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This is the story of how I, a nice girl raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and educated at fine, Northeastern liberal institutions came to feel utterly and completely at home in the rural south. The woman who catalyzed this transformation of allegiance for me was Leona Fennell, so it is also the tale of Leona.

In 1991 I had just finished my Masters in Art Ed at Tufts, and there was a scarcity of teaching jobs in New England. Possessed with a spirit of adventure one June Sunday, I purchased a bunch of newspapers and sent out a flurry of resumes. There was no response to my inquiries until August, when I got a phone call from Eleanor Adams, principal, Colleton Elementary, in Walterboro, South Carolina. School was starting the very next day, and they needed an art teacher.

“Are you white?” she asked me. “I can hear from your voice that you are white”.

Although Mrs Adams was ready to hire me on the basis of just my stellar resume and a phone conversation, I wanted to visit the school and the town BEFORE signing a year-long teaching contract.

I flew down to visit the small town in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Driving out to Walterboro from the Charleston airport was a soft and stunning experience, massive pines, dark, swampy dips, soft and pungent air.

Mrs. Adams put me up for the weekend with her Aunt Leona; and that was all it really took for me to agree to sign the teaching contract.

Leona is a retired beautician and closet interior decorator. Thus her large brick ranch is immaculately composed circa 1977 and meticulously kept. It’s all velour wallpaper and color coordination. There is a blue parlor for entertaining- plush carpet, dark wood, mirrors and a blue living room set. The kitchen is pink and green with frilly lamp shades and crocheted doilies for the bible stands. The screened in side porch is lavender. Naturally there’s a beauty alcove complete with helmet hair dryers.

“Call me Ma, you home now baby.” Leona said this every day, and then proceeded to give a litany of instruction and advice with her very particular blend of accent, inflection, and speech impediment.

(She told me she had a “tie tongue” which I had never heard of, but I guess that this condition makes for some kind of speech impediment. To me, this just made Leona’s utterances more charming and endearing. There was another young woman teacher also living with us who was from a town about two hours away. Her name is Denise, but Leona couldn’t quite say it correctly, just as she can’t say my name correctly. We are Jenise and Tea-er. Denise was not ever in Leona’s favor. She was pretty but fat, and this and some of her habits and affects mage her seem slovenly. Leona still asks me what her name is every time I see her.

THESE ARE SOME OF THE LEONAISMS

*Take off your shoes as to not dirty the carpet.

*Answer with YES MA’AM.

*After wearing any item of clothing outside of the house, wash it. This prevents the acquisition of cockroaches.

*It is good for your teeth to eat sticky or hard candy if you keep it in your mouth while it dissolves.

As she had such a passion for clean clothes (and cleanliness in general), Leona would circle ads for washer/ dryers in THE SHOPPER every week for me.

In the evenings, Leona would drive me slowly around Walterboro in her white Cutlass Supreme, narrating the town. There’s the funeral parlor where Larry works, there’s the Baptist church, there’s the Methodist Church, that there’s the Jew Church.

She introduced me to all of her friends while holding court on the lavender side porch. After her mortician friend visited (“you know I work on dead people”) she said, “You know, Larry is a HE-SHE…”.

While an earlier version of myself might have been horrified by these descriptions that Leona belted out so regularly, I was able to appreciate her honesty and warmth and the complexity of her being.

I found my own place to live in Walterboro and managed to maintain my relationship with Leona. Whenever I visited she’d always reassure me that I was home. Eventually I moved back to New England after having kids. It was a difficult decision, but my husband and I felt that it’d be easier to be closer to family; also we were happy to leave behind giant cockroaches, fire ants, mold, ample sweating, and poor schools.

A few years ago I brought my 2 lovely daughters to the south for a visit. Our first stop was Leona’s. She set us up in the guest bedrooms with their high metal beds and frilly bed skirts. She luxuriated in the act of brushing and fashioning the girls’ long, beautiful hair. After lavishing them with TV, candy, and sweet tea, she said, “relax girls, you home now.”