Child of the Mountains

17





It’s about not telling Mr. Hinkle, and my hope chest.




THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1953

The knot in my stomach squeezed tighter and tighter as I thought about having to stay after school again. I don’t think I learned much of nothing today. Mathematics and English and history all just got blurred together. Sometimes I looked up and felt surprised that I was in the classroom. All I kept thinking was, Is Mr. Hinkle going to try to force me to tell him?

After the bell rang and the rest of them kids ran out of class, I sat in my seat and folded my hands on the desk. Mr. Hinkle walked over and my heart beat faster and my face got hotter with each step he took.

“Lydia,” he said as he sat at the desk beside me, “do you want to finish the conversation we started yesterday? I’d like to help if I can.”

It’s like all the words I could say fell down a well deep inside of me. I tightened myself up and bit my lower lip so hard it hurt. I kept my hands wound in a ball on my desk and stared down at them. Please leave me alone, I kept thinking.

He sighed. “All right, Lydia, it’s your choice,” he said. “I’m here if you change your mind.” He brought me the newspaper. Then he went back to his desk and commenced to grading papers.

I let out my breath. I didn’t know I had been holding it in. I picked up the newspaper and started leafing through it to find the want ads. I saw one for Hildegard’s Bridal Salon. It showed a drawing of a woman wearing a bridal gown. It made me think of when I saw Mama wearing hers.

It’s hard enough that Mama wasn’t here for my woman’s day, but I can’t imagine that she might not be there when I get married or have my babies. Maybe I could wait till she gets out, but I sure don’t like the idea of people calling me a old maid. Mama and Daddy married when they was sixteen after Daddy got hisself a job working construction. They had me when they was eighteen.

Ten to fifteen years. That’s the sentence the judge laid on my mama. I been thinking about how old I’ll be when she gets out of there. I’ll be at least twenty-one when she comes home to me. I might be twenty-six.

When I turn sixteen, I figure I’ll be old enough to get me a job and get out on my own. Maybe sooner. And I’ll go visit Mama in that prison. Nobody will be able to stop me. I know Mr. Hinkle wants me to finish high school and even go to college, but I can’t be expecting Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae to be taking care of me that long.

When I turned ten years old, Mama gived me a large cedar box with a curved top that her daddy made for her. Gran had lined it with deep-blue velvet. The velvet was crushed and a little faded from the years going by, but that just made it look soft in some places and shiny in the others—real pretty to my eye. Mama told me it was a hope chest for keeping things afore a woman gets married. Gramps surprised her with it for her thirteenth birthday.

Gran walked into the bedroom with us and sat down on the bed. She looked at Mama real puzzled-like and said, “Land sakes, Sarah, why you giving Lydia a hope chest when she’s still hoping for a chest on her body?”

“I don’t know why,” Mama said. “I just feel like she should have it now.”

We opened the hope chest together, and there was her wedding dress and the gown she wore on her wedding night. Her and Gran had sewed them. Mama gently lifted the dress that was wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped it and held it up to her. “Put it on, Mama, please put it on,” I said.

Mama sighed. “Oh, Lydia, I don’t know.”

“Pleeeeeeease?” I begged, holding my hands together like I was praying.

Mama sighed again. “All right, Lydia. I’ll do it for you and for your birthday.” She unzipped her dress and let it slip to the floor. I stood on the bed and held the wedding dress while she shimmied into it.

“Mama, you’re beautiful!” I told her with my mouth hanging open. Mama hadn’t rolled her hair in a bun yet and it fell around her shoulders, almost like a bridal veil. The sun comed through the window and made her hair shine like gold. I can close my eyes and see that dress just like I’m still seeing it on Mama.

The dress is long sleeved and made from soft white satin. Gran had crocheted a little collar at the neckline. She also crocheted lacy wings that decorated the shoulders. They fell loose at the top of Mama’s arms in the back. When I saw them on Mama’s dress, I told her, “You look like a angel!”

The waist is long and has a V shape in the front and back. A small satin ruffle puffs below the waist. A line of tiny white buttons like little pearls fall in a straight line from the neck to the waist. Under the ruffle, a skirt of satin with lace organza over the top of it falls long and loose to the ground. Mama and Gran embroidered the organza with the same pattern of leaves and flowers that Gran had used in the collar and shoulder wings.

Mama told me that the long part of the skirt in the back is called the train. I don’t know why they call it that, though. When Mama took it off, I felt the satin between my fingers. And then I rubbed the sleeve on my cheek. The dress felt cool and smooth like butter. It smelled of the lavender oil Mama bathed in.

Mama picked up the veil and attached it to her hair with combs. Her and Gran had made it from the same embroidered organza that covered the skirt of the dress. It fell around her like the scarves you see falling around the women’s faces in Bible pictures. Then she pulled part of the veil that was plain organza in front of her face.

I asked her iffen she wanted to see how pretty she looked in the mirror, but she didn’t say nothing, and she didn’t walk to the mirror. She just looked down and started unbuttoning the front of her dress.

I wondered iffen it was hard for her to see them buttons. “How do you see with that veil on when you’re walking down the aisle, Mama?” I asked.

“Here, try it on and see for yourself.”

She placed it on my head. It was kind of like looking through a screen door. I walked to the mirror on her dresser. I was right surprised. I looked kind of pretty, not like the me I mostly see staring back. I commenced to wondering what my husband would look like and how it would feel to have him kiss me.

“Mercy sakes,” Gran said. “You’re going to be a looker like your mama when you get a few years on you, young’un.”

I ain’t never thought of myself that way afore. I felt my cheeks get hot, and I could see in the mirror they was pinking up, even through the veil. “Why do brides wear a veil?” I asked.

“I know the answer to that one,” Gran said. “When Moses saw the back of God that time, his face was so shiny that no one could look at him. He had to wear a veil. It’s said that a bride’s face is so shiny from the love in her heart that no one can look at her.”

I had been to several church weddings. “How come her husband can pull it back to kiss her without the shine hurting his eyes?” I asked.

“That’s on account of the love in his heart letting him be the only one who can break the spell,” Gran said.

“Or maybe the veil’s on account of her husband is supposed to be the first one to see her face,” Mama said.

I liked Gran’s story better. As I was taking off the veil I asked, “Mama, was your face all shiny when you walked down the aisle to meet Daddy?”

She turned her back to me, knelt down, and stroked the velvet in the chest. “I suppose it was, Lydia,” she said. She pulled the nightgown from the chest and laid it on the bed.

She started undressing. I helped her take off the wedding dress and zip up her everday one. Then Mama held up the nightgown to her. It looked like the wedding dress excepten it hung down to Mama’s ankles and didn’t have no lace over the skirt.

Mama wrapped the dress and the nightgown back in tissue paper and placed them in the chest. “I took everthing else out of here, Lydia,” she said. “You can wear these for your wedding iffen you want. We can change them some to make them your’n. We’ll start sewing some other things for you to put in the chest as you get older.”

It was hard to believe that I might wear that beautiful dress someday.

So many things happened after that. BJ started getting sicker. We went to Ohio more often and then Gran died. Mama and me was just too sad and too busy to think of making things for my hope chest. I wish we could of made one thing together—maybe a wedding ring quilt for my bed. Just one thing, like her and Gran done for Mama’s wedding.

Uncle William had to leave the hope chest at the make-do house. The bedroom here is too small. I hope everthing is safe back home. Uncle William stops by of a time after work to check on it. He says the house is real dusty but looks okay. He puts out some rat poison to keep them varmints from destroying everthing.

I wish I could go back to the house sometime, but I figure it’s best not to ask.