Aggie lived in a part of town we never visited. It was just off of I-75 between the two exits in Tampa where riots broke out when I was a child. It was only 20 minutes from the safely guarded walled community in south Tampa, but it was worlds away.
I grew up in Culbreath Bayou, which was modest by comparison to the houses in the Isles or on the Bayshore, but it was certainly privileged. Nearly everyone had “help.”
I don’t know how my parents found Aggie, but when we moved to Tampa and they both took professional jobs 30 minutes from our home, Aggie was the persistent presence from the time school got out until my mom arrived. She wasn’t really a babysitter and she wasn’t really a housekeeper. She was the godly and gracious and patient caring adult presence.
Having grown up to that point in Indiana, I admittedly lived in a blissful ignorance of the “war” that still raged in the hearts of many people. I now know that war rages on in all parts of the country, but the South still bears the stigma. I’m not sure I really “knew” that Aggie was black until the fifth grade.
Child, that’s just the way the world is
I loved the fifth grade. In those days it was the pinnacle of life at Dale Mabry Elementary School. Everyone that I knew rode their bikes to school. Sure, lots of kids arrived on the bus, but I didn’t honestly know any of them. Mrs. Mabry’s class was comprised of what were called in those days “Gifted and Talented children.” That means something entirely different today than it did then. We put on plays and went on field trips and read the Great Books series. Members of my class won all the school awards, served as the patrols, and I’m sure we were secretly hated by everyone else. At that time I did not possess the social awareness nor the compassion to care.
That all changed on awards day at the end of the year. There was no question in my mind that I would be awarded the Citizen of the Year award for girls. After all, I possessed every single Citizen of the Month award from September through May. So you can imagine my dismay and, I’m embarrassed to admit, rage, when another name was announced. It was a name I had never even heard. It was a face I had never consciously seen. It was a person I did not know. All I saw when she stepped proudly up to receive the Citizen of the Year award from the hands of our principle, Mrs. Weeks, was that she was black. That’s the day I discovered a latent racism in my own heart. And that’s the day that Aggie held me as I sobbed with words that I suppose meant something different to her than they meant to me, “Child, that’s just the way the world is.”
The Help opens in theatres today. I hope that the movie adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling book delivers the same
message that people are people, no matter their differences. People are to be valued because they are people – made equally in the image of God – even if born into unequal realities in a fallen world.
Much progress has been made in a nation that only a generation ago had to be forced by the rule of law to racially integrate. We have a President who is not Caucasian. And for most Americans is it no longer socially acceptable to openly disparage another person because of their race. But we still don’t genuinely love our neighbors as we love our own. Tribalism persists and I am not naïve enough to think that our hearts have been purified on the matter.
One day every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. On that day there will be nothing more that divides us; only the glory of the Lord that ultimately offers real hope of unity. Today is not that day, but we have hope. Aggie knew it and gratefully, by grace, so do I.
When my dad died of a sudden heart attack when I was 15, Aggie was there. My mom had to fly to Jamaica to identify his body and Aggie came and stayed with us. Many hundreds of people descended upon our home. They came and went and ate and talked and grieved. Aggie stayed.
She helped us in the midst of her own grief over the death of the only man who had ever bought her a new car, the only man who had ever gone with her to the bank to co-sign a loan for a house, the only man who had ever esteemed her as an equal. She was the help we needed. She was the help who walked with us through the valley of the shadow of death. She was the one who feared no evil because she was the one who knew the One who had conquered the world.
Aggie died some years ago and my mom flew back to Tampa to walk with her family through the valley Aggie had walked with us.
I thank God today for Aggie, who was my help in so many ways.