Hill Women

by Cassie Chambers

  The next morning, Bryan and I hiked to the top of a nearby mountain. The bright green hills rolled off into the distance as far as we could see. “I like being in the mountains,” Bryan said. “We should come here more often.” I nodded.

  The mountains haven’t changed much over time. They are the same today as they have been for generations. I’m less sure if my family has changed. On the outside, it looks like we have. Like each generation has seen more, shifted more, than the one before. Maybe it even looks like we have each become less connected to the mountains. But, when we’re together, it doesn’t feel like we’re that far apart. I still feel like I am the same as my mother, as my aunt Ruth, as my Granny. I feel connected to the same hills and values that they did.

  I want to come to the mountains more. On the day of our wedding reception, I asked Aunt Ruth to keep an eye out for small farms for sale in Owsley County. I’d like to have a formal way to belong there again, even though I know that I will never truly belong in the same way. I have grown, and I have changed, but I will always remember the hills that I came from.

  “I love you, honey,” Aunt Ruth says, hugging me close. “Your mama loves you too.” I look at the cherrywood casket, draped with the brightest flowers my father and I could find, and my eyes fill with tears.

  The day after I finished this book, my mother died. Bryan and I had bought a house a couple of weeks before, and my mother was driving from Berea to Louisville to help us with home-related tasks. She had made that drive several times that week, helping us to pack, unpack, and get our new place in order. That day, she was rear-ended by a semitruck on the interstate. It has been almost a week since she passed, and it still doesn’t seem real. I can’t imagine how life can keep on moving without her.

  My mother believed in joy, and she always said that she wanted a party to celebrate her life when she died—she didn’t want us sitting around being sad. So that’s what we are trying to do today, throw a party in her honor. We found a bluegrass band to play mountain hymns during her church service, and we invited everyone to join us for food afterward. There is far too much of it, and I know that my mother would be pleased by that fact. Tomorrow we will bury her on a hill near Berea College, looking out on the rising Appalachians. I miss her already.

  Aunt Ruth arrived at the church in a simple black knee-length dress, the fanciest outfit I’ve ever seen her in. Now, during the service, she sits behind me, patting my shoulder throughout. Just before I go up to give the eulogy, she plucks a piece of fuzz off my shoulder and smooths the back of my dress. She nods at me in a matter-of-fact way as if to say “Well, get along with it.” But I can see tears in her eyes. I avoid her gaze so as not to break down crying.

  My father was the one to call Ruth and tell her that my mom had died. Ruth must have been devastated, because all my father will say about that phone call is that it was “the roughest one.” But around me, Ruth puts on a stoic face. I think she is trying to be strong for me, for my mother. There is a deep sadness in her eyes, though, and her voice, usually all lilt and melody, now sounds flat.

  Melissa is at the service too. She sent me a message the day after my mother died and said we needed to stay in better touch, that the family was shrinking, and that it was up to us to keep it going. She told me once again how much she enjoyed coming to Berea when she was young, and we talked about getting together sometime soon. I hope we follow through. She has been kind this past week, checking on me and my father and asking what she can do to help.

  There is a whole Owsley County contingent at the church today, not just family, but my mother’s friends and acquaintances, some she hadn’t seen in decades. At the celebration, they tell me stories about her as a young woman and give me hugs that last just a little too long. Several families from the Child Development Lab are there as well, and they tell me how much my mother changed their lives. “She taught me to be a better parent,” one woman says.

  I tell Bryan that I wish my mother had the chance to teach me that exact thing as we’re driving back to my parents’ home after the service. I am almost nineteen weeks pregnant, and one of my first thoughts when I learned my mother died was to question how I would raise this child without her. She was going to come and stay with us after I had the baby and watch her grandchild during the day once I went back to work. I felt comforted knowing that I would have her close by as I tackled this next life phase. I bragged about her like she was my secret weapon: “I know it’s hard to do it all,” I told my friends, “but I have my mom to help me.” I feel like my foundation has suddenly and unexpectedly disintegrated to dust.

  Bryan pulls me close and kisses the top of my head. “She already taught you to be a parent,” he says. “She raised you. She’s in you. She gave you everything you need to know.”

  Later in the evening, I am sitting in my childhood bedroom looking at pictures. It’s the same stack of photographs my father and I went through a few days before, picking our favorites to blow up into poster-sized prints to set around the church. My mother would have wanted people to remember her as she was in those images: smiling, happy, with her family. That is how I want to remember her, and that is why I’m thumbing through these photos once again. Seeing her wide smile and sparkling eyes gives me comfort. It makes it feel as though she’s not so far away.

  Each memory is there in that stack: her holding me as a newborn, reading to me as a child, waving at the camera as she stands in front of the South African ocean. I’m struck once again by how young she looks throughout it all. I’m also struck by the bends and pivots in her life path, the evolution and expansion of her world.

  I take the picture of her in her high school graduation robes and place it next to one of her on my wedding day. You can see it in her graduation photo, the hope and nervousness she felt leaving the mountains. Her smile is subdued and her eyes are wide. I’m glad that she looks so happy on my wedding day, nearing the end of the journey she set out on all of those years ago. Her smile is radiant.

  This wasn’t the type of tribute to my mother I wanted this book to be. I wanted it to be something that she and I shared together, continued to share together. We were going to celebrate when it came out. She said she would buy the nicest bottle of champagne she could find.

  I suppose in some ways we did get to share this book. Over the course of my writing it, my mother and I had countless conversations about her life, her memories, and our family. She gave me her story to tell, entrusted me to share it with the world. A couple of months ago she read a draft of it, and she told me that she felt honored. She called herself a “proud hill woman.” I hope that the other women I’ve written about here feel the same.

  We talked a lot about what it means to be a hill woman during these past few months. We told each other stories about the fire, grace, and grit that we saw in the mountains. We talked a lot about Ruth, about their relationship. “I called Ruth today,” my mother told me one Sunday evening after she’d read the draft. “I never thanked her for all she’d done for me growing up.” She paused, her voice heavy with emotion. “I told her I appreciated it. I told her she changed my life.”

  My mother and I agreed that more needed to be done for the mountains, for the struggling families there. We tried to figure out what that looked like. I told her that when I started writing this book, I thought I was doing it to find answers to questions like, What is the future of the Appalachian economy? and What should we do to move the region forward? I wanted to understand the past and the present and use that understanding to influence the future. I hoped that the writing process would be a funnel; that by pouring in all of my experiences I would be left with more narrow, streamlined thoughts coming out the other side.

  But this book is now complete, and I don’t have all the answers I’d hoped to. I still struggle with how to balance many delicate and competing concerns: talking about the problems Appalachia faces while highlighting its
strengths; recognizing the importance of tradition while still supporting innovative change; encouraging community-driven solutions along with bringing outside resources to the region. I wish I had some more solid conclusions to share, but, in the end, it’s the complexities of Appalachia and the people who live here that need sharing the most.

  Today more than ever, I’m glad I’ve told these stories. I hope they have shown people the surprising nuances of the region and its problems, so often reduced to a singular stereotype. I hope they have made voices from the mountains ring louder and helped people see the potential that exists here. I hope they bring attention to an area that we often allow ourselves to overlook. The people here deserve that.

  But, most important, I’m glad I’ve told these stories because there’s now a piece of my mother that lives in these pages. She would want the world to understand her as a hill woman, to see the hope and joy in her journey and life. She would want people to take something of value from her story, from our family’s story. It’s a tale of struggle, change, and success that could be told more often if we, as a people, a country, a community, put in the effort to make it happen.

  I know I haven’t told every story here perfectly. This book is born from memory, both mine and others’. Memory is a fickle and faulty tool, and I’m sure that there are inaccuracies in these pages. In some places, I’ve purposefully changed details, altering names and minor facts to protect the identities of people who wish to avoid the spotlight. Sometimes I’ve changed the order of events to help the narrative run more smoothly. But I’ve done my best not to change the character of any story. It’s important to me that I get things as right as possible.

  As I reach for another pile of photographs, I feel a slight tap against my stomach, a tiny push that causes me to instinctively place my hand on my lower abdomen. I felt my baby boy kick for the first time the day after my mother died. I like to think that at some point the two of them chatted for a few minutes as they passed each other, somewhere on the path between heaven and earth. I know that the two of them had a connection. When I told my mother I was pregnant, she responded, “I know. You’ll think I’m crazy, but I was praying a few months ago, and I just knew that my grandchild’s soul was on its way here.” The morning she died she told me that she wanted him to call her Nana.

  Here’s what I will someday tell my son about his nana Wilma: I will tell him that she was kind, warm, and more loving than anyone I ever knew; that she did things that made her scared and created opportunities for her daughter; that she loved her family fiercely and gave people more grace than they deserved. I will make sure he knows that she loved him.

  I’ll tell him about the other hill women who helped form him too. I’ll tell him about Granny and Ruth, about how they valued education and sacrificed so that my mother could have it. I’ll explain how their love and hard work led to the life we have now. I’ll make sure he knows never to underestimate a mountain woman.

  Part of me is scared that my mother was the thread that tied us to the mountains, and that without her my son and I will drift farther from the hills. I don’t want that to happen. There is so much to gain here. I’ll tell him about our family’s roots and try to make him feel anchored in the mountains. I want him to be grounded in the hills, but also free to move beyond them.

  I flip over the next photograph in the stack and pause to take it in. It is a picture of the old house on Cow Creek. The roof is still green, and the yard is alive with red and orange bushes. It’s fall, and the front field is full of harvest remnants. The mountains rise up in the distance. I close my eyes and I am there once again. The sense of home and family washes over me. I feel my mother’s presence nearby.

  “I get it, Mom,” I whisper to myself. “I’ll keep going back.” I’ll remember the places and the stories. I’ll honor her and the others like her. I won’t forget the hills or the women who made them home.

  For my mother, Wilma

  This book would not have been possible without the help of my mother, Wilma, who spent countless hours talking with me about her life and her memories. We were partners in this project. I’m thankful I can share her story.

  To Ruth, Sonny, and the many other family members who helped with this book: Thank you. I have a better sense of who I am and where I came from because of our conversations. To my cousin “Melissa”: I’m so glad that we have reconnected in these past months. Thank you for being so supportive and kind as I have navigated becoming a mother.

  I am so thankful to have had an amazing team of women to guide me throughout this process. To Emily at Ballantine: You have been the best editor that I could’ve hoped for. Thank you for believing in this project from the beginning and shaping this book into what it has become. Jamie at WME: Thank you for being there beside me every step of the way. To the rest of the Ballantine team: Thank you for all you’ve done.

  I owe a special thank-you to my husband, Bryan. You enthusiastically embraced this adventure and never once complained about all of the weekends I spent holed up writing. To my father, Orlando: Thank you for your unwavering support.

  To the wonderful women who read early versions of the book and weighed in (Josie, Abby, Bailey, Brooke, Gretchen, and Kelsey): Thank you for being incredibly kind as readers and as friends. Thank you to Theo for being my constant sounding board and to Mike for all of your thoughtful advice.

  Finally, to all the hill women past, present, and future: Thank you for shaping and inspiring me. This book belongs to you.

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