Child of the Mountains (2 page)

Sometimes I’d think he sure lucked out being that cute. All I got was plain brown hair, plain brown eyes, and a plain face. And a bunch of awful freckles. I asked Mama, “How come I didn’t get blue eyes like BJ?” She said, “You got soft, gentle doe eyes instead, Lydia. Eyes just like your heart.” I felt better after that.

BJ was so tiny he made me come to think of
Tom
Thumb
—a story Gran used to tell me about a little boy the size of his daddy’s thumb. BJ mewed like one of our old cat Hessie’s kittens when he wanted a drink from Mama’s breast. His sucking sounded like purring almost. Sometimes I wished that I could curl up with Mama like that—all safe and warm. But I thought I was too big because Mama was so weak. Feeding BJ seemed about all she could manage. So I didn’t ask. Besides, I had to help Gran with the cooking and other chores. I didn’t mind so much. I pretended I was all growed up and a real important person.

One day while Mama slept, Gran let me hold BJ for the very first time. I had to sit in the rocking chair and be real careful. His neck still flopped about like my rag doll. I curled my arm around him when Gran laid him in my lap. He didn’t weigh much more than a mess of green beans. I looked down at his big eyes, and he looked up at me. “Looky there,” Gran said. “He’s a-smiling at you.”

I smiled back at him. I knew right then and there that I was somebody special to my baby brother. “I will always take good care of you, BJ,” I promised in a whisper only he could hear. “Always and forever. I won’t let nothing bad happen to my BJ.”

I tried real hard to keep that promise, but I couldn’t. Gran always reminded us when something bad happened that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The rain that Gran talked about sure poured down mighty hard on our family.

S
ATURDAY
, O
CTOBER 31, 1953

Folks around here know the tale about Mama and BJ—at least they think they do. Them big-city newspapers wrote about Mama’s story, but most people heard tell of it from someone shooting their mouth off. Ain’t none of them got it right, though.

When Mama went to jail, I had to come live with Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae in their shotgun house at the coal camp in Confidence. Gran once told me that Uncle William’s house is called a shotgun house on account of iffen you shot a pellet at the front door, it would fly clean through the whole house and out the back door.

Mama thought different. “Lydia,” she said, “it’s a
humpback house, on account of having a room on the top. Your uncle has a bigger house than most of them coal miners. He’s a boss over some of them men.” Mama held her head real high when she said that. I know she’s right proud of her brother. That little room upstairs is where I sleep. At least it has a window, so’s I can look at the stars at night.

The house is painted white and has green shutters on the windows. You walk up three steps to the porch. Then you walk in the door to the living room. Aunt Ethel Mae likes to decorate everthing with flowers. She has wallpaper with flowers, pictures of flowers, and a floral couch cover. She even has fake flowers in a vase painted with flowers. Sometimes she sprays them with perfume. I don’t know why she don’t just grow her some real flowers in her yard. I guess she didn’t think about that. For some reason, I always feel itchy when I sit in that living room.

When you go through the living room door, you find yourself in Uncle William and Aunt Ethel Mae’s bedroom. They’s some stairs in their room that lead up to my room. When you go through their bedroom door, you’re in the kitchen. A little bathroom sits off to the side. Out the kitchen door, they have theirselves a tiny stoop and yard.

I sure do miss living in the house that Gramps built with his own two hands. My great-grandpa deeded him the land when he first got married. Gran loved to tell stories about the house that started off as a little cabin. She said Gramps called it his make-do house. That’s on account of him making do with whatever supplies he could
find to build it. Each time he had another young’un, he made do by adding another room. When him and Gran first got married, the cabin had one big room that they used for sitting, cooking, eating, and sleeping. He built a johnny house out in back for the other stuff folks got to do. Gran said he made it a two-seater so’s she could feel rich.

When they been married for a year, Gran told him, “It sure would be nice to have us a place to sit in a swing and look out over the mountains of an evening.” So Gramps created her a front porch and his swing still hangs from two chains today.

When they been married two years, Gran said, “It sure would be nice to have a place to sleep so’s people wouldn’t have to stare at our bed when they come to set a spell.” So Gramps created her a bedroom on the top of the house.

When they been married three years, Gran said, “It sure would be nice to have a room for this young’un that’s a-coming in a few months.” So Gramps created Uncle William’s room on the left side of the house.

When they been married five years, Gran says, “It sure would be nice to have a room for this new young’un that’s joining us soon.” So Gramps created Mama’s room on the right side of the house.

Gran couldn’t have no more babies after Mama, but that weren’t the last of them room addings-on. Gran thought it sure would be nice to have herself a sewing room and a dining room over the years, too. My gramps loved my gran a awful, awful lot. So Gramps created them
rooms, the kitchen on the back of the house, the sewing room on top of Uncle William’s room, and a dining room beside the kitchen.

When all them rooms was done, Gran said, “It sure would be nice to have this whole entire house painted. You know, so it could blend into the sky.” Gramps knowed that meant she wanted it painted blue, her favorite color. So sure enough, Gran got herself a blue house.

Gramps died when I was only three years old. I don’t recollect much about him, just him tickling me with his long white beard. And I have a foggy recollection of him carrying me outside on his arm. He pointed out birds and twittered their calls. He smelled a little musty, but I have a warm, soft feeling when I think about him. Mama told me Gramps called me Sparrow on account of my brown hair and freckles. I like that.

After Gramps died, Daddy said we would move in with Gran to help her out. When I think on it now, I wonder iffen Daddy moved us there to help
him
out. Him and Mama had been renting a tiny house in Raymond City.

Gran was getting too old to climb them rickety stairs, so she took Uncle William’s old room. Mama and Daddy slept in the upstairs bedroom. Mama fixed up Gran’s old sewing room for BJ. She mixed up some paste and wallpapered the room with the Sunday funnies that Uncle William saved up from the
Gazette
.

I slept in Mama’s old bedroom. It was painted a light peach color. My bed was covered with the quilt Gran
made for Mama when she was a little girl. She used all different colors of floral materials to make a Sunbonnet Sue pattern. The quilt smelled like Gran and Mama close together, and I always felt safe tucked in under it.

I loved the tin roof that Gramps put on that little room when he created it. I liked to listen to the rain tinkling and pattering. Ain’t no better song than that to lull a body to sleep.

Sometimes BJ and me spent time sitting on his bed looking at the hills and sky out his upstairs bedroom window. Ain’t no better picture for a wall than that ’cause God Hisself painted our picture, and it changed ever day.

When I think about Gramps’ make-do house, I always recollect the smells. Gran’s room always smelled of lavender. Daddy and Mama’s room smelled of whatever fresh flowers and herbs was a-growing in the woods. And the kitchen always smelled of yummy surprises when I walked in from school. Chicken and dumplings, my favorite. Pinto beans and corn bread. Ham and fried apples. Meat loaf with ramps and fried taters. Buttermilk biscuits. Oatmeal and molasses cookies.

It weren’t no fancy mansion like a lot of city folks have. But there ain’t no better house in the world than Gramps’ make-do house on account of that house being home.

I don’t think Uncle William’s house will ever feel like home. Mama always said Uncle William is the strong, silent type. He’s sort of scary, I think. He has blue eyes, but they look hard like steel, not soft and glittery like BJ’s and
Mama’s. He wears his light brown hair cut short and sticking up on top like he’s still in the army fighting the Nazis. He would pat me on the head sometimes when I was little, but I always thought it was best to stay out of his way as much as I could.

Aunt Ethel Mae has hazel eyes and black hair that she tries to fix like some of them movie stars by using bobby pins to push it in a roll around her face. Then it falls smooth and curls under in another roll at her shoulders. She wears bright red lipstick and uses a eyebrow pencil to paint a mole aside her mouth. I don’t like the mole I have on my arm. I can’t figure why anybody would want a fake one, but she calls it her beauty mark.

Aunt Ethel Mae’s real slender, almost skinny, and she’s taller than Mama. My aunt smells sugary sweet with some cigarette smoke mixed in. She’s always grinning and laughing real loud when she’s with other people. But when she’s in this house, her face looks tight and kind of sad.

Moving in with Uncle William and leaving Mama, my house, my old school and friends hurt bad enough. But the very worst part was not being able to leave them secrets about Mama and BJ behind, too.

Yesterday, some of them girls at school soured the air talking about BJ. Most times, I take a book to read at recess and sit under a tall elm tree as far away from them other kids as I can get. Now that them gold and brown leaves have fell to the ground, I have me a cozy, crinkly nest to sit in.

Iffen them girls start up playing a game, sometimes
they’ll just let me be. But not yesterday. Cora Lee, Maggie, and Penny tired out of playing hopscotch and walked over to me. I tried real hard to keep reading my book,
Anne of Green Gables
.

Cora Lee—she always starts stuff. She thinks she’s special on account of she’s got a pretty face, blue eyes, and long black hair that curls at her waist. Her father works as a big shot at the coal company. They used to live in Pennsylvania, and she talks different. She has ten store-bought dresses. I didn’t have to count. She brags about them all the time. She never wears the same dress two days in a row. Them other girls follow her around like she’s a bitch dog and they’s her puppies. I could feel Cora Lee’s grin without looking up at her. “Hey, child killer’s daughter,” she said. “Whatcha reading?”

“I bet it’s a murder mystery,” Maggie said. She twisted one of her long blond pigtails in her fingers. I kept thinking how I would like to pull them both and tie them in a knot.

Penny leaned in close to me. I could smell her stinky breath. “It’s Halloween,” she said. “Do you think BJ will come back as a ghost and haunt you?”

Keep reading, keep reading, keep reading
, I told myself.

Anne Shirley didn’t have no one to help her out neither. But she always stayed real strong. She never ever let no one mess with her. I bet she would have told them girls, “When you go trick-or-treating, you all ain’t got to wear no masks, you ugly monsters!” Excepten Anne would have said it all fancy.

But I ain’t like Anne. I felt myself shrivel up like a morning glory when the sun leaves the sky. My skin got hot. My fingernails gripped the book so tight that I made little ridges in the cover. I turned a page that I knowed I would have to read all over again later.

“Come on,” Cora Lee said to them other girls. “Who cares what she has to say anyways?” They laughed and prissy-pranced their way back to the other kids, just as my teacher, Mr. Hinkle, walked out the door and rung the bell to go inside.

To tell the truth, I don’t know how much more I’m going to be able to take. One time, I tried to tell Aunt Ethel Mae about them girls. She commenced to crying when she heard the mean stuff that they said about Mama. I don’t tell her no more. I don’t want her to have to feel bad, too. But when I got home today, a few tears snuck out of my eyes when I walked through the door. She saw them, even though I tried to sniff them back inside as quick as I could.

After supper, Aunt Ethel Mae started a-preaching at me while she runned water in the sink for the dishes I cleared from the table. “Honestly, Lydia, you ain’t been eating enough to keep a bird alive. Now, there ain’t no use getting yourself all worked up and in a tizzy over them girls at school. They ain’t got a lick of sense anyways. They should ought to mind their own business. Here,” she said as she shoved a bowl of Tootsie Rolls at me. “Make yourself useful tonight and get your mind offen your troubles. Pass out this here candy to the trick-or-treaters.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle William giving me the hairy eyeball from his chair in the living room as he crocheted another afghan. I ain’t never seen any man afore Uncle William crochet. He used to give some of them afghans to Mama to take to church for people in need. I asked her about it one time. She said Gran taught him how to crochet when he was little to keep him out of mischief. “Idle hands is the devil’s workshop,” she told him. For some reason, he decided he liked it, I guess. He sure has made a bunch of them.