Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody Page A

the last one up. Everybody else had eaten breakfast, dressed and everything. When I saw that Mama had laid my baptism clothes out at the foot of my bed, I sat there thinking of jumping out of the window and disappearing forever. Instead, I looked at that
white
dress, those
white
socks, that
white
slip, and those
white
drawers, and thought, “This shit means I’ve been washed clean of all my sins!”
    “My sins!” I said, kicking everything off onto the floor like a wild woman.
    Just then Mama came in.
    “Gal! Looka here what you done! Gettin’ this white dress all dirty! Get outta that bed!” she screamed angrily, picking up the dress like I had wounded it. “How you ‘spect to be baptized layin’ up in the bed pokin’ your mouth out, kickin’ these clothes on the floor. God’ll
slap
the
breath
outta you, playin’ with him like this! Get up! Take a bath and get these clothes on. It’s nine-thirty and I gotta get you out there ’fore eleven o’clock,” she continued, hollering all the way to the kitchen. “Can’t do nothing with these hard-head chaps.”
    Getting out of bed, I looked at those white things again and thought, “Washed clean!” I threw off my pajamas and pulled on the drawers. “Washed clean!” I said, putting on the slip. “Washed clean!” I said louder, pulling on the socks. “Wa-a-a-shed cle-e-e-an!” I yelled, pulling the dress over my head.
    “Get outta them clothes and take a bath!” Mama yelled and pushed me onto the bed, just as I was putting my arms through the sleeves of the dress, which was still over my head. As I hit the bed I heard a loud rip.
    “Looka there!
Looka
there! Done
tore
that damned dress! Gal, I could
kill
your ass! Get on in there and
take
a bath while I sew this dress up! God
damn
you!” she yelled, pushing me out of the room.
    Finally I put that white dress on and we were on our way out to Mount Pleasant. Everyone had left the church for the pond except the dozen or so candidates who were waiting forme. I was almost an hour late. A couple of deacons used their cars to drive us to the pond. As we drove past the pond where they usually had baptism and turned into the old gravel road I had walked so many times on my way to school, I asked Deacon Brown which pond we were going to.
    “They just build a new pond out there right in front of Miss Rose them. That’s a better setup ’cause it’ll be easier for y’all to change clothes at Miss Rose’s house.”
    Deacon Brown parked the car in front of Miss Rose’s, saying “Oh, they’re all out there, huh? Pretty big day today.”
    Getting out of the car, I looked down the hill and saw hundreds of people standing around near the levee of a big new pond. Opposite the levee, on the far side of the pond, stood a whole group of cows. They looked like they were part of the service.
    We walked through the gate and headed toward the pond. I felt the dampness of the ground from yesterday’s rain. It was a gloomy and chilly September morning and it looked as if it was going to rain again. As I got closer to the crowd, they looked to me like they were huddling together to keep each other warm. Looking at them made me even colder. The girls were shivering in their gaily colored nylon dresses. The young boys stood motionless in their thin suits, with their hands in their pockets. Even the old ladies were too cold to talk. I spotted Mama in the crowd in her new fall suit and thought, “At least she knew how to dress.”
    When we got to the edge of the pond where Reverend Tyson was standing with two deacons, we were told to line up. I looked over at the crowd and saw that they had spread out so everyone could see better. There were a lot more people than I had thought. Seeing all those brightly colored dresses and hats, the long earrings, beads, and fancy hairdos, the blood-red lipstick laid on so thick that on some lips it looked purple made me even more aware that we were all dressed in white, even the boys. I felt