by Ruth White
While we are eating breakfast, we see Uncle Martin through the window. He has come to walk Aunt Sue back down the mountain. Daddy goes out on the porch to meet him, and we hear him telling Uncle Martin that he’s gotta see the new calf that was born last night. Says it’s the prettiest calf ever was. Says he’s sure to get top dollar for it at the cow sale next year. So the two of them go into the barn to see the calf.
That makes Aunt Sue so mad, she starts muttering and mumbling about calves and babies. Samuel pats her shoulder. Aunt Sue says that Willy Starr might be her brother, but she’s got no more use for him than for a two-hundred-pound slug. I freeze to my seat. Who would believe that Aunt Sue has the nerve to say such a thing?
Then Nell says a two-hundred pound slug would be of some use. You could charge people a nickel to look at it. Next thing you know we’re all giggling, even Aunt Sue. That’s our Nell. When you need a little laugh, she can give it to you.
June, 1920
Since our cousin Grace got married, Trula has boys on her brain and nothing else. She and Grace's sister, Pearl, are both sixteen. Pearl comes over to see Trula, and they hole up in the
kitchen together, whispering about Grace and Ken blissfully wallowing in the holy state of macaroni, and they giggle, giggle, giggle.
They also talk about boys they know, who fancies who, and who’s getting married. I know Trula wants a husband of her own, but when will she ever find a beau? All she does is work and take care of Mommie's babies.
Pearl is a sweet girl. She tells me things that happen down in the bottom where people live in houses close together and drive around in cars. She's been to Skylark a few times, and once she went all the way to Bluefield where she saw some colored people. She brung back a piece of oil cloth for Mommie to put on the eating table. It was mostly white with red berries for decoration. Mommie thanked her nicely and said she’d pay her back. But Pearl told Mommie no, it was a present. I could tell Mommie was tickled. She loves pretty things, and does not get to see many. There was a bit of a smile on her faces as she spread the oil cloth over the table.
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We are all outside after a big noontime dinner. Dad and Luther are having a belching contest. Trula is bouncing Daniel on her knee while she and Roxie look through a magazine Samuel brung to us. President Woodrow Wilson is on the cover. Dad calls him the worst president ever was. He’s a Democrat.
While Nell and I patiently wait our turn to look at the magazine, we watch Charles tormenting a big fat June bug. He has tied a string to its poor little leg. He likes to watch it trying to fly away.
Mommie is sitting on the side of the porch, fanning her face with a funeral fan. She’s not feeling good. Since Daniel came, she’s been falling off so bad, she’s down to nearly nothing. Samuel is beside of Mommie, and he says to Dad that Mommie needs to see a doctor, but Dad says he does not have money for doctors.
We see somebody coming up Willy’s Road with a horse and wagon. We know it’s a peddler because we can hear his goodies clanking around in the wagon a long time before he gets to the house. When he reaches us, we’re all standing around in the yard, waiting for him. Everybody says hello, and the peddler climbs down off his seat and commences hauling things out for us to look at. In a few minutes we are clustered about him.
He’s got skillets and pots and knives and plates and aprons and clothes pins and nails and screw drivers and slop jars and coal buckets and I don’t know what all. He's got toys too, and they are real toys, not June bugs on a string. Dad has to slap Jewel’s hands away from a baby doll, and Charles's hands away from a set of make-believe six-shooters in aholster. The rest of us hold our hands behind our backs.
The horse hauling the wagon is an old white good-for-nothing swayback, with red bows and tinkly bells on its head. But I can’t look at it for the pity I feel. There is too much sadness in its old moldy eyes. It stands there jerking around, making the bells tinkle as it swishes the flies away with its tail.
Mommie is looking at the sewing notions, and after a while she says she’d like to have her a new embroidery pattern. We look at the patterns. They are fifteen cents apiece. There are sunsets and evening stars and all kinds of flowers. But Mommie wants one of the ocean.
“That one,” she says, “I want that one.”
We all look at the ocean waves on a far-off shore. Then Dad tells her we don’t have the money for such as that.
About that time I see a hand mirror and brush, a matching set with tiny bluebells painted on the pink handles. I walk over to get a better look, but I don’t touch. The peddler comes up beside me where I am gazing at the brush and mirror.
He tells me, “Go ahead little girl, you can touch it. Ain't it pretty?”
I am so bashful I hang my head down and twist my hair round my fingers. The man is quiet, and when I glance up at him I see a strange look about him. Then I figure it out – his eyes are dark brown. We don’t see many of them.
Suddenly he says to nobody in particular, “This child has the prettiest color for hair there is in the world. It’s the same color as my mama’s hair usta be until she died. I was real young then. Some people call this color chestnut. You can see splashes of gold where the sunlight hits it.”
Nobody says a word about that. They are too busy day-dreaming over the peddler’s things.
I fancy the fairytale brush and mirror are mine to keep for my very own. I imagine me brushing my hair with one hand and holding the mirror with the other. The mirror in the big room over the dresser has dark spots where the shiny stuff is skinned off, but this mirror is smooth and clear as spring water. It makes every reflection prettier.
Dad bumps into me and says, “Move, Nell, you’re in my way.” Sometimes he calls me Jewel or Trula. Then he asks the peddler, “How much is that pistol yonder?”
The guns are hung up high on the inside wall of the wagon. The peddler climbs in and fetches the gun for Dad to see up close. He tells Dad he just a while ago sold one of these pistols to a good-looking fella by the name of Ben Starr. Dad tells him that Ben Starr is his baby brother, and he might be a good-looking fella – everybody says so – but when it comes to guns the man is possessed with the devil.
I see that Mommie has lost interest and gone back to the porch. Samuel goes into the house. Dad says he’d buy him that gun if it didn’t cost so much, but it’s marked up way too high. So he hands it back and says to the peddler that he reckons he has wasted his time coming all the way up on the top of Starr Mountain, since we got no money to waste.
Samuel comes out with a pan of water. He gives the pan to Luther and tells him to hold it there for the horse. Then he passes something to the peddler. I see a nickel and a dime changing hands, and Samuel says he wants that embroidery pattern for Mommie, the one with the ocean waves on the shore. Samuel takes the pattern to Mommie. She can’t keep from smiling, so she puts her hand over her mouth to hide her bad teeth.
I look at the brush and mirror some more. I want it so bad, but I know I won’t ever have anything so useless and girly. If Dad had the money he’d buy something important like a pistol, not a brush and mirror with bluebells on the pink handles. I almost want to cry for the longing that is in me, and I think of the old old thing in the woods by Willy’s Road, how it goes on wanting and wanting day and night, year after year, but never gets satisfied of its wanting.
The peddler is putting his stuff away to drive back down the mountain and try to sell to somebody else. I take one last look at the hair set as his hands fall on them. Then the man takes the brush and mirror and pushes them at me.
“Take’em,” he says in a grumpy voice. “I can’t sell’em, and they’re no good to me. Somebody orta get some enjoyment out of them.”
I stand there with the brush and mirror in my hands, not able to speak or move or anything, as the peddler climbs onto his seat and tells the horse to gitty-up, you old nag. In another moment they are gone and Nell and Jewel are trying to take the brush and mirror out of my
hands. But I hold on.
Way deep in the night when it’s too late to be yesterday and too early to be tomorrow, I wake up and touch the brush and mirror where I have stashed them under my pillow. I think of the peddler with his kind brown eyes. I think of him traveling around in the hills with just that sorry horse for company. He’s probably sleeping beside of some road right now all alone. It gives me strange warm feelings, and I wish I was there with him in the dark, real close.
Four
July, 1920
The traveling nurse comes up from Granger the county seat on a wagon loaded down with nursing stuff. She is big-boned and brown from riding in the sun. Her hair is pulled back in a knot. With a heart listening thing around her neck, she sets up in the kitchen, and orders us to come to her one at a time so she can examinate us. While she's checking Dad first, Mommie makes us young'uns run quick to the washing spring and clean our ears and necks and faces. We take some rags and soap, go at a good trot and wash the parts she told us in the cold water that gurgles up near the willow tree.
Back at the house Mommie is finishing up, and Samuel tells Trula to go in there next. The nurse comes out and says to Dad he better get Mommie into Skylark to the clinic for some blood tests. Says she might be anemic, and that’s not a thing you mess around with. Dad says not a word.
When it comes my turn to go in and see the nurse I don’t want to go. I’m scared. But Mommie smacks me and tells me to get on in there. So I go. The nurse sets me on a stool and listens to my heart and lungs. Then she looks in my eyes and ears and taps me on the knees to make them jerk. She looks at my fingernails that are gnawed down to the quick, and clacks her tongue.
She asks me do I hocky regular? I do pretty regular. Then she gives me this little cup and tells me to pee in it. I like to fall off the stool. Did everybody have to do this? I shake my head no.
“Get over there in that corner and piss is this cup, you silly girl! I’m not gonna look if that’s what worries you.”
I take the cup and go into the corner. When I glance at her, sure enough she's not watching me. She's writing with a yellow pencil in a notebook she’s got there, and not paying me any attention.
When I finally do the deed and deliver the cup to the nurse, she pops a lid on it, then takes a piece of white tape and writes Lorie Starr 8, and Willy/Gertrude below that. She slaps the tape onto the side of the cup. I gotta admit that’s clever of her to do it right then before she goes on to somebody else and gets the cups mixed up.
As the county nurse leaves in her wagon with all of our pee stashed away, Dad says, “That big gal told me she got a hundred and fifty-five samples of pee today.”
We all sit quiet for a minute and think about that.
Then Nell says, “Well, I hope that big gal does not wreck her wagon on the way back to Granger.”
And we laugh so hard. All of us laughing together on this day. Like a happy family.
August, 1920
I am alone in the girls sleeping loft on a pretty summer morning, not too warm. Yesterday it rained buckets and I washed my long hair in it. Now it’s as fluffy as goose down. As I brush it with my bluebell brush, I think of the peddler with a warm mushy feeling. I look out across the mountaintop under a clear blue sky, and wonder where out there in the world he’s at.
Samuel is taking Mommie to the doctor. And he’s also taking Trula, Luther, Roxie, Nell and me too! Dad was contrary to the whole idea, but Samuel had the nerve to tell him that if Mommie should get real sick, Dad would have it on his conscience for not taking better care of her.
That made Dad mad, but after a while he said, “All right. Go on then. But I don’t have money for doctors.”
Samuel said he had a little money put away. So he has hired Mack Call to drive us in a 1913 Ford Model T. Mack is the son of Mr. Call who owns the Deep Bottom store. It’s Mr. Call’s automobile, but he can’t drive it, so Mack gets to do it. He hauls a lot of people to different places. I never rode in an automobile before, but today we are going all the way to Skylark, Virginia. That’s nearabout sixteen miles from Deep Bottom.
You can’t drive an automobile up Gospel Road but just a little ways before you run into ruts and rocks, and deep mud when it rains. You can barely drive a horse and wagon on it. And Willy’s Road is worse. So we will have to walk down off the mountain and meet Mack at the mouth of Gospel Road. It’s only two miles down, but as Nell likes to say, it’s much further coming back up.
Jewel is too young to know what all the fuss is about, but Charles understands, and I feel sorry for him. He wants to go real bad. He has cried and cried for days. Samuel explains to him there is not room for all of us in the car, but he will bring him something special. But Charles wants to go to Skylark in an automobile. That’s all the something special he wants. Aunt Laura has said she will tend to Daniel, so we drop him off on our way down the mountain.
Mack Call is waiting for us in his automobile as promised. Trula slips into the front seat with him, and Mommie gets in beside her. I scrunch up in the back with Nell and Roxie and Luther and Samuel. I have to sit on Luther’s lap behind Mommie, and Nell sits on Samuel’s lap on the other side. Roxie is squeezed nearly flat in the middle. Mack has the top folded back so we can see out around us. As we drive through Deep Bottom, I am hoping that somebody from school will walk by, so they can see Lorelei Starr riding in an automobile. I would not be stuck up about it. I would wave at them. But I don’t see anybody, and we head out a road I’ve never been on before. It twists and turns going towards Skylark.
As we screech around the curves, I feel the biscuits and gravy I had for breakfast go swooshing around in my tum. I don't think Mack Call has to go this fast. I believe he might be trying to show off for Trula. And it looks like it’s working for him. Even from the back seat I can see she’s got the dreamy eyes. I glance over the side of the car. We are right on the edge of the road. You can see a long ways into the holler. I hope Mack is as good a driver as he thinks he is, else we could find ourselves in the branches of one of the trees down there.
It’s hot and sticky with all of us so close, even with the top of the car rolled back, and pretty soon I have to say, “I’d like to puke please.”
Roxie says, “Me too.”
Nell says, “Me too.”
Luther laughs and calls us sissies.
Samuel says to Mack, “I think we’d better pull over and let these girls get out for a minute. They're car sick.”
So Mack pulls off where a cliff is hanging over the road, and we all pile out. Me and Nell puke on the weeds over the side of the hill, but Roxie says she can't. Luther tells her to stick her finger down her throat so we can all upchuck at the same time and get it over with. So she does, but not much comes out, just some yellow slime. When I see it, I go back to the weeds and puke some more.
All this time Mack Call is standing close to Trula, and both of them are laughing at us, like puking is the most entertaining show in the world. Mommie is in the shade, looking up at the sky. Her face is not dark today. Her dress is one she got out of the charity bag. It usta be nice before it was washed. Then the color came out and it drew up. It still looks better than her everyday dresses. She smiles at Samuel when he comes up beside her and he smiles back. They say a few words together.
After puking I feel better, and so does Roxie and Nell. When we get to Skylark we can’t get enough of looking at things and people. I never imagined so many stores in one place together. Mack takes us to the clinic and we pile out of the Model T. again. Samuel goes in with Mommie while the rest of us wait beside the automobile.
Now I am mortified at the way Mack and Trula are hanging all over each other. He places his hands around her waist and she puts her hands on his chest and looks up into his face. This is a worry because I happen to know Mack Call is married with two little bitty kids, and another on the way. Everybody knows it, including Trula. What’s the matter with her anyhow?
When Samuel comes out, Trula jumps away from Mack, and sm
oothes her dress with nervous hands. Her face is like a tomato, but Samuel does not seem to notice. He tells us Mommie will have to wait to see the doctor, and there is a long line ahead of her.
He gives some money to Trula and says, “Y’all go on to the pictures.”
Just to make sure I heard him right I ask, “Do you mean the picture show?”
And he grins at me and says, “That’s what I mean. Go on and see your first picture show, Lorelei, honey.”
Mack tells us The Miracle Man starring Lon Chaney is playing, and he thinks he will go with us. I am so happy I can overlook how him and Trula were acting.
To me The Miracle Man is a miracle itself. The beautiful people on the flickering screen. The words that come up in front of you like a page in a book telling you what the people are saying. The clothes they wear. The houses they live in. All miracles.
Trula and Mack, Luther, Roxie, Nell, and me, Lorelei, not one of us speaks a word for an hour and a half. When it’s almost over I notice that Trula and Mack are holding hands, but I tell myself I didn’t see a thing.
Outside the dark movie house the sunlight nearly blinds us. We stand there shading our eyes till they’re tuned in. A man walks by, puts out his hand, and barely touches my hair.
“Curly Locks, Curly Locks,” says he.
I jerk myself away from him, and my sisters giggle. They say the man was just telling me that my hair is pretty. He didn’t mean anything.
Mommie and Samuel are waiting for us at the clinic. The doctor has sent home a poke full of medicines for Mommie. He can’t say for a sure fact what’s wrong with her, but he thinks she’s got female trouble. He says if she takes all these medicines she’ll be fine. I don’t know what female trouble is, but I’ve got a vague idea.