Crapalachia: A Biography of Place (2 page)

So one day we were outside feeding the hogs and she told AIDS to stay away from the hogs just like usual, but he wasn’t listening.

 

Of course, AIDS cat used to go around and steal slop off the hogs. There was a knot hole in the slop bucket this big bad daddy hog used to eat out of. And so the big daddy hawg was standing at the trough eating the slop, and AIDS cat just kept sticking its head through the knot hole and eating some of that grub. AIDS cat did it once. And then he did it twice. Then he did it three times. He stuck his head through and scooped up some of the slop with a paw.

“You better watch it,” Ruby warned him one last time.

He did it again and looked at us with a greedy grin.

So finally the big daddy hog had enough and reached up and bit AIDS cat’s head plumb off—
gulp
. The cat’s body fell back and jerked and jimmied and jerked some more, and the big daddy hog stood gobbling it on down. Ruby didn’t say anything. She kept feeding the hogs and the pigs and then we went and sat on the front porch and watched the hummingbirds hum around. It felt peaceful.

 

 

So let us begin again then with the first chapter.

I started to stay with Ruby and my Uncle Nathan when I was 14 years old.

It was around this time that Ruby ruined my birthday when she got breast cancer. I was in the kitchen when Ruby told me. She just looked at me and started shouting, “Oh lordie.”

Then she started going on about how the doctor at Beckley said she had breast cancer and was going to die if she didn’t have her breast removed.

 

My Uncle Stanley came to see us that evening, and I told him Grandma had cancer and was dying.

He just whispered “shit” beneath his breath and called the doctor up and it turned out she didn’t have breast cancer at all but a benign growth that could
possibly
be cancerous.

The doctor said it could be treated with a cream.

She wanted everybody to think she had breast cancer though.

 

She started bothering the doctor so much over the next couple of months that he finally agreed to take her breast off as a preventative measure. She told him there was a history of it in our family. She was lying.

My Uncle Stanley started chewing her ass.

Ruby said: “Well all I know is I don’t want to end up dying from it.”

And Stanley said: “Ah hell, Mother, you don’t have cancer from what I’ve heard. You just have a growth that at this moment is benign.”

“Well he said he could take it off when I asked him. He said it’s a preventative measure.”

My Uncle Stanley said “shit” again. “Of course he said he could take it off. He’s a damn surgeon. That’s what he does. Surgeons are the worst people on earth. If you tell him to cut something off of your body, then he can sure as hell arrange it for you.”

 

The day after the surgery was over we waited outside the room in the ICU.

The nurse brought out this jug of brown liquid they’d drained off of her, and then the nurse said we could go inside. So we all went in and gathered around Ruby’s bed. She smiled and grinned with all of these IVs pouring out of her arm.

She pulled down her hospital gown and showed us how it looked all bandaged and stitched up and sunken. “It’s not easy being a sick, old woman,” she said.

My Uncle Stanley shook his head some more and whispered “shit” beneath his breath.

Then I looked at my grandma and she looked so lopsided to me. She looked so cut up and gone.

 

But then she pointed over to the old woman who was in the bed beside her. It was an old woman who wasn’t saying anything but just staring up at the ceiling.

Ruby started telling us all about her. “That poor woman just cries and cries all night.” Then Ruby said loud enough for the woman to hear it: “She doesn’t know it yet, but before they brought her in I heard the nurses talking. They said the poor thing is full of tumors, and the family hasn’t told her yet. They said she only has a couple more weeks to live.”

My Aunt Mary said, “Shhhh,” trying to tell Ruby to lower her voice. Then the old woman who just moments before looked dead, opened her eyes wide with a look on her face like: “What the fuck? What did you say? I’m dying?”

 

Of course, it shouldn’t have surprised us when we came back to visiting hours later on that evening and Ruby was trying to sell a quilt. She was still bandaged up and sitting in the bed talking on the telephone to this woman on the 4th floor. “Now if you want this quilt you better call your daughter to bring you the money. Now I know you can’t walk but you better find a way to get me the money. I’m in bed two.”

 

But then some nurse came in and got all over her.

“Now Mrs. McClanahan, you get off that phone and quit trying to sell your quilts. You’ve just had a breast taken off and you need to rest.”

Then the nurse took the phone from her and put it down.

“We don’t allow people to come in here and solicit patients and we don’t expect you to solicit your fellow patients to buy your quilts.”

So the nurse left the room and Ruby started showing us the cards people had sent her.

 

She showed us a card from Mae and a card from Geneva that said, “Get Well Soon.” There was a card from Leslie and Bernice and some flowers from Stirley and Brenda.

“I don’t think anybody in here’s got more pretty cards than I do,” she said. “I know when Mae stopped by this morning she said she’d never seen so many cards and get well wishes. There was a woman from senior citizens who saw them. Said she’d seen more, but I know she’s just jealous. She had a heart attack last year and didn’t hardly get any.”

Then she picked one up and held it in her hands. Since it just said “Ruby” on it she took a pencil from her nightstand and marked it out, because she could use this one over again for someone’s birthday. She gave it to me and said happy birthday. I had just turned 14.

 

So it shouldn’t have surprised us when we started hearing from other people about how it was a miracle Ruby survived cancer. One day Ruby came home after one of her senior citizen meetings. She had only been home for a few minutes.

She was sitting in her recliner, wearing a breast cancer survivor pin. She kept looking at it and saying: “I love my little pin.”

Then she smiled and touched her pin again and said: “They threw a party for me down at the center and gave me this pin because I’m a survivor.”

 

My Aunt Mary couldn’t take it anymore.

She told Ruby she shouldn’t be wearing a pin like that and telling people she had cancer. Mary told her the pin was for people who actually survived. It’s not for someone who was just telling people she did. Then Mary said it’s a wonder the surgeon didn’t get sued.

So Ruby sat and thought about it for a while and said: “I know that’s what one of the hateful women at senior citizens told me, but what does she know?”

Then she said her line: “Besides that, it was only a preventative surgery.”

 

So Ruby sat for a long time and then she finally said: “Oh the poor things. It seems like you can’t even go out of your house now without something horrible happening.”

Then she thought about all the people she knew who were having bad things happen to them.

She talked about the little girl who had her foot run over by a riding lawnmower and lost her toes. She talked about how I came to live with her.

She talked about seeing her cousin, who was driving down the road and a rock slide crushed her to death.

Then she talked about her friend who just had her deformed leg amputated and couldn’t get out of the house now.

And then she looked like if you just left the house something bad would happen to you, hurricanes, earthquakes, and then she grew quiet with another look on her face like something terrible was going to happen to all of us one day.

 

And you know what?

 

It will…

 

 

…if not tonight, then the next night.

The next night was radio preacher night. That only meant one thing. My Uncle Nathan was going to drink beer. I tried telling Nathan it was a bad idea to drink beer, but he wouldn’t listen. My Uncle Nathan was 52 years old and still living with my grandma. He had cerebral palsy and couldn’t talk. He just kept groaning and pointing at the beer and then pointing at his feeding tube. My hands were feeling kind of shaky as I popped open a can. “I don’t know, Nathan. Grandma is going to get pissed again. She’s just been home from the hospital for a few days and she’s kind of edgy.”

He just threw his hands up in the air and pointed towards the back room where she was doing her quilting and then he flapped his fingers like it was a mouth talking. That meant she was always running her mouth about something.

 

Then he pointed to the teddy bear sweatshirt he was wearing. He was still pissed that earlier in the day she had put the teddy bear sweatshirt on him. He groaned
goop oop
and had a look on his face that said,
Fuck her. I’m a grown ass man and she’s making me wear a teddy bear sweatshirt
.

So I undid the dressing on the tube and pulled out the plastic tube.

“Are you sure?” I said and moved the beer to the tube.

He pointed to the tube and threw his hands up. That meant,
Get on with it
.

He tapped himself on the side of the head because he was smart. What was the use of drinking beer when you could immediately pour a six-pack in your stomach tube and have it shoot into your bloodstream that much quicker? I poured the beer in and then I poured another. Then I cracked another and another. Then I did the rest. He smiled and then he burped. It smelled like a beer burp. I cleaned up his tube and taped it back to his stomach and pulled down his teddy bear sweatshirt. Then he pointed to the radio. He wanted to turn it on.

“Ah shit, Nathan,” I said. “I don’t want to listen to the preacher tonight.”

Nathan did though.

 

He waved his hands and started listening to the preacher going on about hell fire and damnation and the Day of Judgment awaiting us all.

Nathan shook his finger and told the preacher:
Tell them. That’s right, tell them sons of bitches
.

Then he moved his little finger above his head which meant,
the good lord’s coming to get us soon
.

I put the beer cans in a paper bag and hid them outside.

It was a good thing I did too, because just a few minutes later Ruby came into the room. She was still stitched and bandaged up but she was walking around at least. She said: “That’s right Nathan—the good lord’s coming to get you soon.”

 

When Nathan wasn’t telling preachers to give people hell, he was talking about his favorite, Benny Hinn. He pointed over to the counter where there was a Benny Hinn book.

He pointed up into the air.

I said: “What are you talking about?”

Ruby said: “Oh he’s talking about this little girl the preacher healed the other night. Poor little girl was all crippled up and couldn’t walk. The preacher prayed for her.”

So Nathan nodded his head yes and pointed to his eye. That meant:
I saw it.

Ruby said: “He was so excited about it he couldn’t even sleep—poor little feller.”

I told Nathan I didn’t believe in preachers.

Nathan threw his hands up high again and groaned and pointed to his head like it was true.

I told him: “Ah hell, Nathan, these preachers are just ripping people off. You know what they say? ‘I want to be a Baptist preacher/I want to join the Baptist church/I want to be a Baptist preacher because I don’t like to work.’” I giggled and reached to the table and said: “I know you got your money hid for a reason.”

I pushed back the table cloth where he always hid his money. It was still there—crisp five dollar bills.

So Nathan laughed and giggled because I knew where he kept his radio preacher money.

It was our secret.

 

The preacher kept hollering. I helped Grandma put away her dolls. Earlier that day, she was looking at them.

Grandma and I were going through her doll cabinet, and then all of the sudden Grandma went “shush.”

I shushed and then she said: “Listen. Nathan sent the radio preacher five dollars this week. And the little feller’s listening to hear if he says his name or not.”

I giggled and listened to the radio preacher rattle off the names of all the sick and dying and the dead and the recently dead and the need to be dead.

Then he said all of these names so that people could remember them in their prayers.

 

Grandma whispered: “I think he’s going to say it.”

We both listened.

We walked back towards the kitchen.

The preacher said: “And now I’d especially like for you to remember a special listener to this program.”

 

Nathan listened.

We listened.

And then…

“I’d especially like for you to remember little Nathan McClanahan who lives with his mother in Danese, West Virginia. Now Nathan has cerebral palsy and he listens to this program every week. He loves the lord and so I’d like for you to remember him and his five dollar donation. His mother has just recently recovered from surgery.”