I watched Edna walk down my grandmothers’ back porch steps carrying a metal bucket of wet draperies; a job that would have challenged a heavy weight boxer.

Edna, my grandmother’s housekeeper/maid, watched over my uncle and mother when they were children, in addition to my mother’s three children, which included me. 

Grandmother and Edna were around the same age, so I knew it must be difficult for her to carry a giant bucket of wet draperies. Edna was a short yet strong lady, but, she kept putting the bucket down to rest and wipe her hands on her apron. The same apron I watched her wipe her hands on throughout the impetus decade of my youth. I’m not sure why, but Edna’s hands were always wet, and she dried them constantly on a towel strapped to her apron.     

Edna, was more than a housekeeper in my family, she was a part of our family, although from a young age, I sensed an invisible fence between the bonds that exists between members of what we now call, “extended family,” and she was with us through the fragmented decades of the 50’s 60’s, 70’s as well as, the early eighties.

She started working for my grandmother in the 1950’s, but the day I followed her to the clothesline it was the early eighties.  Southerners, as well as, the rest of America were socially confused about how to act, what words to use, relationships, etc…There was a quiet tension floating in the air, mixed with an excitement about the changes to come.

In any event, I followed Edna to the clothesline watching her hand off the bucket from one hand to the other, much like a basketball player tossing his basketball. She had two rags for both of the clotheslines wires, the same two rags she used the last time she washed my grandmothers’ draperies in the bathtub and hung them on the clothesline to dry.

I watched her drop the bucket and pull the rags out of her apron to clean the drapes, so I picked up my pace, in order to reach her in time to help.  

Then, I heard my grandmother talking to me from the back porch, - My grandmother thought people could hear her under any circumstance. I mean, there could have been a circus full of roaring lions in her yard that afternoon and she would have spoken to me in the same tone of voice.

Hence, in a normal tone of voice from her back porch twenty feet from the clothesline, she said,

“Ann, what are you doing?

Well, Nana I’m helping Edna hang the drapes.” Thinking nothing of it.

Then, Edna said, almost instantaneously,

“Ann, I don’t need any help, listen to what your grandmother said.”

Stunned by my grandmother presence, I stood there watching her watch me from the back porch, and pretended I couldn’t hear her, which wasn’t far from the truth.

Then she spoke again, “Ann, will you please come inside, I need you to polish the furniture.”

“I’m sorry, Nana, I cannot hear you,” I shouted.  

Frustrated, my grandmother walked back in the house.

Edna held back a laugh, and said,

“Ann, you better go or you’re going to get us both into trouble. Catch her before she gets inside.”

So, I said,

“Okay, Nana, I’ll be there in a minute.” (Hoping she would accept my answer and go inside, so that I could ask Edna a question.)

And, thank goodness, she did walk inside, and I was free to ask Edna why she let my grandmother speak to her in such a high-handed fashion.  

Edna, just smiled and said,

“Ann, your grandmother and I have known each other long before you were born.” I was on the opposite side of the clothesline, but Edna kept talking while the wind flapped the drapes against her face, like the sails on a sailboat.  

In fact, Edna resembled a sailor having trouble with his sails as she tried to tie the drapes to the line with wooden clothespins that looked as if they survived the civil war.  I tried to grab the other rag and clean the other wire, but she put her hand on mine, and said,  

“Stop it, or I’m not gonna tell you a story about your grandmother.” 

I was a bit apprehensive about what Edna was going to tell me, but the intoxicating fragrances of honey suckle vines, azalea bushes, and magnolia Fiscata’s surrounding my grandmothers’ yard comforted me  that afternoon when Edna began to tell the story of how she became a part of our family sometime in the 1950’s.     

The wind was blowing hard that day, so hard that the leaves on the trees crinkled, snapped, and floated away with the wind.  The branches of my grandmothers’ large Oak tree dipped and swung in circles, like a ride at an amusement park.

Now, when I hear a strong wind it reminds of that day long ago, when my grandmother and Edna were alive and I feel as if they’re standing next to me by that clothesline when Edna spoke about the past.  

When Edna spoke to me through the drapes that flew in the wind like a kite. I could barely hear her until she snapped the last clothes pin on the last drape and it fell into place resembling curtains in a theater.

I was about to hear a story that would lay the foundation of my constitution.  

As Edna spoke the wind wiggled the drapes allowing her voice to take me back to a world I never knew…and to the places in my heart I will not forget.