Soul Food

Michele Marr

“Always be a little kinder than you need to be.”

These words have been whispering through my thoughts over and over

again this past week. A woman I knew only as Beanie, the wisest woman I

ever have met, gave me those words.

The year I met Beanie, I lived with my mother and my sister in a tiny

white apartment a stone’s throw from my maternal grandmother, in Mobile,

Alabama, while my father did a tour of duty in Okinawa.

Beanie was a maid and a nanny to a girl my age whose name and face I

no longer remember. She lived in the apartment next to ours with her

mother, who worked.

Every school day morning for a year I met my now nameless, faceless

friend in her kitchen before we walked to school. Beanie would be

standing over a sink of breakfast dishes, humming or singing gospel songs

and tapping her feet.

I once asked her how she learned to sing that way, and she laughed.

“Learn nothing, chile’.” she said, “The good Lord seen fit to give me

this voice.”

Beanie had an enormous bosom that met her waist, large hips and thick

legs beneath her calf-length housedresses. She had a smile that filled

her face.

When she heard the screen door slap closed behind me, she would turn

that smile on me, dry her hands on her apron and come over to me.

She would get right down to eye level with me. She’d look me straight

in the eye. “Good morning chile’,” she’d say. “Now don’ you look like a

little piece of heaven?”

Sometimes she might add, “My, my I do like that blue ribbon,” or

“Lawdy, lawdy that dress do look ready for Sunday mornin’.”

I never tired of it. And I never felt like it was just talk. I knew

that anything Beanie said, she said straight from the bottom of her heart

or she didn’t say it at all.

I’d watch Beanie while she bent over that sink of dishes. There was

something about her I wanted to understand and just couldn’t. Sometimes

she must have felt my eyes on her, because every now and again she would

look over her big shoulder at me give me a wink.

I was amazed at the joy and energy Beanie had. Beanie never

complained. I was mystified by her generosity and her genuine interest in

people. She called them by name. She knew what mattered to them. She was

a servant in my friend’s household in the noblest sense of the word.

Everything she did there made it a little richer.

Beanie was a mammy. She had her housedress and a Sunday dress. Her

aprons were made from flour sacks. She had never gone to school. She took

care of someone else’s family in order to provide for her own. She did it

without a hint of resentment.

I wondered at how a woman with so little gave so much. And much of

what she gave she gave with no apparent expectation of getting anything

at all in return.

On the occasion of my sister’s fourth birthday, we invited Beanie to

her party. My sister and I both adored her and wanted her to celebrate

with us.

She came, on a Saturday afternoon, dressed in her Sunday dress and

hat, with a present.

It was then that I realized two things: the invitation had obligated

her to spend part of her meager earnings on a gift for my sister, and

attending the party on Saturday afternoon stole some of the little time

she had for her own children.

When it came time to open her presents, my sister reached for Beanie’s

first. She peeled away the paper around the gift slowly. With each piece

that fell away, she looked up at Beanie like she knew something none of

the rest of us did.

When the last piece of paper unfolded, there was a bright yellow

plastic pig wearing a tiny green plastic hat. A piggy bank!

My sister looked at Beanie and they laughed and laughed. I had a piggy

bank, but my sister didn’t.

When she put a coin in the piggy’s back, the tiny green hat flew up.

It was a prized possession. A decade later, when I left home, that

cheerful pig in the bright green hat still collected coins on my sister’s

dresser.

Beanie had known exactly the right thing to give my little sister.

Beanie often seemed to know exactly the right thing to say or do.

She was rich in a way I could see, but couldn’t name. I yearned to be

rich that way, too, and I hoped that if I watched her closely enough I

just might be.

That summer when we had to leave Mobile, it meant leaving Beanie, too.

When I went to say goodbye, she was more solemn than I’d ever seen

her. I told her that I loved her and that I would miss her. I told her I

wanted to be just like her. She got right down to eye level with me. She

looked me straight in the eye. “You can be much better than old Beanie,”

she said as she held my hands and smiled. “Just remember to say your

prayers and ask the good Lord to help you always be a little kinder than

you need to be.”

It was like hearing a lovely sonata. It sounds so easy until you try

to play it yourself.* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic

designer from Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and

ethics for as long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]