This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Marilyn Sue Shank
Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Richard Tuschman
Map copyright © 2012 by Joe LeMonnier
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shank, Marilyn Sue.
Child of the mountains/Marilyn Sue Shank.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In the early 1950s, Lydia Hawkins has grown up poor in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia with her widowed mother, brother BJ, who has cystic fibrosis, and her Gran, but when Gran and BJ die and her mother is jailed unjustly, Lydia must try to remain strong and clear her mother’s name, even after she learns a shocking secret from the uncle with whom she is sent to live.
eISBN: 978-0-375-98929-2
[1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Families—Fiction. 3. Self-reliance—Fiction. 4. Christian life—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. West Virginia—History—1951—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S548413 Ch 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011026174
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To my brother, Tom Shank,
and in loving memory of my father, Joe Shank,
and my mother, Lenah Shank—proud West Virginians
who gave me reason to value my heritage.
And to all children of the mountains: “Rise and shine!”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
1: It’s about my problem.
2: It’s about missing home and them girls at school.
3: It’s about my daddy.
4: It’s about not judging people.
5: It’s about Thanksgiving.
6: It’s about having nothing to do and my real smart brother.
7: It’s about how BJ ended up going to Ohio.
8: It’s about making Christmas presents.
9: It’s about giving and getting.
10: It’s about what happened to Gran.
11: It’s about that last trip to Ohio.
12: It’s about solitaire and solitary.
13: It’s about the rainiest day of my life.
14: It’s about them mean girls again.
15: It’s about talking back.
16: It’s about Maggie pestering me and having to stay after school.
17: It’s about not telling Mr. Hinkle, and my hope chest.
18: It’s about telling Mr. Hinkle.
19: It’s about auctions, ice cream, and that hospital in Ohio.
20: It’s about Aunt Ethel Mae’s headaches and Jake.
21: It’s about Mr. Hinkle’s betrothed.
22: It’s about telling Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae.
23: It’s about Ears and Germy.
24: It’s about not knowing who I be no more.
25: It’s about what Uncle William told me.
26: It’s about saying hello and good-bye.
27: It’s about dinner, singing, and Jake’s mama.
28: It’s about Mama’s new trial.
29: It’s about being in Paradise.
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
These women of Appalachia, they didn’t survive.
They prevailed.
—Margaret Hatfield
from the West Virginia History Film Project
1
It’s about my problem.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1953
My mama’s in jail. It ain’t right. Leastwise, I don’t think so. Them folks that put her there just don’t understand our family. My mama’s the best mama in the whole wide world. Everbody used to say so afore the awful stuff happened. Even Uncle William. And he don’t say much nice about nobody.
I got to get her out. But how? Even when they’s wrong, once grown-ups make up their minds about something, a kid like me don’t stand much of a chance of changing it. Poor Mama. I know she hates being caged up like a rabbit, and it’s all my fault.
I feel like my heart done shattered in tiny pieces, like Gran’s vase that me and BJ broke playing tag one time. And I ain’t got nobody to help me put them pieces back together.
That’s why I stopped by the company store after school yesterday and bought me the biggest spiral notebook they had. Maybe writing everthing down will help me sort it all out.
“Lydia, when you came to be, you was my only star in a dark, dark sky,” Mama always said. When I lived in Paradise, Mama and Gran always made me and BJ both feel like we was right special to them.
But sometimes a body can feel all alone, even when other people live in the same house. That’s how I feel living with Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae here in Confidence, West Virginia. They be nice enough people, but they ain’t got nary a clue about what to do with me.
The bad stuff commenced like this: My brother, BJ, was borned awful sick, but we didn’t know it at first. When Mama birthed me, Gran said I didn’t cause Mama no trouble at all. Daddy was at work, so Gran hollered to a neighbor across the road that I was a-coming soon. The neighbor got in his car and went to fetch old Doc Smythson.
When Doc Smythson comed to help Mama, Gran told him she could manage things just fine, but he said he would be awful obliged iffen she let him help because it was his doctoring duty. So Gran figured it would be okay. But Gran told me that she really done most of the work, after Mama, of course. Gran midwifed most of the women around these parts. She fixed Mama blue cohosh tea to sip and tickled her nose with a feather.
Gran said, “When your mama sneezed, you whizzed out of her like a pellet from a shotgun. All Doc Smythson had to do was hold out his hands to catch you.” Gran shook her head. “Ain’t like you have to go to some fancy school to learn how to do that!”
But things sure turned out different with BJ. I recollect the whole thing. I was four years old at the time. Gramps and Daddy lived in Heaven by then. Me and Mama and Gran lived in Gramps’ cabin all by ourselves.
When BJ was about to come, Mama started bleeding real bad, and she screamed like a hound dog a-howling at the moon. Nothing Gran mixed from her herb bottles helped none. Gran sent me running to the neighbors’ house to have them find Doc Smythson.
Doc took one look at Mama and told Gran he had to fetch her to the hospital in Charleston straight away. But we didn’t have no ambulance close by where we lived. Sometimes the men from the funeral home took folks to the hospital in their hearse. But they couldn’t get to our house soon enough for my mama, tucked way back up in the mountains as we are.
So Gran wrapped Mama up in blankets, and Doc carried her like a sack of taters to his jeep. Her eyes was closed like she was asleep. I cried out to her, “Take me with you, Mama! Take me with you!”
She opened her eyes just a little and looked at me. Her lips said, “I love you,” but no sound come out at all. Doc sped off with her to the big hospital in Charleston.
<
br /> Tears commenced to roll down my cheeks when I watched them drive away. Gran smoothed the hair back from my face with her hands, rough as a cat’s tongue. “Your mama needs us to stay here and look after things for her, pumpkin,” she said.
When me and Gran went back inside, Gran pulled Mama’s bloody sheets offen the bed and took them to the washtub. I couldn’t bear to watch the water take Mama’s blood away, thinking that was all I had left of her. So I runned under the kitchen table and curled up like a woolly worm that somebody poked with a stick.
After Gran got done a-scrubbing and a-hanging out the sheets to dry, she leaned under the table and took my hand. “Come on, child,” she said. “Your mama needs us to be strong for her. Besides, I ain’t got the bones for bending down like this. You ain’t helping your mama none by hiding under the table. Let’s fix up the cabin all nice for her and the baby to come home to.” I crawled out, and Gran handed me a little broom Daddy made for me afore he died.
I got myself busy sweeping the floors ever day Mama stayed at the hospital. Gran said, “Lydia, I declare, you’re going to wear holes in the floor clean through to Chiny iffen you keep that up.” But I wanted them floors to be spanking clean for my mama.
Mama finally comed back and brought my new baby brother with her. Gran folded up a blanket and laid it in a dresser drawer on Mama’s bed for him to sleep in. It made me think of Baby Jesus in the manger to see him lying there all cozied up.
Mama named my brother Benjamin for my grandpa on Daddy’s side and James for my gramps on Mama’s side. But he looked just too little to be Benjamin James. I wanted to call him Ben Jim, but Gran said, “Mercy, pumpkin, that sounds more like the name of a tonic than a fitting name for a boy. I can hear it on the radio now. ‘Ben Jim heals your soul and heart, mends your body and makes you smart, keeps you strong and cures the farts.’ ”
So we took to calling him BJ instead.
BJ looked as cute as a speckled steamboat on a spotted river, as Gran used to say, even iffen he was as skinny as a straight pin. He had big blue eyes the color of our pond when it froze over. Them eyes looked clean through you, right inside to your very soul. His hair was the color of a ripe ear of corn. I used to hold him on my lap and tell him stories—about our daddy, about living up here on the mountain, and about how much we all loved him. He’d look at me and grin, and this little dimple would creep up like an extra smile.
Sometimes I’d think he sure lucked out being that cute. All I got was plain brown hair, plain brown eyes, and a plain face. And a bunch of awful freckles. I asked Mama, “How come I didn’t get blue eyes like BJ?” She said, “You got soft, gentle doe eyes instead, Lydia. Eyes just like your heart.” I felt better after that.
BJ was so tiny he made me come to think of Tom Thumb—a story Gran used to tell me about a little boy the size of his daddy’s thumb. BJ mewed like one of our old cat Hessie’s kittens when he wanted a drink from Mama’s breast. His sucking sounded like purring almost. Sometimes I wished that I could curl up with Mama like that—all safe and warm. But I thought I was too big because Mama was so weak. Feeding BJ seemed about all she could manage. So I didn’t ask. Besides, I had to help Gran with the cooking and other chores. I didn’t mind so much. I pretended I was all growed up and a real important person.
One day while Mama slept, Gran let me hold BJ for the very first time. I had to sit in the rocking chair and be real careful. His neck still flopped about like my rag doll. I curled my arm around him when Gran laid him in my lap. He didn’t weigh much more than a mess of green beans. I looked down at his big eyes, and he looked up at me. “Looky there,” Gran said. “He’s a-smiling at you.”
I smiled back at him. I knew right then and there that I was somebody special to my baby brother. “I will always take good care of you, BJ,” I promised in a whisper only he could hear. “Always and forever. I won’t let nothing bad happen to my BJ.”
I tried real hard to keep that promise, but I couldn’t. Gran always reminded us when something bad happened that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The rain that Gran talked about sure poured down mighty hard on our family.
2
It’s about missing home and them girls at school.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1953
Folks around here know the tale about Mama and BJ—at least they think they do. Them big-city newspapers wrote about Mama’s story, but most people heard tell of it from someone shooting their mouth off. Ain’t none of them got it right, though.
When Mama went to jail, I had to come live with Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae in their shotgun house at the coal camp in Confidence. Gran once told me that Uncle William’s house is called a shotgun house on account of iffen you shot a pellet at the front door, it would fly clean through the whole house and out the back door.
Mama thought different. “Lydia,” she said, “it’s a humpback house, on account of having a room on the top. Your uncle has a bigger house than most of them coal miners. He’s a boss over some of them men.” Mama held her head real high when she said that. I know she’s right proud of her brother. That little room upstairs is where I sleep. At least it has a window, so’s I can look at the stars at night.
The house is painted white and has green shutters on the windows. You walk up three steps to the porch. Then you walk in the door to the living room. Aunt Ethel Mae likes to decorate everthing with flowers. She has wallpaper with flowers, pictures of flowers, and a floral couch cover. She even has fake flowers in a vase painted with flowers. Sometimes she sprays them with perfume. I don’t know why she don’t just grow her some real flowers in her yard. I guess she didn’t think about that. For some reason, I always feel itchy when I sit in that living room.
When you go through the living room door, you find yourself in Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae’s bedroom. They’s some stairs in their room that lead up to my room. When you go through their bedroom door, you’re in the kitchen. A little bathroom sits off to the side. Out the kitchen door, they have theirselves a tiny stoop and yard.
I sure do miss living in the house that Gramps built with his own two hands. My great-grandpa deeded him the land when he first got married. Gran loved to tell stories about the house that started off as a little cabin. She said Gramps called it his make-do house. That’s on account of him making do with whatever supplies he could find to build it. Each time he had another young’un, he made do by adding another room. When him and Gran first got married, the cabin had one big room that they used for sitting, cooking, eating, and sleeping. He built a johnny house out in back for the other stuff folks got to do. Gran said he made it a two-seater so’s she could feel rich.
When they been married for a year, Gran told him, “It sure would be nice to have us a place to sit in a swing and look out over the mountains of an evening.” So Gramps created her a front porch and his swing still hangs from two chains today.
When they been married two years, Gran said, “It sure would be nice to have a place to sleep so’s people wouldn’t have to stare at our bed when they come to set a spell.” So Gramps created her a bedroom on the top of the house.
When they been married three years, Gran said, “It sure would be nice to have a room for this young’un that’s a-coming in a few months.” So Gramps created Uncle William’s room on the left side of the house.
When they been married five years, Gran says, “It sure would be nice to have a room for this new young’un that’s joining us soon.” So Gramps created Mama’s room on the right side of the house.
Gran couldn’t have no more babies after Mama, but that weren’t the last of them room addings-on. Gran thought it sure would be nice to have herself a sewing room and a dining room over the years, too. My gramps loved my gran a awful, awful lot. So Gramps created them rooms, the kitchen on the back of the house, the sewing room on top of Uncle William’s room, and a dining room beside the kitchen.
When all them rooms was done, Gran said, “It sure would be nice to have this whol
e entire house painted. You know, so it could blend into the sky.” Gramps knowed that meant she wanted it painted blue, her favorite color. So sure enough, Gran got herself a blue house.
Gramps died when I was only three years old. I don’t recollect much about him, just him tickling me with his long white beard. And I have a foggy recollection of him carrying me outside on his arm. He pointed out birds and twittered their calls. He smelled a little musty, but I have a warm, soft feeling when I think about him. Mama told me Gramps called me Sparrow on account of my brown hair and freckles. I like that.
After Gramps died, Daddy said we would move in with Gran to help her out. When I think on it now, I wonder iffen Daddy moved us there to help him out. Him and Mama had been renting a tiny house in Raymond City.
Gran was getting too old to climb them rickety stairs, so she took Uncle William’s old room. Mama and Daddy slept in the upstairs bedroom. Mama fixed up Gran’s old sewing room for BJ. She mixed up some paste and wallpapered the room with the Sunday funnies that Uncle William saved up from the Gazette.
I slept in Mama’s old bedroom. It was painted a light peach color. My bed was covered with the quilt Gran made for Mama when she was a little girl. She used all different colors of floral materials to make a Sunbonnet Sue pattern. The quilt smelled like Gran and Mama close together, and I always felt safe tucked in under it.
I loved the tin roof that Gramps put on that little room when he created it. I liked to listen to the rain tinkling and pattering. Ain’t no better song than that to lull a body to sleep.
Sometimes BJ and me spent time sitting on his bed looking at the hills and sky out his upstairs bedroom window. Ain’t no better picture for a wall than that ’cause God Hisself painted our picture, and it changed ever day.
When I think about Gramps’ make-do house, I always recollect the smells. Gran’s room always smelled of lavender. Daddy and Mama’s room smelled of whatever fresh flowers and herbs was a-growing in the woods. And the kitchen always smelled of yummy surprises when I walked in from school. Chicken and dumplings, my favorite. Pinto beans and corn bread. Ham and fried apples. Meat loaf with ramps and fried taters. Buttermilk biscuits. Oatmeal and molasses cookies.
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