It weren’t no fancy mansion like a lot of city folks have. But there ain’t no better house in the world than Gramps’ make-do house on account of that house being home.
I don’t think Uncle William’s house will ever feel like home. Mama always said Uncle William is the strong, silent type. He’s sort of scary, I think. He has blue eyes, but they look hard like steel, not soft and glittery like BJ’s and Mama’s. He wears his light brown hair cut short and sticking up on top like he’s still in the army fighting the Nazis. He would pat me on the head sometimes when I was little, but I always thought it was best to stay out of his way as much as I could.
Aunt Ethel Mae has hazel eyes and black hair that she tries to fix like some of them movie stars by using bobby pins to push it in a roll around her face. Then it falls smooth and curls under in another roll at her shoulders. She wears bright red lipstick and uses a eyebrow pencil to paint a mole aside her mouth. I don’t like the mole I have on my arm. I can’t figure why anybody would want a fake one, but she calls it her beauty mark.
Aunt Ethel Mae’s real slender, almost skinny, and she’s taller than Mama. My aunt smells sugary sweet with some cigarette smoke mixed in. She’s always grinning and laughing real loud when she’s with other people. But when she’s in this house, her face looks tight and kind of sad.
Moving in with Uncle William and leaving Mama, my house, my old school and friends hurt bad enough. But the very worst part was not being able to leave them secrets about Mama and BJ behind, too.
Yesterday, some of them girls at school soured the air talking about BJ. Most times, I take a book to read at recess and sit under a tall elm tree as far away from them other kids as I can get. Now that them gold and brown leaves have fell to the ground, I have me a cozy, crinkly nest to sit in.
Iffen them girls start up playing a game, sometimes they’ll just let me be. But not yesterday. Cora Lee, Maggie, and Penny tired out of playing hopscotch and walked over to me. I tried real hard to keep reading my book, Anne of Green Gables.
Cora Lee—she always starts stuff. She thinks she’s special on account of she’s got a pretty face, blue eyes, and long black hair that curls at her waist. Her father works as a big shot at the coal company. They used to live in Pennsylvania, and she talks different. She has ten store-bought dresses. I didn’t have to count. She brags about them all the time. She never wears the same dress two days in a row. Them other girls follow her around like she’s a bitch dog and they’s her puppies. I could feel Cora Lee’s grin without looking up at her. “Hey, child killer’s daughter,” she said. “Whatcha reading?”
“I bet it’s a murder mystery,” Maggie said. She twisted one of her long blond pigtails in her fingers. I kept thinking how I would like to pull them both and tie them in a knot.
Penny leaned in close to me. I could smell her stinky breath. “It’s Halloween,” she said. “Do you think BJ will come back as a ghost and haunt you?”
Keep reading, keep reading, keep reading, I told myself.
Anne Shirley didn’t have no one to help her out neither. But she always stayed real strong. She never ever let no one mess with her. I bet she would have told them girls, “When you go trick-or-treating, you all ain’t got to wear no masks, you ugly monsters!” Excepten Anne would have said it all fancy.
But I ain’t like Anne. I felt myself shrivel up like a morning glory when the sun leaves the sky. My skin got hot. My fingernails gripped the book so tight that I made little ridges in the cover. I turned a page that I knowed I would have to read all over again later.
“Come on,” Cora Lee said to them other girls. “Who cares what she has to say anyways?” They laughed and prissy-pranced their way back to the other kids, just as my teacher, Mr. Hinkle, walked out the door and rung the bell to go inside.
To tell the truth, I don’t know how much more I’m going to be able to take. One time, I tried to tell Aunt Ethel Mae about them girls. She commenced to crying when she heard the mean stuff that they said about Mama. I don’t tell her no more. I don’t want her to have to feel bad, too. But when I got home today, a few tears snuck out of my eyes when I walked through the door. She saw them, even though I tried to sniff them back inside as quick as I could.
After supper, Aunt Ethel Mae started a-preaching at me while she runned water in the sink for the dishes I cleared from the table. “Honestly, Lydia, you ain’t been eating enough to keep a bird alive. Now, there ain’t no use getting yourself all worked up and in a tizzy over them girls at school. They ain’t got a lick of sense anyways. They should ought to mind their own business. Here,” she said as she shoved a bowl of Tootsie Rolls at me. “Make yourself useful tonight and get your mind offen your troubles. Pass out this here candy to the trick-or-treaters.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle William giving me the hairy eyeball from his chair in the living room as he crocheted another afghan. I ain’t never seen any man afore Uncle William crochet. He used to give some of them afghans to Mama to take to church for people in need. I asked her about it one time. She said Gran taught him how to crochet when he was little to keep him out of mischief. “Idle hands is the devil’s workshop,” she told him. For some reason, he decided he liked it, I guess. He sure has made a bunch of them.
Uncle William listened to The Aldrich Family on the radio while he crocheted, but I knowed from that look in his eye that he heard ever word Aunt Ethel Mae said. And I also knowed I best do what she told me without no backtalk.
I swallowed the hurt that was a-churning in my stomach like butter and took the bowl. I wish I could be like Anne. Anne would have told Aunt Ethel Mae that she ain’t got the sense God gave a scarecrow for telling me to hand out candy to kids the same age as BJ when he passed on. I would have to be nice to them little kids. It weren’t their fault.
Instead of going to bed like I wanted to, I headed for a chair in the living room to wait for the first knock on the door. Soon I stood on my feet more than I sat down, a-passing out candy to cowboys, Indians, and princesses.
“Trick or treat!” the kids shouted, their grinning teeth peeping out from homemade costumes.
“Them costumes is great,” I said, trying to keep my eyes away from their faces as much as possible. It worked for a while.
But then it happened. A little boy wearing a tattered old sheet with a hole for his face smiled at me and his blue eyes seemed to laugh. His two front teeth was missing, just like BJ’s on the day he left us. The tears wouldn’t stay locked up in my eyes no more.
Aunt Ethel Mae saw me as I shut the door. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry. What was I thinking?” She tried to put her arm around me, but I pulled away and runned to bed. She weren’t thinking. That be the problem. Mama would have knowed better.
I buried my head in my pillow, but all the bad stuff—losing Mama and BJ and Gran and Daddy—washed over me like floodwaters.
“I wish you would send BJ back as a ghost to haunt me,” I whispered to God. “I sure do miss him.”
3
It’s about my daddy.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1953
I wonder how come sometimes you love someone and hate them at the same time. I can’t figure out how my heart can hold all them good and bad feelings about my daddy. I had me a nightmare about him again last night.
Daddy never even got to lay eyes on BJ. My daddy got killed when he went on a construction job at a church in Poca three months afore BJ come along. Mama saved the newspaper article about what happened. I used to get it out of the family Bible and read it sometimes. It says that Daddy died when a wall they built to hold back the dirt for the basement caved in. The loose dirt and cement blocks fell right on top of him. They couldn’t dig him out in time to save him. Uncle William always says he’s surprised it weren’t him that got swallowed up by the ground, working in the coal mines as he does.
I hate to think of Daddy being buried alive like that. I still get the nightmares about it a lot. I wake up shivering—cold and hot
at the same time. My breath gets swallowed up inside me, and I scream, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”
When I got the nightmares at home, Mama would sit beside me on the bed, stroking my hair and cooing to me, “Shhh, Lydia. It’s all right, baby.” Then she would sing, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” Sometimes Gran would bring me a cup of chamomile tea.
But when I woke up screaming last night, Uncle William just yelled from his bedroom, “Be quiet in there, Lydia. You’re having another bad dream is all. I got to get up at four o’clock. Now turn over and go back to sleep.” I think Aunt Ethel Mae slept through the whole thing.
I turned over like Uncle William said, but sleep never comed back. I finally got up and sat by the window. The stars seemed to wink like they was a-telling me they knew my secret but wouldn’t never tell a soul. I wondered iffen Mama could see the stars winking at her through the bars in her cell window.
Sometimes I have nice dreams about the good times with Daddy. I can smell the sweetness of his chaw and the warmth of his sweat after he worked hard all day. I help him saucer and blow his coffee after he washes up and sits down to supper. Mama pours him a boiling hot, steamy cup when he finishes eating. He pours some of it into the saucer and adds a little cream. Then he winks at me. I come running over and help him blow on it to cool it off. He slurps it down from the saucer. Then we look at each other and say, “Ahhhhh, now, that’s good coffee!” He pours some more coffee in the saucer, and we start all over again. When he’s done, he picks me up in his strong arms and swings me around while he sings:
“Old Dan Tucker was a mighty man.
Washed his face in a fryin’ pan.
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel.
Died with a toothache in his heel.
So get out the way, Old Dan Tucker.
You’re too late to stay for supper.
Supper’s over, breakfast’s a-cookin’.
Old Dan Tucker just stands there a-lookin’ ”
I squeal and laugh and feel like Daddy is the best daddy in these here United States. Then I wake up calling to him. But he ain’t there and never will be again.
I still like to think about the fun things we done and the funny stories he used to tell.
We had us a special joke. He’d ask, “How does a cat go?”
I’d say, “Meow.”
He’d ask, “How does a dog go?”
I’d say, “Bow wow.”
Then he’d ask me with a big grin on his face, “And how does a turtle go?”
He tricked me the first time, but ever time after that, him and me would both say, “Sloooooooooooooow.” We’d laugh, and he would give me a big hug.
After we moved into Gramps’ house, Daddy added on a bathroom. I’d stand outside and watch him work. Sometimes he let me help. I wore a old jacket that Mama picked up at the Salvation Army so’s not to ruin my good one when I played. Daddy and me called it my cementing jacket. I’d hand him tools, and go in the house to get him something to drink when he felt thirsty.
One time he had me fetch a straight, thick stick. I weren’t old enough to write, so he put his big hand over my tiny one and helped me scratch Lydia in the wet cement. I can still feel his warm, sweaty fingers a-closing over mine. We put my name behind the hole for the toilet. We didn’t want Mama and Gran to see it and get all mad. When Daddy put the linoleum down, he cut a rectangle out so’s my name wouldn’t get covered up. Ever time I cleaned the bathroom after that, I always peeked behind the toilet to see my name. It sure seems strange to have to look behind a toilet to get a good feeling about my daddy.
Gran didn’t seem to remember none of them good things when Daddy died. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she said. “That man was as useless as tits on a boar hog.”
Mama told her she shouldn’t say such things, even iffen his body weren’t able to soak up all the corn liquor he drunk. Daddy could get awful mean when he was all liquored up—as mean as he was good when he wasn’t drinking. His whiskers couldn’t hide the nasty look on his face when he comed home late, reeking of his time with his drinking buddies, as Gran called them. He smelled sour and fiery.
I’d take one look at him and run to hide under the kitchen table. Then I’d stick my fingers in my ears and close my eyes tight. But it didn’t never shut it all out. Never.
Mama and Gran always stood between him and me. Sometimes Daddy hit Mama and Gran and cussed at them like they be snakes. But he was the snake—a mean old copperhead that would strike at anybody that got in the way. Mr. Hinkle read us a scary story called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Halloween. Dr. Jekyll was a very good person, but Mr. Hyde acted like a monster. Then you find out they was one and the same man. That man be just like my daddy.
One day Gran stirred apple butter in a giant pot over a fire in the backyard. She said she thought it tasted better when it cooked outside than on a stove. Mama and me sat on the porch, sewing on a quilt. The rocking chair that Daddy built for Mama when they first got married creaked back and forth, back and forth, as she hummed and sewed, hummed and sewed. The smell of the apple butter seeped around us, warming me inside. Daddy should ought to be here, too, I thought, a-playing his jaw harp on one of his good days.
“Mama, why did Daddy have to go and get drunk all the time?” I asked. I bit my lip when it come to me what I done said. Mama always told me, “Iffen you ain’t got nothing good to say about someone, don’t say nothing.” And here I sat, saying something bad about my daddy.
But Mama didn’t bat an eye or drop a stitch. “Your daddy didn’t drink like that when we first got married, Lydia,” she said. “Paul was the handsomest man in the holler, maybe in the whole state of West Virginny, with his coal black hair and hazel eyes.” She put down her sewing and looked at the sky like she could see him a-floating in the clouds.
I reached over and touched Mama’s yellow hair that fell below her waist. Most times, she wrapped it in a bun. I loved it when she took out the bobby pins and let it hang loose. It remembered me of sunrays. Her blue eyes was the sky. “Mama,” I said. “He got hisself the prettiest woman God ever created.”
Mama smiled at me and patted my hand. Then she stared at the sky again. “I met him at church,” she said. “We both sung in the choir. He had this deep voice that sent shivers right up and down my spine. One Sunday morning, Pastor John asked me to sing a solo. I sang ‘We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.’ After church, your daddy strutted right up to me and told me that he could feel hisself climbing that ladder to Heaven when I sung. Then he asked iffen he could walk me home, just as bold as if he knowed me all his life. On the way to the house, he knelt down and picked me some flowers. ‘Here’s some lady slippers for my lady,’ he told me. His smile and them little yellow flowers lit a candle in my heart.”
Mama smiled and got a real faraway look on her face. I think she might have misremembered that I was there. She took a deep breath like she was a-smelling them flowers again.
“When we first got married, your daddy was good and kind to me,” she went on, “just like my own papa. But then the war with the Nazis broke out. The day after your daddy heard on the radio that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he tried to join the army. But they turned him down—said he had flat feet. He told me, ‘It ain’t much of a man who can’t even fight for his country.’ ”
Mama looked down at her lap and picked some loose threads from the quilt offen her dress. I kept on sewing. I was afeared that iffen I said anything, she would stop talking.
She shook her head. “Your daddy sure didn’t act like much of a man after the government turned him down. He stopped going to church. Most of his friends went to fight across the waters. A couple of them didn’t never come back. He said he was too ashamed even to go to the funerals. He found hisself some new friends at the honky-tonk. Instead of worshipping God, he started worshipping demon liquor.”
“Ow!” I said afore I thought. I had stuck my finger with the needle. A drop of b
lood oozed out.
Mama jumped like a squirrel that done heard a shotgun fired. She handed me her hankie. Then she looked me in the eye. “Lydia, it ain’t right for me to tell you all this. It’s too heavy a burden for a young’un.”
I spit on the hankie and wiped my finger. Then I looked straight on at her. “He’s my daddy. I got ever right to know, Mama.”
She sighed and got real quiet, like she was a-puzzling it out. Then she looked out the window again and commenced to talk. “I kept thinking maybe iffen I loved him more, he would change,” she said, almost whispering. “I tried real, real hard to be a good wife.” She sighed again even deeper. “But I learned me a important lesson. You can’t never change nobody but yourself. Ain’t nothing I could of done to make your daddy happy. He hated hisself too much. And all that hate just kept spilling out on your gran and me.”
“When I’m all growed up, Mama, I ain’t never going to let a man hit me,” I told her.
She turned and looked real hard into my eyes. “Good for you, Lydia. You deserve a man who will treat you like the precious jewel you are.”
“Mama,” I said. “You deserved better, too.”
“You’re right, Lydia. All us womenfolk should ought to be treated with respect. I had up and decided never ever to take his meanness no more. Your gran and me had us a plan to leave your daddy after BJ got borned. But the good Lord seen fit to take matters into His own hands.”
My mouth got all dry and my insides felt squeezed together just thinking about it. “Where would we of gone, Mama?”
“The Lord would have provided, Lydia.”
I had me another question I was afeared to ask. It kept me awake sometimes pondering on it. I figured I might as well spit it out. “Mama, did Daddy go to the bad place after he passed on?”
Child of the Mountains Page 2