BLACK-EYED PEAS for the SOUL by Donna Marie Williams

Author:Donna Marie Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Published: 1997-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

STEP FOUR

Cooking the Peas

“Black-eyed peas are a down-home food. When I was growing up in Jacksonville, Alabama, your great-grandma, my grandma, would cook ’em in molasses and serve it over rice. She’d cook ’em with ham, pig tails, bacon—whatever she’d have lying around, and she’d cook ’em in a pot as big as this kitchen on that tiny wood-burning stove. We’d be eating black-eyed peas for weeks. Every New Year’s she’d cook a batch for good luck.”

“Good luck?”

“Right, cook ’em on New Year’s and you’ll have good luck for the rest of the year,” said Daddy.

“Sounds like some superstitious Negro nonsense to me,” I said superciliously. But as soon as I said it, I regretted it. My father looked to heaven and shook his head sadly.

“You complain about your son not caring about our history—wonder where he got it from?” I deserved that.

“Daddy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to crack, but you’ve got to admit—black-eyed peas, good luck, oh c’mon!”

Daddy sat down in one of the old sturdy chairs. It was such a slow, pained movement, it hurt me to watch. His knees creaked and groaned, and I could tell his back hurt. Must be going to rain. His arthritis was more dependable than the weatherman. I wanted to give him some ibuprofen, but I knew better than to make a fuss. My mother fusses, to his great irritation. So I kept silent, wincing at every creak of the knees.

The salty, smoky smells of the boiling turkey danced with the smooth piano of Ramsey Lewis. Daddy’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be listening to the music for strength. He sighed deeply, then said, “Get me a beer.” Quickly, I got a can out the refrigerator, popped the top, and poured it for him in a tall, clear glass, making sure to give it a good, foamy head. It was kind of early in the day, but I guess I had driven him to it. Whatever it took to keep his blood pressure down.

I handed him the glass of ale and stoically awaited my tongue-lashing. Instead, he told me to sit down, and then he proceeded to tell me a story. It was a story about how my great-great-grandma had walked off the plantation with my great-grandma in hand and set up housekeeping in Jacksonville. Times were hard, but our family has the work ethic stitched into our genetic code. These brave women used the skills that kept them alive on the plantation and set up a family cooking business—catering, they’d call it today—that fed folks from miles around. With a single, solitary wood-burning stove, they’d cook turkeys, hams, sweet potato pies, pecan pies (there was a huge pecan tree out front), peach cobbler, fried chicken, cheese sticks, pound cake, and the sweetest ambrosia ever concocted by woman.

“There was never an easy time when I was growing up. We had to fight Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and other Black folks. Sometimes, throwing kernels of corn on the ground

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