When the train whistle sounded clearly on our side of the mountain, Mother said, “Children, it's going to rain.” Late that afternoon or early the next day it would cloud up and rain. I never questioned the relationship of the train whistle to the rain until I moved to Indianapolis in 1960. We lived near a railroad yard across White River in West Indianapolis. For the first week or so every time I heard a train I thought, “It's going to rain,” but the rain did not come. Finally I stopped expecting rain every time I heard a train. Mountain customs die hard.
Mountain people are criticized for leaving the industrial cities where they live and work and heading home almost every weekend. What people who live in today's transient society don't seem to understand about us mountain folks is that it's possible to put one's roots down so deeply they cannot be satisfactorily transplanted anywhere else. People who have lost an arm or a leg complain that they still feel phantom pain. I used to fancy it was that way for us mountain people. Take us anywhere in the world and there will always be pain in the missing part buried so deeply in hillside soil. Mountain people have a strong sense of place; they know where they belong.
It is always a joy to me to leave cities behind, to travel through the Bluegrass section of Kentucky and on to the hills. As the mountains unfold for me I have a feeling of belonging, of being protected, of wanting to settle down and stay forever.
My friend Jane Wilson, an East Tennessee woman, says it well: “I can walk back home from just about anywhere.” She and I both have a sense of place—a knowing that if all else fails, we can always walk back home and there will be space for us, and people who care about us.
GRANNY BROCK
from Headwaters (1995)
“Granny, is it gonna rain?”
“My bees worked in the clover early and late,
and the moon had a ring around it these past few nights.
There were red clouds in the sky this morning,
the wind turned tree-leaves underside over,
and redbirds called ‘wet, wet, wet’ all day long.
That's a sure sign of rain,” she says.
“Granny, is it gonna snow a lot?”
“The woolly worms done give us their opinion,
and crickets're singing their lonesome winter song.
The cornshucks're thick and stiff this year,
and moss is growing on the north side of trees.
That's a sure sign of a bad winter,” she says.
“Granny, why's there so much trouble?”
“The east wind of trouble travels far and near,
and bad times come but they do go away.
Once I was younger in older times,
when a good day's work brought a good day's pay.
Back then was the dayburst,
now it's coming down dusky,
but it's not yet plumb dark in our land—
that's a sure sign,” she says.
MOUNTAINS FILL UP THE NIGHT
from Headwaters (1995)
I know the mountains covered with snow,
and misty green of earth's awakening,
when they are drenched in summer storms,
painted with master colors
softened with Indian Summer smoke.
Mountains, so steady, and yet they change
when each determined morning climbs.
Some of night sneaks into hollows
but noonday sun blasts it out,
gold heat here but up there—trees.
I know the mountains when heat is gone
and sun challenges the regal night.
I know them when raindrops fall
and break, and wet the silver lichen;
and white mist tassels the trees.
Then dusky dark, its curtain silent;
the mountains grow star-ward
around us, and over us and
under. Even inside us.
Where do the mountains stop?
APPALACHIA, WHERE ARE YOUR HILLS?
from Headwaters (1995)
Thank God for the mantling snow
He sends to caress the ravaged hills.
It covers the smell of the slag heap burning,
it hides the scars that mar the mountains,
and makes a shroud for murdered trees.
I wish the snow would never stop.
When father was a young boy
the mountains were like nurseries
for the creeks and the young rivers.
They were rich in green-gold bounty
and strong with wide black bones.
They held and nourished our people.
Now the people sit, slack-handed,
from chill, dark drawn to hopeless night.
They sit, dreamless and passive,
waiting for a sedative sleep
to come riding down on the snowfall—
I pray the snow will never stop.
NIKKY FINNEY
(August 26, 1957–)
Nikky Finney is a founding member of the Affrilachian poets, a community-based group of Appalachian writers of African descent living in and around Lexington, Kentucky. Born in Conway, South Carolina, she is the only daughter of parents who both grew up on farms. Her mother, an elementary school teacher, grew up in Newberry County, South Carolina, and her father, a civil rights lawyer, grew up in Virginia. She was raised in South Carolina and graduated from Talladega College in Alabama.
Her poems have been published in a number of journals and anthologies, including In Search of Color Everywhere, I Hear a Symphony, and Spirit and Flame. She contributed to Kentucky's New Books for New Readers series, creating the stories in Heartwood for an adult literacy program. The author of two books of poetry, On Wings Made of Gauze and Rice, she has two books in progress: a collection of poetry, The World is Round, and her first novel. Finney received the Pen American Open Book Award in 1999.
Finney began teaching and writing in California, where she lived for nearly a decade. Since 1991, she has been a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Kentucky. She frequently gives readings at schools, colleges, universities, and writers’ workshops across the country.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Poetry: Rice (1995), On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). Short stories: Heartwood (1997). Autobiographical essay: “Salt-Water Geechee Mounds,” in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 121–27. Video: Coal Black Voices: A Documentary (2001). Script: For Posterity's Sake: The Story of Morgan and Marvin Smith (PBS documentary, 1995).
SECONDARY
Kwame Dawes, “Reading Rice: A Local Habitation and a Name,” African American Review 31:2 (summer 1997), 269–79. Joyce Dyer, “Nikky Finney,” in Bloodroot, 120. Sally Lodge, review of On Wings Made of Gauze, Publishers Weekly 228 (12 July 1985), 53. Louis McKee, review of On Wings Made of Gauze, Library Journal 110(1 September 1985), 202.
HEARTWOOD (1997)
from Queen Ida's Hair-Doing House of Waves
Lots of black women did hair in Luketown. Most of them did it just as a favor for a girlfriend, just because they were good at it, and some did it just for fun. They would sit a sister, a niece, or some other family member down in the middle of their kitchen, in the middle of an easy Saturday, laugh, talk and just do hair.
Ida Sims, who had always been known as “Queenie,” was the only one of them to own her own beauty shop. Queenie Sims was serious about the beauty business. But everybody knew she was more serious about the beauty part than the business part. She had been Luketown's first female business owner. For thirty years now, her Hair-Doing House of Waves was where the women of Luketown and a few other towns came to treat themselves when they had a few extra dollars and felt like being served by the Queen of Deep Down Beauty.
On those days when life had been just a bit too hard and the women of Luketown had taken perfect care of everybody else except themselves, they came to Queen Ida's for some relief. Usually Fridays and Saturdays, when they neede
d just a little extra attention, they called up the Queen and asked if she had any space in her afternoon for them. The women would walk a few doors down the street or drive from somewhere close by to sit and talk and let the Queen of Hair wash and set their blues away and turn their sweet curly naps into endless oceans of waves.
Queen Ida's Hair-Doing House of Waves might have looked like just a hole in the wall to a stranger passing through Luketown, but inside she had built a place of honor for black women and their many different kinds of hair. She had decorated her one-room shop just like something out of those old black and white movies.
Miss Ida was always saying she wanted to make the women who dropped by feel like royalty themselves. Mr. Andy from down the street had covered her two swivel chairs in purple velvet, just for added effect.
Hanging from every wall were soft spotlights, clean sparkling mirrors, and photographs of women who, Miss Ida said, were “some of the most beautiful black women ever born.” And in between all the pretty pictures she had small signs printed up with what she called her “words to be beautiful by.” One of her favorites was “Beauty is not something your Mama and Daddy gave you, beauty is something you must give yourself permission to have. So get to work!”
Queenie Sims believed in making her women feel like each and every one of them had finally won the black woman's lottery jackpot! She had the idea, years ago, that black women needed some special love and attention after all their years of having to take care of everybody else. So she decided to go into the business of treating them like queens every chance she got. That's how Miss Queenie got and kept her name.
Even though the sign said “Hair-Doing House of Waves,” to each and every black woman who went there each week, it also became a private rest stop, vacation, hot tub, emergency room, and restaurant, all in one. Not only did their scalps benefit from Ida's homemade creams and conditioners, but the good and honest talk they got back from her helped them work out some important things they were battling in their own private lives.
When Ida Sims got through with her customers, not only did she have the women of Luketown looking good, but she also had one or two of them thinking and believing something good about themselves as well. Her beauty shop wasn't just about fixing up what was on top of the head, it was also about cleaning out the years of dust hidden inside the deep corners of their lives.
After every head had been brushed and styled, and before anybody ever thought about leaving, she offered each customer a cup of tea as well as a slice of homemade coconut creme pie. And each customer who stood up to leave always got a little surprise box of something. A gift wrapped up in leftover Christmas paper. Something sweet secretly tucked down in their handbags with a little note attached. With that kind of special attention, no wonder Ida Sims had been in business thirty years. There were other shops in other towns nearby, but no one had ever opened up another beauty shop in Luketown to compete with the Hair-Doing House of Waves.
Ida Sims worked three shifts a day with two customers at a time. Each shift lasted about two hours, depending on the length and thickness of the hair. But as busy as she was, she never thought about getting a bigger place or hiring on more help. She said she could only give quality care to the hair and heads of two women at a time and no more than six per day. Quality was more important to Queenie Sims than making more money.
Women who came to Queen Ida's were never sure who would come in at the same time. They never knew which two would arrive and sit side by side for at least two hours with only each other as company. Some of them might have been friends before, but some others might never have spoken to each other before that day. That was part of the beauty of Ida's place, never being sure of just who you might be getting your hair done beside.
Miss Ida always believed that they would talk and by the end of the day make friends with each other. And because of that, they would have more to share the next time they saw each other out in the world doing something else.
There was no waiting room in the House of Waves. There was no room for anybody to avoid somebody else's eyes. There were no magazines, and it was rare to hear any music. It was Queen Ida's mission to get people to talk to each other. The rest of that stuff, Ida said, “you can do anytime.” This was the sacred beauty hour.
Her grandmother told her way back when she first started her business to always remember that there were some black women who never got the free time that other women got in their lives to make and keep friends. These were the black women who for all their time on earth had worked two and three jobs. These women had taken care of their own children and somebody else's too. Ida Sims decided way back then that bringing black women together to be friends was an important part of her all-round beauty work. This was where she started making the women of Luketown pay attention to their inside beauty.
No matter what day it was and no matter which two customers came in, there was always a lively conversation going on inside the House of Waves. In this relaxed time of working and talking, a lot more than hair-doing went on. In fact, nine times out of ten, somebody stood up to leave with a new, five-dollar hairdo and a million-dollar attitude. Queen Ida softly preached that creating outside beauty only lasted a week but inside beauty lasted for as long as the head itself stayed around.
IRONS AT HER FEET
from Rice (1995)
from the coals
of her bedroom fireplace
onto the tip
of my grandmother's
december winter stick
for fifteen years
hot irons traveled
into waiting flannel wraps
and were shuttled
up under covers
and inbetween quilts
where three babies lay shivering
in country quarter
night time air
hot irons
wrapped and pushed
up close
to frosting toes
irons instead of lip kisses
is what she remembers
irons instead of carmel colored fingers
that should have swaddled shoulders
like it swaddled hoes
and quiltin’ needles
and spongy cow tits
everytime
i am back home
i tip into her room
tip again into her saucering cheeks
and in her half sleep
my mother reads her winters
aloud to me
her persimmon whispers are deleriously sweet
to this only daughter's ear
when you are home
she says
the irons come back
every night
i know the warm
is coming
LUCY FURMAN
(June 7, 1870–August 26, 1958)
Short story writer Lucy Furman was born in Henderson, Kentucky, and was orphaned when she was young. An aunt took her into her home and sent her to school in Lexington's Sayre Institute, from which Furman graduated at the age of sixteen. She lived with her grandparents for several years, before completing a secretarial course and working as a court stenographer in Evansville, Indiana. In Evansville, she began to write stories.
By the time Furman was twenty-three, her stories were being published in Century Magazine, and soon after, her first book of stories, Stories of a Sanctified Town, was accepted for publication.
After a decade of poor health, Furman moved in 1907 to eastern Kentucky and became a teacher at the Hindman Settlement School. There, she joined Sayre classmate Katherine Pettit, who had founded the school on Troublesome Creek in Knott County, Kentucky. Furman lived on campus and worked as a teacher, houseparent, and gardener, and gained strength enough to resume writing. “I have charge of the gardening and outdoor work at the Settlement School,” she wrote, “but the happiest part of my life is my residence at the small boys’ cottage, about which I have told in the ‘Perilous’ stories, and in which I find e
ndless pleasure and entertainment. Here I hope to spend the remainder of my days.” Mothering on Perilous was published in 1913, and she continued to write stories for Century Magazine. Although she moved from Knott County in 1924, the years she spent at the Hindman Settlement School were her most prolific years as a writer.
After leaving Knott County, Furman returned to her hometown, Henderson, for a decade before moving to Frankfort, Kentucky, until 1954, and spent her final years with her nephew in Cranford, New Jersey.
In this excerpt from the opening of Sight to the Blind, a settlement school nurse encounters a woman blinded by cataracts who has been told by her community that her blindness is the result of her questioning God's will after the death of her daughter.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Novels: The Lonesome Road (1927), The Glass Window (1925), The Quare Women (1923), Sight to the Blind (1914). Stories: Mothering on Perilous (1913), Stories of a Sanctified Town (1897).
SECONDARY
“Miss Lucy Furman [obit],” New York Times (26 August 1958), 29. Ish Richey, Kentucky Literature, 1784–1963 (1963), 83–84. John Wilson Townsend, “Lucy Furman,” Kentucky in American Letters, Vol. 2 (1913), 247–48. William S. Ward, “Lucy Furman,” A Literary History of Kentucky (1988), 86–88.
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