Some notes on the book 'Mama Sue' will someday write

This article first appeared in The Berkshire Eagle.
By Felix Carroll
Susan Wingo wants to write a book about this man, her husband, her Avery. Maybe a movie.

How would it begin? Would it begin in the aftermath of her brutal rape when she was 19, how he made her feel like a human again, took her in his arms, married her and has doted over her ever since?

He's a black man. She's a white woman. Would it begin with the two of them being spit upon — her being called a "n— lover" — in those early years as they walked together in the streets of racially charged Missouri?

Would it begin at the beginning, with his birth May 10, 1946, just south of St. Louis, where his parents soon abandoned him and eventually each other? Or how about with him saying his prayers as a young boy in his grandmother's house, prayers that went something along the lines of, "Lord, please don't let me get into the position where I would ever have to kill a man. And, Lord, I don't ever want to have to go to jail."

So much to say — and of course, she doesn't know how it all ends. 
The doctors won't tell her.

"Myelodysplasia." 

She had to look that word up five years ago when her husband, Avery Wingo, was first diagnosed. Myelodysplasia, a blood disorder that can lead to leukemia, has no cure except for a stem cell transplant, and that has been ruled out in Avery's case.

"Chemotherapy." She looked that up, too, this past summer, after Avery was rushed to a hospital with two swollen legs. He had lost 7 pints of blood by the time he arrived in the emergency room. He has had 27 blood transfusions since then.

He drives their battered Buick from their apartment in Great Barrington five consecutive days a month to Berkshire Medical Center's Cancer and Infusion Center in Pittsfield. There, he sits for an hour on the fourth floor as a bag full of Decitabine drips into a port placed under the skin by his collarbone.

If Avery is living on borrowed time, she would like to know how much more they can borrow. She'd gratefully go into hock.

Practically speaking, medical bills have, indeed, put them into hock. But that's not what she would write about. She would write instead about the people, their friends and family — from Lee on down the valley to Lakeville, Conn. — who have poured forth to help them since things took a turn for the worse in August.



"Mama Sue" and "Pops" Wingo — maybe you know them. He's an accomplished carpenter with a slow Missouri drawl and incapacity to speak ill of another. She's a quick-talking former mill worker, a self-described hothead but really a loving mush.

On karaoke nights at Bogie's in Great Barrington, she pretty much owns "Harper Valley PTA."

As she puts it, "Mama rocks it."

It'll all be in the book, or the movie.

As will be the day they married, in 1972.

It was just the two of them and two friends at the preacher's house. Family members on both sides couldn't abide the biracial nuptials. Only after the fact, when her father finally met Avery, relationships would form.

Her late father and mother loved Avery. The feeling was mutual.

Avery and Sue met in 1970, when she went out to Missouri from Lakeville to visit her sister-in-law. At 19, Sue had already lived a lifetime. Pregnant at 16, her parents forced her to give her baby away, she says. Her trip to Missouri was part of a ragged journey toward a new life.

At a nightclub in Crystal City, Avery asked her to dance. They went on a few dates. She was smitten. She would have to walk a few blocks out of the white section of town into the black section where it would be safe for the two to meet up.

One night, alone, having just gotten out of work, Sue saw a car pull up to the curb. Thinking it was a friend, she hopped in, closed the door tight behind her and turned to the driver's side. It was not her friend. She knew she was in trouble. She reached for the door. There was no handle. The man took her down a dirt road, held a jagged end of a broken beer bottle to her throat and proceeded to rape her.

The entire time, her inner voice pleaded, "Please just let me live, please let me live."

After it was over, all she wanted to do was to die.

In the story, she'll probably confine the rape to a few short paragraphs. People can fill in the blanks. Maybe she'll sum it up with something like: "There are beautiful things I've experienced in my life that I've forgotten, while this, I'll never forget. How fair is that?"

When Avery learned what happened, he invited her into his life, permanently.

"That man right there, he made me want to live," Sue says. "He had so many girls that wanted to be with him, and he chose me — after all that. He made me believe life is worth living."



"I just admire that she came through it and was able to be a mom and raise children and not hate anyone," he says.

The man who raped her was eventually brought to justice.

Of the many beautiful things she can't forget, what might be tops? Their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren — yes. But it all begins with that man who now wears a surgical mask to protect his frail immune system. He used to snore at night. Since August, he sleeps quietly, so quietly that she finds herself wide awake, leaning in just to hear his breath.

On their 26th anniversary of marriage, he gave her the wedding she had always wanted — "in a church, before the eyes of God." By this time, they had moved the heck out of Missouri, where their mixed-race children were being teased in school. New England, too, has its racists, but they tend to rudely ignore you rather than aggressively confront you.

At the wedding, she wore white. Their son, Reggie, walked her down the aisle of her girlhood church in Lakeville. Avery couldn't take his eyes off her. When she reached him at the altar, he took her hands into his and he wept.

She had stashed away money for the honeymoon they hadn't had the first time around. They flew to Las Vegas, where Sue stuffed some quarters into a slot machine and out popped $2,500, just like that.

There will also have to be a chapter on the 70th birthday party she held for Avery last year at Bogie's. Everyone came, including the daughter she had when she was 16, with whom she has recently reunited. Mama Sue took the microphone and sang Miranda Lambert's "Holding on to You," which she dedicated to her husband, who sat there smiling like a king.

The other day, she called WSBS and requested "Holding on to You."

They played it, dedicated from Mama Sue to her beloved Pops.

Comments

Popular Posts