Fever In the Winter By LLW

I must have been born on the coldest day in January. It must have been cold because every since that day, I have never felt anything warm. From cold stares, to cold responses to cold hand shakes and cold lunches, it felt like winter forever.

In the swamps of Mississippi where the winters were white. Where the lines of color never crossed, that was the way of respect; but if that line was crossed in that small town of Sardis, Mississippi things would happen that you would soon want to forget. It was the south. I never went to school with white children, did not know they existed. They were not a part of my life. All I knew were my grandmother and cousins. I can't even say I knew my mother, the woman that birth me in the world. There was a love that came because she birth me in the world, but a mother I never had. I always felt that I was my grandmother's favorite. Although I had several cousins to play with, I always believed that she treated me like I was special. I loved her for the attention. I loved her for the affection she gave me when I had a cold. She would rub sulfer on my chest and under my nose, so I could breath that night. I loved the blues she played during the week and the old spirituals on Sunday. I loved the pies she made, the greens, the corn bread,the peach cobblers. I loved her bravery when killing a chicken, plucking him until the skin was bear and preparing him to be eaten that night. I loved that in the summer we could pick peaches off her tree and pecans to later become a pie's. She was the industrial woman. She did everything, my grandfather must have loved her to death.

But that joy would soon be broken and replaced with a new environment unfamiliar to me. It would be the last time that I remember something being warm.