Child of the Mountains

18





It’s about telling Mr. Hinkle.




FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1953

I washed Mr. Hinkle’s handkerchief in the sink last night and laid it across my bedpost to dry. This morning, I tucked it inside my bobby sock so as to keep it close to me.

When I got to school, some of the other kids was a-helping Mr. Hinkle decorate a Christmas tree he had put up in the classroom. “Come and join us, Lydia,” he called to me.

I picked up one of the paper chains and rubbed my fingers over it. I smelled the pine and recollected the last tree that Gran had fixed up for us. I didn’t feel all sad, though. I kept thinking how much Gran loved us, to do that when she felt so poorly. “This is for you, Gran,” I whispered as I added my chain to the tree.

Then I heard Gran’s voice, real deep inside, say, “Rise and shine, grandchild of mine.” I started up thinking of her tickling finger and couldn’t help but smile. I sang “Joy to the World” with the rest of them kids.

Mr. Hinkle finally got us all settled into some work. I felt as restless as the tip of a cow’s tail, thinking about having to stay after school. Would he ask me about my dream again? The knot in my stomach growed bigger and bigger as the hands on the clock crawled closer to three-fifteen.

Then the rest of the kids left and I was alone with Mr. Hinkle. “Lydia, here is your newspaper,” he said. “There are lots of want ads in today’s edition.” He laid the newspaper on the corner of his desk. Then he picked up a stack of our math papers and commenced to grade them. He didn’t so much as look at me.

I felt right perplexed. I got out a piece of paper and a pencil. Then I picked up the newspaper and walked back to my desk. I tried real hard to read them want ads, really and truly I did. But them words was all blurry. Instead of seeing the words, it was like I was looking through a window and seeing my mama trapped in a jail cell on the other side.

The knot inside my stomach kept growing until finally it pushed the words out of my mouth. “It’s my fault Mama’s in jail,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

Mr. Hinkle looked up. “Did you say something, Lydia?”

I pushed the words out again, a little louder this time. “It’s my fault Mama’s in jail.”

Mr. Hinkle got up and pulled his desk chair up close to me. “Lydia, are you ready to tell me about your dream for your mother now?”

I nodded.

“I know what I read in the newspaper and what others have told me,” Mr. Hinkle said. “But I have an idea that there’s much more to the story of what happened to your family. I want to know the truth, Lydia. Will you tell me?”

At first, talking about it was hard. But as I started telling Mr. Hinkle about me and Mama and BJ and Gran, it got easier. I even told him about Daddy. One time Mr. Hinkle had to ask me to slow down a little. We smiled together about some of them stunts Gran and BJ pulled.

When I got finished telling Mr. Hinkle about what happened to BJ, he said, “Lydia, you can’t blame yourself for telling your mother to go to Ohio to bring BJ home. She made the choice, and it certainly sounds as though it was the right thing to do for your brother. It’s not your fault your mother’s in jail.”

“That’s not the only reason why it’s my fault,” I whispered, the words choking up inside me again.

Mr. Hinkle just looked at me for a spell. Then he looked at his watch. “It’s too late to talk more today,” he said. “I have to go to a meeting in Charleston, and you need to get home before it gets dark. You’ve helped me understand so much, Lydia, and I value your confidence in me. We have one more time together after school Monday. If you want, you can tell me about it then.”





19





It’s about auctions, ice cream, and that hospital in Ohio.




SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1953

Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae went to the auction tonight. They go almost ever weekend, either on Friday or Saturday. I had to go with them the first couple of times after I came to live here. But I started up a-coughing and a-hacking from all the cigarette smoke. After the second week, the auctioneer told Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae that they had to leave me at home. I was real glad. All them people sitting around us kept on giving me dirty looks like I pestered them on purpose.

Aunt Ethel Mae thought I just pretended on account of I didn’t like auctions. She up and pinched me the first time. Then she gived me the hairy eyeball when I kept on a-coughing, and she told me to quiet down. I tried hard to stop, but I couldn’t.

“Look at her eyes, woman,” Uncle William said. “They’s all red. Stop messing with her. She can’t help it.” Uncle William went outside to smoke on the porch at his house after he saw how much all that auction smoke made it hard for me to breathe. I was real grateful. Aunt Ethel Mae kept on a-smoking and a-smoking in the house. She said I just needed to get used to it.

I felt bad about cigarettes making me cough. Uncle William always planted a cash crop of bacca on Gran’s land after Daddy died. He gived Gran and Mama half the money to help us pay bills. The other half he used for hisself and Aunt Ethel Mae. Mama told me once that she thought he let us keep most of it after we found out BJ was sick. But Mama said never ever tell that to Aunt Ethel Mae. I ain’t sure we could have gotten by without that money.

Most times when Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae go to the auction, I listen to the radio. Gran and Mama and BJ and me always tuned in to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. I can’t listen to it when Aunt Ethel Mae’s around on account of that “racket” giving her a headache. She calls it “The Grand Old Uproar.” When they’s gone, I can sit on the couch a-quilting and a-singing to the music, just like Mama and Gran and BJ and me used to do.

I was glad to have time alone tonight. I finished up my homework, and then I tried to listen to the radio a little, but I had a hard time keeping my mind on it. I finally turned it off. I thought a lot about what Mr. Hinkle told me. Maybe he’s right. Maybe what happened to Mama’s not my fault. But I still feel a heaviness about it.

Seeing Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae come through the door surprised me. They both looked all excited. I ain’t never seen Uncle William look that way, excepten maybe when he talks about his car. He grinned and his eyes laughed. They bought theirselves a ice cream maker, the wood kind that you turn with a crank. Uncle William said they got it for a steal on account of no one else wanted to bid on a ice cream maker in the winter. They decided to make some ice cream when they got home—six days afore Christmas!

The auction house is on Tyler Mountain, and it’s real close to a store called Van’s Never Closed. They stopped there and got rock salt, whipping cream, a bag of ice, and half-and-half. We already had the rest of the stuff we needed.

It was near ten when they got home. We’s always in bed by then. But making ice cream is just what we done. Aunt Ethel Mae and me mixed up all the ingredients while Uncle William checked out the machine. We all three talked about the different flavors we could make. I felt right surprised when they said for me to pick the flavor. We had us some peaches we had canned and homemade peach jam, so I said maybe we could make that kind. And maybe we could crumble up some oatmeal cookies to add to it. So we did.

We had to wait thirty minutes for the stuff we mixed up to cool in the refrigerator afore we put it in the machine. Then we added all the ingredients excepten the cookies in the ice cream maker’s tub, and Uncle William added the ice and rock salt around the tub. He cranked and cranked and cranked. He even let me take a turn, and I cranked and cranked and cranked. We added the cookies last. Finally, the ice cream was ready. We each got a spoon and tasted it from the machine. Uncle William said I picked a real good flavor. That was just about the best ice cream he ever done ate. Aunt Ethel Mae said chocolate walnut was still her favorite, but my ice cream flavor tasted mighty fine.

I made some hot coffee for them and some hot tea for me. We sat in front of the coal-burning stove in the living room with our bowls of ice cream.

The three of us talked about all the times we recollected having ice cream from a crank machine. Aunt Ethel Mae sat cuddled up close to Uncle William, and he didn’t seem to mind none. I sat on a old cushion on the floor close to the stove. We told about family reunions and all-day-singing-and-eating-on-the-grass days at church. Aunt Ethel Mae didn’t even shame me when I talked about Gran and Mama and BJ. I ain’t never had that kind of fun with them.

We didn’t head to bed until after midnight, and now here I be, writing all this stuff down. I guess that hot tea is keeping me wide awake. I was right surprised but thankful Aunt Ethel Mae said we could skip Sunday school and just go to church so’s we can sleep in.

After I curled up under the covers, I thought of something about ice cream that I didn’t tell them. One time I asked BJ what his favorite and least favorite things was about the hospital. He said his most favorite things was when his friend Jake stayed at the hospital with him. And also that he got little cardboard containers of ice cream with a wooden spoon almost ever night at supper. His least favorite things was them needles they always poked him with and the way them doctors and nurses always treated him and Jake.

BJ said Jake spent a lot of time at the hospital, too, on account of having something called sickle-cell anemia. Jake told BJ about the pain. He said, “It feels like men with jackhammers bang on my bones and lightning goes down or up my arm. Sometimes it hurts so bad I just jump when it comes.” I can’t imagine hurting like that.

Most times, BJ and Jake had beds in the back of the ward. BJ said them doctors stood around his bed almost ever day talking about him like he weren’t even there. BJ said sometimes he would break wind while they was standing there to teach them a lesson for treating him like that. He said they would go on talking like nothing had happened, but they also crunched up their noses. Most times, BJ acted like nothing had happened neither. Sometimes he would say, “P.U.! Which one of you made that smell?” They just acted like he didn’t say nothing.

BJ told me about a time them doctors stood around his bed. “He’s from West Virginia, isn’t he?” a doctor asked one time. “Perhaps consanguinity is an issue we should investigate. It might benefit our research.” Some of them other doctors started laughing until another in the group gave them the evil eye and they shut up real fast.

Them doctors should have investigated how smart BJ was. They had no idea he figured out all the stuff they said about him.

BJ loved words, and he loved the sound of consanguinity. He had to tell me that big word about five times afore I could recollect it. BJ recollected it just hearing it that one time. He had to know what it meant. The hospital had a dictionary in the little library they had for them kids. BJ went and looked up that big word. He said it meant them doctors thought Mama and Daddy was related, like first cousins or something.

BJ asked Mama why they would say something like that and laugh about it. Gran heard him and shook her head. “People like to make fun of West Virginians by saying they marry relatives,” Mama told BJ. “Generations back, it was a common thing for cousins to marry, and not just in West Virginia. Back then, people didn’t know it could cause the children to be more likely to have diseases that are passed on by parents. From what I hear, it still happens with royal folks in other countries. BJ, when people make jokes about it, they be saying West Virginians is ignorant and stupid because their parents married relatives.”

BJ’s eyes got wide. “Why would they say things like that, Mama? Why do they make fun of people just because of where they be borned? They make fun of Jake, too, just because his skin is darker colored than theirs. I hear them sometimes when they know he’s not listening. I can’t make any sense of it. I ain’t heard none of them making fun of somebody just because their eyes or their hair be a different color.”

“It’s hard to say, BJ,” Mama said. “Do you remember how the chickens we used to have pecked each other?”

“Yep,” BJ answered.

“When they peck on another chicken, they be saying, ‘I’m better’n you, and don’t you forget it.’ Them chickens don’t see that they’s all really the same. They all be chickens—nothing more, nothing less. Some people be like that, too. They pick on other people so’s they can think they’s more important than they really be. I feel sad for people like that. They must not feel very good about theirselves to put down other folks. They’s so busy trying to puff theirselves up that they can’t appreciate and learn from people the good Lord puts in their life.”

BJ tightened his hands into little fists. “Mama,” he said, “I get so mad when they say that stuff. I want to punch them!” He punched the air to make sure we knowed exactly what he meant.

“You could do that, BJ, and it might make you feel better for a while. But you would just be trying to puff yourself up, too.”

“What can I do, then, Mama?”

“It can be more fun to laugh at yourself, BJ. You’re a right smart boy. You’ll figure it out.”

The next time BJ went to the hospital, him and Jake did figure it out. BJ asked Mama iffen him and me could buy a piece of licorice when we stopped at a filling station on the way to Ohio. She said okay and gived us each a penny. I ate mine on the trip, but BJ stuck his in his pocket. When I asked him why, he said he had something special to do with it at the hospital.

When he got to come home a few weeks later, BJ told me what him and Jake did. Nurse Chapel used to come in to wake him and Jake up in the mornings. She would stand by BJ’s bed and say, “How’s our little hillbilly feeling today?” When she finished up with him, she would stand by Jake’s bed and say, “How’s our little colored boy feeling today?” They hated them wake-up calls. She didn’t say nothing like that to them other kids—just “How’s Bill feeling?” or “How’s Fred this morning?”

BJ and Jake snuck in the janitor’s closet and pulled some straws out of a broom. In the playroom, BJ grabbed one of the little tins with eight watercolors that them kids used for painting pictures. BJ always had water and a cup aside his bed, so they didn’t have to grab that from nowhere. They had to be real sneaky to get by the nurses and go into the toddler ward. They grabbed a can of baby powder offen the changing table.

None of the kids in the ward liked Nurse Chapel. BJ and Jake told them what they planned to do. Them kids was happy to help. One of them had a little alarm clock he kept on the stand aside his bed. He set the alarm real early so’s they could all get up afore Nurse Chapel comed in to wake them.

Then a couple of them kids helped BJ and Jake get ready. All of them climbed back up in bed and waited. They couldn’t hardly hold back the giggles that stuck in their throats.

Nurse Chapel walked in the room, all prim and proper like always. After checking the rest of them kids, she walked back to BJ’s and Jake’s beds. First she stopped by BJ. “How’s our little hillbilly doing today?” she asked as she throwed back the cover.

“He’s just fine,” Jake said. He sat straight up in bed. Nurse Chapel screamed. He had broom straw sticking out from a baseball cap to look like blond hair. His face was covered with baby powder and his two front teeth was coated with black licorice to look like he didn’t have no teeth there.

BJ sat up in Jake’s bed and said, “Ain’t you going to ask how your little colored boy’s doing today?” He had painted his face and arms and hands ever color of the rainbow. Nurse Chapel screamed again. All them kids started up laughing.

BJ said Nurse Chapel’s face looked like a red balloon about to bust. She grabbed BJ and Jake by the ears and ow, ow, ow, owwed them down to the bathroom to take a bath. BJ said it was worth it. “Aaaaabsoooooolutely!” That’s the way he said it. Nurse Chapel never did say nothing about them being a hillbilly or a colored boy again.

I had misremembered about that. I been wishing I could ask Mama what to do about them mean girls. Maybe she done already told me.