When my great-grandfather was born in Mississippi, white folks still hired Black women living in the sharecropper cabins as wet nurses. On the long ride to the plantation house, or the mansion in town, or the cottage ‘round the way, the women crossed their arms over shirtwaists sticky with milk, no longer only for their own babies. Eyes on the road, never down.

Through the back door and up three flights of steps to the nursery (a room bigger than three cabins put together) they hardly had enough time to settle down on an unvarnished wood chair and unbutton their blouses under the eyes of a tense-lipped white woman waiting to thrust a globulous pale infant into their arms, its bobbing sobbing big head and barely-pink lips ready to attach, attack, and drain away life-giving milk. White babies’ thin mouths rooted around on brown breasts: it happened every day. For centuries, the mad science of racism made Black women nurse white babies—but never ever the reverse.

Dad told me that my great-grandfather would sit on the front porch, the porch of the house he owned, in Missouri a ways up from the banks of the Mississippi River. He would sit in his straight-backed chair, eyes closed but always vigilant, listening to the rocking chair on the other side of the porch squeak on the loose board as my mother settled me into her lap and brought my brown head and its curly, kinky hair to her white breast. Great Grandpa would shake his head in wonder. That’s a beautiful thing. 

___

Catherine R. Squires, PhD, lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her essays have appeared in Lunch Ticket, Minnesota Women’s Press, and the edited volume, What God Is Honored Here? Writing on Miscarriage & Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color. As an academic, she wrote multiple books on media, race, and politics, including The Post-Racial Mystique: Media & Race in the 21st Century. Now retired from academia, Squires provides editorial support to non-profits and writers, makes collages, and writes creative non-fiction. She is always on the lookout for interesting birds.

Artwork by Meera Lee Patel