6. Look Away

I recall precious little about the night my sister made her debut with the Society of Southern Families – which attests to the astonishing power of disassociation.  I was there and yet I wasn’t – a Stepford sister in very reluctant attendance.  That this improbable event really happened is confirmed by a clipping from the Miami Herald that I’ve found in The Pile: The headline reads “Southern Debs Bow in Splendor.”

Prompted by the article, a few details pierce the Blessed Curtain of Forgetfulness that my mind has drawn across the event.   Like the other debs – “12 pretty girls, all of Southern lineage” – Jane  had an escort (our cousin Bobby) who wore a Confederate Officer’s uniform, sash and all.  “All the charm and grace of the Old South were on display at the Swords and Roses Conference debutante ball," wrote the Herald's society editor.

It was “a Southern plantation, complete with columns, trailing vines, etcetera.”  Etcetera and then some.  There were crossed swords, red roses, a grand march and, as special guest, an 86-year-old who had overseen the costumes at the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind.  

 I was horrified but I was there.  I wore satin and lace, styled my hair in an impeccable French twist – and spent the evening thinking dark Flannery O’Conner-esque thoughts.  To me, the ball was about the tackiest thing I had ever seen.  Fake Confederate uniforms!  “Golden” crossed swords!  Styrofoam plantation columns!  

In my mind this was all wrong. Despite evidence to the contrary, I believed this was not the kind of thing our family did. I never thought my father had any affection for the Deep South way of life – he abandoned it for a career in the military.   But by the time of the Ball, my father was retired from the Army and my parents had settled in a suburban house in South Miami.

I had already escaped to a tiny apartment in the hippie enclave of Coconut Grove.  There I wallpapered my living room with aluminum foil and smoked pot supplied by my kindly downstairs neighbor.  For entertainment we watched the wild peacocks as they swooped across the lawn, fluttering past the night-blooming jasmine bushes.  My life was wonderful, brimming with exciting new possibilities.

But I could see that no one at home was finding it easy to adjust to civilian life.  Unlike me, my sister had to make her way in the shark tank of a large suburban high school where everyone had known everyone else since forever.  Predictably, she was having trouble making friends.  

According to my father, the purpose of the debut was to boost Jane’s status with her peers.  He was no longer Col. Banks. His Southern “lineage” may have been of little consequence during his 30-year military career, but maybe he could trade on it now to help his unhappy younger daughter.  Jane reluctantly went along with the plan, and excruciating as it was, it worked.  She reported that the snobby girls at Palmetto High were much nicer to her after the story appeared in the newspaper.  

But going through some family papers in The Pile, I came across a carbon-copy document that brought me closer to the true meaning of that night so long ago.  It was a narrative of the paternal pedigree, a prideful catalogue of forebears prepared by my father to demonstrate our family’s eligibility to join the Society of Southern Families. 

On the onionskin sheets I spotted familiar family names:  assorted Picketts and Alstons and Harrises.  The highest profile collateral relations were herded into a single sentence that included: “Major General George E. Pickett, CSA, Leroy Pope Walker, first Secretary of War in Jefferson Davis’ cabinet, Episcopal bishop Samuel Harris of Michigan.”

The pages contained dismaying new information – it seems that  my father’s father, Richard Griffin Banks III, was the Chief of Staff of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Alabama Division. This is the organization that today is campaigning to defund Nascar over its banning of the Confederate flag.  

My grandfather died before I was born and I did not know my father to share such views.  But I take note of his description of himself as being from a “Southern Military family.”  We weren’t outsiders at the Swords and Roses Confederate Ball, as I had somehow imagined.  We belonged.  And on that sticky summer night we had put on our best clothes and participated in a celebration of white antebellum society and the Jim Crow version of Southern history.  

Such celebrations are far from extinct.  If you want to throw a Confederate-themed party today, Pinterest has 29 suggestions for you, including how to decorate a cake with a Confederate flag.  You may encounter protesters, as a museum in Texas did recently when it announced an “Old South” ball.  One protester explained: “It would be a different matter if we were no longer feeling the effects of the institutionalized racism that [the Confederacy] spawned.  . . So yes, a lot of people see this kind of event as insensitive.”   

At the time of my sister’s debut, I was not among them.  Yes, I was dismayed to find myself at such a supremely tacky event.  But the persistent evils of the Lost Cause ideology it venerated didn’t even cross my mind.  

As far as my forebears’ complicity is concerned, back then I wasn’t willing to know that.  Instead, not long after, I decided it was time for me to leave the South.  I would plant my flag far from my family and our “lineage.”  At such a distance I could look away, and for many long years I did.