HUGUENOT! This is a hard word to spell when you’re in kindergarten. I had just learned how to spell the name of the street I lived on when the name was changed to Hollywood. Without moving, I now lived at 494 S. Hollywood Street.
Our house seemed big to me, but it was just a three-room shotgun house. The front room was immediately followed by the bedroom and then the kitchen. The front and back doors in alignment, earning the name of a shotgun house, for the saying goes that if one shot a bullet straight through from the front door of the house to the back door, it would exit without ever touching anything.
This was the house my grandparents felt blessed to live in after moving from the Mississippi Delta to Memphis as part of the Great Migration. My mother and I lived in the house with them. One of my earliest memories of living in the house was using a slop jar to do our “business.” It was not until the house was rebuilt after the fire that we had a toilet in the house.
“Mother dear”—“Muhdear” in my mouth—and I slept in the same bed, which took up most of the space in the front room. Just across from the foot of the bed was room for a small couch where my grandparents sat and listened to the radio and later watched television. On the right side (when facing the bed), there was just enough space for a chair at the head of the bed. In a corner on the left side was a tiered “whatnot” with a picture of me as a baby on the top shelf. I don’t remember the picture, but I do remember the frame—oval with a wide black border with pink and white flowers on one side. I liked the frame. Years later, I was told that this only picture of me as a baby was lost in the fire…
Gwen Dungy 