Sitting Up with the Dead by Pamela Petro

Author:Pamela Petro
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628727746
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2017-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

Tom’s Tale

I HAD BEEN IN CHARLESTON, South Carolina for twenty-four hours and had not seen so much as a square foot of the historic district — the pastel townhouses of Rainbow Row, the piazzas, the gardens, the filigreed ironwork balconies, the harbor views, that made it “probably the loveliest city in the continental United States,” as my guidebook claimed. After I left the homeless shelter, I retreated to a motel on a commercial strip and spent the evening drinking wine and eating rubbery calamari at the bar at Red Lobster. For a short time I wanted to avoid distinction and bask in uniformity (if one can actually bask, that is, in a world entirely lacking depth).

I returned to my motel room to find a new e-mail from Vickie.

Hi Pam!

I was happy to hear from you … kind of like when my daughter writes to me from Korea. The whole e-mail experience is like Christmastime when Santa “leaves you something” — sometimes something that you really want, which, generally, in ordinary life, is acknowledgment from others that you count…

As soon as I finish editing the stories about the Dead Man, Sister Collins, and the Bald-headed Bohannon Boys, I will send them to you …

As I told you when you were visiting me … I am always encouraged when I read the words of the blues songs and can relate to them — there is pain and conflict to Southern life that gets bypassed in discussion. What I mean is: there is a line drawn for no humane reason between blacks and whites as if one suffered more than the other, maybe because the emphasis is always put on slavery. But my own belief puts me in a position to disagree with that. I wish I had better words than I do, and I wish I could articulate my gut feeling when I explain this. There is a common element that connects us (Southerners, black and white) — and I hope it is what disconnects us from innocent Northerners or Westerners. In the South, the blacks and whites are intertwined in wrongdoing — a vicious cycle of hurt. I say that from the perspective of a participant in family violence. When one person (a family or society) commits a violent act on some other person, both people end up hurt. It may take some time for the offender to recognize this, or he may never, but what happens is that the air becomes filled with a tension and a pain, a spiritual hurt … In my opinion the South is full of misunderstanding about itself…

What is important, I think, is if you’re trying to form some opinion about one person in the South, you are usually forced to form an opinion about the whole group first. People say, “What happened to make the South so factious? Are you aware you’re pulling in separate directions?” Some people do know; some people don’t. I think we (Southerners) have an innocence and ignorance that breeds this kind of separatism.

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