people" were superior to all others, as demanded--not just encouraged--by the culture of her youth. Even the poor white tenant farmers who came from upstate were dismissed as "white trash" and "peapickers," with their "towheaded kids." Towheaded meant blond, and it was a strange inversion that the trait should so contemptuously identify that part of the lower class mostly descended from Scotch-Irish pioneers of America.
Black people were given a measure of respect, at least in Jessica's day. They were called Negroes in polite communication, and racial purity within white families of any class who believed it to exist was protected fanatically. The one-drop doctrine was obeyed without exception: one black ancestor made you a Negro. White working-class people were so afraid in particular of losing their perceived birthright of racial superiority that to be called a "nigger lover" was a fighting insult.
Jessica, like most girls of her tribe, had little education in the ways of the world beyond Mobile. She seldom read newspapers or books. Television had not invaded her home, even now. But she was an encyclopedia of local lore and a great storyteller in the congenial Southern tradition. She seldom stopped talking when she got hold of you, and she could render spellbound any who cared even the least for Southern culture in an authentic form.
Jessica was not, as it turned out, Marcia's aunt. That title was traditionally bestowed on any woman, white or black, who was a close and beloved friend. Nonetheless, Jessica was at least a Semmes, and certainly Marcia's distant cousin at some unknown degree of remove. Marcia had been introduced to her when a little child by her father, and she grew up recognizing her as the official genealogist of the Mobile Semmes clan.
As Jessica walked with Marcia and Raff into the parlor, a pale woman of about seventy stood, without salutation. This was Sissy, who had lived with Jessica for longer than anyone could exactly remember. No one was even sure of her surname, although some believed it was Dupree or something close to that. Among the Semmes cognoscenti it was also rumored that Sissy was descended from the first French settlers of Old Mobile. Others guessed, more reasonably, that she came as a young woman with a dissolute sharecropper family, and at some point Jessica hired her and then took her in. None of the Semmes women ever spoke about it in Jessica's presence. It was an old Southern custom to keep improvident elderly relatives and family friends in the house, if such was large enough.
Jessica had no children of her own, so there was no one obligated to inquire into that or any of her other business. If Jessica had money--there had to be some--or a will, no one knew. She never in anyone's memory had given a gift of any value, nor asked for help of any kind.
Sissy was dispatched to bring lemonade and crackers. Marcia and Raff followed Jessica into the parlor, and were struck by the telltale scent of neglected old age, a mix of unwashed flesh and decayed upholstery with just a hint of urine. If this fazed Marcia, her composed features gave no sign. As the two women seated themselves, she gently nudged Raff and commanded, "Give your Aunt Jessica a kiss."
The ten-year-old was well practiced in this drill. He walked over and delivered a peck on Jessica's forehead, sidewise to avoid the hairy mole on her nose.
Jessica smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Raphael." Raff gave the expected response, "Yes, ma'am," and sat in a chair under the parlor window. A cat appeared from behind a pot of plastic ferns and rubbed against his legs, then sat back and stared up at him in hungry supplication.
Marcia drew her chair close to Jessica's, and the two fell quickly into soft, animated conversation. Jessica seemed to have memorized the genealogy of the Semmeses and all their collateral lines back into the seventeenth century. In particular, her archival knowledge of the Mobile Semmeses was total. The two women browsed through episodes about the local family and their antecedents, sharing pleasure in every detail, hopping from topic to topic. Raff was able to catch only fragments.
"Your cousin Tommy on your Aunt Sara's side...No, no, I'm sure of it, she's buried with little Mary Jo right there on the west edge of Magnolia Cemetery...Oh, I know, those were such dreadful days, there was such suffering...Well, believe it or not, I actually met him once, I must have been only five or six...No,