Priscilla

As a child I was in awe of her dark, wrinkled skin...her face was soft yet her hands were calloused and cracked with hard work. She lived alone in a big, white house that looked like it could cave in at any moment. I don't think she had any family left. She did not have running water and I loved to watch/"help" her pump water to fill her old tin bucket. I wasn't afraid of her...she was gentle and I wanted to spend time with her. She loved her chickens...they had names...one of them was Henrietta and when she called them it was with a high, shrill foreign sound...the chickens came running...EVERY SINGLE TIME. I use that same sound now to call in our barn cats. Those chickens knew and trusted her. I liked the way she wiped her hands on her old apron after she threw grain out for the chickens. She talked low and her words were a little hard to understand. She helped my Mamaw from time to time and my Mamaw would send me to her house to check on her, to buy eggs from her and sometimes take something to her...some cornbread and soup beans or a piece of pie. When she died I would ride my bike to the cemetery where she was buried. No one else ever lived in her house...it stood empty till it was bull dozed down MANY years later.

I remember you Priscilla.