by Silas House
And then I sat alone in the room for a while. I thought about climbing down the fire escape and running away. I still had the money from Kiku in my pocket. But then I thought about Mum on the kitchen floor and I just couldn’t do it. So I lay down on the bed and cried until I fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was completely dark outside and Mum was sitting next to me. She had lit her aarthi candles, so the room was glowing and her face was, too. I felt like our fight was a dream, but then Mum put her hands on my shoulders and said, “Mee-Mee, I didn’t want to leave you in Mussoorie. We had to do that because you were just a baby. We thought we would make a lot of money and have you with us in a month or two. We thought you would never remember us leaving when you grew up. It was not what we wanted. It was just what happened.”
It was strange to hear Mum explain herself to me like I was a grown-up. Her hands were shaking and she looked so worried and tired and sad.
I felt terrible. I sat up and hugged her and we didn’t let go. I said I was sorry for talking so meanly to her.
She said, “Let’s forget about sadness and go to sleep. I’ll take you to see the movie this weekend and you can bring any friend you want.”
So I got back into bed. Mum turned on her side and fell right to sleep, and I watched the shadows on the wall until the candles burned out. I wondered if I was Mum’s American daughter or Indian daughter. I wondered if I was turning into a mean person who makes her mother cry. And then I got up and crawled under the bed to write to you.
Thanks for being my friend. Since I have you to talk to, I don’t feel so lonely anymore. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
Good night,
Meena
P.S. I almost forgot . . . thank you so much for the birthday card. It’s beautiful. I love the buckeye and I carry it every day in my pocket. Actually, I accidentally left it in the pocket of my jeans the other day and it went through the washing machine. But since it’s a lucky buckeye, nothing happened to it.
February 28, 2009
Dear Meena,
I was really sorry to read about your mom and you fighting. It made me feel bad for both of you. I thought both of you had good points (and in the end she was really nice to come in and make up with you like that), but I have to tell you that you were pretty rough on her. If I had said some of that stuff to my parents or to Mamaw, they would’ve busted my hind end. I guess I should tell you that “busting a hind end” is not as bad as it sounds. Mrs. Tipton, our new math teacher, who is not from here, says that people in Appalachia exaggerate everything. It’s just the way we are. I mentioned it to Ms. Stidham, and she said it’s because we are “a storytelling culture.” Anyway, to bust someone’s hind end just means that you get a slap on the butt. So it’s not as bad as it sounds.
ANYWAY . . . I have gotten way off the subject (as usual). So back to the subject:
Like I was saying, you were pretty tough on her, and so I felt sorry for her. But on the other hand, it’s good that you’ve started to stand up for yourself a little bit more and to tell people how you feel about things. Mamaw always says that life is too short to be unhappy and that a lot of times people are unhappy just because they failed to speak up for themselves.
I see your point about them leaving you for seven years. That’d bother me, too. Dad is gone off to Biloxi to find work, but that’s different because at least Mom stayed here to be with me and it is not halfway around the world, like India is from America, and all that. When she explained it I still didn’t really get why they left you behind, but I believed her (didn’t you?) when she said that she didn’t want it to be that way. It must be one of those things that we’ll understand when we get older. Half the time when I say I don’t understand something, a grown-up tells me that I will understand when I get older.
Did you get to go see Coraline, then? I’ve been wanting to go because I loved the book, but I’ve been so busy I’ve not been able to. A kid I know saw it and said it freaked him out and the 3-D made him a little bit sick. He loved the book, too, and was mad that they changed it in the movie so that Coraline lives in America instead of England.
I have a secret and you can’t tell anybody — I love that Beyoncé song you were talking about, that “Single Ladies” song, or whatever it’s called. Have you seen the video? The cheerleaders at school have been doing a dance routine to it, so every day when school is out we see them practicing it on the yard outside the church and we hear the song and some of the boys start acting stupid and acting like they can do that dance. DON’T TELL ANYBODY I LIKE A BEYONCÉ SONG, OK? But it makes me want to dance.
I thought it was pretty genius of you to rubber-band a flashlight to the springs under the bed.
The march in Frankfort is tomorrow, so I better get in bed. We have to get up at like 5:30 so we can be there plenty early. It takes us about two hours to get there. I’ll write you all about it as soon as I can.
Yours truly,
River
P.S. That’s cool that nothing happened to the buckeye in the washer.
March 3, 2009
Dear River,
I’m writing you a quick note from history. We were assigned some readings about “empires,” but I finished them already, so I decided to use the extra time to write to you.
I think it’s called “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you like the song. It’s a good song and it’s SUPER FUN to dance to. Kiku let me play the video from YouTube. He was studying for a chemistry exam, but he let me play it over and over again until I had all the moves down and could do it right along with Beyoncé and those two other girls. I don’t do it as good as they do, but it’s still fun. You should try learning it. Carlos is a boy and he knows all the steps. Why shouldn’t you?
I didn’t see Coraline yet. Mum had to go into work over the weekend. But she says we will go next weekend for sure.
I liked what you said about wanting to do things over. I feel like that a lot. I wish I hadn’t yelled at Mum, for one thing.
OMG. This girl Marla who sits near the door just started laughing so hard that she snorted like a pig! When the teacher asked her what could possibly be funny about the empire handout, Marla said, “Napoleon had the tiniest hands and feet!”
Your big march at the capitol sounds very exciting. I hope you save Black Banks and all the mountains. I think you will. I can’t wait to hear all about it.
Peace out,
Meena
2 March 2009
Here’s what happened:
Everybody we knew all piled in together on a bus we had rented from a church. It was an old school bus that had been painted white, and instead of saying CROW COUNTY SCHOOLS down the side like a normal bus, it said JOHN 3:16 on one side and HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS on the other side. People were honking their horns, and truck drivers would sound their big loud horns at us all the way up the interstate, and at first it was funny but then it got old real quick. On the way up, one of the community organizers (that’s what Mamaw is, too, a community organizer) led everybody in songs. We sang all the way to Frankfort, which is a two-hour drive from Black Banks. We sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “Which Side Are You On?” and “Hard Times.” Those are real old songs that people in the mountains sing all the time, so I’m not sure if you’ve heard them or not, but I’ve been hearing them all my life. It’s like if you’re from here, you’re sort of born knowing those words, like they’re part of your body or something. The organizer had changed some of the words to fit our situation, so for example, like in “Circle,” instead of it being the real line, like
There’s a better home a-waitin’
In the sky, Lord, in the sky
it was changed to
Take my hand we’ll work together
We won’t let these mountains die
One of the people on the bus had a fiddle and another had a banjo and another had an Autoharp (here’s a picture of one I got from the Internet, because nobody
hardly knows what they are and they are mostly an instrument people here play) and they played some of the songs right there in their seats. That woman played the fiddle on “Hard Times,” and the way she played it was like you could hear all of her sadness pouring out right through the strings. She closed her eyes when she played, and I don’t even know how to describe her face. It was like a rock, somehow, how hard and firm and solid it was. Her face made the song even better.
I guess there were about 60 of us on the bus, and I knew just about everybody on there. All the boys from the team were on there with us, and they didn’t sing along, but they were ready for the march. They were into it.
Mom and I sat right behind Dr. Patel and Chandra, and on the way up there, Chandra turned around and talked to me most of the time. She asked me all kinds of questions and had me tell her the whole story of when the rocks caved in, and when I told her about thinking Mark was probably dead and how scary it was, her face sort of fell in on itself and her eyebrows went together and then I realized she was crying. Her tears fell in two lines down her face and then she had to turn away. I thought I had said something to hurt her feelings, because Dr. Patel was patting on her and saying, “Shh, shh, it’s all right,” and then he talked in Hindi to her (I’m guessing it was Hindi; I don’t really know, but since that is the language you speak, I’m figuring that’s what they speak, too? Sorry if this is stupid of me . . . I don’t know if everybody in India speaks the same language or not) and that calmed her down.
After a little while she turned around in her seat and said, “Forgive me, River. I’m sorry I got upset. Your story just reminded me of something bad that happened to my brother, in Mumbai.” (Later I googled “Moom-bi” — because I didn’t know how to spell it — and the search engine came up and said, “Did you mean Mumbai, India?” so I guess that’s how you spell it.) When I typed in “Mumbai,” one of the first things that came up was “Mumbai attacks,” and so I read about all these bombings that happened there last year. Do you know about these? It might not even be what happened to her brother, but somehow I felt like it was. I don’t know why.
We were all caught up in singing when we got close to the capitol, but then everybody hushed — the hush worked its way back through the bus from the front to the back — because Mamaw was standing by the door with her hand over her mouth. When everybody got silent she pointed out the window and said, “Oh, my Lord.” We looked out and we couldn’t believe it.
There is a big wide street that goes for a straight mile in front of the capitol, which sits up on a hill. We were on the bridge at the end of the street and the entire mile of road in front of us was taken up by people. The police had shut down the street because there were so many. They are saying now that at least ten thousand people were there. I had never seen so many people in one place in my life. All of them carrying signs. They were from all over the state and all over the country, even. Mamaw said that they were there to help us in the fight.
So we marched.
My sign said:
MY BEST FRIEND LOST HIS LEG TO MTR
I asked Mark if it was OK to put that on a sign, and he laughed his loud crazy laugh and said, “Hell, yes!” and his mother slapped at him and acted shocked over him saying that, but then she laughed and said, “Yes, River, yes. Carry that sign for all of us.” So I did. I was also carrying a mason jar full of water I had gotten out of the creek. The water was solid orange. It looked like watered-down carrot juice sloshing around in there.
I can’t explain to you properly how it felt to be with all those people, walking up that street. Mamaw and the other community organizers told us we could be most effective if we would be absolutely silent until we got to the capitol steps. So we were. All of us just walking along, and it seemed to me that every single person’s face looked like the fiddler’s had. It took me a long time to figure out what that look was, but then I knew it was defiance. I learned this word in history class, back when we were talking about that boy who stood in front of the tanks in China. And that was the way I felt, defiant. And that was the way everybody looked like they felt, too.
It was cold as knives. There had been a big snow a week before that hadn’t really melted all the way, especially where it had been pushed into little hills on the sidewalks. In one yard we passed, all the snow had melted except for a snowman that stood there, completely solid, like he had fallen from the sky into that brown, wet yard. It was so cold that every time I breathed I could feel the cold air way way way down in my lungs. My nose felt like an ice cube. But we were bundled up good with layers of clothes, so the only thing that got really cold was my face. In some weird way it felt good, too, though.
All along the street there were state troopers standing with their hands on their hips, not looking any of us in the eye. They didn’t say anything, but they kept their faces completely square and had guns right on their belts, like we were dangerous criminals or something.
Not all of us could fit, so some people had to spill over on the lawn on the sides of the capitol steps, but when we had all finished walking up the street, Mamaw stood at the very top step and yelled into a bullhorn, “Whose mountains?” and the whole crowd hollered back, “Our mountains!” and then Mamaw said, “Whose streams?” and the crowd said, “Our streams!” and then Mamaw said, “Whose future?” and every single one of us said, as loud as we could, “Our future!” We kept saying it over and over until it sounded like a song, and I believe that everybody in the town must have heard us. I bet people heard it through their walls and wondered what had happened. I imagined them going to their windows and looking out to see what the ruckus was all about. I thought that some of them probably stepped out onto their porches to look toward our sound coming from the capitol steps, standing on the porch in their sock feet, hugging themselves against the cold.
And then, all at once, Governor Evans came out the front door of the capitol with two state policemen on either side. Mamaw said he had never come out to talk to our side before, that this was a real first. She says he is a good man but not good enough. I think this means that he wants to do the right thing but isn’t brave enough to stand up to the coal companies. Mamaw says this is the problem with a lot of politicians. “They want to do right, but they’re too scared to,” she says.
The governor stood there and answered questions in the cold. He hadn’t worn his coat, and I think this was on purpose, so he’d have an excuse to not stand there too long, since it was so cold.
He didn’t give any real answers to anything. When someone would say why didn’t he put a stop to MTR, he’d say something that sounded rehearsed, like he was reading it off little note cards. “We are looking at different options for making sure that the coal industry stays productive while also protecting our citizens.” He just kept finding a way to avoid the questions.
Then Mamaw turned to him and said, “Why is it that we, as Americans, are having to come here to ask that our children be protected? That our water be protected? Those are the two main things that we should always be looking out for.” And a big roar rose up from the crowd, everybody hollering and clapping.
The governor said that he didn’t think our water was polluted, that he’d drink out of any stream in Eastern Kentucky.
When he said that, everybody started booing, and then all at once the whole first line of people (Mamaw, and my mom, and Dr. Patel and Chandra, all the boys from my basketball team, and lots of others) were bobbing their signs up and down and chanting, “Save our water! Save our water!” over and over. Everybody’s anger spread out over all of us, and then I saw that some of the state troopers were moving in, one on each side, and the governor was moving toward the door, looking every which way while some of the policemen at his sides talked into their walkie-talkies. It felt like everything was about to blow up, like it was all about to go wrong, so I stepped toward the governor. I don’t know why, but I just felt like it was the right thing to do. A state trooper stepped toward me, his eyes right on
me, and I couldn’t believe it but he put his hand on the handle of his pistol. When he did that, the governor put his hand out across the cop’s chest and I took another step forward, seeing that the governor’s eyes were on me, too.
All through the crowd I could hear people shushing one another. “Shh, shh,” the sound ran back through all the people, like a slow, strong wind through summer leaves.
I guess it wasn’t much more than a couple seconds, but it seemed like I stood there looking right at the governor a long while, and finally I held out the jar of nasty water I had been carrying the whole time, and I said, “Drink it, then.”
Everybody had gotten so quiet that even people far away could hear my voice, bouncing off all that marble of the capitol building.
The governor laughed a little bit in the back of his throat and said, “What, son?”
And I said, “This came out of our creek. Our creek was as clean as a whistle until the mine moved in next door. Now it looks like this.”
He patted me on the head like I was a dog. So I forced the jar right into his hands and I said, “You said you’d drink out of any creek we had, so drink it,” I said. Then I didn’t want to sound disrespectful, so I added, “Sir.” There were so many cameras flashing in front of me that I had to blink to see.
It felt like something was about to happen, like everybody was holding their breath. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing or not, but it felt like the only thing to do.
But he just laughed again and said, “Aw, son, I don’t believe I will.” And then once again every single person started booing and bobbing their signs up and down in the air, so that the signs made a kind of booing sound all their own. The governor went back inside the capitol building, waving with both hands and smiling, as if he thought everyone was applauding instead of booing him. He wouldn’t come back out.