The Minnie Years and Julia Town

My Aunt Minnie was a tyrant. Nothing gave her more pleasure thanto rear back on the hocks of her legs, arms akimbo, and Bellow at peoplein such a belligerent voice they were reduced to a state of nothingness.Cunning, greed and deceit were parts of her outward character discernibleat all times, but her strong filial tendencies were known only to those inclose contact with her.Aunt Minnie was a tall woman, close to five feet ten inches in height,weighing somewhere in the two hundreds. A wide face, small eyes spacedclose together, gave her the look of a pouncing hawk. Needless to say, westood in communal awe of her. We, being my nine brothers and sisters,entrusted into her care by my well-meaning, misguided father, whose onlyfault laid in his pride as sole provider of a family the size of ours. Fatherlooked on the acceptance of charily in any form as a cardinal sin. Therefore;when times became hard, we were packed up and shipped off to a smallrural parish in North Carolina, under the auspices of MinnieAlthough we were forced to submit to her absolute rule, there were times,to give the Devil his due, when she was most kind to us. As time passed, welearned to mistrust these moments of kindness . . . They seemed to precedeAunt Minnie at her worst.Now that I am grown and know something of Aunt Minnie’s history,I am more given to understand her whole character. She was, according tomy grandmother, never satisfied with her status in their small family whichconsisted of herself, my grandmother, and their mother. Born some monthsafter the death of my great-grandfather, she was never sure she could rightfullyclaim the legitimacy that fell naturally to my grandmother, who enjoyedthe safety of being born during the lifetime of their father. Consequently,she was a difficult child who grew to womanhood with a warped sense oflove-hate toward her mother, sister and the whole world.This too would explain her late marriage. Having developed a tongueand temper akin to razor sharpness, it was a complete surprise when at the'old-age' of twenty-nine, she married a 'ships’-hang-about' in NewportNews, Virginia, and brought him home to the small house she rented onCharles Street in Norfolk, Virginia. Her husband, Samuel Bell was born of adying mother in the early eighteen nineties. His birth date was never officiallyrecorded. After the death of his mother, with no one claiming relationshipand still an infant, he was sent by the authority in place to Suffolk Foundling,the County Home for orphaned Negro children. There he remained untilhe reached the age of eighteen. At age thirty two Sam, a loner with a heavydrinking problem, attended a June Nineteenth Masonic Picnic. There hemet an unattached spinster; Miss Minnie DeComtessa Louisiana Blount,my Aunt Minnie. After the marriage, she supplied him with a push cart,work card, and a contract to sell bushels of wood from a local lumber yard,and promptly set about making this poor spineless creature’s life a livinghell for the next five years.When my mother was ten years old, Aunt Minnie gave birth to twindaughters. She was thirty-four years old at the time, and the combinedfacts of not being a younger woman, a difficult pregnancy, and a growingrealization that she had married a lazy, shiftless man whose sole ambitionwas 'jist to git by for today,' drove her to extreme fits of temper. Each weekduring her pregnancy, no matter how inclement the weather or morningsickness, she would trudge the twelve blocks or so in front of or beside,(never behind) her husband’s push cart, haranguing him all the way withfoul words and name calling. When they reached the lumber yard, it was shewho would sign for the amount of wood to be sold that week, her husbandbeing completely illiterate.Each week the amount would be increased. On the day she gave birth,despite her labor pains, she made him get up earlier than usual (his day startedat 4:30am), conducted him to the lumber