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I dare you.
I dare you to try to get close to me.
I dare you to love me.
I dare you to think that I will love you back.
My dare to you isn’t about your capacity to love.
I don’t mean to insult you with my challenge.
It’s just that you don’t understand.
You’ve probably been quite excited about my arrival, but know nothing of what I’ve been through the last three months. I bet Georgia Tann didn’t tell you a thing – or any of her so-called social workers. Did they tell you when I arrived at the Children’s Home Society in Memphis that I had impetigo?
That was three weeks after my entry into the world. Three weeks that no one can account for my whereabouts. Where was I? And why was I so sick upon admission to that place of a hundred crying babies?
Had mama tried to keep me and just gotten overwhelmed with my care on top of hiding me from her family? Had I gone to some type of “holding farm” for babies between birth and the orphanage and gotten sick there? Did they tell you any of this before we met at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in March of 1946?
Did they even hint at the fact that I had suffered a profound loss that would deeply impact my life when they separated me from my mama at birth?
Did they tell you that after I took up residence at the orphanage on January 15, 1946 that I launched into a failure to thrive campaign? I wouldn’t eat. There was no reason to take in nourishment. I had been in this world for three weeks and I wanted to die. During my three months at the orphanage, they sent me back to the hospital twice when I became too sick for them to take care of – did you know that? I was getting so close to the edge of death they sent me away – just like mama did.
Georgia Tann didn’t usually send babies to the hospital while they were in her care. There had been several infant deaths the year before and the local authorities were beginning to get suspicious. To avoid investigation, she must have decided to try to save all of us – even those that wanted to die.
Did the social worker tell you they had pumped me full of Phenobarbital day after day after day – just to quiet my crying? Perhaps that was standard procedure in orphanages in the 1940’s, but wouldn’t it have been easier – more natural, less invasive to my little body to just hold me?
One nurse understood - she held me – and wrote in the medical notes: “This baby will stop crying if you just hold her.”
Bless that woman, whoever she was, for being my solitary comfort in three months of crying about the loss of my mama. Did the other nurses even read what she wrote? Next entry – next shift – “baby crying constantly" and shortly afterwards, more Phenobarbital was administered.
Did they tell you any of this so you might know why I challenge you today by the look in my eyes, the turn of my head, the little fists I’ve made of my hands?
From where I lay in this bassinet, you both look exceedingly happy, and totally unaware of all I have survived in the last three months. I hope you don’t expect me to be as happy as you are about this. Not to sound ungrateful, but I’ve been taken away from my mama – kicking and screaming. And now, a social worker has brought me to you - 2,000 miles away from the roots of my heritage – the land, customs, extended family and history that I will grow up craving knowledge about so I can find my place in the world.
I’ve been put in your arms – complete strangers to me. My life is very short so far – but has been racked with trauma. And thus, I dare you – to love me, touch me, to reach inside my wounded little heart. In the three months since entering this world, I have learned to trust no one – so why should I trust you? Just because you look happy to see me?
For my first nine months, I lived inside the belly of Neleta Jean Kemp of Adamsville, TN. She was the oldest child of Fred and Ruby Kemp, oldest granddaughter of Baltis and Mary Kemp, and oldest great granddaughter of Edmund E. and Harriet Claunch Kemp. The Kemp family had lived in Adamsville since Edmund’s grandfather, Nathan L. Kemp, had moved from Georgia to McNairy County in 1822 looking for fertile land to farm in the Tennessee River Valley.
I know mama likes home made fudge brownies baked in an iron skillet, country music and Lucky Strike cigarettes. I know she was living with her brother, Bobby Maurice, in my early months in mama’s belly, and she seemed to have a lot of friends. I liked it when she would listen to her favorite country music – she seemed happy then as she sang along and sometimes even danced around her mama’s kitchen – just she and I.
I loved listening to her talk with that soft Tennessee drawl, knowing I would soon be able to speak just like that. I know her voice, the fragrance of her body, the rhythm of her day. I fully expected to enjoy the comfort of her arms as I made my entrance on December 26, 1945 just before midnight. Instead, I heard a man’s voice I hadn’t heard before as he told mama, “healthy baby girl, Jean” and then he handed me to some woman dressed all in white who took me to another room. I was screaming. I heard my mother crying softly. I never saw her again.
So why should I trust you? It is March 1946. My short life has been filled with pain and loss that no one has even bothered to tell you about. I guess no one thinks it’s very important. Look deeply into those defiant brown eyes as I dare you to love me. Know this – at the ripe old age of three months I have already fought the most painful, traumatic events of my life. I will continue to do battle with those events for decades. It won’t be easy for you, as I will keep my distance. My anger will be right below the surface and come out in a thousand directions. You will likely be the target of that anger many times as you watch me grow up. I wish I could tell you that it’s not really you
I’m angry at, but I won’t figure that out myself for decades.
You are the innocents in my life. You come to me with open arms and hearts full of love. I have already shut down – and as hard as you try, I won’t ever really open my heart to your love. I so wish I could make this different for you, as I see the smiles on your faces and feel the joy that surrounds us as you take me in your arms – but I can’t. You will be hurt by this anger of mine, confused by my sullenness, unsure of what to do when I am silent for days.
I truly wish I could make it easier for you because you both look like such loving, kind people – but I can’t. The anger that took hold of my spirit and froze my feelings in fear as I was whisked away from the only familiar voice I had known will haunt all of us as we make this journey together.
There is so much of my conception and first nine months that I’m thinking they should have told you. Maybe then you could understand that look of defiance on my face and the place of anger in my little life. I guess no one but mama could have told you about my conception. That story is something she will keep inside of her, refusing to share it with no one but her best friend – whom she swore to secrecy. But I will share it with you now.
About a year ago, mama was invited to go on a picnic with her deceased father’s best friend, Fred Durbin – or “Little Fred” as he was known about town in Adamsville. After my grandfather passed away when mama was 12 years old, Little Fred took to looking after our family. Maybe he had promised my grandfather he would do that, but no one seems to know.
So on a warm, Sunday in March 1945, my mama put together a picnic basket for she and Little Fred, 15 years her senior. After services at the Methodist Church, they drove off to the river where it would be a little cooler. Little Fred had brought along his bottle of moonshine and began to drink as mama spread out the blanket on the ground and laid out the chicken and biscuits she had made before church that morning.
He did his best to convince mama that she should “be relaxin" like he was doing. She soon gave in to his nagging with a few sips of the moonshine just to make him happy. As the afternoon wore on, Little Fred drank enough to be drunk and he seemed to change from being nice to being mean. He forced mama down on the blanket and began to try to kiss her – but he was too drunk and she held him off. I guess this made him angry, as the next thing mama knew he was on top of her, holding her down and hurting her. He quickly pushed her Sunday dress up over her head – ripped her panties off and brutally raped her. She tried to fight him off, but he was too strong.
Mama was confused. This was someone she had trusted all her life – someone who was in her life as a trusted friend of the family. He, however, didn’t seem to care about any of those things on that warm, humid Sunday afternoon. His actions said that he had no real regard or respect for my mama.
He went home later that afternoon to his wife and two sons. Mama went home and tried to sneak in the back door and get washed up before Bobby Maurice saw her. She never told her baby brother about what happened that day, but they both suffered the consequences when her belly began to expand as I started to grow and the folks around town started talking behind mama’s back. Mama was 16 years old that spring. Little Fred was 32.
I guess mama never would have told you this story. She kept it silent and deep within her entire life. It was such a violent act – she did everything she could to push it out of her memory. She and the folks at Georgia Tann would have wanted this part of the story to remain a silent part of my history. They probably wanted the story of my life to begin with you in that hotel room at the Biltmore Hotel on March 17, 1946. But it didn’t begin there. My entire existence to this point in time has been full of rage from the moment of my violent conception.
They probably didn’t tell you that mama kept me a secret from her own mama, did they? My grandmother – known as Mama Ruby to everyone in the Kemp family clan, had gone to live with her older sister in Memphis not long after my grandfather had passed away in 1941 at the age of 39. He left her with three children and the roof over their heads, but no savings, no life insurance, no way to support this family he had created. She moved to Memphis and became part of the growing female workforce during World War II.
Mama and Uncle Bobby were in high school at the time and didn’t want to leave their friends, so Mama Ruby let them stay in Adamsville – asking friends and family to “look out for them”. The youngest child, Mary Olga, went with Mama Ruby to Memphis. She was about four years old at the time.
There were lots of cousins, aunts and uncles in Adamsville for mama and Uncle Bobby to be around. They lived on Main Street and were part of the prominent Kemp family legacy in Adamsville. Everyone knew them. Little Fred and my grandfather were best friends. They were drinking buddies, rode their motorcycles on the country roads at speeds faster than they should have and managed to get in lots of trouble together over the years. Because of that long-standing friendship, Little Fred was also one of the people that Mama Ruby had asked to look after mama and Bobby Maurice.
One day in the late summer of 1945, Mama Ruby received a call from one of her sister-in-laws. All she heard was, “You better get back to Adamsville, Ruby. You need to take care of Jean.”
Not knowing what to expect when they got to Adamsville, Mama Ruby, her older sister Judy and the youngest child, Mary Olga loaded into the car and headed home to McNairy County. Even though she was very young at the time, Mary Olga remembers that day. They were at their home in Adamsville and everyone yelled at each other all day long. And they all cried.
It was a day of ugliness that I could only listen to in mama’s womb. I knew mama was terribly unhappy, but there was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless. I listened to mama scream over and over that she “won’t go” as her body convulsed with sobbing.
On the ride back to Memphis, Mary Olga remembers that mama went with them. She was simply told, “Jean is coming back with us to go to sewing school.” They did not tell her about me. It was yet one more lie in my early history – and one more traumatic event that mama and I had to survive together. We never got to dance in the kitchen listening to country music again.
Did they tell you that “sewing school” was actually the Bethany Home – a place for unwed mothers to wait out the birth of their children? Most of those young mothers came from the rural parts of Tennessee and would return home after turning over their newborn child to Georgia Tann and the Children’s Home Society. All these girls had in common was the shame they had caused their family.
Mary Olga remembers visiting her big sister there one time. Mama had made her a small doll out of cloth, so it made sense to Mary Olga that mama was learning to sew. Mama made friends with the other girls at Bethany Home. They were all told the same thing by the social workers from Georgia Tann’s that were always seeking signatures on paperwork they didn’t understand. They were all told, “as soon as this is over, you can go back home and get on with your life as if this never happened.” What did they mean? How could she pretend that this has not happened?
Did they tell you while mama was at the Bethany Home in the fall of 1945, her daddy’s older brother Dewey and his wife Blanche met with Georgia Tann herself in Memphis and told her they wanted to adopt me? I bet they didn’t tell you that. My great aunt and uncle wanted me. They had only one child during their marriage, a little girl - stillborn. So they wanted me – sight unseen, since I was kin to them and they had longed for a child. But Georgia Tann wouldn’t allow that to happen. She told them “It’s not advised for extended family to keep the child. It’s better for the child given up at birth to be adopted by an unrelated family.” That made no sense to Uncle Dewey and Aunt Blanche, but Ms. Tann was well respected in Memphis. She had graduated with her master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in New York. She was the expert. They left Memphis that day feeling deep sorrow.
They probably didn’t tell you what mama has been doing these last three months either. While I was in the middle of the room of crying infants hungry to be held, mama went to stay with her Cousin Barbara June and her Uncle Hobart, back in Adamsville. She didn’t want to go live in the family house with just Bobby Maurice or return to Adamsville High School. It was the middle of her senior year – how could she face her friends?
She could have stayed in Memphis with Mama Ruby and Mary Olga, but by then they were living with Grandmother Creagh, who was a very stern, elderly woman with lots of rules for children. Additionally, Grandmother Creagh lived next door to the Children’s Home Society. Mama knew I was probably there. It was too close.
So she stayed with her Uncle Hobart and Cousin Barbara June, neither of who had been told why she had been living in Memphis the fall of 1945. What they observed of Neleta Jean – my mama – was a quiet young woman. She and Barbara June slept in the same bed at night and often my mama would wake up the whole house screaming and sobbing from nightmares. Barbara June would always hold her for awhile as she was coming out of that nightmare and into the reality of that tiny little bedroom they shared that winter and spring. She said mama’s whole body would convulse with the weeping until she could calm her down. As often as Barbara June asked what the nightmares were about, mama would refuse to tell her.
We were both in strange places that winter of 1946, being cared for by others with more silent questions than anyone had answers for. Mama had her dear cousin to at least hold her when the nightmares came and the deep mourning racked her body. Was this what those social workers meant when they said mama could just go back to her old life and pretend nothing had happened?
Mama had family to hold her – even though she wouldn’t answer their questions. I would just get another shot of Phenobarbital amongst the backdrop of many crying babies. It would seem that both of us were taking our unanswered questions, anger, pain, and screaming into the world with the loudest cries we could muster.
Those three early months of 1946 were probably the last we would share common feelings in such obvious ways. Even though separated, it felt as if we were still joined in some deeply spiritual way – as the pain and loss continued to swirl around in our souls, totally out of control. We had to step into new lives, pushing all that pain, loss and anger down into our bodies. There was nowhere else to go with it. No one could take the horrific pain away – we had to simply swallow it and move on in our different life paths.
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