by Elizabeth J. Westmark
Pre-submission qualification: why do I think I am Southern?
1. That’s an insulting question. What else would I be?
2. I live in not one, but two, places in the South: deep in the deer woods of northwest Florida behind a locked gate with about twelve keep out no trespassing signs on it; and in western North Carolina on a mountain where we don’t need a locked gate because Miss Sarah lives across the way from the road up our mountain and no one gets past her without their license plate being recorded.
3. My mother’s people are all from Mississippi. Her brothers all became Southern Baptist preachers – except for the black sheep, Uncle Ned, who joined the Navy and married that model from New York City. They have names like Elton, Levon, Ewell and Marcus. In their pastoral hay day they all drove identical big white cars. Their black plastic eyeglasses frames and pouffy jet black preacher hair made it impossible for me to tell them apart.
4. My father’s people are all from Alabama. Before I was born, my Daddy moved the family to Miami to seek his fortune there – mostly so he wouldn’t lose any more fingers working in the Alabama box plant.
5. The only people in the world who call me Mary Beth are relatives, as in “Why, as I live and breathe, it’s Mary Beth.”
6. My Uncle Arthur agreed to “give me away” to my first husband, who certainly didn’t know what to do with me once he got me. Before agreeing to do it, my uncle told me he had to ask me a serious question first. It was, “Are you gonna bake biscuits for your man?”
6. When doctors said my mother had an organic brain disease which caused hallucinations and seizures, my sister, Flo, knew better. Flo periodically communes with the spirit world, which is how she knew Mother was possessed by demons.
8. My man don’t go nowhere without his woman, his dog, and his black, four wheel drive pick-em-up truck.
This is but a thumbnail of my Southern pedigree, but I hope it is sufficient for you to read my submission, which follows.
A True Southern Woman
An otherwise lovely evening in New York City’s Rainbow Room several years ago led me to a fuller understanding of just how Southern I am. When the quintessentially suburban Connecticut margarita-lubricated corporate spouse began to speak on the subject of a good college education, others at the table and I listened politely, sipping our drinks. She blithely stated that the only real education comes from an Ivy League school; further, that “real” Americans go to Ivy League schools; that there are no Ivy League schools in the South; thus, Southerners are not true Americans.
Was I the only one listening at the table? My dear husband, bless his heart, can’t hear worth a damn, due to decades of shooting dove and quail back when hearing protection was for sissies. Sometimes I envy him. Had he heard what this Yankee bitch said, he would have come forth with some culturally appropriate Southernism – maybe about her mamma not teaching her any manners – and we would have swept out of that fine room.
Surely she didn’t say what I thought I heard. Dancers were swirling about as a live band played. Tables full of small talk in the dimly lit room created wavelets of background noise. Besides, my mamma always taught me to give rude people the benefit of the doubt. But upon further exploration, it became abundantly clear to me that this woman was an anti-Southern, elitist bigot.
And I was furious. Me, the mild-mannered, about whom it has been said that we all have our cross to bear and mine is that I’m too nice.
I managed to get through the rest of the shortened evening without putting my hands around her throat and squeezing, and the dark room hid the high spots of color that had bloomed on my porcelain cheeks. My husband sensed something was going on and that I was about to blow. He could feel the change from my normal pattern of breathing. Intensity. Heat. Just in time, he gracefully said our goodnights and helped me escape out into the cold December air.
Her superior, cool conviction had shocked me like a hard slap in the face. She was a little drunk, true. Rude, narrow-minded and drunk. My Southern heritage had never been a source of high identity for me, but that night changed everything. My view of the eastern establishment went slightly tilt. Even now, listening to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, anchor of the news talk show, Hardball, I hear a similar edgy disdain of the wild, unpredictable, unvarnished Southerner. Highly varnished Southerners can be safely brought into one’s salon for an evening’s entertainment, but would you want a member of your family to marry one?
I really ought to thank this miscellaneous woman whose name I have long forgotten. She jerked on my roots, laid them bare. Caused me to examine them more closely, nurture, treasure and season them like a fine old cast iron skillet.
And now I greet the world serenely, confident in knowing who I am: a true Southern woman and proud of it.
