On International Women's Day, I Hear a Family Story

That this happened on International Women's Day was a matter of pure coincidence.  If, that is, there are coincidences.

I had promised myself to make contact with my elderly cousin more months ago than I care to admit.  I learned of her existence (as more than a name in my genealogical charts) some time in the past from a marvelous lady one of whose vocations is walking through old cemeteries and recording information she finds on tombstones, then researching those whose tombstone information she has retrieved.

She uploads all of this information about people entirely unrelated to her in a blood sense, but whose lives have become interwoven with hers through her passion for visiting cemeteries and preserving tombstone information, at a site many genealogists in the U.S. use to retrieve burial (and biographical) information--Find a Grave.

And so when I found this devoted researcher had uploaded some information to that site about a relative of mine some generations back in Louisiana--a brother of my ancestor Camilla Birdwell Green--I emailed her to tell her that I had some information to correct hers, which perpetuates a confusion found in many accounts of the Birdwell family, in which two men named John Birdwell have been conflated.  

The researcher, Jan H., kindly wrote me back, and one of those unexpected e-friendships ensued, in which we swapped stories and, in the way people brought up Southern are wont to do, probed our possible far-flung family ties--and discovered that her family and mine are, in fact, connected by several marriages.  She told me charming and not very surprising information about her great-aunt Roxie, who was a first cousin of my grandfather, and who was known far and wide in her little Louisiana town for two reasons: she went everywhere on her bicycle, even up to the ripe age of 90 (she died at 91).  And everywhere she went, along with her in the bicycle basket went her little ill-tempered cur dog Bobby.

Bobby, whom Roxie adored to highest heaven.  But Bobby, who was, sad to say, despised by all and sundry due to his unfortunate tendency to bite anyone who approached his beloved mistress, and for whom Roxie made provisions in her will, since she feared that if she predeceased poor little Bobby, no one would love him, due to his inability to endear himself to anyone but her.

As I say, none of this surprised me to hear because, well, this is how quite a few of my relatives have long behaved.  I have a first cousin who told me only yesterday she was spending the day waiting on electricians to complete the air-conditioning and heating system for the "doggie mansion" (her phrase) she's building right now for her pack of rescue dogs, all of whom have multisyllabic euphonious Southern names like Isabella Maria and Piper Lauretta Antonia.  (But then there's also Jack, who was named by a neglectful neighbor from whom my cousin took Jack away because, well, to her mind, he deserved to be loved.)  

In telling me her Roxie stories, Jan told me, too, "Now you have to get into contact with Aunt Roxie's niece Barbara--mind like a steel trap.  Can tell you all sorts of stories about your family.  Might not want anyone to know her age, but let's just say she's of an age to remember a great deal and you might want to call her now while she is able to share information."

I did try calling Barbara a number of times after Jan sent me her phone number, but never succeeded in getting a live voice, and it wasn't clear to me her answer machine was functioning, so I set the number aside, told myself I'd keep calling, and months passed.  And more months.  And the guiltier I felt about not carrying through (on what I considered a promise to Jan to call Barbara), the less I acted: guilt inducing paralysis inducing more guilt, in that strange dysfunctional cycle that must be bred into bones with a residue of Calvinism in them.

It being Lent, I have now decided to deal with guilt and what causes guilt, so I recently had the brainstorm to look up Barbara's address and send her a letter.  That way, I told myself, you'll be less intrusive than you would be if you called her out of the blue, introduced yourself as a distant cousin, and then asked if you might pick her brain about family ties and family stories.

So write I did, and this past week, I immediately received a phone call in response from the elderly cousin, whom I found delightful, and who spent an hour talking to me while making twenty pounds of chicken and sausage gumbo for her granddaughter's wedding, which is today.  "I'm 80 years old," she announced, "and could not be happier, since I have my wits, a little house for which I've completely paid, three wonderful daughters whom I put through college, and good health.  What more do I need?"

And on it went from there: "Yes, I remember your grandparents.  They visited us for a week when I was a little girl and I thought your grandmother was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen--that head of rich black hair, and that beautiful complexion. And I remember your grandfather's sister Camilla* and his brothers Sam, Clarence ('Doc'), and A.B."  

Because I myself remember all these folks well, we were off on a good footing, since we could match story to story ("If you went to the annual family reunions, did you ever see Aunt Camilla tipping fastidiously to the outhouse, with those immaculate white gloves on her hands"?), and add pieces of information the other didn't recall or hadn't heard.  And then there was this:

I was 25 and not long out of college, and I met Jim.  He could charm the birds out of the trees. 

But what you learn after you marry is what you don't know when you court.  Every time a bump came along in his life, off he went on a drunken tear, days on end.  And along with the whiskey went fists, shoves, punches.   

We had three little girls, and what could I do but live with it?--or so I told myself.  And then this happened.  He came home drunk out of his mind one night, pulled a pistol, cocked it, and told me, "Darling, say your prayers, since they're the last words you'll ever say." 

Our baby girl, Charlotte, was the only one at home.  She saw this and ran to the neighbors.  They called the police.  While Jim held the gun to my face, I could see the police out the window, motioning me to run to the door. 

But I knew that if I tried that, he'd shoot me in the head.  So I told him, "Jim, I'm thirsty.  I need a drink of water."  I told myself, "If you can only get to the stove and pick up one of the iron skillets, you might be able to knock him in the head and grab the gun." 

"Get the water," Jim said.  "It will be the last drink you drink."

And while I walked to the sink, the police broke the door down and Jim fired the gun.  Fortunately, it shot into the ceiling and I didn't lose my life.  And I was never so happy in all my life as I was the day I divorced him and found a teaching job.  I started teaching at a salary of $6,000 a year in 1973, and thought we were rich.

And I now cannot get that story out of my head, having heard it on International Women's Day.  I can't shake the story and the combination of anger and pity it elicits in me, because I'm convinced that far too many women throughout the world live in conditions--every day--in which they are subject to male rage that comes in all shapes and forms, and manifests itself in acts of violence, cruelty, psychological and physical torment against them solely because they are women.

Over and over, world without end.

But this has to end, because God did not make the world to function this way.  God did not make men to be little lords in the land, and women to be mere loam for the lord of the land to till and fertilize and dispose of as he wishes.

And those who tell us otherwise--the powerful, ancient, seemingly intractable patriarchal traditions in the world's religions which tell us that God made men to rule and women to obey--are wrong.  They misrepresent God.  

And they must be stopped from doing so.

*Named for her grandmother Camilla Birdwell Green.

The graphic is a photo by Safin Hamed, AFP/Getty Images, and is from USA Today.  It shows women using a computer at Sahar Gul cafe in Kabul, the first internet cafe for women in Afghanistan.