Hill Women

by Cassie Chambers

  People at the restaurant were aflutter with predictions about the election results: Who would win the local offices? How would the other side react if they lost? Would anybody get into a fistfight? About five minutes after the polls closed, Sonny started calling the clerk’s office to get the results. “Well, do you know who won the magistrate race?” Sonny hollered. “Well, I guess I’ll call you back in a few more minutes, then. Let me know if y’all have the results.” Aunt Ruth explained to me that people were no longer able to go to the courthouse to wait for the election returns because too many brawls had broken out over the years.

  The voter turnout numbers in Owsley County reflect the passion that people feel for politics. Whereas only a little over 17 percent of voters in Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, turned out to vote on primary day, almost 47 percent of Owsley Countians showed up. And people aren’t just engaged on Election Day. Aunt Ruth watched the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings in their entirety. When Sonny fell asleep, she shook him and said, “Wake up. We have to decide if that man is guilty or not.” Afterward, she told me, “He’s guiltier than sin.”

  Recently, I revisited the conversation about Donald Trump with Ruth and Mabel. We were at a family gathering, and we decided to talk politics while the men were outside grilling burgers. “Why do people in Owsley County like him so much?” I asked once again.

  “Honey, I don’t think they do anymore,” Aunt Ruth told me. “People don’t think he’s done nothin’ for no one. ’Specially not for the workin’ people.” She tilted her head. “I think people in Breathitt County still like him. But folks ’round here don’t.

  “And let me tell you somethin’,” she continued, “he’s gone and made women mad something awful. You can’t make women mad like that—they’ll show up at the polls is what they’ll do!”

  The numbers from the 2018 midterm elections support Aunt Ruth’s claims that rural Kentuckians are increasingly less enamored with Donald Trump. Although Republicans still hold a super majority in the Kentucky state house and senate after the midterms, the Republican margin of victory shrank significantly. Democrats fell 23,000 votes short of taking back the state house in 2016. Just two years later, in 2018, they cut that vote deficit by 60 percent and fell only 9,000 votes short. We made these gains despite Donald Trump coming to Kentucky to campaign for Republican candidates.

  And the Democrats flipped three state house seats in Eastern Kentucky, including the one that encompasses Owsley County. “Of course the Democrat won,” Aunt Ruth told me. “That Republican wanted to merge our county with Lee County—we’d have lost ’bout a hundred jobs!” After the 2018 midterms, Eastern Kentucky was looking like one of the bluest parts of the state. Then again, polls still show that Donald Trump is popular in Kentucky, and I’m not sure how much the discontentment I hear people express will translate at the 2020 polls.

  Mabel, who had been waiting eagerly for a break in the conversation, chimed in with her thoughts about Donald Trump. “I voted for him ’cause I didn’t trust Hillary. But I don’t have nothin’ good to say about him anymore. The only thing he’s done is make it so we don’t have to pay the penalty for not havin’ health insurance.” She paused and thought. “It’s not right, you know, makin’ people buy health insurance. We couldn’t afford it. They might as well have given everyone free health insurance. I wouldn’t have minded that.”

  On paper, Owsley County looks like one of the most Republican counties in the state, maybe even in the nation. On the ground, though, the dialogue is different, more nuanced. My uncle Sonny is a Republican. “That’s just how things are,” he tells me. But he loves to talk politics with me, and has never disrespected my point of view. “Huh. I never thought about things thataway,” he will say, his brow furrowed as he ponders. He agreed with Aunt Ruth’s assessment of Brett Kavanaugh. He told me that he’s worried about Donald Trump’s impact on our nation. “Now, I’m not goin’ to say it in public, you see, ’cause in some parts ’round here they might shoot you, but the way he’s a-doin’ things, it’s just not right.” He was genuinely distraught about the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their families at the Mexico border.

  Sonny puts signs in his yard for Democratic candidates who he believes in. He had a sign for the Democratic candidate for sheriff the last time I was there. These aren’t national-level candidates, people he doesn’t have a connection to. They are local people he knows and trusts. He believes that they will do right by him and his community.

  For some reason, Sonny’s yard signs make me feel hopeful. Maybe our politics aren’t as divided as we think. Maybe we as a people aren’t as divided as we think. And, maybe, we can still agree that our communities are more important than our politics.

  It rained on the day I married Bryan. Not a light, drizzly rain—that would’ve been kind of romantic. It downpoured—the kind of rain that hits you with its weight and soaks you through in seconds. I sat in my hotel room that morning watching the water fall down from the sky.

  My mother was beside me on the couch, frantically checking her phone while trying to hide that franticness from me. She was in charge of my wedding; she had planned it down to the last detail. Bryan and I had both been busy at work, and neither of us had had the time to invest in wedding details. Plus, I don’t think we cared about the specifics all that much. We were just happy to be getting married. My mother had been retired for several months, and she was looking for a project to take on. She was detail oriented, a hopeless romantic, and a big fan of Bryan. It made sense for her to take charge of the day.

  She and my father insisted on paying for the wedding. They were proud of me, and they had the money to spare. My father had recently been promoted to associate dean at the University of Kentucky. His investment in education was continuing to pay off. I protested heavily—“The reasoning behind the bride’s family paying is so problematic!” I exclaimed—but my mother and father wanted to give me the gift of a beautiful wedding. I tried to accept that gift gracefully.

  My mother spent almost a year planning it. She provided us with an agenda of the day and what time things would happen. The décor was similarly well-thought-out. She had wanted mercury-glass instead of plain-glass votives because it would add more ambience to the room. I had argued with her, saying that any added ambience wouldn’t be worth the extra money. She insisted, and she was right: The mercury glass did add a warm glow.

  She was also right about the flowers. I had wanted to save money and do them myself by having wholesale flowers shipped in the evening before. She had put her foot down and told me she loved flowers and that she intended to get them from a professional florist. “I will not be staying up to midnight the day before my only daughter’s wedding rehydrating flowers,” she said with a look that told me I should stop arguing with her.

  I thought about the women in my family a lot in the months leading up to the wedding. I thought about Granny and how it must’ve felt to marry a man she had known for only a few months. I had known Bryan for a year and a half, and still some people questioned why we were rushing into things. I knew almost everything about Bryan: what makes him laugh, what makes him sad, how to cheer him up after a stressful day at work. How different would it be to have discovered those things about him after having already committed to spending my life with him?

  I also thought a lot about my mother—how she planned her wedding in just a few months and with a shoestring budget. She carried artificial flowers to save money. She knew my father, yes, but they were both still children on their wedding day. Bryan and I were in our thirties when we got married. We both had careers and graduate degrees. I imagine it would’ve felt different to have little idea of the people we would grow up to be.

  It’s an interesting image to think about, the three of us lined up beside one another on our wedding days. Granny in her blue dress and house shoes, my mo
ther in an off-the-rack white dress, me in a tailored gown, each of us standing next to the husband we chose. Granny next to a man she had known for just a few months, my mother next to a man she had agreed to marry three months before, me next to someone I had been engaged to for almost a year. Granny at fifteen, my mother at nineteen, me at thirty-one.

  I wonder if looking at each of us on our wedding days can tell you something about the way we progressed as a family—the way each of us built on what was given to us by the generation before. We gained something because of their hard work. But I wonder if we lost something as well: identity, community, connection to a place and to one another.

  I pulled myself from my thoughts as my bridesmaids began to arrive in the hotel suite to get ready for the day. While we had our hair styled, my mother slipped into her dress. It was the first long dress she had ever worn. She’d ordered a dozen online before deciding on this one. It was a deep plum that complemented her blue, still-sparkling eyes. She looked young, beautiful, and at home in it. My friends who met her at the rehearsal dinner the night before couldn’t believe that she was old enough to have a daughter in her thirties. I reminded them that by the time my mother was my age, she had a preteen daughter.

  I don’t remember much about walking down the aisle. That part was a blur. But I do remember seeing my mother standing at the end. She mouthed the words “I love you” as I walked past her and stopped next to Bryan.

  Aunt Ruth was not at the wedding. None of my relatives from Owsley County were there. We invited them, but we knew they wouldn’t come. “Louisville may as well be Beijing as far as they’re concerned,” I explained to Bryan when he asked me why they weren’t on the list of confirmed guests. They don’t have cellphones; I don’t know that they have ever seen a parking garage. They don’t know how to get around in a city the size of Louisville, let alone how to use a GPS to guide them. We assured them that it was okay, that we would find time to celebrate with them later.

  I missed them that day. The guests reflected nearly all of the important places in my life. I had friends from Yale, London, and Harvard; my new friends in Louisville were there as well. But Owsley County wasn’t represented, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that an important piece of who I am was missing.

  * * *

  —

  I celebrated my marriage with my Owsley County family a few months later, on a beautiful Saturday in July. The sun was bright but not oppressive, and the humidity was lower than normal. My mother had reserved the one event space in Booneville, a renovated barn filled with folding furniture and burlap tablecloths. She had glued lace onto a few vases and filled them with Costco flowers. The barn looked beautiful.

  I wore my same wedding dress. I didn’t want to spend the money to buy a second one, but I also wanted my Owsley County family to experience as close to the original wedding as possible. Not so much for their sake as for mine. There had been a hole in my wedding day that I needed them to fill.

  I had a moment of panic when I first got to the barn and opened the dress bag. The dress had a corset, which had originally been laced with a delicate satin ribbon. That ribbon had gotten lost somewhere between Louisville and Owsley County, and I had nothing to hold my dress together. “Do we have fishing twine? A shoelace? Anything?” I asked my mother. I knew that the rest of the family would be arriving soon.

  She tapped a finger to her chin and thought. “I’ve got something even better,” she said as she disappeared down the stairs. She came back with a roll of jute twine, a thick brown rope used for gardening and other odd jobs. At first the twine was too wide to fit through the corset holes, but my mother stripped and separated it until it slipped through easily. “See? I told you we’d figure it out,” she said once the dress was fully tied. I put a lace jacket over the top part of the dress before going downstairs. I wasn’t sure my uncles were ready to see me in a strapless dress.

  My family members began to arrive around noon, each one with a dish of food. I love that special occasions in Eastern Kentucky are marked by a potluck—it’s a more active and communal way to celebrate. Aunt Ruth brought corn bread, soup beans, and my favorite banana pudding. Mabel brought chicken and dumplings, shuck beans, and potato salad. I lost track of who brought the rest of the food. The table was overflowing.

  The barn soon filled with noise and energy. Uncle Dale sang bluegrass tunes, and I tried to clog in my wedding dress. My dad manned the grill out back, filling aluminum tins with burgers and hotdogs. At some point Aunt Ruth hollered for people to start eating. In between shouts she turned to me. “You sure make a pretty bride”—she gave me a meaningful look—“but you go put on some comfy blue jeans whenever you’re ready. It’s hot in here.” My mother, eyes full of happy tears, introduced me to Verlene, her friend from high school, whom she hadn’t seen in over thirty years. Verlene had heard that Wilma’s daughter was having a wedding reception in town—news still travels fast in Booneville—and decided to stop by. My relatives had put out the word that anyone and everyone was welcome at the wedding barn that day.

  Bryan’s family was at the wedding that day too. His mother, brother, and one of his aunts had driven from Louisville because they wanted to get to know my extended family. I took them from table to table, introducing them. When I got to Uncle Dale I teased, “This is the uncle you’d want to know if you ever needed to get rid of a body.”

  “I got rid of my body years ago!” Dale shot back, patting his rounded stomach. “I think it’s in the witness protection program—to protect the witnesses!” Bryan’s family laughed. Everyone relaxed.

  Billy, my cousin Melissa’s son, spent most of the day in the green space behind the barn, back where my dad was grilling. Billy’s gotten quieter over the years, and he seemed uncomfortable in the wedding barn that day. He looks to everyone else for cues and acceptance. When he does speak, his voice is soft and most of his sentences sound like a question. Recently my mother asked him if he’d given any more thought to what he’d like to study after high school. When she asked him what he enjoyed learning, he looked surprised, as if no one had ever asked him that question before. “I suppose I like building things,” he said after a pause. She told him that there were ways to go to school and make a career out of that, and he sat silent for several minutes. “Maybe I’ll just do that,” he said softly.

  Melissa wasn’t there that day. I had invited her, but I knew she wouldn’t come. I’ve been trying to reconnect with her, extending invitations through my mom to go to lunch with us or meet up when I’m in Owsley County. I heard she has traced our family’s mountain roots back to the 1700s, and I want to talk to her about what she’s learned. But I’ve never heard from her and I don’t really know how else to reach out. One relative told me that Melissa wants nothing to do with me because she’s jealous: “She can’t figure out why her life didn’t turn out like yours. She thinks she deserved it.” I want to tell Melissa that I wrestle with the same question.

  Before the reception ended, I asked Aunt Ruth if she would take a picture with me. I wanted to have it to remember the day. At first she hemmed and hawed. “Honey, I ain’t dressed up,” she told me. She was wearing blue jeans and an American flag T-shirt.

  “I’m the only one dressed up here,” I responded truthfully. “And I want a picture with my Aunt Ruth.”

  “Well, okay then,” she said matter-of-factly. I handed Sonny my cellphone and showed him how to use it. After I explained to him several times that the Home key was not what you pushed to take a picture, he finally managed to capture an image that wasn’t terribly crooked. In that picture, Aunt Ruth looks mostly proud, and a little bit happy.

  Later that evening, Bryan and I drove to a nearby state park, where we were staying the night in a cabin. I had heard that there was a hoedown that night, and I wanted Bryan to have the full Eastern Kentucky wedding experience. He gave me a suspicious look when I first told him about it, b
ut he finally agreed: “If square dancing will make you happy, I’ll give it a try.”

  My parents, his mother, and his aunt joined us. My dad and Bryan drove to a barbecue joint a few miles away to get us all sandwiches. Earlier that day my mother had hidden a couple of bottles of wine in a cooler in the back of her car. Now, miles away from her family’s prying eyes, we sat on a porch and drank it as the sun set over the mountains. My mother had recently told Ruth that a doctor said drinking wine might help her medical condition. “Well,” Ruth said thoughtfully, “it might, just might, be good for you.”

  “Your relatives are so fun,” Bryan’s mother said to me that evening. “Now, I couldn’t always understand what they were saying. But they are such nice people.” Bryan shot me an I-told-you-so look from across the porch. The party had gone well.

  Soon the sound of fiddle playing wafted up the hill from the valley. “I think the hoedown is starting!” I said excitedly. “We best get moving if we’re going to make it.” Bryan squeezed my hand as we walked down the hill toward the music. We all danced until well after dark. We didn’t know the steps to many of the dances, but that wasn’t important. My dad and Bryan’s mom joined in the square dancing. My mother sat on the sidelines with my dog while the rest of us do-si-do’d and did something resembling clogging.