Bright, light and damn near white

Here’s The opening paragraph from the essay Wanda Bridgeforth wrote when I assigned “I Walked Home” as a writing prompt this week.

My father grew up in the South under a caste system that clung to the old thought of blue bloods. Looks and family were of great importance — even if your family was poor as church mice. Color of skin and texture. Our family fit the mold of “Bright, light and damn near white.”

Wanda will celebrate her 95th birthday next month. That’s her from way back on her 90th. Photo courtesy Darlene Schweitzer.

My memoir-writing classes are taking the month of September off, and that essay Wanda wrote for our final meeting of the 2016 summer session sent us home smiling — and thinking.

Wanda’s high school boyfriend was more of a buddy than a beau, she says. “The dating pleased both families, especially my father, because Rodney was bright, light damn near white…and HANDSOME to boot,” she wrote. “The fact that Rodney was an alcoholic was overlooked.”

Social clubs were very popular on Chicago’s South Side. Social clubs sponsored live music and dancing for 50 cents admission, and when Wanda was a teenager she danced every Friday and Saturday night until midnight.

Wanda says her date Rodney was “the essence of social propriety” when he arrived at their door to escort her out on weekend dates, and whether Rodney arrived drunk or sober, the two of them always worked out a deal. “Once at the affair, he’d go one way and I’d go the other,” she told us. “When it was over, we poured Rodney into a Jitney cab and sent him home.” More from her essay:

For the school’s fall dance I paid the whopping sum of $4.95 for a pair of ultra-thin -strap black satin slippers from OG’s Shoe Store.
Dad gave Rodney two dollars and told us to enjoy ourselves. The evening was great. I danced and Rodney drank

Wanda’s feet were sore by the time that dance was over. “The ultra-thin black satin straps were cutting into my swollen fat feet and I could hardly walk.” After gritting her teeth and hobbling a while, she gave in, asked one of the fellas she’d danced with for a pocket knife, sat on a fireplug and ceremoniously cut off every strap of her ultra-thin black satin slippers. “After I peeled a couple of the straps from my feet and removed the shoes, I flexed and rubbed my feet and walked barefoot across a dewy wet lawn and dropped the ultra-thin strap black satin slippers into a trash can,” she wrote, ending her essay with these four strong words. “And I walked home.”

Wanda’s classmate Sharon Kramer compiles essays by writers from the “Me, Myself and I” class I lead at the Chicago Cultural Center at the Beth’s Class blog. You can read this essay by Wanda in addition to essays by her fellow Wednesday writers in their entirety on that blog.