In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

  One time when we had both reached adulthood, I asked Junior what he remembered of our growing up. He had blocked some things out, he said—like our mother had—but he told me about the time he went to a cave with our father and how our father climbed onto a higher ledge while they were inside the cave, and he stepped on Junior’s fingers. Junior yelped in pain, and Dad looked down at him with an empty expression, said nothing, and continued climbing or walking to wherever he was going. When Junior told me this story, he was still in wonder that a parent could hurt their child, even accidentally, and not feel remorse. Like me, Junior found it almost impossible to believe our father could really do the things he did, feel the way he felt toward us, over the years.

  Unlike me, Junior had to be a man about these things. He learned on the school bus that the quickest way to escape abuse from other boys was to show them he could hurt them back. I’m not sure I ever really escaped, until my tormentors found more interesting things to do. I turned inward to seek a safe haven, and immersed myself in all the beauty I could find in books and nature and psychedelia. And in Granny, of course, and in what I could claim of church. I turned my anger inward, too, since I wasn’t allowed to express it.

  Junior didn’t love reading like I did, and didn’t do particularly well in school. He didn’t seem to care about it, while I relished every bit of praise my teachers gave me. My love of reading and ability to perform well academically reinforced the positive feedback I received from adults at school. I came to want and need affirmation that I was smart, while Junior was rewarded for achieving less than I did. My achievements, though, gave me an easy route to a college degree without debt, and I had to leave my hometown in order to get it—the most vital step in escaping one’s childhood hell, it seems.

  And while I was subject to the whims and tempers of men who did not deserve the power they held, I sometimes wonder whether it would have been better or worse to be a boy, expected to act like a man in places where men are unpredictable, dangerous, forbidden to feel pain or fear. As a girl, I was yoked with the desire to please. As a boy, my brother was saddled with the command to dominate. For either of us, stepping out of line was met with brutality.

  CHAPTER 40

  In the Holler

  When I hear people musing over the contradictions and sorrows that plague this region—Appalachia, with its unparalleled beauty—I want to remind them that it’s always easy to see someone else’s flaws, especially when the other doesn’t have pretty clothes to hide behind. Whether it’s addiction or racism or cycles of abuse, I want to tell them how these are not just Appalachian problems. We didn’t invent fentanyl or Lortabs or OxyContin. It’s not hillbillies who are getting rich off opioids—but just like this land’s lumber and coal that fueled the economy for the rest of the country, someone is getting rich off our desperate and dying people, our last expendable resource.

  And I cannot say what kind of hate is in anyone else’s heart, but I know it is easy to turn a man to hate if you can convince him that the outsider is the cause of his problems. In a place like this, outsiders have taken away everything the people had—the very minerals from under their feet—time and time again. But just like the coal bosses brought in scabs to break the strikes, it is always someone at a higher pay grade who convinces workers to blame immigrants, people of color, and other poor people when the owner won’t pay fair wages. In a land like this, people have actually been fighting for their lives—not figuratively or metaphorically—since they first decided to take their chances in this unforgiving Eden.

  I’ve discovered that people of all classes fail their children—sometimes they abuse them, sometimes they neglect them. But if you can afford a good lawyer, you might not go to prison, and your kids probably won’t be going to foster care. Sometimes judges even decide, He’s not well suited for prison, so victims watch while abusers walk free because they themselves are too fragile to suffer the consequences of their choices.

  These are rotten fruits we are reaping from conquerors who planted their flags in other people’s homes and holy lands long ago.

  When people ask, What’s wrong with eastern Kentucky? all I know is it’s the same thing that’s wrong with all of us. My father was not the first man to hurt his children or his wife or his parents. My brother won’t be the last to watch his children go into foster care while he—full of love as he is—chooses pills and prison. If we trace these heartbreaks back to some comprehensible root, we would probably find that somewhere along the way, some vital trust was broken.

  It is bittersweet, finally knowing that I can’t save my father—whether he’s too far gone or had nothing to save in the first place, I may never know. I can’t save any other men, either, no matter how lovable I see they are, and how I know they would be okay if they could feel the depth of my love for just one moment. I can’t save my siblings, can’t undo the things that broke inside them while our father filled them with fear and loss and pain. While their mothers watched.

  I can’t change anything that happened to my mother or take away any fear or loss that has haunted her. I can’t give her vibrant youth back to her, nor the beauty in her high cheekbones and smooth skin. Without knowing it, I spent much of my young life longing for a new story with her, one in which we are close and she helps me understand motherhood, or how to be a strong woman. Maybe we get lunch together, just the two of us, or slip away for the weekend.

  But perhaps like me, my mother wasn’t ready to have a girl in her early twenties. And maybe my father loves me as much as he could ever love anyone, and loves himself least of all. There’s nothing to be done with what happened. All I can do is write the future.

  People tell me that my children look just like me. They were both born with almond eyes; my daughter’s were deep and dreamlike for weeks, as if she were sent from another world that held part of her until they knew I was ready. My children’s faces are symmetrical, their teeth straight. A babbling brook of confusion obscured my thoughts for most of their childhoods, but I still read books to them and sang songs and listened when they were sad or angry. I taught myself to apologize when I had wronged them. I taught them to apologize when they had wronged someone else. I know there is nothing I can tell them for certain, other than how I love them.

  I tell my daughter bedtime stories about a certain girl who was sent down from Heaven because her mother wanted her so much. I tell my son stories about being wild and free in the woods, just like he got to be at times. I tell them both stories about Papaw and Granny, about meals and prayers that took place for generations at our kitchen table, about growing up in the holler. They ask for those stories over and over again—my stories, our stories—the threads of a story they will tell their children and grandchildren, who will someday savor those words.

  When Papaw Conn was on his deathbed, I begged him to tell me some of his stories. They don’t matter now, he told me. And I let it go, already mourning what I could never know of him and his life. But I discovered that our stories do matter—they tell us who we are, give us history and context that help us define ourselves. Some stories serve as a warning, while others are an endless source of hope. And there is always more to be written.

  I look into my children’s faces and see the best of myself, a reminder of how important it is to choose my best every day. I see life that springs forth and defies the cruelty we so often inflict. That I can give my children something better, give my self something better. That I must, come hell or high water. I feel the magic of childhood and the whispering strength of forests waiting for us. I see miracles incarnate. I hear the stories I tell my children, the stories of their births and how their lives are gifts to us all. I see myself and my parents, grandparents, generations I never knew but whose love and loss are bound into each thread of my being. I see the holler I was born to, as much as I was born to any person—a place and a symbol filled with power and knowledge, comfort and paradox.

  I see my granny. We’re sitting in the white glider o
n her front porch, a bucket of beans in front of us. She strings them with knowing hands, snapping off the ends without hesitation, breaking them into perfect pieces. I try to mimic her, carefully pulling the strings from each pod, knowing how they feel in your teeth once they’re canned. She does not speak, and I do not need her to. I have watched her carry split wood from this porch—the fire never died in her house. I’ve watched her wring the chickens’ necks and make pie out of just about anything you could ever want. I’ve watched her cry and pray and love when surely there was no reason to.

  Not far from us is the creek I grew up playing in, full of pinching crawdads and the occasional copperhead. There’s the forest with its guardians, oaks and maples who watched me as a child. Granny and I can hear the sound of the leaves moving in the distance. It’s like a prayer she has taught me.

  EPILOGUE

  Endless Revision

  At his high school graduation, Orion walked across the same stage I had crossed seventeen years earlier, when I received my college degree—his little school’s gymnasium couldn’t accommodate the ceremony. Orion earned the highest honors and received scholarships to various universities. Going to college was never even a question in his mind.

  I took him to get his wisdom teeth out earlier in the week. We got home after that appointment, and I picked up his medicines a little later—an antibiotic and something for the pain, in case he needed it. I set them on the kitchen counter and didn’t think about them until he picked them up.

  What’s this?

  We looked at the labels.

  Oxycodone? I’m not taking this shit. Why would they prescribe that to me?

  You’re right, I told him. You don’t need that. We’ll use ibuprofen and Tylenol. I wondered whether he remembered the time we went to my father’s house and I cried in the car afterward, pleading with him not to ever take pills. Later, he said he didn’t remember that specifically, but he knew how badly pills had affected so many people—he wasn’t willing to take that chance.

  I think about my own prescriptions—an opiate for pain from having teeth extracted so I could get my own teeth straightened after my kids both had braces. A muscle relaxer I was given following a car accident. They sit in a container high on a shelf, unopened.

  During a thunderstorm, my daughter, now eleven, calls to me: Come snuggle with me and the dog, Mama. You were made for comforting—we need you. She doesn’t share my love of thunderstorms, which cooled the thick heat in my childhood bedroom.

  I look for every chance to show her I love her, though I sometimes feel so stretched for time, patience, energy. We go on mommy-daughter dates—usually just a simple meal. We go shopping sometimes, but we stick to what we really need and what she can buy with her small allowance.

  Like Granny before me, I have largely hidden my emotional work and struggles from my children. All their lives, I have thought about how my choices will affect them, how they will remember all this, and what stories they might tell themselves about the life we are sharing. I force myself to speak gently when I just want everyone to be quiet. We say grace at the table to remind us all that there is always something to be grateful for. I try to find the balance between giving them everything and saving something for myself.

  I put my arms around my daughter and pull her close.

  I wish everyone could have what we have, she says. I wish every family was like ours.

  When I sit alone at the end of the night, I realize this is my greatest triumph—to give my children the love and comfort I longed for, but which were not to be found in my childhood home. To give them a new world—one where they can thrive—without having first seen that world myself. What greater magic is there? Every day, I try to give my children the kind of life I know Granny wanted for me. And I do it without knowing quite how, writing a new story for us, revising until I get it right.

  I think of my little-girl self, who is surely still inside me, and know I could tell her that she is good and that everything is going to be okay. I would tell her there are angels and spirits who have loved her since before she was born, and they have filled the forest with treasures that only she can find. I would tell her that everything she longs for is also looking for her, yearning to be found. Some of it is in the creek behind her house, hidden in the fossils and the sound the water makes as it caresses each stone. Some is at Granny’s house and at her holy table, where love and sacrifice are made manifest. Some is in the books she loves to read, with characters whose lives she feels as if they were her own. Mostly, it is concealed within her own hopeful heart, just waiting for her to write her story.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Young Smith, my creative writing mentor, for being the first person to encourage me to write my story and for convincing me it was a story worth telling. I am forever grateful to Lois Giancola, who believed in me before I could believe in myself, and who has endlessly supported and encouraged me. Thanks to Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, Bianca Spriggs, and Hafizah Geter—three amazing women who helped this book be the best it could be and saw the value in bringing it to life. I thank my children for loving and accepting me throughout this project and during all our time together—to both of you, I love you most.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2019 Erica Chambers Photography

  Bobi Conn was born in Morehead, Kentucky, and raised in a nearby holler, where she developed a deep connection with the land and her Appalachian roots. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Berea College, the first school in the American South to integrate racially and to teach men and women in the same classrooms. After struggling as a single mother, she worked five part-time jobs at once to support her son and to attend graduate school, where she earned a master’s degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. In addition to writing, Bobi loves playing pool, telling jokes, cooking, being in the woods, attempting to grow a garden, and spending time with her incredible children.