Affinity for Girls: Tears from Vidalia’s Onion Fields

By Anne Holmes Davis

When Isabelle Louise Parks and her siblings were children, growing up in rural Georgia all seemed well on the surface. However, the death of their mother at a young age left Isabelle vulnerable to child sexual abuse at the hands of her own father and several other men. AFFINITY FOR GIRLS: Tears from Vidalia’s Onion Fields chronicles Isabelle’s remarkable, personal journey to escape child sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence. The novel highlights her desire to be a good mother to her seven daughters; the mistakes she makes along the way; and her struggle to heal. It follows her life from Georgia to Michigan and traces her transformation as she seeks therapy; participates in a women’s support group; and strengthens her relationship with God. The story reveals Isabelle’s mental anguish in finding out that she had created ground zero for the exploitation of her own daughters at the hands of a dangerous pedophile.
Cover Design: Joel Cobb, Xlibris Author Solutions
Lead Graphic Artist & Anne Holmes Davis
Cover Photo: Wayne Norman of Photographs by Wayne

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984565419

Anne Holmes Davis

Anne Holmes Davis is a Michigan writer who lives in Metro Detroit. An advocate of our nation’s most vulnerable, she strongly supports the prevention of child and elder abuse. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University and a certificate in publishing from the University of Denver Publishing Institute. She also possesses a master’s degree from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and a post-graduate certificate in gerontology from Wayne State University Institute of Gerontology. A genealogy and photography buff, she is currently working on a children’s empowerment series and a second novel. www.anneholmesdavisbooks.com

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PROLOGUE

2003

Sleep barely visited Nuri. She was lying in bed, suspended in sleeplessness, barred from any semblance of rest. It was nearly daybreak on the morning of her mother’s burial. Her head was spinning with endless thoughts and memories. She thought about every detail of her mother’s funeral service. She wanted it to be flawless and her mother’s life to be celebrated. The gut-wrenching thought of not embracing her mother again or just chit-chatting with her gnawed at her emotions.

Nuri carefully scrutinized the last few years of her mother’s life. Four years earlier her mother Isabelle was lying in a coma; connected to an intricate network of tubes that sustained her life. That’s when doctors diagnosed her with congestive heart failure. Nuri realized that God had given her mother a longer life with her seven daughters; a few more years to make amends. Then her mother had died in her sleep – her life’s wish. She had never wanted to know the hour of her death and God had granted her this last gift.

Nuri was grateful that she had slept over at her mother’s apartment on Thanksgiving night, only a week before her death. She and her mother had enjoyed reminiscing, eating fried green tomatoes and drinking Cokes. It was one of her mother’s favorite pastimes.

Eating fried green tomatoes was a habit Isabelle had acquired as a child when she grew up in Vidalia, Georgia. It was a respite from the fields where she toiled on her father’s sharecropping farm. Vidalia is a small, rural town in the middle of Georgia – a picturesque place with verdant, rolling hills. It is a town loaded with industrious farmers; a quaint place warped with sameness and tradition.

As a youngster, Isabelle Parks didn’t realize that she would lose her mother at an early age and both love and hate her father, Winston C. Parks. This man had mastered growing crops and raising farm animals with precision, but had failed miserably in child rearing. She also didn’t know she would marry her first husband, Evan McIntosh, a man who worked at a bottling company for a quarter of a century. The couple would have the first two of Isabelle’s seven daughters.

The last night Nuri was with her mother, she had noticed her labored breathing from the living-room sofa. She was alarmed. Her mother’s breathing sounded louder than normal and irregular. Maybe this was God’s warning to her. The next day, Nuri asked her mother about her health. Isabelle assured her that she would follow up with her doctor at an upcoming Wednesday appointment. Her mother died three days after that medical appointment.

Now Nuri was waking up on the day of her mother’s burial in a haze of exhaustion. Her mind begged for rest, but was still racing with memories. As Nuri slowly opened her eyes, she could glimpse the snow-covered branches on the bare, honey locust tree through the window blinds. The dusty skies had turned into a frigid, December morning with light flurries.

Nuri rolled over in bed and reached for her husband Parker. She discovered that his side of the bed was empty. She and Parker had separated a few weeks earlier after nearly twenty years of marriage. Tears surfaced in the corners of her eyes. She needed to be held and comforted on one of the worst days of her life, but felt utterly alone. Absolutely no one was there to console her.

Nuri crawled out of bed and fell to her knees. She recited the Serenity Prayer, her mother’s favorite:

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things, I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Then Nuri decided to steal a few more minutes of sleep. She rose from her knees and climbed back into bed after glancing at the time on her cell phone. It was 7:37 a.m. Sliding between her comfy sheets, she found little comfort there. She began to think about the last few chaotic weeks of her life. She prayed for calm and an end to the upheaval.

In late October, Parker had moved out and was contemplating a divorce. He left her and their son Alex to adjust to a home that felt empty without him. The thought of divorce terrified and sadden her. However, the life that they had been living after she discovered the affair was unacceptable. Only two people can be in a marriage.

Within hours of Isabelle’s death, the family found out that their Aunt Madelyn had traveled to Florida for a short cruise with her daughter Stella. Then their cousin Mary Esther had not been able to locate their Uncle Julian to tell him about his sister’s passing. He had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke a few days before Isabelle’s death.

A week later, Isabelle’s oldest brother Jon had died unexpectedly - just two days before her funeral. The timing made it impossible for the family to travel to Florida for the funeral or to check in on their Uncle Julian. The funeral had already been delayed to give their Aunt Madelyn and cousin Stella time to return for the services.

Nuri was overjoyed to hear that her mother had spoken to her brother Jon a few days before she died. Stricken with Alzheimer’s disease, he had called her with the assistance of his daughter during a lucid moment. Nuri’s mother had also taken a final call from her favorite nephew Elliot, a college professor, pastor and medical doctor rolled into one. He had heard that she had not been feeling well and checked in on her to lift her spirits.

After finally getting up, showered and dressed, Nuri heard the front door bell ring. She suspected that it was Parker. She ran downstairs to answer the door. Glancing into the mirror, she noticed her subtle, yet striking resemblance to her mother. She was a shorter and pint-sized version of her; but more serious and intellectual than sexy glam. As she looked in the mirror, she could not believe that she had dropped ten pounds in only a few weeks.

Parker entered the foyer through an oak door flanked by sidelights. He balanced two cups of coffee and a bag with soufflés from Starbucks in his hands. Towering over Nuri at 6'1" tall, he bent over to kiss her.

Good morning Nuri, said Parker, surveying her mood. I brought us coffee and a couple of soufflés since we have limited time this morning.

Thanks Parker, said Nuri. I’m not very hungry, but I can definitely use the coffee.

I know it will be hard today, said Parker. But I’m here and we’ll get through it together.

It’ll be a difficult day, but I’ve got to be strong for Alex and the whole family, said Nuri emphatically as if to convince herself.

Alex insisted on staying with his cousins, explained Nuri. I think having his cousins to keep him busy is the best thing for him.

After taking a few sips of coffee at the kitchen island, Nuri retrieved her coat, keys and purse. She would speak to Parker about the state of their marriage in a few weeks, she thought. That conversation would have to be saved for another day.

We can leave after I call Lourdes to let her know we’re on our way, said Nuri.

Okay, said Parker, turning the corner into the great room to retrieve the photo display screen for the funeral service. It featured twelve enlarged photos highlighting the life of Nuri’s mother.

Nuri trembled at the thought of seeing her former stepfather Chandler at the funeral as she caught a glimpse of a photo of her mother and him in the photo display screen as Parker stood it against a wall in the foyer. She had not seen her mother’s third ex-husband in nearly 10 years. The thought of seeing him at the funeral made her physically ill. Several of her sisters insisted that his name not appear in the obituary for their mother’s funeral program or in the classified ad. Later, they had heard from his son that the deliberate omission of his name had upset him.

Parker, I’m not looking forward to seeing Chandler at the funeral today, said Nuri. I don’t think Momma would want him there, but we have no way of forbidding him from attending the funeral service unless he creates an ugly scene.

It should be okay, said Parker as he took Nuri’s keys from her and locked the entry door behind them. I don’t think he will make a scene. He will be on his best behavior because of all the guilt he should be feeling.

Within twenty minutes Parker and Nuri were on the road traveling towards the outer skirts of Birmingham towards Flint, Michigan. Memories rushed in and out of Nuri’s head overwhelming her with grief. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and slowly began to fall as the reality of the day settled deep into her psyche.

As the couple headed north on I-75, Nuri thought about the fact that it had been forty years since her mother and sisters arrived in Flint from New Jersey to join her mother’s second husband Bradley. Now her mother was being buried during the very same month that Flint had become their home. Her mother had lived in Flint from December 1963 to December 2003.

Nuri vaguely recalled a sermon that her pastor, Rev. C. F. Stewart, had preached many years earlier. His powerful sermon had focused on the significance of the number forty in the Bible. She distinctly remembered her pastor saying that Bible scripture mentioned the number forty 146 times. The special number symbolized a period of testing, trials and tribulations set by God.

Nuri realized that the last forty years of her mother’s life had been just that: a string of trials and tribulations punctuated with times of joy. Those forty years were only trumped by the first thirty years of her earlier life. Over her mother’s lifetime she had intermittingly met a series of men who had an affinity for girls, men who had robbed her mother of her innocence, her sense of self-worth and her future.

Sadly, this trajectory of her mother’s ruined life foreshadowed the tumultuous lives of her seven daughters.

Part I

Vidalia’s Onion Fields

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"If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be! – Maya Angelou

ONE

The longest journey is the journey inwards.

– Dag Hammarskjold, Inventor

It was the summer of 1935. Madelyn Maddie Parks could still hear her mother’s muffled moans as she weathered the labor pains of her seventh child’s birth. Six-year-old Madelyn had been dispatched by her father to run a mile to the neighboring farmhouse to fetch Mamie Hayes. She was one of several mid-wives who delivered babies for the colored folks of Vidalia, Georgia.

Madelyn looked at both her parents with surprise when she was asked to run next door. She ran as quickly as she could and took her father’s request seriously.

Tell Mrs. Mamie that your mother is gonna have the baby real soon, he ordered. We’re depending on you to get her here as soon as possible since yo’ brothers are workin’ the fields.

Madelyn ran out of the farmhouse and through the front gate quickly. She could hear the patter of her feet on the unyielding, red-clay earth beneath her. The hardness of the ground and her fast pace propelled her short legs mid-air as she raced pass the sub-divided fields loaded with crops of tobacco, sugar cane, and a variety of vegetables. A flurry of dust emerged from the ground hovering over the red-clay dirt like small, scattered clouds. She and her family had played in, worked in and even eaten this soil – it was their life’s blood.

Sweat tunneled through the inner-rows of Madelyn’s braids and rolled down her face as the hot Georgia sun heated her skin to a boiling point. She repeatedly rubbed sweat out of her eyes. Only the Georgia pine trees in the distance seem to cool down the early morning sun rays.

Madelyn could still see her mother, Olivia Louise Parks, in her mind’s eye. She could see her mother’s beautiful face etched with pain as she rocked from side-to-side to battle the labor pains. Earlier that morning, she had witnessed her 27-year-old mother repeatedly sitting up and then lying down in the bed she shared with her 34-year-old husband, Winston Parks. Finally, her mother could not escape the escalating pain and had called out for Winston to send for Mamie.

Winston quickly ran in from the smoke shed to see what was happening. His tall body towered over Olivia’s five-feet six-inch, petite frame as he came to her side. He sat in a chair on the side of their bed to monitor her labor pains. He held her hand gently as he reassured her that everything would be okay. He saw both the fear and joy lurking in her hazel-brown eyes.

As Madelyn made her way to Mrs. Mamie’s farmhouse, she vaguely remembered the birth of her brother Julian when she was just four-years-old. She also remembered tidbits of family stories about the birth of her oldest brother Jon, the twins Wesley and Evie, and her sister Phaedra.

Madelyn became increasingly worried as she thought about the fact that Wesley’s twin sister Evie had died a few days after her birth. Although Mamie proceeded over the birth; no doctor could be afforded to deliver the breech birth of her tiny sister.

Madelyn remembered over-hearing stories about the death of little Evie. She distinctly remembered her older brothers saying that their mother had sobbed as she held the body of their breathless, two-day-old baby sister. This memory motivated Madelyn to fasten her pace. She slid through an opening in the fence of the neighboring farm to quicken her arrival.

Madelyn wished that her older brothers Jon or Wesley had been asked to make the run. They would have been faster. Her father had sent her instead. A baby’s birth could not be an excuse for the loss of a full day’s work given Winston’s work-load as a sharecropper. He had mouths to feed and was only half way through the contract year.

Madelyn left four-year-old Phaedra playing with two-year-old Julian from their make-shift play pen on the porch. Their play space almost looked like the variety that kept the pigs and chickens at bay instead of small children. However, it safeguarded the little ones and gave them a view of the farm.

Julian had cried because he wanted to be closer to his mother instead of on the shaded porch. His mother had complained of contractions earlier that morning when she put Madelyn over the care of her playful sister and brother. Olivia thought seeing a baby come into the world was too much for their tender age.

Madelyn dashed pass the small weather-washed barn with a wooden roof towards the Hayes’ tin-roofed farmhouse. She ran up the stairs to the porch in a panic. She could smell bacon, smoked sausage, eggs and biscuits from the kitchen’s fireplace and hear the rumblings of a busy morning.

Mrs. Mamie, my daddy says the baby is comin’ and he wants you to deliver it, she said as she pushed the screened door open. My Momma says the contractions are less than an hour apart!

Mamie was a plumb, older woman with a bitter-chocolate skin tone and a halo of graying hair. A middle-aged widow of fifty years or so, she smiled and invited Madelyn into the house. She quickly pulled off her apron and grabbed a small satchel with her supplies from a tall chest. She beckoned her younger daughter Marian to take over breakfast.

Good mornin’ Maddie. Wouldn’t your mother start having her labor pains right in the middle of my breakfast, said Mamie jokingly. I told her that baby was due sooner than later with that big belly of hers.

Mamie asked her boarder Jim Logan to fetch the horse and wagon that he had prepared for a trip into town. She went to her bedroom and came back with additional supplies. She handed Madelyn a brown bag with fresh cloths and pulled her straw hat from a hook by the front door. She looked down from the porch at the chickens and hens running around the yard that consisted of dirt with intermittent patches of grass and flowers. Like Winston Parks, she too was a sharecropper for Clinton Applebaum.

Jim, please drop Maddie, Allison and me by the Parks’ place on your way into town and check with me on your way back, she ordered. "Remember to make sure that the man at the Applebaum Commissary writes down July 17th along with each item we are ordering so we don’t have a mistake like before.

Mr. Applebaum wrote the wrong date and amount last time and that costed us.

Yes ma’am, said Jim, Mamie’s live-in boarder and farm hand for the last five years since her husband’s death. I will be quick so I can be on stand-by since you have some birthing to do.

Allison and I will be at the Parks’ place the best part of the day, she said as her eldest daughter Allison followed Madelyn and her onto the long porch shaded by a tin-roof. Madelyn noticed that Allison was the spitting image of her mother, although younger. She wished that she could look beautiful like her when she grew up.

Marian, I need you to take over breakfast and get dinner on since I’m takin’ Allison with me to help and watch the children, she added.

Okay Momma, uttered Marian. I’m sure everything will be just fine.

Mamie climbed on to the seat of the wagon with Jim’s assistance once he brought the horse and wagon around from the barn. Jim helped to hoist Madelyn and Allison into the back of the wagon for the trip to the Parks’ place. Madelyn could instantly smell the hay in the wagon intermixed with horse manure. She wondered how the new baby would change her life since she was the eldest girl.

Upon approaching the tin-roofed farmhouse with its chicken-wire fencing laced in wooden posts, Mamie, Allison and Madelyn could see the two older Parks’ boys working the red-clay fields in the far distance. Winston and Olivia Parks had been on those fifty acres of the Applebaum Plantation for years shortly after their marriage in 1924 and a short stint on another farm. His father Holland Parks had long toiled the same farm in Vidalia before his death.

Mamie and Allison climbed the stairs to the Parks’ farmhouse trailing Madelyn. Mamie asked Madelyn to stay on the porch with Phaedra and Julian until she got her bearings. She quickly assigned Allison to get water boiling out back and to keep an eye on the children along with Madelyn.

Mamie swung the front screen door open. She could hear Olivia’s moans before getting inside. Olivia looked up from the bed in the front room and smiled. Then she slumped back towards the headboard to rest in between contractions. Winston held her hand and nervously patted her forehead dry from sweat with a cloth as he sat on the side of the bed. His callused hands affirmed his strong work ethic and his tie to the land.

I’m so glad that you made it so quick, said Winston in a southern drawl punctuated with excitement. I work the fields and do the work of a mortician, but bringing babies into the world ain’t my line of business.

TWO

Life is like an onion, you peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.

– Carl Sandburg, American Writer

Mamie waved Winston off to his breakfast simmering in the kitchen and into the fields that awaited him as she set up shop for the baby’s birth. A man of few words, he complied by singling out chores near the barn which was within hollering distance to Olivia and the farmhouse.

Mamie placed her mid-wife bag on the nightstand and made her way towards the kitchen to wash her hands in the bowl on the dry sink. Olivia raised up to thank her for coming as quickly as she did and the two women traded expressions of concern as they both thought about their struggle to keep Baby Evie alive for the two days of her short life.

Now Olivia, you know I have birthed many babies in my lifetime and this one that’s coming ain’t no exception, she hollered from the other room.

How many minutes do you think the contractions are coming now? she asked as she peeped around the corner from the kitchen. She sat a large pot on the dry sink that would shortly serve as a vessel for the hot water boiling out back. Few farmhouses had running water in Vidalia; only well water that had to be heated.

My contractions are about 30 minutes apart! said Olivia in a voice filled with exhaustion and anticipation. I ’spect that the baby’s comin’ t’day, she added with both exhilaration and fear in her quivering voice.

Mamie came back into the living room and gently felt Olivia’s stomach. She placed a cloth on Olivia’s forehead sweltering from the morning heat rendering the house hot as a furnace. She gazed into Olivia’s face to get a handle on her emotional readiness to bring her child into the world.

Olivia had gentle features that rendered her a natural beauty that turned the heads of men. Her jet-black hair reached her waist. She was graced with naturally shaped eye brows with a slight limp in their arches that brought extra attention to her hazel-brown eyes. Her high-cheek bones and slightly keen nose displayed the native blood of her Chickasaw heritage mixed with that of slave holders and Africans. She could easily slip into a size-six house dress when her belly wasn’t swollen with child. Unlike her mother Margaret, she had long slender legs and arms that would be perfect for a ballerina. These physical attributes aligned with the stature and heredity of her father’s side of the family.

Mamie pulled up Olivia’s gown to get a glimpse at whether the baby was crowning. Once again, she was helping to bring a new life into the world and for that she smiled.

Well it looks like you have a little more dilating to do, said Mamie. Just remember to take in deep breaths with the next contraction. You are doing good, but have some mo’ crowning to take hold.

As Olivia fell into a resting position in between the labor pains, Mamie sat in a bed-side chair and looked around the front room as she monitored the baby’s progress. She wondered if the baby she was delivering would have a better life than what was being dealt to blacks and poor farmers in rural Georgia. The depressed economy had hit hard and made the current year more difficult than the last. It was hard living as a sharecropper in a tin-roofed, wooden house that sounded like a drum when it rained. The Parks’ family was like her own family; one of seven dirt-poor sharecroppers on Applebaum’s 350-acre plantation.

Mamie could see Olivia’s desperate attempt to make the small farmhouse a home. An old mirror with a marred, reflective coating hung above the fireplace mantel in the living room. It faced the stuffy, olive green sofa that sat parallel to the foot of the couple’s bed. The mirror was flanked by old photos crackled by humidity and age. One photo depicted Winston’s father and mother – Holland Parks and Della Walton. A weathered photograph of Olivia’s parents – Margaret Talbert and Jon Patterson – held down the fort on the other side. A small photograph of President Roosevelt took center stage in the middle of the family photos propped up against the mirror.

Mamie remembered that her mother had brought Winston Parks into the world not far from Vidalia in Landsberg when his parents lived in Johnson County. This was before the family had made the move into their sharecropper’s farm in Alamo. Ironically, old Green R. Maby, Sr. had left the Alamo house to Winston near his death. However, his two sons, in a jealous rage, ignored the wishes set forth in his will despite the objections of the executor of the will. A year later, the sons begged Winston to work the land under contract when they fell on hard times. Winston refused and moved out of the area.

Mamie’s mother and grandmother, both mid-wife’s themselves, also knew Winston’s grandparents, Daniel and Angeline Parks. Daniel had been born around 1845 and his wife Angeline was born ten years later. Daniel’s parents were Thomas and Celie Parks of North Carolina and Emanuel County, Georgia; born 15 and 20 years after the turn of the century. Angeline was a Harrison, the oldest child of Isaac Harrison of North Carolina and Amye Hunter of Merriweather County, Georgia. All of them were generations of former slaves and sharecroppers trying to eke out a living from the land never to be fully owned by themselves.

Mamie looked through her old, brown satchel to ensure that she had all her fix-ins for the birth. She sponged Olivia’s forehead and gently massaged her shoulders to relax her. She shouted out for Allison to bring in the sterilized rags from the wash ’n tub while keeping an eye on Madelyn and the children. The children periodically called for their Momma. With the exception of Madelyn, they were unaware of the reasons for her periodic shrieks of pain.

Maddie, I want to see Momma, said little Julian in unison with Phaedra as she poured them jars of lemonade to keep them cool. I want to give her a big kiss.

Mamie found a small pouch in her satchel and pulled out the silver coins for the baby’s binding. She laid out her cachet of herbs and tallow to prepare for the birth and afterbirth. Organizing the herbs and other home remedies she had gathered from her birth garden, she wanted to ward off bad spirits. She felt this ritual was especially needed because of the curses and setbacks plaguing the Parks’ family.

Mamie always found it ironic that Winston worked as a part-time undertaker to bury the dead when he was not farming the land while she, on the other hand, ushered in life to cheat death.

This new-born baby will not perish like little Evie while on her watch," she lamented in the many thoughts that churned through her head.

Mamie peered out the door as she saw Olivia stirring in preparation for more labor pains. She cried out for Winston who had already meandered over from the smoke shed. Winston ran back inside after reassuring the children that their mother was okay. He quickly washed his face and hands with Olivia’s home-made, oatmeal soap using one of the warm white rags that Allison brought in from the back yard. As he washed his hands, he looked into the mirror that reflected his tall frame. His skin color was a shade of weathered, brown leather darkened slightly by the abrasive southern sun. His face was beaded with sweat that dripped from his face. The cluster of loose curly hair crowning his head was a trait inherited by all the Parks’ family off-spring.

Winston wiped his sweaty face and