p 94 -- Abbie Bank

MSC -- Abbie Bank, though I did not know it until the Delta Land book actually came out, was a woman who raised a couple of generations of the King family. By "raised," I mean the Kings were cared for, cooked for, cleaned for, and baby-sat for by Abbie Bank. She probably saw and heard and lived with way more than she ever wanted to know about these people. Yet I sincerely believe that she actually had deep feelings for this family and took very good care of them. I think Abbie Bank was sort of like Miss Bessie in Visible Spirits: she was in "way deep" and it behooved her to follow the rules--to hold fast to any old bargains that may have been struck by whatever circumstance--but somehow she may have been compelled to challenge the rules too. In my own family, our Abbie Bank was Lucille Fleming who came to work in 1936 for my grandfather , Judge May, when Lucille was 30 and my mother was 19. Lucille died in 1994 at the age of 88, and I truly considered her my "real" mother, since she was always there for me (unfortunately for her, she was literally there from sunup to way past sundown). I first photographed Abbie Bank's grave when the surrounding fields were planted in cotton, and then again about two years later when the fields were planted in corn. After I took the the second picture, I remembered a blues song called "Hey, Hey Boll Weevil" which is told from the point of view of a boll weevil, a common agricultural pest here, that's going back and forth between the cotton and corn, taking note of the landscape while systematically destroying two of the Delta's main crops. I have seen many heartbreakingly beautiful grave markers here in the Delta -- including some out of cement, some out of piled-up rocks -- but this simple black and white wooden cross with Abbie Bank's name hand-painted on it seems so noble and true, a timeless monument to a strong and loving woman who must have had a tough life traversing between the distinctly different black and white worlds of the Delta.