, Jeezus, have mercymercymercy!
Astonished, I looked over at this little old, white-haired, wild woman jerking and throwing her arms. My mouth, I’m sure, dropped open. For I’d never seen Auntie lose control. I’d never seen emotion sweep her up like a tornado and throw her about like a puppet. Women with nurse’s caps on their heads ran to her with fans and handkerchiefs in their hands. I scrambled out of the way, not wanting to be rolled over and mashed flat. Her shouting set it off. The whole church began to get the spirit and folks started shouting, moaning, screaming, and falling out in the aisles. Because I had no reference point for this kind of church service, for the meaning and history of this ritual in Black culture, the whole thing simply scared me to death. It was not until years and years later that I began to learn, to understand, and not be frightened by something that we Black folks brought across the ocean and cultivated, like precious seed, to see us through on our hard, soul-testing journey in the Americas.
