Hannah Coulter

by Wendell Berry

  She was an old-fashioned housewife: determined and skillful and saving and sparing. She worked hard, provided much, bought little, and saved everything that might be of use, buttons and buckles and rags and string and paper sacks from the store. She mended leaky pans, patched clothes, and darned socks. She used the end of a turkey’s wing as a broom to sweep around the stove.

  She always had one Sunday dress carefully preserved that she wore to church and on her visits to town. For those occasions she had also, during all the years I knew her, a little black hat with a brim and a bouquet of paper violets, which she wore as level on her head as a saucer full of coffee.

  My father was not a man of much ambition or, to be honest, much sense about anything beyond his day-to-day life of making do and doing without. It was because of Grandmam’s intelligence and knowledge and thrift that we always had a plenty to eat and enough, though sometimes just barely enough, of everything else.

  And Grandmam, as I have seen in looking back, was the decider of my fate. She shaped my life, without of course knowing what my life would be. She taught me many things that I was going to need to know, without either of us knowing I would need to know them. She made the connections that made my life, as you will see. If it hadn’t been for her, what would my life have been? I don’t know. I know it surely would have been different. And it is only by looking back, as an old woman myself, like her a widow and a grandmother, that I can see how much she loved me and can pay her out of my heart the love I owe her.

  The day my father went away to marry Ivy, Grandmam lost no time in getting me and all my things moved into the room over the kitchen—furniture, clothes, everything. That room was divided from the upstairs rooms at the front of the house by a hallway and another room that was full of broken furniture and such. When our work was done, Grandmam locked the hall doors and put the keys in her pocket.

  She said, “Things are going to be different here, and you don’t want to be in the middle of them.” I didn’t yet know what she meant, but of course she knew Ivy and her boys, and she foresaw what was coming.

  By the time my father and his new family got home that night, the change was all accomplished and beyond talking about. As far as Ivy would ever know, I had always slept in the room over the kitchen and those doors had always been locked. Anyhow, we left her free to suppose it.

  And so I began, you might say, a new life, and from then until I left home the center of it would be Grandmam.

  She took my side. My own mother was gone. Ivy was not going to be a mother to me—as I think Grandmam foreknew, and as Ivy proved. And so Grandmam came back from that distance in time that separates grandmothers from their grandchildren and made herself a mother to me. She disliked Ivy’s open partiality to her boys, and so Grandmam made a principled effort to disguise her own partiality to me. And she did usually disguise it pretty well, partly because I felt the need for disguise myself and did all I could to cooperate.

  But sometimes Grandmam favored me in ways that she thought were clever and secret but were obvious to everybody and embarrassing to me. For instance, to save sugar we drank our coffee bitter, though with plenty of cream. In fact, I liked it that way. But every so often Grandmam would become unable to bear it—for me, that is, she would just not be able to stand it any longer. I would be sitting with the others at the table, Grandmam standing at the stove, as she preferred to do, to wait on us and then eat her own meal in the quiet later. All of a sudden I would see her hand dart over my shoulder and dump a spoonful of sugar into my coffee. She perfectly believed that she was being too quick and sly to be noticed. But of course everybody saw. I was a grown woman with children before I realized how funny that was, and how recklessly devoted. She was like an old ewe with one lamb.

  But her love for me had also more practical outcomes. She said, “You have got to have some money, child.”

  She was looking ahead. I had not the least idea what she saw, but I understood pretty quick that she was looking ahead. She was thinking of a time when I would not be a girl anymore but would have needs that I would have to meet. Sometimes it seemed dreadful to me that I was coming to a time that would make such demands. But Grandmam was a demanding woman in the present, and she didn’t leave me much time to worry about the future.

  She had not had much schooling—only eight grades—and so school was a big thing to her. “You have got to learn your books,” she said. “You have got to keep at your studies.”

  And so at night, after the others had cleared out of the kitchen and we had put away the dishes, we would sit down across the table from each other, the best oil lamp between us, she with her work basket and mending and I with my books. We would sometimes look up from our work and talk a little, taking a rest, but neither of us went to bed until my homework was done.

  To the extent that she could see to it, I did learn my books. In fact, I became the valedictorian of my graduating class of ten students at the Shagbark School. And again Grandmam embarrassed me by declaring to Ivy and her boys, who were resentful, and to others, who were not the least bit interested, “She is a valedictorian.”

  As she knew, my need for money was just as serious as my need for book learning. To take care of that, she put me to work, and in that way she gave me knowledge just as worthy as any that I got from books, and of more use. The day we moved me into the room over the kitchen was also the day she told me, “You have got to have some money.”

  “Listen,” she said. “You have got to learn to be some account. From now on, when you’re at home and you’re not at your studies, I want you to help me.”

  That was when I was twelve. From then until I was eighteen and graduated from school, I would be at work with her—in the kitchen, in the garden, in the henhouse, in the cowstall. Six years. She was a hard teacher when she needed to be. She made me do my work in the right way. And I learned all the things she knew, which turned out to be all the things I would need to know after I married Nathan in 1948. Though she could not have known it, and she never knew it, the things she taught me were good seeds that sprouted and grew.

  She paid me for my work with the surplus eggs and cream that we carried into Shagbark and sold at the store every Saturday. Out of my earnings I bought my clothes and the few things besides that I needed. That, as Grandmam foresaw, gave me a certain independence from Ivy, who then couldn’t blame me for spending my father’s money. What I didn’t spend, I saved. In the six years I saved $162.37.

  Grandmam was an early riser. She got up way before daylight, even in the summer, partly because she had slept her limit, but she took pride in it too, and she gave the habit to me. I would hear her cot creak as she sat up and began to grope her feet into the carpet slippers that she always wore in the house. She would feel her way to the table, strike a match, and light the lamp. She would lay wood in the cooking stove and open the draft. And then, standing close to the heat if it was winter, she would put on her clothes. She would cross the kitchen to the wash table, dip cold water from the bucket, and wash her face. And then she would sit in her rocker to brush her hair and put it up in a bun for the day. As I dressed and made my bed and brushed my own hair, I would listen to her, knowing by the sounds every move she made. By the time I came down the back stairs and crossed the porch to the kitchen, the coffeepot would have begun to whisper on the stove and Grandmam would be cutting out the breakfast biscuits.

  We ate while the rest of the household was still asleep, and while we ate we talked. That was our social time. Sometimes Grandmam would tell of her memories of the things that had come to her in her life, many of which by then had been lost, but she spoke of them in her matter-of-fact way, just so I would know. Or we talked of what we had been doing and what we were going to do. She would want to know about school and what my life was like away from her and what I hoped for, and I would tell her while she watched me and listened. She would be studying me. Sometimes I had silly thoughts, and when I told them to her I would know they were silly, sh
e didn’t need to say a word. When we had eaten and finished our coffee, we fixed breakfast for the others and went out to milk and do our morning chores.

  That was the life Grandmam made for me, and that she used to protect me from Ivy’s jealousy and her boys’ teasing. It was a good enough life too. After it was over, I realized that it was happier than I had known. We had, you could say, everything but money—Grandmam and I did, anyhow. We had each other and our work, and not much time to think of what we didn’t have.

  Grandmam saw to it that I worked and learned and saved some money. The time and her character required that. But she also tried to see that I had the pleasures she thought were due me. The “extracurricular activities” at our school were nothing like so numerous as they are now. We had too little money to spare, and all of us children were needed to work at home. But every week we had a ball game that we attended when we could, and parties from time to time, and a sort of May festival at the end of the school year.

  When she thought I was old enough, Grandmam allowed me to go on dates with boys. She was strict about the time I was to come home, and the boys would have to present themselves to her before we left and when we got home. She saw to that just by opening the kitchen door and saying, “Young man, come in here and show yourself.”

  She was afraid I would blunder into an early marriage by getting pregnant or just by being silly. She said, “You’re too good and too smart to go to waste. And you’re too pretty for your own good, maybe. It could get you an early start on a miserable life.”

  I didn’t mind her watchfulness as much as I might have, and maybe that was because I really was not much tempted by the boys I went out with, though they were good boys and I liked them well enough. I knew that I was a temptation to them, but I had not yet met anybody who even Grandmam would have seen as much of a threat to my future. She had told me exactly what to do if ever anybody got fresh with me. I was to remove their hand firmly from wherever they had put it, look them directly in the eye, and say, “Are you ready to try that in front of Grandmam?” But it was going to be a while before I let things go that far.

  3

  The Future Shining Before Us

  We were the class of 1940. After we graduated that spring and I had made my speech at the commencement exercises about “the future that lies shining before us,” I had to start wondering what was going to become of me. Now that I was a high school graduate, I felt that I was a grown woman with a life to live and the future, shining or not, before me. I had an idea of freedom, too. I was wanting to leave home. The bad feeling and the ongoing resentment of Ivy and her boys had begun to be a prison to me. Even my good life with Grandmam seemed not enough to keep me there with the whole world waiting, it seemed like, for me to come out into it. But I was lazy-minded and scared too, and was letting myself just drift along, nowhere near to packing my things and saying, “Well, good-bye. I’m going.”

  But it wasn’t very long before Grandmam saved me any further trouble by making up my mind for me. This was her last gift to me.

  One morning when we were finishing our breakfast, she put down her coffee cup and sat looking at me. She did that for maybe a minute, letting me know that she was going to say something important.

  And then she said, “Child, dear Hannah, you’re grown up now. You have graduated from school. You’re a valedictorian. You’re smart, and you can do things. This is not the right place for you. You need to go.”

  My throat ached and I felt tears on my face, for I knew beyond doubt that she was right, and there could be no more waiting. I had to go. And it came to me at the same time, as it never had before, how much she had done for me, and how much I loved her and would miss her.

  She looked at me a while again without speaking, dry-eyed, and then she picked up a dish towel and handed it to me to wipe away my tears.

  “Listen. Tomorrow morning we’re going down to Hargrave. I’m telling you now so you can think about it and get your mind in order. We’re going to see what we can do.”

  My father drove us to Hargrave. Grandmam instructed him to take us to a little grocery store on the main road just where the houses of the town began. He was to leave us there and come back for us at a time Grandmam gave him. She had arranged this, as I didn’t yet understand, because she didn’t want us to be associated with my father’s old car, which looked, as she had often said, like the last of pea time. He of course knew exactly what she was up to, and I remember how he grinned.

  When he had let us out in front of the little store, Grandmam waited for him to drive away, and then she turned to me. She said, “We are going to see an old friend of mine.”

  She looked me over and gave a few improving touches to my dress and hair. I was wearing a navy blue dress with a close-fitting white collar and covered buttons, a very dressy dress, very becoming, that she had given me to graduate in.

  She was wearing her good black Sunday dress and her black hat with the violets, her hair neatly done up. As I had never seen her do before, she was wearing too a pair of small silver earrings and a silver broach that matched. To my surprise, seeing her then in the dignity of her best clothes and the strange newness of that day, I saw that my grandmother, as familiar to me as the path to the barn, was a beautiful woman.

  Both of us were carrying our purses and wearing gloves.

  We didn’t have far to go, only two doors to a handsome red brick house in a row of other such houses that stood between the street and the top of the Ohio River bluff. We went across a green lawn with a birdbath and tall trees, and up the porch steps to a door with leaded glass. Through the glass I could see into a hallway where the light was colored by a stained-glass window at a landing on the stairs.

  Grandmam raised the loop of a brass knocker and knocked three times. After a minute we heard steps, and then the door was opened by a white-haired lady, slightly stooped, who looked piercingly at us through her rimless glasses, and then smiled and pushed open the screen door. “Well! Vinnie Steadman! Come in!”

  “Hello, Ora Finley,” Grandmam said, not ready to come in yet. She stepped aside and reached for me where I was standing behind her. Patting my shoulder with her hand, she stood me where I could be seen. “This is Hannah Steadman.” She said it proudly, and then to prove her pride she said, “She is the valedictorian of her school.”

  I felt myself blush hot to the top of my head, and I had tears in my eyes that I was afraid were going to run over, but they didn’t.

  “Oh, it’s Callie’s girl!” Mrs. Finley said in a tone that both sorrowed for my mother and approved of me. She took another of her unhurried straight looks at me and said, “Isn’t she fine!” And then, looking back at Grandmam, and with a sort of insistent gesture pushing the screen door wider, she said, “You all come in.”

  It was a requirement when she said it that time, and we went in.

  We followed her into a pleasant living room with a big window looking out to the front, an ornate clock on the mantelpiece, and under the window a radiator fairly loaded with books and magazines. I could hear the clock ticking in a solemn way that made the house seem proper and formal, as Mrs. Finley herself seemed to be. She and Grandmam sat down in armchairs on either side of the big window, and I perched on the edge of a slipcovered sofa on the other side of the room.

  Miss Ora—that was what I was going to call her—and Grandmam talked for a while without reference to me. They had been girls together when Miss Ora’s father kept the store at Shagbark. They told each other their news or some of it, spoke of the changing times, and named names from the past. There was pleasure and some laughter in all their talk, for they were happy to see each other. And there was something else too, a sort of tone that made you know they were speaking out of the knowledge of age and widowhood and hard times.

  After a while Miss Ora said, “And how are Dalton and Ivy and her boys?”

  “The same,” Grandmam said. “As you would expect.”

  Seeing Grandmam’s reluctance
to say more, Miss Ora said, “Hmh!” and to change the subject looked over at me. She was smiling, but she had sharp, estimating eyes that were not easy to meet, and I blushed again.

  “Well, Hannah, you have finished school.”

  I could only smile back and nod, but Grandmam was quick to answer for me. “Yes. She made A’s in all her studies. She was the number one.”

  Miss Ora said, “Yes. I heard you say that.”

  “Yes,” Grandmam said, talking as if I were perfectly deaf, understanding rightly that I was too shy to take part. “And now she needs to be getting on. She don’t need to be any longer at home.” She pressed her lips together, looked straight at Miss Ora, and nodded, inviting her to come to her own conclusion.

  Miss Ora looked back and then said, “I see.”

  She had given up talking to me. She said to Grandmam, “And what does she propose to do with herself?”

  “She would like to come down here to Hargrave and get a job. There are lots of things she could do. They taught her to typewrite. She can do it fast. And she can write in shorthand. She could work in an office. She could work in one of the warehouses when the market opens. She would catch on. She can do anything.”

  When I looked at myself in the mirror at home, I saw myself as a grown woman, but out in the world that was asking me to come into it, I was still a girl. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I had no knowledge of my own that would take me past Shagbark. I was inexperienced and unformed—malleable, I think, would be the word. Grandmam knew it. I was a piece of soft clay. I couldn’t be that way for long, but while I was she was determined to mold me into something that could stay alive.