Because My Mother Said So by Edith Rock

The tale begins in a darkened balcony of the local theater on a weekday afternoon in 1931. Four teenage girls, including me, are gazing wistfully at the screen below watching Rhet Butler dismiss a Scarlet but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a dam. He was so handsome and I envied his crystal blue eyes. My friends and I were lost in the rapture of Gone with the Wind, when suddenly our attention shifts to the aisle seat where an usher is whispering a message from the school principal to return to his office.

We scrambled our way out of the dark, forthwith and headed out as ordered. We knew we were headed for trouble called “playing hooky”. Getting caught at this game was no small matter. But then again, in my way of thinking (even then), it depends on how you define hooky.

According to the dictionary hooky means: absent without leave. That’s it, it was off the hook. My mother, I thought would handle this. After all, I had asked and she had given permission or rather the “Ok”, saying “I guess it won’t hurt to be absent from school for one afternoon”. Therefore, I was not absent without leave. Then I got to wondering about how she would handle it. She was not what we call today, an involved parent: one who stays on top of school affairs by showing up in the building and attending parent association meetings. In her view, I was in a good school and schooling was a matter for me and the teachers to work out. Understand that we were living in a wealthy New Jersey town where colored folk were expected to know their place. Mother’s place was that of a servant, she prepared grand dinners in grand settings, where white people were her superiors. She was their servant and she acted accordingly, even allowing them to call her Hilda, which was not even her real name. Their children were my schoolmates but we stayed apart outside of class.

Of course the school principal was not grand in the same sense but he was white with a white sense of superiority. I knew she knowingly differed to the people she worked for, so I wondered what her posture would be with the white principal. All this raced through my mind as we returned to school, shamefaced and scared.

I can’t remember the details of the intended punishment handed out by the principal. What I do remember is what happened the next day when my mother came to my school to see the principal.

She listened quietly as he explained his duty to discipline students for wrongdoing. When he finished Mother said very slowly and firmly “Now, let me tell you something. You can punish the others, but you will not punish Edith because I gave her permission to go the movies, yesterday”. In other words, she told the principal he had crossed the lines of authority.

And that was the end of that predicament. What a relief! Note, she never offered any explanation other than “because I said so”. The lesson I learned from this incident has served me throughout life. That is, don’t be afraid to question authority.