Swimming and sex seemed a lot alike to me when I was growing up in Tuscaloosa. You took off most of your clothes to do them and you only did them with people who were the same color as you. As your daddy got richer, you got to do them both in fancier places. Country club pools instead of public ones where you paid a quarter. Rooms at the Stafford Hotel (or at least back seats with leather upholstery) instead of creek banks somewhere out in the county or lying on your boyfriend's work shirt out in the woods or on top of an Indian mound, trying to swat the mosquitoes off his back and your own legs. Both sex and swimming could involve liquid, heat, inflatable protection devices, and the occasional unguent. And bad things, real bad things, could happen if you did not follow the rules. My family was big on talking about rules, but keeping them has never been our strong suit, especially in the sex department.

My mother met my father when she made an emergency landing in his father's cornfield, flying lessons being the rage among the young women of Montgomery. She was married and pregnant with my brother less than a year later. They built their little house in the shadow of the Old House-my father's mother's house. My grandmother's ancestors had started building it on land they snagged when Alabama first became a state and just never figured out when to stop. Until I was eleven, I had a room in each house and would fall asleep at night wherever I was when my head started bobbing. At my parents' house on nights when she worked late Connie Lee Touchet sang me to sleep with her mournful songs about laying down burdens and wading in water and carrying weary loads.

I don't mean to sound Gone-with-the-Wind-ish. Most of my relatives would have found a better fit on the pages of Erskine Caldwell. Maybe Faulkner if he was wrestling with a bad hangover. My grandmother and her daughters were each over six feet tall. They lived in the five rooms of the house you could heat to tolerable in January, and prayed nightly that the morning did not find them all crawling out from under a heap of termite-infested lumber.

I know that it is because of the women of my childhood that I have no fear of flying or work; that I believe in magic; that I sleep easily, deeply, and soundly at night; and that I always feel safe and protected in the world in spite of all that came later.

Still, when I stayed over in the high bed at their house, my grandmother held me in her arms. My Aunt Margaret read Grimm or Andersen tales to me ( my favorites being the ones with crafty trolls, kindly woodcutters, brothers changed to swans, and brave girls who wove blankets of nettles or told the truth to save themselves), and my Aunt Grace brushed my waist-length hair until I dozed, watched over by three benevolent giantesses. I know that it is because of the women of my childhood that I have no fear of flying or work; that I believe in magic; that I sleep easily, deeply, and soundly at night; and that I always feel safe and protected in the world in spite of all that came later.

Four generations of my family lived within walking distance of the Old House, six if you counted the Touchets. I did count them, since they had lived with us for over a hundred years-at first, against their will, then by economic necessity or lack of other options, and finally from familiarity and perhaps some love. I suspect they also may have simply stayed out of curiosity to see what sort of foolishness my family would commit next. They had plowed, harvested, and cooked our food for decades, but never once swam with us or sat down to eat with us when my parents were home.

To say walking distance may be a stretch. It was only walking distance if I cut through the box factory lot by the woods and crossed the railroad track, which I was not allowed to do without my big brother because of hobos. This seemed stupid to me, as I had eaten countless hunks of pie with them on my grandmother's stoop. Feeding hobos was, according to Grandma, the best way to keep them from hightailing it down the tracks with a lineful of your laundry. One did try to get me to go down into the woods one evening when I was seven. I politely declined the invitation because I had written a kickass report about Alabama's four Indian tribes (CHOC-taw! CHICK-a-saw! CHER-o-kee! CREEK!! I'd chant them jumping rope). I was scheduled to read it first thing in the morning. I've always loved an audience and did not want to be late for school. I knew not to tell anyone about his invitation, that he'd get in trouble and after all, he hadn't done me any harm.

I knew many useful things by the time I was seven. I knew not to swim without a buddy or to ask for a hit on a seventeen-point hand in a game of blackjack. I could shoot a deer and knew how to field dress it if there was someone to help me with the heavy parts. I could sing like an angel, make a devil's food cake, and produce embroidery so fine that the back was as pretty as the front, all the loose threads tucked and trimmed.


Melissa Delbridge has published her writing in Atlanta Press, Crescent Review, and Southern Humanities Review. She was one of the winners of the 1999 Southern Women Writers Conference's Emerging Writers competition. She works as an archivist in Duke's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Family Bible, the trilogy of essays from which this introduction is excerpted, was written during the year she served as the first Library Fellow for Duke University's John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. The essays appear in their entirety in Southern Humanities Review 39.2 (Spring 2005), pages 105-124.. Credit: Courtesy of Melissa Delbridge