Child of the Mountains

by Marilyn Sue Shank

  I needed to put the napkins and tablecloth in the bottom drawer, but the top drawer stuck out some with stuff pouring out of it like paper molasses. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the stuff shoved back in to close the drawer. So I decided to pull it out and set it on the floor. I figured I could get rid of any trash and try to sort the rest of it so I wouldn’t have to keep fighting it any time I needed to put things away. I thought I might as well take out the bottom drawer and sort it, too.

  When I pulled out the bottom drawer, I saw a envelope taped to the back of the buffet. The envelope and the tape was yellow, like they been hanging there with no one seeing them for years. I started to reach for the envelope, but then I pulled my hand back. I thought of Gran saying, “Curiosity killed the cat.” But I knowed that Hessie lived after being curious about most everthing. Besides, I figured no one would ever know. I was as drawed to that envelope as Eve was to the apple.

  I reached my hand out again. I wish I had recollected the story we heard tell of in Mr. Hinkle’s class when we studied mythology. We read about a lady named Pandora. She opened a box that changed everthing in the world, and not in a good way. As soon as I gently rubbed my finger behind that tape to loosen it, I had commenced to open Pandora’s box.

  The envelope wasn’t sealed. The flap was tucked instead, so I figured it was safe to look at what was inside. Then I could stick the envelope to the buffet again when I finished. I pulled out the paper and set the envelope on the floor aside me.

  The paper was folded in thirds. Nothing was wrote on the back. When I unfolded it, a picture of a woman fell out. I glanced at it and laid it aside. Then I read what was wrote on the paper, and my heart stopped. The whole world stopped. It was a birth certificate from the State of West Virginia. And there was my name. Well, almost my name. And my birth date. But not my mother’s and father’s names.

  The name on the birth certificate said Lydia Jane Garton—not Lydia Jane Hawkins. The birth date: March 15, 1942. Father’s name: William Stanley Garton—my uncle’s name and Gran’s last name. Mother’s name: Helen Jane Garton. I didn’t know who that woman could be. It sure ain’t Aunt Ethel Mae. And it sure ain’t my mama.

  I picked up the picture again. It didn’t have no name or date on it. The woman smiled at me from the picture—a nice smile. She was pretty in a gentle way. I couldn’t tell the color of her hair or eyes on account of the picture being black-and-white, but they looked dark. Her hair hung down in long curls around her shoulders. And I saw she had freckles—soft little spots that seemed to make her beauty real special, not like the beauty other folks have.

  No one else in the family has freckles but me. Tears runned down my face. Was my mama not my mama? What could this mean?

  I heard a car parking in front of the house and knowed it was my uncle.

  I stuffed the birth certificate and picture back in the envelope. I tried to stick the envelope to the back of the buffet, but the tape wouldn’t stick no more. I smoothed out the stuff in the drawers the best I could and shoved them in the buffet. Then I slid the envelope behind the elastic in my skirt and hid it under my blouse, just as I heard my uncle opening the back door. I stepped into the kitchen, picked up the spoon, and stirred the stew as he stepped into the kitchen.

  “William, is that you, sweetheart?” Aunt Ethel Mae called even more feeble than she did to me. “Come give me a kiss after you clean up, dear.” Uncle William rolled his eyes just like I had. He took off his work boots and dropped them on the mat at the door. He took off his dirty socks and put them in his pants pocket. Then he dropped his lunch bucket and thermos on the kitchen table, trudged to the bathroom to take a quick shower to get rid of the coal dust, trudged into the bedroom to give Aunt Ethel Mae her kiss, and listened to her complain about her headache—or at least pretended to listen.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and started spooning the stew into three bowls. The warm salty smell of stew makes me hungry most times, but not tonight. My stomach was too balled up. I poured milk and coffee, cut some bread, got out the butter and jam, and set the table for Uncle William and me. I dished up some peaches for dessert. Then I made up a tray for Aunt Ethel Mae and took it to her.

  When I sat down at the table to eat supper with Uncle William, the envelope rubbed against me, making me itch. I worried that Uncle William might notice it bulging under my blouse and maybe worried just a little that he wouldn’t see it. But he brought the Daily Mail to the table with him. Uncle William read that newspaper the whole time he was eating and didn’t even look at me once. When he finished eating, he grunted, “Good stew, Lydia,” got up from the table, turned on the radio in the living room, sprawled hisself out on the couch, let out a big belch, fell asleep, and commenced to snoring.

  I went to pick up the tray from Aunt Ethel Mae. “Come here and sit on the bed,” she whimpered like a pup. “Tell me about your day, Lydia.” I sat down with the envelope making my blouse stick out like it wanted to be noticed. But Aunt Ethel Mae didn’t see nary a thing.

  I knowed how this would go. It’s like Aunt Ethel Mae is always trying to find her way in one of them houses of mirrors they have at fairs. No matter where she looks, she only sees herself. “School was fine,” I said, not looking her in the eye.

  “I recollect when I was your age …,” she said, looking out the little window. And then on and on and on she talked.

  When she finally stopped to take a breath, I said, “Well, I guess I best finish the dishes and get to my homework.” I figured she had got her talking out of her system. She let me leave.

  Uncle William sat on the couch crocheting a red, white, and blue afghan. I ain’t sure what he done with them afghans now that Mama is in prison. Maybe he took them to work and gived them away. I feel right certain that he wouldn’t tell them miners he be the one that crocheted them. I also reckon that any of them miners that made fun of Uncle William would hurt pretty bad for a few days. Maybe Aunt Ethel Mae gived them to her church. Iffen she did, I bet she bragged that she made them. I sure wasn’t going to ask him about it.

  I stood by the couch and watched him wiggle them big needles back and forth for a couple of minutes, but he never looked up. Part of me wanted to talk to him about what I found. But the biggest part was too afeared.

  As I cleaned up the kitchen, I wished I could wash away that birth certificate just as easy as I washed the dirt offen them dishes.

  I kept a-trying to sort it all out while my hands was busy with the dishes. Iffen that birth certificate is real, this is the way I worked it out. Mama and Daddy is my aunt and uncle. BJ is my cousin and not my brother. Gran and Gramps was still my grandparents when they was alive. Uncle William is my real daddy and Aunt Ethel Mae is my stepmother. That last one was a real scary thought. And what happened to my real mama?

  I felt as empty as the jam jar I washed out. All that I knowed about myself was gone. My tears added to the dishwater. I understood then about how Aunt Ethel Mae felt with her sick headaches. I opened the cabinet and got out the bottle of aspirins. I wondered what would happen iffen I took all of them. But I took out one little pill and swallowed it with a glass of water.

  Gran always told me I whizzed out of Mama like a pellet from a shotgun—real easy. Mama told me when I came to be, I was her only star in a dark, dark sky. I recollect them telling me that as clear as iffen it happened today. Why did they lie to me? I felt this anger come up inside me like hot, red lava from one of them volcanoes that Mr. Hinkle showed us a filmstrip about. I wanted to let it spew out over everone.

  I had to know. Somebody had to tell me the truth. As afeared as the thought made me, I knowed that one person had to be Uncle William. When I fixed Uncle William’s lunch for tomorrow, I filled his thermos with coffee and the bottom container of his heavy metal lunch bucket with water. I wrapped two tuna fish salad sandwiches in wax paper and tucked them and a apple in the middle container. I wrapped a piece of blackberry pie for the top container. I also folded the envelope with the birth certificat
e in half, making sure I didn’t fold the picture. I wrapped it in wax paper and put it underneath the pie. Aunt Ethel Mae once told me coal miners always eat dessert first in case something bad happens to them. I wanted to make sure Uncle William seen that there envelope afore he had one bite to eat.

  25

  It’s about what Uncle William told me.

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1954

  After school today, Mr. Hinkle asked me iffen I was okay. He said it wasn’t like me not to do my homework and that I seemed very quiet. I told him I was sorry and that I hadn’t felt well.

  “Are you concerned about the trial, Lydia?” he asked as he patted my shoulder.

  “A little,” I said. How could I begin to tell him everthing I was worried about?

  “Well, that’s understandable. I need you to try to stay caught up with your work, though. We don’t want you getting behind.”

  “I’ll get caught up tonight,” I promised.

  I sure was glad to see Ears trotting up to me when I walked home from school. I sat down on the curb aside him and buried my head in his neck. I wrapped my arms real tight around him. His body tensed up like he was asking me, “What’s wrong?” He licked my face. I couldn’t talk, not even to him.

  Me and him sat together until he had licked all the tears offen my face. I patted him for a bit. Then I said, “You and me be alike, Ears. You seem to think you belong to me, but you really belong to the people in that house over there. I don’t know who I belong to, neither.” Ears whimpered a little like he knowed what I meant.

  I was just about to stand up and finish walking to the house when I saw my uncle’s car coming around the corner. My heart started beating so fast I thought I might faint. I wanted to run, but I was like a rabbit trapped by a bobcat—too afeared to move. Uncle William pulled the car over and opened the door on my side.

  “Get in,” he ordered. Ears barked at him.

  My voice shook, but I said, “Go home, Ears,” and pointed to his house. Ears looked like he didn’t want to leave me alone. But he did what I told him.

  I climbed in the car with my uncle. He didn’t say nothing. I didn’t, neither. He drove to his house, parked the car, and told me, “Stay put.”

  I did. I twirled a strand of my hair and was surprised to see I had pulled a few hairs out of my head. I didn’t even feel it.

  Uncle William got back in the car and handed me the shopping list. “I told your aunt that I took off a couple of hours early to get some hunting supplies at Sears and Roebuck for this weekend. I picked you up on the way home and figured I could drop you at Evans to do the grocery shopping. She said she wanted to go shopping, but I told her she needed to stay home on account of being so sick. I said I would bring her something.”

  I knowed Aunt Ethel Mae wouldn’t be happy about that, but I didn’t say nothing. She loves to shop at Sears and Roebuck. I wondered iffen Uncle William got in trouble for taking off early. I wanted to ask him what he told his boss, but I was afeared to.

  Was we really going shopping? I pulled out a few more strands of hair thinking about it. We drove offen the hill and turned left toward Charleston. Then Uncle William pulled over at a little park at Hometown.

  It ain’t much of a park, just a couple of picnic tables and signs. One tells how George Washington acquired all the land up in these parts. His nephew lived close to the park in Red House. The other one tells how the highway was the path of a Colonial army that defeated Cornstalk at Point Pleasant. I knowed all that because we took a field trip to the park when I was in fourth grade. We even had a picnic after we read and talked about the signs. I figured me and Uncle William weren’t going to have no picnic.

  “Get out,” Uncle William ordered me.

  I got out. At least I knowed he wouldn’t hit me. Too many cars kept passing by. He sat hisself down at one of the picnic tables. I sat down across from him. I shivered and my teeth chattered. I don’t know whether it was because it was so cold or on account of being so afeared of him. I pushed my hands deeper in the pockets of the coat he bought me. Most times the smell of cold air makes me feel clean inside. Today it just made me feel numb.

  Uncle William looked hot. His face was all red. “How did you find it?” His steel-blue eyes drilled holes in me.

  I told him without looking at his face. I stared at a knothole in the picnic table as I forced them words out of my mouth.

  “You had no right to open that envelope!” he yelled, and slammed his fist on the table.

  I jumped like he had slammed that fist down on me. Tears ran fast down my cheeks. I covered my face with my hands. My gloves caught the tears, but now my hands was wet. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I moaned.

  He stood up and walked away from me. I watched him through my fingers. He put his arm on a oak tree that was dead of leaves for winter and leaned his head on his arm. He stayed that way for a while. Then he comed back to the table and sat down.

  He sighed. “What do you want to know, Lydia?”

  I still didn’t look at him, but the tears stopped coming. “Is my mama my real mama?”

  He didn’t say nothing for a while. Then he said, “Yes, Lydia. Your mama is your real mama. But she’s not your birth mother.”

  “The lady in the picture is my birth mother?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you my daddy?”

  “No, I’m your uncle William by law.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I gived you up to your parents for adoption soon after you was borned.”

  I tried to imagine what my life would have been like iffen I had growed up with Uncle William. I couldn’t even get a tiny picture of it in my head. “You didn’t want me?” I asked.

  Uncle William fidgeted a little and then cleared his throat like he had to make room for the words to come out of his mouth. He didn’t look at me when he talked. “Helen—your birth mother—and I wanted you more than anything.” He thought for a bit. Then he said, “I dropped out of high school to take a job in a machine shop in Charleston. Times was tough, and I wanted to get out on my own and make my own way. I had me a little one-room apartment. I ate at Jack’s Place most days. That’s where I met Helen. She worked there as a waitress.”

  “You thought she was pretty?”

  “Beautiful. She always had a smile for me. I could talk to her.”

  That was saying something. I knowed how hard it was for Uncle William to talk to anybody about anything. “So you married her.”

  “Yeah. We eloped. Most folks couldn’t afford a fancy wedding back then. We didn’t have much money, but we saved up what we could for a house. We was real happy when we found out Helen was going to have a baby. I didn’t know nothing about raising young’uns, but I knowed Helen would help me learn. She loved kids—always talked to them and liked to give them special treats when they comed in the restaurant.”

  “What happened to her? Where is she?”

  Another real long sigh blowed out of him and his face tightened up. “She died, Lydia. They had a special waiting area at the hospital for what they called expectant fathers. After a time, the doctor called my name and took me to another room. He said you come out fine but your mother didn’t make it.” One tear crept out of his eye. It didn’t slide down his face very far until he pushed it aside with his sleeve and cleared his throat again.

  My throat got tight. “I killed my mother?”

  He looked me straight in the eyes. “It ain’t right for you to think of it like that, Lydia. Helen never would have wanted you to see it that way.”

  “But iffen I hadn’t been borned, she would still be here. Is that why you gived me away? You hated me for killing her?” I cried again. I was shivering hard.

  “No, Lydia. It ain’t like that.” He looked at me for a minute. “Come on. Let’s go back to the car, and I’ll put the heater on. We’ll finish our talk there.”

  So we walked back to the car. It took a few minutes for the heater to warm up. We didn’t s
ay nothing for a while.

  “You was borned three months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,” Uncle William started up again. “You know about World War Two, right?”

  I nodded without looking at him.

  “I wanted to do my part to make the world safe for you and Helen. I enlisted in the Army Air Corps a month after Pearl Harbor. I would have been drafted anyhow, so I wanted to choose the branch where I would serve. I knowed that Helen could take care of you on the money I made in the service. I thought I could take the two of you with me wherever I had training in the States afore going overseas. Helen thought it would be a adventure to live in another state. You was borned in March. I was scheduled to leave in May.”

  “You couldn’t get out of it to take care of me?”

  “No, Lydia. I couldn’t. War don’t work like that. A lot of soldiers died in that war. I didn’t know iffen I would come back. I thought about leaving you with my folks, but they was getting up in years. I tried to figure out what was best for you. I knowed that Sarah would be the best mother a young’un could ever have. Her and me both got married just a few months apart. John was 4-F and couldn’t be drafted. Iffen I gived you to them, you would have a mother and father to love you and care for you. I signed the adoption papers for them to take you.”

  “Did you try to get me back when you comed home?”

  “I had signed them papers, Lydia. You seemed real happy with Sarah. It felt best to leave you with her. It took me a while to figure out what to do with myself when I got back.”

  “You become a coal miner,” I said, still trying to sort it all out.