Orphan Girl by Lila Beckham

 
     
     
     
    Introducing Miss Gilly
     
    The wrinkled old woman looked up from her pea shelling and gave me a searching look. I had asked if she knew anything about sharecropping. Our class was studying Alabama History and the teacher had instructed us to each write an essay covering one of the topics we discussed. One of the topics we discussed was sharecropping during the Great Depression. I remembered my great-grandmother saying that when she was a child, her father was a sharecropper. It stirred my curiosity about them as a society, what they were like and such as that, so I chose to write my essay about Sharecropping.
    When I finished with high school, I wanted to go to college to study journalism. The only way we would ever afford it was if I earned a scholarship, therefore, I was working hard toward that goal. I thought this would be a great human-interest story, if I could find someone who knew the subject well enough to speak on it.
    I could not ask my great-grandmother, she has gone to be with the Lord, but her next-door neighbor and closest friend, Gilly Eubanks, was still alive. Miss Gilly, as everyone called her, lived on a piece of property adjoining my great-grandmother’s old place in Citronelle.
    My grandmother had lived in Citronelle all of her life, and although Citronelle was a good thirty-minute drive from Mobile, we had visited my grandmother the first Sunday each month for as long as I had been alive. However, I had not gone there in several years, not since my grandmother’s funeral. The funeral was the one and only time I had ever met Miss Gilly; on the drive there, I had hoped she would remember me. She was near eighty years old, but still sharp as a tack. I had not known how to get in touch with her to ask for an interview beforehand, so I had just shown up at her door that day and asked to talk with her. She was sitting on her front porch shelling peas when I arrived and said that she did not mind my unannounced visit. She invited me to sit and talk awhile, so now, here I sit in front of her with my little recorder and notebook, trying to look the part of a professional journalist.
     
    “Who’d you say you was?” Miss Gilly asked.
    “I’m Susie Jackson, Miss Gilly. I’m Betsy’s great-granddaughter.”
    “Betsy was a good woman. She was a good friend to me when I first moved back out here in the late 40s, about 1948 no, 9 it was. She taught me how to be a good farmwife.”
    “Yes, Ma’am, she was a good woman,” I said, looking into her pale but remarkably clear blue eyes. She stared at me for a full minute it seemed before she spoke again.
    “You favor her, you know.”
    “Thank you Miss Gilly. I’ve been told that before,” I said, and I had been told that several times, but when I looked into a mirror, I could never see the resemblance.
    “You say you wanna know about sharecropping, you look awfully young to be intrested in stuff setch as that,” Miss Gilly said shaking her head.
    “Yes, Ma’am, I remember Grandmother Betsy saying that her father was a sharecropper. Since you and she were friends for so many years, I thought you might know something about it too.”  
    “Yes I do,” she said slowly, “More than I’d like to know about it, that’s for sure.” Miss Gilly seemed to perk up a bit. “I can tell you a thing or two about sharecropping,” she said sprightly.
    When I turned on the recorder, she asked, “What is that thing?”
    “It’s a voice recorder, Miss Gilly. You don’t mind if I record what you’re saying, do you?” I asked cautiously.
    “Ain’t never had my voice recorded before, but I reckon it’ll be alright.”
    “It will help me keep the facts straight when I write my essay.”
    “Is it ready for me to start talking?”
    “Yes, Ma’am, it’s ready.” Miss Gilly bent forward, as if she thought she needed to be closer to the recorder for it to hear her.
    “You can sit comfortably, Miss Gilly. The machine will hear you fine.”