Child of the Mountains (14 page)

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.

F
RIDAY
, D
ECEMBER 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.”

S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER 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.