Enajite Pela

Black People Music

My grandma was quite the character. She was a no nonsense kind of woman and how she felt things was how she said them. When she said her peace about something it always seemed as if, no matter how harsh, cruel, or even funny, there was no other way to say it but that. She was the first Black nurse in the small town of Tracy, CA and in the whole county for that matter. She was from Louisiana and every where she went she made sure to permeate the room with southern charm. Ever since she was a little girl, she had been incredibly hard working. She went back to nursing school at the age of 38, to provide for her family. She retook every class that she got a B in so that she would have a 4.0. My grandma once told me a story of when she was a cleaning girl. The white family she worked for had it in their agreement that they would provide one meal for every work day. She had no idea that that one meal would be served on the dirty slab of concrete that lead to the back yard. She also told me the story of how, as a nurse, one of her patients, a racist white man with AIDS, took the needle out of his arm and stuck it into hers. She worried and tested for years thinking that she had certainly contracted HIV from the mans wicked actions.