Every night, I felt the weight of his eyes on me while I slept. It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t a ghost. It was my husband.
For seven long months, every single night at exactly 2:47 in the morning, he would stand right next to my side of the bed in the pitch black. He would just stand there, watching me sleep.
He did this like a ritual until the day I finally pretended to be asleep and heard what he was whispering in the dark. And child, let me tell you, what I discovered in those shadows destroyed my life forever.
My name is Hattie. Hattie Mae Ellington. Today, as I sit here, I am ninety-one years old. I turned ninety-one on March 3rd of this year.
I was born way back in 1934 in Macon, Georgia, and I have lived through a whole lot in this life. I’ve weathered storms that would strip the bark off a pine tree.
I have gone through situations that, when I tell folks today, they shake their heads and look at me like I’m spinning a tall tale. They just don’t believe me.
But everything I am going to tell you here is the gospel truth. You can ask my daughters, my grandchildren, or anyone who really knows me. Hattie Mae doesn’t lie. I have never lied a day in my life.
I want my story to be known, not for fame, but so other women know they are not walking through this valley alone. I want you to listen close, because you need to understand where I came from to understand where I ended up.
I married Otis Washington on October 15th, 1955. I was twenty-one years old, fresh-faced and naive. He was twenty-six.
It was a marriage sort of arranged by our families, which was common practice back in those days out in the country. My daddy knew his daddy—they were both deacons in the same church and decided we made a sensible match. Practicality came before passion back then.
To be honest, I barely knew Otis before the wedding day. We had seen each other maybe three or four times, and always with our parents hovering nearby like hawks.
He was a handsome man, I’ll give him that. Tall, broad-shouldered, strong as an ox, and hardworking. My daddy said he was a serious man, a man of his word, and that he would put food on the table and a roof over my head.
I got married in a white lace dress at the Baptist church in Macon. It was a big celebration with platters of food piled high, gospel music shaking the rafters, and the whole congregation packed in the pews.
I remember wearing that dress; it had belonged to my grandmother, and my mama had kept it preserved in a cedar trunk for years.
It was a scorching hot day, the Georgia sun beating down on the roof, and I was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I realized, standing at that altar, that I didn’t really know this man I was pledging my life to.
After the wedding, we loaded up and went to live on a small farm that his daddy had gifted us. It was about fifty acres of land near Cordell, deep in the Georgia countryside, miles from anything resembling a town.
The house was simple, a rough-hewn wooden structure with just three rooms. There was a main living room that doubled as the kitchen, a single bedroom, and a small pantry in the back for dry goods.
The bathroom wasn’t even inside; we had an outhouse out back, and we didn’t have a lick of electricity. We lived by the glow of kerosene lamps. The water came from a deep well in the yard that you had to pump by hand.
Otis worked the land. He planted corn, collard greens, and sweet potatoes, and he raised some chickens and hogs.
I took care of the home front. I washed our clothes on a metal scrub board until my knuckles were raw, cooked our meals on a wood-burning stove, and sewed every stitch of clothing we wore.
It was a hard life, grueling even, but it was the only life we knew. Everybody we knew lived just like that.
Our family started growing pretty quick. My first daughter was born in 1957, on April 23rd. I named her Ruth because I always had a fondness for that biblical name; it sounded strong and beautiful to my ears.
The birth happened right there at home with Miss Sebastiana, the local midwife. It was a difficult, long labor that dragged on for hours. I suffered a lot that day, but the moment I saw my daughter, my first baby girl, the pain just evaporated. She was so tiny, so perfect.
In 1959, Ruby came along on August 8th. It was another hard birth, but this time I was seasoned; I knew what to expect.
Ruby was different from Ruth right out of the gate. Ruth was quiet, calm as a still pond. Ruby was born screaming, making noise, demanding the world’s attention.
Two beautiful girls. And then, in 1962, came Pearl, my baby. She was born on December 1st. It was a calmer birth than the others, thank the Lord. Pearl was small, petite, but sharp as a tack and smart from the get-go.
Three daughters. Three girls.
Otis had wanted a boy. He never said it outright, but I knew he wanted a son to help him plow the fields. But the Lord saw fit to give me three girls, and I was grateful for each and every single hair on their heads.
Otis was always a very quiet man. He wasn’t one for small talk, nor was he one for affection. He never hit me—I have to give him credit for that—he never raised a hand against me in anger.
But he was cold. He never hugged me just for the sake of hugging. He never told me he loved me. He never surprised me with a gift, not even a wildflower.
It was as if we were two strangers renting space in the same house. He worked, I worked, and we raised the girls alongside each other. But there wasn’t that spark, that thing of a couple in love like you see in the movies. There just wasn’t.
Sometimes I wondered if it had to be that way, if all marriages eventually cooled into this polite silence. I talked to the other women at church, whispering during gatherings, and it seemed like, yes, that was the norm.
The husband provided, the wife kept the home, and that was the deal. Love was a fairytale for young single girls. After marriage, it was obligation. It was duty.
