LOST and FOUND

On the death of Julia Brown: Julia dies in 1890 and is buried at St Luke’s cemetery along with James F., who died in 1868. The storyline for James F. and Julia is over. I don’t know if they are buried side by side but that would have been a fitting end to their story for me, though Julia showed a streak of independence, after all, James had run away to escape enslavement without her, then died twenty-two years before she was ready, a full generation. She lived first with friends then all alone. Independence wasn’t unknown to her, neither I suppose was loneliness. I picture her in her last years living, coping in a world that’s neither Black and can’t be white, a mulatto world. She seems to have been a remarkable person during a time when remarks were rare and generally unkind toward a former enslaved person, tossed about over a lifetime for something she had no control over, the color of her skin. Is color a question by the enumerator or a statement? I don't know. There's an uptick in mulattoes in this census. I suppose if given a choice most would choose "house" versus "field." Julia may have chosen mulatto on at least two occasions. On school days at Brockway, the company town: I don’t recall any American flags being flown in Brockway, not even at the Brockway School. I was young and just may not remember a flag pole, any flag day celebrations, or recesses for that matter. But I do remember that the school sat in the middle of Mother Nature’s playground. There were walnut trees in the fall, with falling nuts to crack, bricks were handy and therefore the tool of choice, smashing nuts rather than cracking them, but the nuts, walnuts, delicious as they were, left stains that wouldn’t budge with washing. Only time would remove those stains from tiny hands. There was a wooded stream in the front of the school that disappeared into a shaded marshy area with frogs, snakes, and the smell of skunk cabbage. The brickyard clay banks were through the woods to the left with its crystal blue ponds of collected rainwater that turned Black bathers gray if enticed to skinny-dip, and Martin yard with its old clapboard housing a ways to the right. The sounds and sights of nature were all around – the caw of crows, the scamper of squirrels, the gliding of hawks under the big white clouds above our heads. There were wild strawberries, blackberries, and mulberry trees that served up snacks in the spring assuming you found them first. I may have just figured out why we didn’t recess.