THE REASON IS A BABY-SITTER
When my brother and I were small, Cora Bailey, a Black woman from a neighboring town, would take care of us when our mother took a day off. She was a calm person whom we never thought of disobeying.
She made superb lemon meringue pies and peanut butter cookies. Sometimes she brought her daughter, Doris, a teenager I admired because she could twirl.
Some years later Cora told me that Doris had had a baby, and then, that he had died. "She misses him," she said.
At about that time my aunt, who worked at the Urban League in the town where Cora lived, told my mother that Cora was a prostitute. "We don't need you any more," Mom told her. We never saw her again.
The accusation may not have been true. In any case there had never been anything untoward in the years that Cora took care of us, and her private life was none of our business. She may not even have known the reason for being let go.
Such unfairness led to my being on the left and her memory explains being drawn to Blacks. It led to choosing African history.
Blook II is dedicated
to Cora Bailey.
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