By: Connie Woodring

March 25,1945. That is the day we received a new patient on our ward. Her name is Buella Whitehouse. I wasn’t sure if she would be accepted by everyone (patients and staff), since she is a Negro. There is only one other Negro in the hospital. She’s on Ward C-1 and is 106-years-old according to the staff. But back to Buella.

At least that’s what she says her name is at 1pm on Tuesdays and 4pm on Thursdays. Other days she’s Billie Holiday, whoever she is. She seems to think she is a famous singer, and she won’t talk to any of us on those days.  She ‘just sings the blues.’  She only talks to me on Tuesdays, and she tells me about her home in South Carolina. She has no front teeth, and it is very hard to understand her dialect. I had never spoken to a Negro before, so I have tried to duplicate what she said for the reader as best I can. She often hits herself in the head while speaking. I must say, she was the most pitiable, yet interesting, patient I’ve met in all my years here.

The conversation is always the same:

“You ezer bins to Sow Cowlina?”

“No, what’s it like?” I ask. I notice her legs. Very dark skin with deep purple scars. I interrupt to ask, “Buella, what happened to your legs?”

“Oh. Me and my sissers and brossers all have dat. When weez feed the pigs down on da farm, doze hogs woulds bit us somepin fearful. Weez would run into the woods and sometimes daid gets out and chase us ups the trees. I so scared of doze pigs. I hates pigs, and I don’t ever eats pork or none of that nasty stuff. I’d eat rattlesnake befores I eats pork, that’s for sure.”

“So, when did you move up North?”

“Whens we was kids. I wish I was still in da Souff ceptin for doze pigs.”

“Why?”

“Causes up here it’s all too busy like and noise and da white folks, I don’t know about dem. Daze better than doze white folks down home, but I don’t knows about dem. You got some crazy white folks in here, ain‘t dat right!” She starts to belly laugh.

“You’re the only Negro I ever met.”

                                    “You hates Negroes?”

“Oh, no. I don’t hate anybody but my husband.”

“Whys you hates him?”

“He’s a mean man, and he’s having an affair with Fern every day I’m here.”

“Oh, dat too bad. I knows abouts dat. My old man put meez in here. I tries to kill him with a pitchfork. I misses his head by one inch. Dat fork stuck in da barn wall. Nobody could gets it out. Goods, too, causes I would has killed him, yessirey! I rans away, but the police brungs me here. Dats was two years ago today. Day all thought I would kill ‘em all here, so day locked me in the room with devil Himself! And nowz I’m on dis open ward.” She smiles a big grin as if this is her best accomplishment in life. She starts to shuffle her feet, and they fall out of her pink slippers. She has only one big toe.

“Did the pigs eat your big toe?”

“What you talkin about pigs? I don’t know no pigs and my big toe is right there.” She points to the empty space on her foot. She gets up swiftly and starts to mumble to herself, “Deez white folks is aaaaaaall crazy in here. Can’t she sees my big toes is right stuck on my fool foot? What do I gots myself in for now?” She wanders into the other dayroom, shaking her head.

The next time I see her she is very different—very sophisticated. She comes over to me and says, “I am Billie Holiday, and I would like to inform you that you are no longer welcome in my house. No whites allowed.”

Her personalities help me tell time better than my Timex.