Hill Women

by Cassie Chambers

  And I rarely ran alone. There was a slew of kids to get into trouble with. My cousins—Melissa, Ben, and Dustin—are all around the same age as me, and our family relationship mandated that we become friends. Family was important—all of our parents believed so, and they made sure we spent time together, “gettin’ to know your kinfolk,” as Granny liked to say.

  Melissa, just a few months older than me, was my best friend. We would catch crawdads in the creek and play with dolls in the living room. The boys, Ben and Dustin, would drive us crazy with their wild antics and roughhousing ways. Even as young children they were taught to embody a type of tough masculinity that drew suspicious glances from us girls. We would sneak off into the fields to pick wildflowers and hide when we heard them coming.

  Aunt Ruth was often charged with supervising us. She had a matter-of-fact approach to life and childcare. “Well, of course that dog bit you,” she once told a crying Ben. “I told you not to pull his ears. That’ll teach you not to bother that dog no more.” She raised her eyebrows at him and went back to work. She was a busy woman, doing what it took to keep the remaining family afloat. She didn’t have time to fuss over us, and she believed that children learned from the natural consequences of their actions. But we never doubted that she loved us something fierce.

  * * *

  —

  I had spent the morning playing in the creek that cuts across the cow pasture, moving the flat rocks around, trying to build a dam. It was hot, and I was on my way to the house for a glass of water. As I rounded the corner I saw Granny, limbs akimbo, standing awkwardly in a tree. Grannies were not supposed to climb trees. My jaw dropped open a bit.

  “Cassie, git me a jar,” she hollered, her voice raised and filled with excitement. “Your Granny’s about to git you a tree frog!”

  I had been wanting a pet frog. I listened to them singing in the evenings and ran from corner to corner of the yard trying to find them. I never imagined, though, that I would come to acquire one through my Granny’s acrobatic prowess.

  Granny’s hands closed swiftly and softly around something on a tree branch, and she made the short drop to the ground below, tree frog in hand. Her eyes twinkled from behind her thick glasses as she said, “Ah, boy! We’ve got ’im!”

  Granny found joy in the simple things. In a Ralph Stanley cassette tape playing while she swept the house. In a neighbor stopping by for a short visit. In helping a granddaughter get a new pet. She celebrated each moment that stood out against the backdrop of challenge and struggle.

  Housework filled Granny’s days. Without indoor plumbing, she had to travel back and forth to the well to get water for tasks like washing dishes and doing laundry. The wood-fired stove that she cooked on was cantankerous, and it was hard to keep it from getting too hot and burning the food. The house was heated by a single coal stove. In the winter, Granny sometimes woke up before four o’clock to stoke the fire.

  By the early 1990s, hard work was the usual for Granny. From the time she was a child growing up on a farm, she was expected to help out in the fields and the house. There was little time for fun or rest. Granny never played a sport or went to a friend’s house or the movies. She never watched television or had a doll or ate ice cream. Instead, she picked beans, made corn bread, and milked cows. She attended school on and off until she dropped out in the third grade.

  Even with her brothers and sisters pitching in, resources were scarce. There were times when she and her six siblings went hungry. The house they lived in—a few miles from Cow Creek—was old, and the single fireplace couldn’t keep it adequately heated in the winter. Some mornings she would wake up to find her blanket covered in frost.

  Yet somehow she learned to find joy in it all. I know this because I saw it: the way joy always flowed so easily and freely through her. She hummed as she cooked. She danced as she cleaned. She laughed clearly and frequently.

  Her joy hid the poverty. I didn’t know that the walls of the farmhouse on Cow Creek were made out of cheap particleboard or that having walls made out of particleboard was anything to be ashamed of. I didn’t understand that the tin roof was in desperate need of repair. I didn’t realize that some kids would turn up their noses at the bologna sandwiches we had for lunch some days. Years later, I would learn that bologna sandwiches had been a rare and expensive treat when Ruth and my mother were growing up, and I would feel bad for taking them for granted.

  But it also didn’t feel as though we were poor. Granny was generous. She offered anyone passing through Cow Creek a meal or a piece of cake. Once, a man came electioneering, asking Granny for her vote. “Son, you know I can’t vote for you,” she said mirthfully, “ ’cause you’s a Republican, and I don’t mess with that foolishness. But if you come on up to the house I got a piece of pie that you’re welcome to.” Granny had spent all day working on that pie, a special treat for her family, but this man looked hungry, and Granny wouldn’t abide hungry people walking around Cow Creek.

  The evening after the frog capture we were watching the old television in the living room. It was finally working again, thanks to Granny’s efforts. She had taken it apart and fixed it herself that afternoon. I had watched as she laid out the pieces carefully, her blue eyes squinting as she thought. I doubt a trained television repairman could’ve done a better job. In my mind, there was nothing Granny couldn’t fix.

  * * *

  —

  A few days later, I heard a car rumbling off in the distance, the sound of crunching gravel bouncing off the mountains. I ran down the hill from the house to the road, hoping to make out the color of the car as it rounded the bend. Before I knew it I could feel it: it was my mother. I ran to her as soon as the car stopped.

  My mother, Wilma, is beautiful. At that time, she had permed blond hair; strong, tanned legs; and Granny’s—her mother’s—sparkling eyes. Her speech was fast, accented, carrying the tone and rhythm of the mountains.

  In many ways, Wilma took after Granny. She had her same easy smile and her same fiery temper. It would flare quickly, burn brightly, then extinguish as fast as it had arrived. As a child, she fought ferociously with each of her four brothers. She once threw an empty gallon orange-juice container twenty yards while running, to bean her brother Dale in the back of the head. She whacked another brother with a fireplace poker when he messed with her pet cat. She wasn’t afraid of a fight.

  She was also incredibly kind. When our pet dog went blind, she made sure to keep everything in the house the same so that the dog could find her way around. She cried when the monster died in the movie Godzilla because it pained her to see any living creature suffer. She always told me, “You get more flies with honey than vinegar.” I would come to see that Wilma embodied the delicate balance of so many mountain women: kind, gentle, firm, unyielding, capable of erupting into fire under the right circumstances.

  Wilma, like Granny before her, was well acquainted with hard work as a child. She would get up at four or five o’clock to help cook breakfast before the others woke up. The house was drafty, and it could be an hour before it was warm enough not to see your breath in the winter air. Once the morning meal was done, Wilma would clean the kitchen and join the others—including Ruth—in the fields by seven A.M. Other than a short lunch break, she worked straight through until four in the afternoon. Then she and her siblings would complete their chores, play tag or softball in the yard, and go to bed. The next morning she would do it all again.

  I was excited, as I always was, to see my mother that day in the mountains. We loaded my few things into the old car and began the drive home. We lived in Berea, less than fifty miles from Owsley County, but the hills and curves made it seem much farther. Along the way I told my mother about my adventures on the farm: the places my dog, Bubbles, and I explored, the way I helped Granny make the corn bread, the tree frog that Granny and I caught and later released. She listened carefully, asked q
uestions, and told me she was glad I had fun.

  A little over an hour later, we arrived. Berea is set in the foothills of the mountains, at the western edge of Appalachia—the last county that the Appalachian Regional Commission considers part of Appalachia proper. This small town has always been a place ahead of its time, in large part because of Berea College. Founded in 1855 by the abolitionist John Fee, Berea opened its doors to students of all races and both genders from the outset. In 1866, the year after the Civil War, ninety-six of its students were black and ninety-one were white. Today, one in three students is a person of color, and the school enrolls students from more than sixty countries. The progressive values embodied by Berea College have seeped into the surrounding community. Full of artisans, international craft markets, and eclectic musicians, Berea feels different—more diverse and colorful—than many people expect Appalachia to be.

  Undergirding this diversity is a distinctive mountain feel. Most of Berea’s students, more than 70 percent today, come from Kentucky or Appalachia. The average student’s family makes less than $30,000 per year, and over half are first-generation college students. That reflects the school’s mission: to provide a free college education to low-income Appalachian students. Instead of paying tuition, students participate in a work-study program, where they are employed as teaching assistants, restaurant workers, and folk artisans. My mother, in her early days at Berea, worked as a weaver. Another friend of hers learned to make baskets by hand. Even now, a quilt made in Berea is a prized possession of many a Kentuckian.

  Young people flock to Berea because of the college’s combination of quality and affordability. In an age of increasing college debt, a free education is a hard thing to come by. With them, these students bring their music, their food, and their art. The college, and, subsequently, the town, celebrates this unique culture, a blend of the mountains and countries far away. The campus occupies the center of town, the heartbeat that energizes the surrounding community.

  Once we were home that evening, I played in the living room while my mother studied for her college classes. The worn carpet in our apartment became mountains and valleys where my plastic animals frolicked. I was good at entertaining myself. As an only child, I learned early how to keep myself occupied. I once spent an entire afternoon watching a line of ants build a mound.

  While I played on the floor, my mother sat above me on the couch, surrounded by yellow notepads and open library books. I asked her a question, and it took her a minute to pull her thoughts away from the book she was bent over. A few hours later my father returned from his classes, and we built a zoo underneath the coffee table.

  My mother was almost finished with her college degree. After taking evening classes at a nearby school for a couple of years, she had recently gone back to Berea as a full-time student. Despite being the second youngest of her seven siblings, she would soon become the first in her family to graduate from college, just as, a few years before, she was the first in her family to finish high school. Lying on our living room floor, I knew that my mother would study late that night, as she did many nights. She would tuck me in to bed, read me a book, and then return to the living room. There she would write papers and tackle homework assignments. In the middle of the night I would sometimes sneak out of bed and tiptoe down the short hallway. I would watch my mother, brow furrowed, seeking a way forward in the pages.

  * * *

  —

  They are strong mountain women, Aunt Ruth, Granny, my mother. When I was a child, it seemed as though they could bend the world to their will. I never once heard them say “I can’t do that.” They also never directed those words at me. Once, when I was seven or so, I told Granny “I want a cucumber,” expecting her to hand me one from the basket of vegetables on her lap. “Well, over there’s a whole field of them,” she replied. “Honey, go get you as many cucumbers as you want.” Off to the field I went.

  They modeled independence, hard work, persistence. They took care of me, of one another, and of their communities. They embodied the strength and security of the mountains that surrounded them. It’s no wonder I grew up thinking I could take on the world. But it is still a wonder to me that I was able to in the ways that were to come.

  I don’t have enough ways to honor them, these women of the Appalachian hills. Women who built a support system for me and for others. The best way I know is to tell their stories.

  I was born in the fall of 1986. I had my father’s bright red hair and my mother’s quick-to-flare Eastern Kentucky temper. I screamed most of the time I was in the hospital.

  My parents, Wilma and Orlando, were young, still students. They had gotten married a little less than a year before, and they hadn’t counted on having a baby so soon. When my mother told my father they were pregnant, he joked, “Well, I suppose we will just have to put her out to pasture if we want to feed her.” His joking hid his very real, very palpable concern: babies cost money, something they didn’t have.

  Wilma and Orlando had met when Wilma was a freshman at Berea College. Owsley County High School had left Wilma unprepared for Berea’s rigorous curriculum, so the college made her take a few remedial courses her first semester. One of these, to Wilma’s numerically challenged horror, was math.

  It was there that she met my father.

  Orlando was born in Ohio, in a small town about an hour from Cincinnati. His family has deep ties to Eastern Kentucky: his grandfather was born in Lee County, which shares a border with Owsley. His family had lived in Eastern Kentucky since the mid-1800s, but Orlando’s grandfather left the mountains in the early 1900s, part of a wave of people who left the hills in search of better opportunities in more industrial cities.

  In many ways, this plan paid off for Orlando’s family. Orlando’s father worked in a factory, earning a blue-collar living with a good manufacturing job. His mother was a homemaker. Like Wilma, Orlando grew up in farm country, but in an area with far less poverty. There was a movie theater and a Kmart less than ten miles away. He and his siblings got to go to restaurants occasionally. Everyone always had plenty of clothes and food.

  Wilma’s family, on the other hand, grew most of their food, and it wasn’t until she was in high school that Granny treated them to a store-bought frozen pizza. Almost all of Wilma’s clothes were secondhand, given by churches and neighbors. When she was young, she asked Granny why Santa Claus hated her, since she and her siblings never got toys for Christmas.

  Orlando was a couple of years ahead of Wilma in college. He had bright red hair that curled around his ears and always had a crinkle across the front from putting on a baseball cap right after showering. He was a math major and the teaching assistant assigned to Wilma’s section of remedial math.

  Wilma was in a bad mood that first day of class. The first week of orientation had been exhausting. She missed home. Everything was unfamiliar. Berea, and its few thousand students, seemed overwhelmingly large. She was afraid to leave her dorm room because she wasn’t sure she could find her way back. Even amongst her fellow Appalachian students her heavy Owsley County accent stood out. She entered the classroom right as the bell rang and plopped unhappily into her seat.

  Once the class was seated, Orlando called the roll. One by one, the students answered “Here.” When he reached Wilma’s name, she responded, with too many vowels, “He-arrre.”

  Orlando paused. He looked at Wilma and asked, “Where are you from?” Her accent was distinctive, and he was curious to know more about the attractive blonde in the second row.

  Wilma, normally timid and polite around strangers, had had enough. Her mountain-woman temper flared. “Why did you ask me that?” she said defiantly, her accent growing stronger.

  Orlando, a consummate conflict avoider, quickly lowered his eyes to his roll sheet. “Never mind,” he said, his voice just a touch higher than it had been a minute earlier. He tried to move on to the next name on t
he roll list.

  “No,” Wilma said. “I want to know why you asked me where I’m from. You didn’t ask anyone else where they were from. You think I talk funny, don’t you?”

  “Oh…no…goodness, no,” Orlando stammered. By now his cheeks matched his red hair. He averted his eyes and quickly called the next name on the list. “Sara? Do we have a Sara in the class today?” Wilma, seething in her seat, decided to let him move on unimpeded. He was, after all, she thought, somewhat handsome.

  From then on, Wilma and Orlando saw each other three times a week in Math 015. Wilma decided Orlando was cute and kind. Orlando decided Wilma was beautiful and a bit terrifying. Their initial confrontation soon transformed into a mutual crush.

  Wilma threw herself into her math studies with unprecedented vigor. Each night, she would wrestle her way through her homework, double-checking every answer. The next day, in class, she would call over Orlando to “help” her with the completed problems. As he explained things, she replied, “Oh, yes, I get it now.” She liked having an excuse to interact with him, and she liked the way he smelled. Eventually they began to date.

  On their one-year anniversary, Orlando emptied his savings account. He bummed a ride to a local shopping mall to buy a ring and invited Wilma to dinner at the restaurant where she worked. Orlando had told their friends he was planning to propose that night, and the group had been stealthily creeping up and down the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the proposal through the window. Orlando asked Wilma to marry him, and a smile—half glee, half surprise—spread across her face. After it was clear she had said yes, their friends celebrated in the street.

  Wilma and Orlando decided to schedule the wedding for just a couple of months after the proposal. She was nineteen and he was twenty-one. Neither saw any reason to wait. They both came from places where family was valued more than anything. They were both eager to start a family themselves. A few months after the wedding, Wilma, worried and exhilarated, told Orlando that they were expecting a child.