Part I - the article as originally published by Kudzu Monthly on April 1, 2002

The sound I heard wasn't the familiar skritch, skritch of the red and yellow autumn leaves rubbing against the frosty windowpane. It was different; one of those sounds that sent a chill snaking up my spine, causing the little fuzzy hairs to stand straight out on the back of my neck.

Silhouetted against my thin, pull-down blind I could see a black-clad figure skulking along in the shadows in an upright fetal position so as not to be seen nor recognized. It stopped and stooped down beside the wall of the tarpaper covered, tin can shack that stood on the opposite side of the narrow alley from my bedroom. I couldn't see what the dark specter was doing; I could only hear the chink of metal on metal as something grated against the flattened tin cans that formed the walls of the lean-to that old "Mammy" Yokum called home.

She was very old; her once shiny, black skin had become a fuzzy gray that sagged in folds along her now too-thin body. She was bent and twisted with arthritis. She always seemed hungry, yet she was willing to hand her last bite to any beggar that rapped on the makeshift door that served only to keep out the rain.

I cowered inside my handmade quilt hoping that the intruder wouldn't realize that a child had witnessed his dirty deeds. I didn't cry out; I was terrified that he would hear me. I listened as he slowly dredged a hole large enough to crawl through without ripping his skin on the exposed metal. I could see in the dim glow from the streetlight as he disappeared inside the hole to the pallet on the floor where Mammy Yokum slept. I turned my face away. I couldn't watch; I didn't see him leave. Then, the quiet overwhelmed the night. Where had he gone? Had he decided to creep through my window? Had his raid on my dear old neighbor's Bull Durham tobacco sack that hung around her neck not yielded him a sufficient take?

I never slept that night; in the dark, my eyes stayed wide with not knowing. My heart pounded each time the tree limbs pressed against the outer walls of my room. I watched the next morning when they removed her body in two pieces and covered it on the stretcher that carried it away. No one but me saw the phantom that had beheaded her for $2.17. I was five years old; I never told.

Part II - the rest of the story, added April 9, 2002

The year was 1947. The post-war stink and pain of poverty permeated the lives of those trying to survive. Kids walked to the elementary school in the snow with bare feet, covered in ragged, dirty blankets instead of coats. When the bell rang, the first job of the teachers was to begin to thaw dirty, little, blue feet by rubbing them and holding them close to the steam radiators that provided a modicum of warmth in the classroom. It was a time of outside toilets, well pumps and iceboxes. We had a large white card we put in the window with numbers on four sides; the number that was placed in the up position was the weight of the block of ice we were ordering for that delivery in order to keep the inside of our wooden icebox cold. It was a time of wood stoves for cooking. We were more fortunate than most; we had electricity. We ate more regularly than many of our friends and neighbors. Our mother was an outstanding seamstress so we always had coats and shoes. Yes, she even built new tops on the old, still usable soles.

My little hometown in Southern Indiana was hard hit by the War; jobs were almost non-existent as no industry chose this secluded area and, as a result, crime was rampant just in order to survive.

My family of six, Mom, Dad, my three older sisters and I lived in a tiny, four-room house that had been built by my grandfather when my dad was a baby. When all other forms of gainful employment had dried up, my parents elected to take one of those tiny rooms and turn it into a grocery store in order to eke out a meager living. Our neighborhood was racially integrated, as were most of the struggling northern cities and many of our neighbors lived on paltry pensions from the government. Our grocery store doled out credit on a daily basis in order to have any form of business at all.

Jimmie Taylor was an enterprising individual in this time of tribulation. She was a tall, frightfully skinny black woman and a familiar sight in the neighborhood with children's underpants on her head in lieu of a proper hat. However, there was some speculation as to this person's gender; many believed she was, in fact, a man who lived as a woman. She did, however, have a son, Ralph. There were no laws at that time that governed the acquisition of a child, especially a black child. And, since there is no evidence proving that she actually gave birth to Ralph, the gossip extended to the circumstances of his being with her. Was he adopted, did she just take him, did his birth mother abandon him? Jimmie never said; Ralph didn't know.

There were also no zoning restrictions. Jimmie used this to her advantage. On some vacant property just across the alley from my home, Jimmie built her shanties. Jimmie didn't own this land; she just used it. These hovels were only one room. The frames consisted of whatever boards she could find covered with flattened tin cans in the fashion of laying tiles on a roof. Tarpaper covered the cans to keep out the rain. One small window was cut into the side and covered with plastic; the door was anything she could find to lean into the hole she left for entrance. Most of them were discarded commercial pallets. She rented these out to the unfortunate homeless who pervaded the streets. They served only to keep the residents out of the elements. Furniture was a luxury few could afford, so most of these shacks were furnished with only a pile of blankets on the dirt floor for sleeping. It was one of these ean-tos that Mammy Yokum called home.

We never knew her real name. She was dubbed "Mammy Yokum" because of her likeness to the comic strip character that appeared in "Li?l Abner" written by Al Capp, a very popular strip of the time. She was a tiny black woman, hunched and crippled by arthritis, toothless and sporting a chronic affliction of body lice. She had nothing yet she was always willing to share with anyone who had more nothing than she. She cashed her tiny pension each month, paid her grocery bill in our little store so she could continue to eat the following month and wadded what was left in a tobacco sack.

At that time, most smokers bought their tobacco, including the popular Bull Durham, in a little gauze bag with a drawstring top, bought rolling papers and rolled their own cigarettes. It was one of those little "Bull Durham" sacks that Mammy carried on a filthy, gray string around her neck to hold her money.

On that, the last day of her life, she visited Jimmie Taylor and paid her rent. Next, she came into our store, paid her bill and headed home with her groceries that were added to her bill for the next month. My dad fretted for years that Ralph Taylor had been in the store that day and saw that she had a small pittance left in her sack.

Ralph Taylor sexually assaulted and beheaded her. There is no record available as to his punishment, but the guidelines for the era carried mandatory execution, which was probably carried out swiftly. Appeals and time lingering on death row didn't exist, especially for blacks.

Shortly thereafter, Jimmie's shacks burned to the ground, leaving nothing but a smoldering, jellied pile of melted tarpaper and blackened, flat tin cans. The cause of the fire was never discovered; in fact, nobody tried to determine the cause because nobody cared.

Author's Note:

When my older sisters read this, they were shocked that I had seen this and never told them. They, of course, knew of the event, but, apparently, I was the only one who saw it. The fear from this night stayed locked away in my psyche for many, many years. I feared that if I told, he would find me. I can still close my eyes and see every skulking movement.

I want to thank my sister, Molly, for filling in the name of the perpetrator, the extent of what he did to this pathetic, unfortunate, vulnerable lady and the fact that he was apprehended. I knew these people, but I never knew that he was the one I watched creep through that gaping hole in Mammy Yokum's shack.