Every now and then someone of iconic stature passes on, and I wish I’d had a chance to talk to her, one on one. Not for this newspaper, mind you. But for my own selfish reasons.
That’s how I felt when I learned Mamie Till-Mobley died last week. Mobley was the mother of Emmett Till, the black 14-year-old who left his Chicago home in the summer of 1955 to visit relatives in the Mississippi Delta and was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman.
In the days following Mobley’s death, I’ve read eloquent quotes from her and I’ve heard broadcast sound bites. And I can’t help feeling this immense sense of loss from having never sat down with her, without the divide of television, radio or the written word.
Beyond the icon was the woman. Yes, she was the person who had somehow found the courage to open her son’s casket to let the world see how he had suffered. But she was also a wife, a mother of four daughters, a teacher and a crusader who spent the bulk of her life traveling the country trying to sustain Emmett’s memory.
One of the things about her that struck me was that she also loved to cook and bake.
Alvin Sykes, a human rights worker from Kansas City, Mo., told me that when he and a colleague arrived at her house last month to discuss getting the state of Mississippi to reopen Emmett’s murder case, she was in her kitchen smoothing icing on a German chocolate cake.
A New York Times reporter wrote last month that when he met with her, she was preparing a feast for her 81st birthday. There was “turkey, beef roast, oyster dressing, gravy, mixed greens, collards, cabbage, macaroni and cheese, string beans and rutabagas.” And, of course, there was sweet potato pie.
So I began to wonder whether she was like a lot of the older women in my family who used their kitchens as a place to work out life’s tangles?
There’s something about starting with a dash of this and a dash of that and measuring out portions by the palmful and not following a recipe and still having faith that it’s going to come out all right.
I thought about that German chocolate cake. Was she the type who sliced a piece of cake and handed it over? Or the type who said, “Honey, make yourself at home. Butter knives are over there in that drawer. Saucers are in the cupboard. You just sit down and eat until your soul’s content.”
And about the collards: Did she fill the sink with water, understanding that collard greens, though fairly easy to cook, were arduous to clean? That is, unless you place them in saltwater, which, as my mother always said, unsettles the earth and coaxes out every bit of rock and sediment and sand until they all float up to the surface. What’s left is sustenance.
I wondered if she hummed while she cooked? “Amazing Grace,” “The Lord’s Prayer,” or some other number that sometimes took her way back, between the Mississippi Delta and Chicago. Did she tap her foot and sway from side to side?
And when the dish was almost done, I wondered if she placed her hand on her hip like I’ve seen aunts do and stir in her pots. Did she dip her spoon in the pot liquor, take a taste and then shake her head and say: “Nope, not quite right yet. But it’ll be all right. We’ll just give it some time.”
Finally, I wondered whether her kitchen had a window. If so, was there ever an afternoon when some little sandy-haired boy with a mischievous smile ran past who reminded her of Emmett?
I imagine that if she had allowed me to sit in her kitchen, I wouldn’t have had the heart to broach the topic of her son.
But if she had wanted to talk about him, I would have asked her how she found the courage to look upon his horribly disfigured face and then allow the world to do so.
I would have asked her how she could not hate the murderers. Even though, she did tell a reporter: “I have not spent one minute hating. Once, I had a dream I was walking alone across a bridge, a long, long bridge, and I looked down and the waters were real black, and the waters were troubled, and they were moving, cresting. And the Spirit said, `I have suspended you high above.'”
If Ms. Mobley had allowed me to sit in her kitchen, I would have warned her that I am not a good cook. But I would have been honored to stir a few of her pots.