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.I learned this when we spent a long evening together.Grace s house sits back a short way from Route 17.It is a quarter mileor so to her father s home in one direction, to her mother s in the other.Her sister Rhonda also lives less than a mile away.The house is a placethat had special meaning for Grace. I remember being a little girl and walk-ing by and it looked so big and white from a distance.The man who ownedthis house died.It s about forty years old (about Grace s age).Now thelittle girl has grown up and owns the big house she remembers so fondly.The house is actually quite modest, perhaps fourteen hundred squarefeet.It is still white but could definitely use a coat of paint.Like much elsein Yvonne, it looks a little tired.Grace is aware of this, and tells me, I gotto get my father to do some things here. The yard is mostly dirt, includ-ing the path from the road.Directly next to the house sits a pile of old fur-niture and junk, covered by what looks like yards of old carpet.Indeed, whenGrace s income rose sufficiently, she essentially replaced her old furnitureand carpeting but the old sits outside as a reminder of days not long past.Too, it is a reminder of her admonition to me, at her sister s house one day,when she asked what I really knew about poor people and then told methat what things look like from outside are not always what they look likeon the inside.The interior of the house is very tidy and well kept.Grace and I sat inthe living room, which contained a comfortable couch and chairs as well asa large television.For hours, we were mostly by ourselves, but her childrendropped in occasionally and sometimes joined us in conversation.Grace had her first child immediately after graduating from high school.She wasn t married, and for awhile she joined her older sister, Alice, livingin another part of the state.But when Alice joined the military, Grace re-turned home and started working at whatever jobs were available. 60 Rooted in Place I worked at the shoe factory in Conaty and then I started cookin in theislands.Me and my sister, Rhonda, could do any kind of party.She andI supervised the food preparation at the Radisson.We had a big job onetime and got people off the streets and out of the woods! We worked somelong hours I m talkin from three one mornin to one the next.One nightwe did over nine hundred steak dinners in one spot, three different roomsof people [she laughs, remembering this occasion].We worked at Shuckers;it was a restaurant on the island, run by some people from Atlanta.Rhondaused to work there.They wanted me to manage one shift, and I told themthat I needed to bring my sister back.We did that till we got tired of workinand I decided there s got to be a better way. The islands, where many of the black people in Colonial County work,are forty-five minutes to an hour s drive away.There is one road to them.When it is foggy or stormy, the driving, as on many roads in the Lowcountry,gets treacherous.The roads will have water on top, and even on a clearnight, it is often inky black where the main road (U.S.17) runs like a paththrough a forest.There are no streetlights outside towns, and houses andother possibly lighted buildings are few and far between.Grace, like her brothers and sisters, reached a point in life where, as shetold me, she was determined to find a better way. This way was to go backto school and find a career that would be more rewarding, financially andotherwise, than continuing to cook.In the end, she decided that, if she wasgoing to be on her feet much of the day, it would be as a nurse an occu-pation where the pay and benefits would be worth the physically tiring work.But like much else in her life, this was not easy. I went to school when I was in my thirties.See, what happened was thatI was gettin up at four in the mornin and my children were raisin them-selves.I took a nursing assistants class.I came out of there in six monthswith a one-hundred accumulated average.I got out of there on a Thursdayand started college on the following Monday.I went two years and got anassociate s degree; passed my state boards; and became an R.N. When I started clinical, I had to be at the hospital at six forty-five in themorning.I had to be there earlier before the inspector come.I would walkdown to the corner and catch a ride with people goin to work.Or if I couldconnect with someone, I would ask them to pick me up here.Lots of times,I rode with a girlfriend of mine, a white girl.One girl came from Fort Strong Women 61[pronounced, as by many Lowcountry black people, Fote] Stewart and whenshe found out where I lived on 17, she said I could ride with her. When I got off at nights, at ten, I d be standin out in front of the hospi-tal tryin to get a ride home.My brother said, You should quit and takecare of those kids. I told him, If I have to wait that long, I need not go.I mgonna go to school if I have to sleep in that old broken-down yellow car[still parked in the yard] with my kids. I had this nursing assistant s certificate under my belt, so I tried work-ing during my last year of school.One of my girlfriends had an old car shesold to me for five hundred dollars, so I used my loan money from schoolfor that and drove the car to work on the islands and then I d study when Igot home.I would work all night and go to school during the day and thencome home.I could maintain my grades that way
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