Stand Up Straight and Sing! Read Online Free Page B

sons to usher into manhood, was happy with the shot of estrogen that came with having a little girl. Every bit of that desire played itself out in the way she dressed me. She was the architect of my most fancy wardrobe. There were dresses with Peter Pan collars, and pintucked tops, and organdy for Sunday, and great big bows that tied perfectly in the back, with black patent leather Mary Jane shoes shined with a little petroleum jelly just so—bangs and pigtails coaxed straight on Saturday nights with the scorch of the hot comb and a few fingerfuls of Royal Crown hairdressing, then gathered neatly with ribbons. Nothing pleased Janie Norman more than to see her little girl looking like, well, a little girl.
     
    I LIKED DRESSING UP , and I would oblige my mother’s wishes for me to walk instead of run, and to stop and recover should my sash get caught on the door handle, rather than just pull away, torn sash and all, in my mad rush hither and yon. But really, I was fascinated with what my brothers and their friends were allowed to do. Alas, wearing sneakers and climbing trees and skinning my knees on the hard pavement was but a dollop of salve for my independent spirit—the spirit of a baby boomer whose generation had yet to even begin a serious conversation about the liberation of girls and women. Girls were born, given a certain amount of schooling, then they were married, were mothers and homemakers and, if they worked at all, were limited to very specific kinds of jobs, not meant to leave a real mark on the world outside of their homes. Too few of our elders seemed to imagine a bigger world for us.
    I craved bigger. And I found it hard, even at an early age, to fit my mind, body, and spirit into the too-tiny box carved out for girls and women of my generation. After all, I was raised by the hand of Janie Norman in a family full of strong women. There was my maternal grandmother, my mother, her seven sisters, and my four paternal aunts—each firm in their stance that none of us should be hampered by the limitations saddled on the shoulders of women. Each of them provided daily inspiration to simply “get on with it”—to grow into the best woman I could be, no matter the hurdles, despite the odds. My aunt Veronia, for example, was an ordained minister who would dress up, complete with heels, a handbag, and gloves, just to go the grocery store, because she felt one “ought to do so.” She also wrote books and held such glamorous events as “book signing parties.” One of my paternal aunts was named Cleopatra, and though we called her Aunt Cleo, she wore her full name splendidly, majestic and proud! Another paternal aunt, Louise, traveled often to Ghana, and wore fabulous African clothing that on someone else would have resembled a costume. They were amazing women.
    My mother was the very embodiment of a woman who worked through gender limitations—a person who made no excuses, stood up for herself with the perfect mixture of strength and grace, and who managed to be much more than her country had come to expect of an African American woman raised on a farm in Washington, Georgia. Janie Norman was educated and an educator—a middle school teacher who found a career long before she found a husband (she married my father, Silas Norman Sr., when she was twenty-seven, which, in that era, meant that she was in danger of being labeled an old maid by the time she said “I do”). It was not easy for women—mothers, in particular—to have careers, when veterans were heading back to the States to reclaim their jobs and the media continually spread the message that women should be keeping the home and raising children while the men earned their keep. My mother followed her passion and poured her very soul into the betterment of African American children who, at the time, counted on their own communities to give them what segregation denied them: a fighting chance in a country that had yet to allow those of African descent