Child of the Mountains

15





It’s about talking back.




TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1953

Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae was as mad as all get-out that I got myself in trouble and have to stay after school. I couldn’t make myself show Mr. Hinkle’s note to them yesterday. I thought iffen I gived it to Aunt Ethel Mae this evening while she was busy with her embroidery, she might not pay it too much mind. But she got all watery-eyed. “William, come look what this child has gone and done now,” she hollered.

Uncle William stormed in the back door, wearing his heavy coat, his hands all greasy from working on his car. “What are you jabbering on about now, woman?”

I could feel my hands getting all icy cold. I clenched them behind my back and stared at my shoes. I wished I could drop clean through a hole in the floor.

She handed him the note, and I could see him getting greasy smudges on it as he read. Aunt Ethel Mae looked up at me from her chair, her eyes all glassed over with tears. “Lydia, I told you to ignore them girls. This will all go away in time if you pay them no heed.”

“But you …,” I started.

Uncle William grew to the size of a grizzly bear. His face got all red and blotchy. “Don’t you dare sass your aunt!” he yelled. He raised his hand up high.

I figured he would be like Daddy and whup me upside the head. I squinted my eyes real tight and turned my face away from him.

Nothing happened. I finally peered up. Uncle William was a-staring at me, all sad-like, his hand back down at his side. “Lydia, don’t disgrace this family,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Haven’t we had enough of that already?” He headed out the back door to work on his car again. Aunt Ethel Mae turned back to her embroidery, and it was like I wasn’t even there no more.

I almost wished Uncle William had hit me instead. I don’t think it would of hurt near as much as them words. I walked to my bedroom, laid myself down on my bed, and stared up at the ceiling. My bedroom’s so tiny that it can only fit a bed and a little table Uncle William brought from our house in Paradise. All of a sudden, them walls seemed to close in on me, tighter and tighter. I started up panting like a hound in summer. My heart commenced to racing. After a time, I turned over on my stomach and cried so many tears that my pillow was sopped. After I was cried out, I got up to write in this here notebook.

I recollect what Mama used to do when me and BJ got in trouble. She didn’t yell. When the weather was pretty outside, sometimes she took us by the hand and said real soft, “Come with me.” She’d march us down to the little swinging bridge that stretched across the creek behind our cabin.

“Five times,” she might say. We knowed that meant we had to go back and forth across the bridge five times. The first time across was always the hardest. Me and BJ didn’t want to walk in step. We’d have to hold real tight to them rope handles. That bridge would slither back and forth like a snake.

But after a while, like magic, we’d start to march, even though we tried not to. The bridge would stop slithering and slide back and forth like Gran’s rocking chair. We’d sing jump-rope songs like this one:

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, tie your shoe.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, that will do.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, go upstairs.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, say your prayers.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn out the lights.



Teddy bear, teddy bear, say good night.



It’s right tricky to turn around and touch the ground like that teddy bear on a swinging bridge! We’d laugh so hard we forgot all about being mad at each other. When we finally got offen the bridge, we’d still feel like we was a-swinging, and we’d stagger for a time like we had got ourselves ahold of some of that raisin root beer BJ tried to make.

Mama had another trick up her sleeve. Iffen BJ felt too sick for the bridge or it was rainy or dark outside, she brought out a dulcimer wrapped in a special quilt. Now, this weren’t just any old dulcimer. Nosiree bob! We believed it was magical! That dulcimer shined reddish brown and gleamed like sassafras tea in a glass mug. And this dulcimer had two fret boards so that two kids could play at the same time.

After Gramps made it, he took Mama and Uncle William to the woods. Gramps gathered pollen from lady slippers, looking around to make sure that no haunts listened in. Then he whispered to Mama and Uncle William that lady slippers really be fairy slippers, and the pollen be fairy dust. He blowed the fairy dust onto the dulcimer. Then he waved his hands over the strings, closed his eyes, and chanted:

“Fairies high and fairies low,



Come this day, your powers bestow.



Bring peace and calm and music sure,



Tranquil words and melody pure.”



I was seven and BJ was three the first time Mama brought it out for us to play. I already knowed all about playing a dulcimer. Mama said it was up to me to learn BJ how to play. So all three of us said the magic chant, and I showed BJ the right way to strum. I learned BJ to play real good. And we never fussed when we strummed the magic dulcimer together. Ever time we finished, my mama always smiled and said the same thing, “My young’uns make such beautiful music together.”

I just heard Aunt Ethel Mae and Uncle William outside my bedroom door. “Maybe I should go in and check on her,” she whispered.

“Leave her be,” Uncle William said.

I should stop writing in this notebook and go to bed. But it sure is going to be hard to get to sleep, fretting about having to stay after school tomorrow.