Day 822: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: Oatmeal
Even for Selene Slocum-Lofton and her friend Mildred York, who each had lived for 80-plus years basically ignoring the mass condition of the peoples – peoples, for they had lived long enough to see the Latino immigrant population move into positions many Black people had vacated after the civil rights era – who had given them a lifetime of service, the Lofton County Free Voice was too much to bear when it put out its issue of the 12,000 names of the servants who had perished in their neighborhoods and those adjacent because of the Ridgeline Fire.
Mrs. York had a complete breakdown – “Oh, no – the Greeley girls – my mammy's entire family is dead!”
Mrs. Slocum-Lofton, being of steelier composure, did not break down, although she shed many tears. The number hit her hard. The Civil War had not produced a number of deaths that large in Lofton County – 12,000 people was a whole battlefield, a battlefield's worth of death that had perished as the criminal element of Lofton County's elite had turned on itself.
It was also a number that was completely unsustainable – completely, for her class of people.
Mrs. Slocum-Lofton had done something unthinkable to her kind of people. First of all, she had made sure when evacuating her locale that all servants were evacuated. She had then listened deeply to the grief and anger of her two butlers, Charles and Tracy, and to the cleaning crews who came in, and to her in-home support assistants that came in for more personal assistance at need. All of them had lost friends and family. All of them complained about the callous disregard of Mrs. Slocum-Lofton's neighbors. All of them got a BIG raise from Mrs. Slocum-Lofton, daily warm thanks for staying on, and an open checkbook to help with any needs brought to her.
Mrs. Slocum-Lofton noted down the family names and relationships at hand in the Free Voice, and then made a phone call.
“Hello – good morning, Anne. I regret I that I must cancel my appearance at your tea event tomorrow, and if you were wise, you would read the Free Voice and cancel the event as well … look, Anne, every event of this type we do after what we all know has happened is building danger for our whole class of people … you'll be blessed if they all don't walk out on you while all of you are sitting up there complaining that the Free Voice outed you about not even bothering to report the dead who have served us for decades … the only thing that we need to be eating together in front of the servant class for the rest of the year is oatmeal and humble pie … yes, I said oatmeal and humble pie. If you want to have good help for the holidays, y'all better start eating it now, and put the money y'all save into giving some really big raises … all right, do it your way … you could serve tea on the Titanic with that same attitude … I already am in my lifeboat with people rowing it, while I eat my oatmeal and humble pie. Y'all do what you want, without me there to watch you sink.”
Photo by Andrea Tummons on Unsplash