Hill Women
Page 6
I rushed out of my fifth-grade classroom one afternoon, eager to find my mother in the school pickup line. All day I had been full of anticipation. I had to get to Owsley County as quickly as possible.
Aunt Ruth had a date.
Aunt Ruth had never dated before. Many times I had asked her, “Aunt Ruth, when are you going to get a boyfriend?” She acted surprised each and every time. She said that she had work to do. That Papaw didn’t like it. That she was too busy for a boyfriend. She had a million excuses, and she would hand them out with a smile and a quick pivot in the conversation.
But things in Owsley County had changed, the type of change that was complete and disorienting. A couple of years before, Papaw had died from Alzheimer’s-related complications. He had been sick for the better part of a decade, and his tall, work-hardened body finally gave out.
Granny buried him in his overalls. He always wore overalls, no matter the occasion. On my mother’s wedding day, he showed up in his nicest pair of bibbed ones. Despite his happiness that his daughter was getting married, he refused to walk her down the aisle because he was ashamed he had nothing else to wear. My mother, upset that her father wouldn’t give her away on her wedding day, begged him to change his mind. When he refused, she had her brother Dale walk her down the aisle in his place.
Papaw had such pride in public. He was a tall man who always stood straight and looked people in the eye. He stopped going to a store in town because the owner made a snide comment about his muddy clothes. Papaw fiercely defended his reputation if it was ever called into question.
Yet I think he also had a lot of private shame. Shame in the clothes he wore, the way he lived, his unshakable poverty. He worked twelve-hour-plus days on the farm to be able to provide for his family. I’m sure there was a part of him that felt guilty that he couldn’t provide more. I think he knew some people in the world were asking why he couldn’t do better. I hope, in the end, he found peace.
Papaw’s death meant that Granny and Ruth were the only ones left at Cow Creek, living in a house that was rapidly falling apart. A chunk of the front porch had rotted out. The barn was increasingly unsound. There were neither the hours in the day nor the dollars in the bank to take care of everything.
For a while, they made it work. The previous landlords had set it up through a lawyer for Granny to have a life estate at the farm, meaning that she could stay, rent free, for the remainder of her life. The Reeds had bought the farm with that understanding—plus they weren’t about to kick out a good family that had fallen on hard times. Finally, though, Aunt Ruth and Granny gave up the lease on Cow Creek. Ruth, never one to show too much emotion, cried the day they sold the farm animals.
The once family-filled home became vacant. With the tobacco industry in decline, nobody else wanted to rent it, and it would sit empty for decades. A few meth addicts looking for a place to cook drugs would be the only people to enter it for the next twenty years.
Dale owned a piece of land on the other side of Booneville, just up the hill from his house. He offered to let his mother and sister put a trailer on it. Ruth and Granny agreed. I went with them to buy that trailer. It had low ceilings and a narrow hallway. The walls were covered in cheap, fake wood paneling. No matter how much Granny cleaned it, it always felt just a little bit dirty. Dale built a wooden porch onto the front to make it feel more like a home.
This new home, however lackluster it might seem, represented a new life for Aunt Ruth. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, she had free time. She didn’t have to wake up before dawn to tend to the farm. She didn’t have to stay up late into the night worrying about all of the things wrong in the old, drafty house. She worked a normal eight-hour workday as a cashier at the dollar store. Afterward, she went home to a reasonable number of chores.
I’m not sure if she intended to fill her free time with companionship. Aunt Ruth never struck me as the romantic type. She was usually dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts. I don’t think she owned any makeup.
But she did keep a romance novel on the stand near her bed. My cousin Melissa and I found it once, and we squealed over the cover with the shirtless men and fawning women in low-cut dresses. Aunt Ruth also let me and Melissa put makeup, usually borrowed from our mothers’ makeup drawers, on her anytime we wanted. We weren’t great makeup artists—we once covered her brows to lashes in neon-green eye shadow—but she often looked pleased when she saw herself in the mirror afterward. I’m sure there was a part of her that craved attention, romance, companionship. I’m sure there’s a part of every person that does.
Shortly after Aunt Ruth began working at the dollar store, a man named Sonny started to come in regularly. Every morning around ten o’clock he would stop by to purchase washing powder. As he checked out, he would take an extra-long time at the cash register—there was never any line to speak of—chatting with Ruth about her day and the goings-on in town. “Did you hear what Johnny said to Pat yesterday?” he’d say, laughing and slapping his leg. After fifteen minutes or so, he would take his washing powder and leave. He would return the next day for the same routine.
Eventually, folks around town started to put two and two together. Sonny was a divorcé who lived by himself. Both of his sons were grown and out of the house. Surely he had no need for all that washing powder—he must have an ulterior motive. News quickly spread that Sonny was courting Ruth.
At first, Ruth wasn’t sure how she felt about being courted. When she heard, through the town gossip mill, that Sonny intended to call to ask her on a date, she took the phone off the hook overnight. But Sonny was persistent. He knew that Ruth got to work about eight o’clock every morning and that it would take her about ten minutes to drive from her trailer to work. He called the house right before she left, just as she put the phone back on the hook. She decided that she might as well give him a chance.
For their first date, they planned for Sonny to pick her up and drive her to the Dairy Queen in Beattyville. Beattyville, a county over from Owsley, was about a twenty-minute drive and the closest town with a decent restaurant selection; in addition to the Dairy Queen, there was a pizza place.
When I heard that Aunt Ruth was going to the Beattyville Dairy Queen with a man, I knew this was serious. I knew with equal force that I had to be there. I begged my mother to drive me down and let me spend the night with Aunt Ruth. Melissa felt the same way I did. This was the most exciting thing we could remember happening in our lives. My mother agreed to take me. She was also excited for Ruth, and I wonder if she felt relief that Ruth was finally able to experience some of the things she had given up by staying at Cow Creek.
Melissa and I made plans to meet up at Aunt Ruth’s trailer and wait for her to arrive home. Dale was Melissa’s father, so Melissa lived just down the hill from Ruth. She came up as soon as she had finished supper. At first we sat outside, pushing the porch swing back and forth with our toes. As it got dark, we decided to hide near the front porch. We figured this was our best chance to try to catch Ruth and Sonny “a-smoochin’.”
As Melissa and I hid in the dark, we talked about the things young girls talk about. Friends, activities, boys. I remember this conversation distinctly, because it was the first time that I noticed a difference between our lives. I talked about the activities I was involved in—all of the moving pieces of my young life. Girl Scouts, soccer, a community theater play. I talked about my friends, the sleepovers we had, and how we went for ice cream after we won a softball game.
Melissa didn’t have these things to talk about. She didn’t do any activities. No Girl Scouts, no arts or crafts, no sports. I’m not sure if that was because activities weren’t available—likely many of them were not—or because no one had helped her get interested in them. And although Melissa had friends at school, she didn’t get to spend time with them in the same way I spent time with mine. Her parents were protective, worried about her being
out of their sight for too long. As early as the mid-1990s, people were beginning to worry about the drugs seeping into the mountains. Meth was becoming more common, and Melissa’s parents decided the best way to guarantee her safety was to keep her at home with them.
Even if they hadn’t been as protective, there wasn’t a whole lot for Melissa and her friends to do. There was no roller-skating rink or ice cream parlor. There wasn’t even a McDonald’s to play at. Now that the farm—and its veritable horde of animals—was gone, there were a lot fewer ways to entertain ourselves in Booneville.
The difference in our experiences gave me pause, even then. Melissa was just like me. We were blood. Kin. We had grown up together on Cow Creek. She was the closest thing I had to a sister. I depended on her to be like me. I didn’t like the feeling of not knowing what to talk to her about.
This pause lasted only a minute, a brief glimpse of a hairline crack in our relationship that would eventually open up into a fissure. But it didn’t separate us yet. Soon we were back to plotting the way to catch Ruth and Sonny romancing, and all felt well with the world again.
Eventually a truck pulled in and two people got out. Sonny and Aunt Ruth made their way to the front porch, talking in slow, low whispers. They weren’t touching, but they looked intimate, like they were sharing secrets with each other. I took a step closer to try to hear what they were saying. A twig snapped under my foot. Aunt Ruth’s head spun toward our direction, and we burst into guilty giggles.
“Cassie? Melissa? Is that you down there? Git yourselves up here! I never seen the like! Spyin’ on your aunt Ruth!” Her voice sounded angry, but we knew that she wasn’t. Her eyes were soft. She was happy to see us. We spent the evening on the porch with Sonny and Ruth, asking them questions about their date and what Sonny’s intentions were toward our aunt. Later that night, after Sonny had left, Aunt Ruth pulled out the couch bed in the living room and we all three crawled in and watched the ten o’clock news until we fell asleep.
A few months later, Sonny and Ruth announced that they were getting married. Aunt Ruth was in her forties. She had never had a serious boyfriend, and she was pleased with this unexpected turn life had taken. Just like my parents, neither Ruth nor Sonny saw any reason to wait. There’s a certain practicality in the mountains. Once you decide you love someone, you might as well get on with living your lives together.
Melissa and I approved of the marriage. We liked Sonny. He was a self-taught home builder. Even without formal training, he could design and build pretty much any type of house. He took us to a beautiful log cabin on the other side of Booneville that he had created all on his own.
In his free time, Sonny bought junked-out old cars and repaired them. Once they were finished, he showed them at car shows before selling them for some extra money. At that time, he had an old Chevy Nova that he painted candy-apple red. We took it to car shows, where we would set up lawn chairs and occasionally meander through the rows of vehicles. Afterward, Sonny would take us hot-rodding. Really, he just revved the engine a couple of times at a few stoplights. But we found it glamorous and exciting.
Shortly after they got engaged, Ruth went over to Sonny’s house for a serious conversation. “Sonny,” she said, “I just want you to know that if you ever put your hands on me in anger, I’ll have to kill you.” Sonny’s eyes grew wide. “I might have to wait till you go to sleep one night, but I sure to God will stick a claw hammer in the back of your head.” Sonny quickly assured her that she had nothing to worry about. But domestic violence was—and still is—common in Owsley County, and Aunt Ruth was glad that they had that conversation. At least if she had to kill him, she thought, she would’ve given him fair warning.
Ruth and Sonny planned the wedding quickly. Neither of them wanted much fuss, so they had a Friday-afternoon ceremony at the church they attended together. Aunt Ruth wore a modest white dress. My mother, Granny, and other family members made up the majority of the limited guests. I wasn’t able to attend—I had a test that neither my mother nor Aunt Ruth would hear of me missing—but I insisted my mother recount every detail to me afterward.
At the time, Aunt Ruth’s marriage stood out to me because of the marked shift it represented in my world. Aunt Ruth was independent. Aunt Ruth could do anything. She was strong in every sense of the word. And even at that age I knew that some men didn’t like that—they liked their women to have some weakness in them. There was no weakness in Aunt Ruth.
Now that I’m older, Aunt Ruth’s marriage stands out to me for similar reasons. Ruth got married at an older age in a culture where women got married incredibly young. She lived the first half of her life independently. It was very different from the experience of most women in the mountains.
It was very different from the experience of her mother.
Granny, whose given name was Emma Golden, met Willie, the man who would become my Papaw, in 1948. Willie was a kind man with a soft spot for animals and children. He used to carry around a kitten in the front of his bibbed overalls. If he forgot to pick up the kitten in the barn, it would chase him out into the yard. When he stopped, it would crawl into the leg of the overalls and scamper up toward Willie’s pocket. He would grin as he fished it out and tucked it into the front pocket where it belonged. “Just hang tight, little buddy,” he would say. “Just hang tight.”
When they met, Emma was fifteen and Willie was thirty-two. No one was surprised when he started courting her. This age difference was common in marriages at the time, and tied closely to the local economy.
Most families in Owsley County made a living farming. In this environment, sons were a benefit; they were strong workers and could tend to the crops and animals. Sons might even be able to earn extra money by working in the fields of friends and neighbors. They also carried on the family name, which mattered in a place where your last name was a large part of your identity.
But daughters were a liability. The community saw women as less efficient, weaker, and more delicate than their male counterparts. It didn’t matter that women were often the first awake and the last to bed at night. It didn’t matter that they did both housework and fieldwork, all while birthing and raising children. Society had deemed women inferior workers. It was unlikely that another farmer would hire a female to help out, reducing the family’s chance of added income from outside work.
My mother still remembers her father bickering with a neighbor after she and her brothers had spent the day working in his fields. The family had been topping tobacco in the hot July sun. At the end of the day, the neighbor, tallying up the amount he owed the family, informed Papaw, “I’m not paying for your daughter’s work.”
Papaw responded firmly, “She worked as hard as my sons. You will pay her the same for her labor as you pay them.” His voice was calm, but his jaw was clenched.
But Papaw wasn’t always so egalitarian in his views. In her twenties, Ruth gained a reputation for being one of the best tobacco workers in the county. Several farmers offered to pay her to work in their fields. But Papaw wouldn’t let her go unless he accompanied her. It “didn’t look right,” he said, for his young, unmarried daughter to be unsupervised in the field with the men. Ruth sometimes turned down chances to earn money because Papaw couldn’t go with her.
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It was common in those days for sons to stay with their families well into their thirties before they began looking for a partner and an independent life. Most families tried to hold on to their boys as long as possible. Legend has it that Papaw’s mother wept for months when his twin brother got married and moved to a farm of his own.
But families tried to marry off their daughters as early as possible; sending a daughter away meant one less mouth to feed. It wasn’t unusual for a girl as young as thirteen or fourteen to marry. A girl who reached the age of twenty without a husband was frequently referred to as an old maid.
I used to assume that these actions were somehow grounded in religion—in a context of sin and casting it out. But Aunt Ruth says that they were often rooted in pride. “Truth be told, there weren’t even that many churches ’round here in those days,” she told me. “No, it didn’t have nothin’ to do with the churches. That was all pride is all that was.” Hill people may not have much, but they have their pride. And if anyone—even a daughter—wounded that pride, the consequences could be severe.
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Back in the late 1940s, Granny’s family was thrilled by the potential match with Willie. Willie was an honest man from an honest family. He didn’t have any money, but he was known as a hard worker. He rented a farmhouse, and he owned a bed to go in it. He could provide for their Emma, they thought.
Granny always said that she and Willie fell in love at first sight. He had come to her house on some other business when he saw her standing in the yard. It was springtime, and her yard was blooming with mountain wildflowers. Blues, yellows, and reds blended together in a bright montage. Willie thought Emma was the prettiest wildflower in the Appalachian Mountains. Within ten minutes they were sitting on the porch, giggling as they got to know each other.