Fried Chicken!

By

Ann Gray

"Fried chicken!" Mary Lee said, tying her apron strings. She laughed, deep and husky. "Child, you know perfectly well we have fried chicken every single day that passes. Why you always asking me, "What we having for supper?"

"I dunno," I answered, grateful to have her firm words of assurance once more.

Mary Lee was probably the best cook in Hazelhurst, Georgia in 1935. She knew I just loved her crispy fried chicken, especially the "parson's nose" as she had taught me to call the part that went over the fence last.

Every single evening of the week there was a platter of Mary Lee's fried chicken on the table in the dining room, and it stacked up as high as she could pile it without pieces tumbling off. When the twelve adults and the one child living in the boarding house sat down to eat, there would also be other delicious dishes, but Mary Lee always set the platter of golden fried chicken before my place. The aging cook did her best to see to it that I received special attention. Matter of fact, I hung out a lot with Mary Lee in the kitchen for lack of other playmates.

We had been living in the boarding house for about six months because we couldn't afford to rent a whole house or even an apartment because Daddy couldn't find a "decent" job. I knew, because in two rooms there wasn't much could be said in one room without being overheard in the other unless it was very late at night.

I'd found Mary Lee's Sears and Roebuck catalog the first week after we moved in and on page 344 there was one dainty piece of jewelry that caught my eye and I went back to it over and over again. On the opposite page it said that it was item No. A153-2809 - a delicately carved pink cameo set within a thin gold sculptured frame, and hanging from a fine gold chain. The price of $12.00 was so high I didn't dare mention the necklace to my mama or daddy. I never even mentioned it to Mary Lee, but I drew a penciled ring around the picture and dog-eared the page so I could find it more quickly.

We didn't have a Christmas tree in our rooms that year. Always before, we'd spent Christmas with my mama's sister and her family in Atlanta and it was lots of fun. I thought that Christmas was going to be the loneliest, saddest day I'd ever know.

The next morning, Christmas, I awakened and lay quietly in my bed waiting to hear stirrings from the other room. A few minutes later, the door between our rooms opened and my parents came in, holding hands.

"Merry Christmas, Sweet." Daddy said, as he reached  and lifted me out of bed and stood me, barefoot, on the cold floor.

"Hurry, we're late!" Mama wrapped me in my bathrobe, pushed my feet into my bare shoes, and ran her fingers quickly through my bangs.

The dining room was empty. Everyone else had eaten and the dining room table had been cleared except for our usual places.

Mama opened the kitchen door and stuck her heard through, asking Mary Lee if there was anything left for us.

When the kitchen door swung open again the smell of Mary Lee's delicious fried chicken preceded her as she waltzed into the room carrying a platter, heaped with the biggest pile of "parson's noses" I could ever have imagined. She set the steaming platter down before my plate. On top of the "parson's noses" rested a small box in Christmas wrapping paper.

"Merry Christmas, Sweet," the three of them chorused.

"The fried chicken is from Mary Lee and the box is from Daddy and me," Mama said.

Inside the little white box on a bed of softest cotton rested that beautiful pink cameo necklace I had admired so very much and for so very long in Mary Lee's Sears and Roebuck catalog.

Mama was crying when she fastened the chain around my neck. Daddy and Mary Lee were both smiling a lot. I was just happier than I had ever been in my whole life.

Mary Lee went back to the kitchen; Mama and Daddy had their usual coffee, toast, and jelly; but I pitched in and ate "parson's noses" until I was simply about to burst.

Even without a Christmas tree, 1935 was the very best Christmas I'd ever had.

** Author's note: Seventy-three years have passed and I still have that little cameo necklace. It's a reminder of the 1935 depression year Christmas when I first learned that  people make sacrifices because they love someone else more than they love themselves.