Child of the Mountains (24 page)

“You mean the same one where they took you during the last trial?”

I nodded.

“It’s different this time, Lydia. Last time, this room was filled with fear and despair. This time, let’s think of this
room being filled with hope. Come see what I have for you.”

I followed her. Two packages sat on the table. They was wrapped up with paper covered in flowers and tied up with big pink bows.

“I need to go to the courtroom to be with your mother, Lydia. I know you’ll be fine. I’ll see you later,” Miss Parker said.

“Okay,” I told her.

I sat down and unwrapped the first gift. A red diary with a tiny key. The box also had a pencil that doesn’t need sharpening. You twist it and the lead comes down the point at the bottom. The package said it’s called a mechanical pencil. It also comed with a little box of lead strings to fill it up.

I opened up the diary. In blue ink, Miss Parker had wrote:

I couldn’t figure out why she thought I was strong. Maybe she was just trying to be nice. I wrote today’s date at the top of the first page. That diary sure was fancier than the spiral notebook I been writing in. I could lock it
and not worry about nobody reading it. I’d just have to figure out a safe place to keep the key.

Then I opened up the other package. Two books.
Anne of Green Gables
and
Anne of the Island
. I opened up
Anne of Green Gables
. In blue ink, Mr. Hinkle had wrote:

I felt the covers—smooth and velvety. Now I could always have Anne with me. The woody smell of them books remembered me of curling up on my bed in Paradise to read.

I turned to the first page of Anne’s first story and read about the most important day in her life. The day when she left all the bad behind, all the TRAGICAL, she called it, and started up all the good things with Matthew and Marilla.

I was thankful I had Anne to keep me company on my most important day. I sure hoped I could leave all the TRAGICAL behind. I joined Anne in her life so’s I could forget about what was going on in mine.

When I first sat down at the table, the clock in the room seemed loud, clicking by the minutes. But I was
surprised when Miss Parker walked in to get me. I looked up at the clock and it was already eleven-thirty. I had read almost half of my book.

“Lydia,” she said, “you’re next to testify. I asked the judge if we could take a recess for lunch before you’re called to the stand. We need to be back at one. I thought you and I would go to lunch together. There’s a sandwich shop down the street.”

We walked to the shop and ordered hamburgers and French fries. Miss Parker asked for a cup of coffee, and I asked for a root beer. When the waitress handed us our drinks, I told Miss Parker about BJ putting raisins in the root beer back in Paradise. The two of us had a good laugh over that one. She told me about how when she was little, her brother asked her iffen she wanted half of his peanut butter sandwich. She said yes. When she took a bite, she bit off the head of a water bug he had stuffed inside. Us women decided that boys sure do weird things sometimes.

After we finished eating, we talked about what was going to happen next. She asked me iffen I recollected all the things she had taught me about trials afore Christmas. I told her yes.

Miss Parker already learned me all them big words that lawyers and judges use. She said that Mama is the defendant because she needs defending. BJ’s hospital is the plaintiff on account of them doctors complaining about Mama taking BJ out of the hospital.

Attorney
is just a fancy word for lawyer. Miss Parker is the defense attorney because she defends Mama. The
lawyer who tries to make Mama look guilty of doing something wrong is the prosecuting attorney. I told Miss Parker I thought he should be called the persecuting attorney. She said in Mama’s case, she agreed with me.

The jury is a group of people that listen real close to everthing that everbody says. When the lawyers finish up saying everthing they want to say, they go out to another room to decide iffen the defendant is guilty or not guilty of doing a bad thing. Iffen they say
guilty
, the judge decides what the punishment should be. Iffen they say
not guilty
, everbody gets to go home, including the defendant. I hope that’s what happens to my mama, that the jury figures out she’s not guilty, and we all get to go home to West Virginia.

When Miss Parker got done learning me all that lawyering stuff, she said I was just about ready to pass the bar—that’s a big test people take after they get all their book learning to prove they’s ready to be lawyers.

I also learned that swearing on the Bible in court means saying that you promise to God and everbody else that you ain’t going to lie. And as long as you don’t tell a lie, God will be right proud of you.

After I finished up reminding her of what she learned me, Miss Parker nodded. “Good. I’m glad you remember,” she said. “I’ve helped you understand the basics, but I want to tell you what the prosecuting attorney might ask you. He’ll want to know what your mother had you do to help get your brother out of the hospital. He’ll want to make the jury think that your mother forced you to do
something that you shouldn’t have done. I can’t help you practice what to say. That should come straight from your heart. Keep your answers honest, short, and to the point. When he finishes, I’ll ask you some questions to give you a chance to explain more. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“When I ask you questions, the prosecuting attorney might try to interrupt you and say that he objects to what you are saying or the questions I ask. Don’t worry about him. I’ll take care of any interruptions he tries to make. We’ll find a way for you to say everything you want to say about your mother and your brother. And if he starts asking you questions that I don’t think are appropriate, I will interrupt him with an objection. He’s tough, Lydia. But all you need to be concerned about is telling the truth.”

When we walked back to the courthouse, I thought about what I would say. I would tell what I done to help Mama get BJ out of the hospital. I would tell about how BJ cried when Gran died on account of her not having any kin with her. And I would say that I remembered Mama of that and begged her to bring BJ home. Then I would ask all them people how Mama and I could
not
bring him home to die with us iffen we loved him.

So I thought I was ready. But when I walked in that big room again with all them important people, it was like I was having a nightmare and was back in Mama’s first trial. I looked at the twelve empty seats at the side of the courtroom, waiting for the judge to call in twelve strangers that would look at me like I might be a criminal. I knowed
from what Miss Parker told me that they was the jury. Them people was going to decide what happened to my mama. And by deciding what happened to my mama, they was going to decide what happened to me. All at once I felt dizzy and as jumpy as a grasshopper in a henhouse.

Then I saw them people in uniforms bring in my mama—in handcuffs. Her long hair had been cut short. Her beautiful hair was gone. The dress Miss Parker and me picked out for her was too big. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up in it. Mama walked to her seat without looking up from the floor. Didn’t she know I was in the room? Why didn’t she look for me? Did she know that Uncle William told me the truth about him and Helen? Was she too ashamed? Did she still love me?

The room started spinning and Uncle William had to catch me. He sat me down on a bench. Miss Parker runned over.

“Is Lydia all right?” Miss Parker asked my uncle. “Maybe we’re expecting too much of her.” She looked at me, her eyebrows arched up high, all worried-like. “Dr. Smythson is still outside with the pastor. I’ll go get him.”

“She’ll be fine,” Uncle William said. “You just go on and do the lawyering you need to do with Sarah. I’ll tend to Lydia.”

Miss Parker looked at Uncle William like she weren’t too sure whether to leave me, but then she went to Mama’s side.

Uncle William sat down beside me. I smelled bacca on
him and knowed he had hisself a smoke after lunch. He didn’t look at me when he talked. “Lydia, this sure has been a hard road for you to travel, but you got good blood running through your veins. Never forget who you be.”

Then he went to talk to Doc Smythson and Pastor John and left me alone.

I recollected Mama saying them very same words to me. “Never forget who you be.” Them was the last words she said to me afore Doc Smythson took me away from Paradise.

Uncle William and Mama knowed that I ain’t who I thought I was. It didn’t make no sense that they said that to me. What did Uncle William mean about good blood? But then I got to thinking that maybe they was saying I be more than who my mama and daddy be. That my blood runs deeper than that.

I recollected about how I felt when we drove to the courthouse—wishing I was back in the mountains. I figured something out. Them mountains is always and forever inside of me, making me who I be. My blood is like a river running through them mountains. As sure as I feel this here chair I’m sitting in right now, at the trial I felt them mountains filling up all the empty spaces inside me. Gran, Gramps, Mama, Daddy, BJ, Uncle William, Helen, and even Aunt Ethel Mae. The blood of them mountains flowed deep in all of us.

Gran always said our West Virginia mountains is like the bosom of the Almighty, keeping us protected and still
in Him. That brought to mind one of them Bible verses Gran made me learn by heart.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, the maker of Heaven and Earth
.

And when I looked to them hills I always carry deep inside, I felt their strength. And I felt God, who made them hills, inside of me, too. Maybe the truth of who I really be had set me free after all.

I didn’t even notice Doc Smythson standing beside me. He knelt down and looked in my eyes. “How are you doing, Lydia?” he asked, all worried. “Let me feel your pulse.”

I held my arm out to him. “I feel better,” I told him.

He looked at his watch and counted the beats. “Nice and strong,” he said, and winked at me.

“All rise!” a man shouted. We all stood up while the judge walked in and sat down. The judge remembered me of a bulldog that belonged to our neighbor in Paradise. He had saggy jowls and his face was shaped like a rectangle. He looked like he might growl. I was mighty afeared of that bulldog at first, but after we got to know each other, he turned out to be a pretty good dog. I hoped this judge would turn out to be nicer than he looked, too.

The judge called in the jury. Then we all sat down after the judge took his seat.

“The prosecution calls Lydia Hawkins, Your Honor,” the hospital’s lawyer boomed out. As I walked to the front of the courtroom, I looked over and saw my mama smile
at me. She was skinny and had lost her beautiful long hair, but her eyes was just the same—blue and clear and strong.

The man that had us stand up when the judge walked in told me to place my left hand on the Bible and raise my right hand. Then he said, “Do you solemnly swear before almighty God, the seeker of all hearts, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as you will so answer on that last great day?”

I looked him in the eye and smiled. “I swear,” I said.

S
ATURDAY
, A
PRIL 3, 1954

Me and Mama sat in the rocking chairs out on the porch today. Ears sat beside me with his big old head in my lap. I rested my elbows on the arms of the rocking chair so’s I could sew over the top of his head. The sun cozied up to us and spring finally started to peek out of the ground and the trees. The sweet smell of honeysuckle blowed a kiss to us from the side of the house.

We sewed memory quilts for BJ and Gran. Mama tore up strips out of my old coat to use for the border of Gran’s quilt. I sewed a train on BJ’s quilt that looked like the magic train. I cut me up some root beer jars out of BJ’s old brown britches. Then I sewed together two of his black socks to make a long black snake. It had a red forked
tongue from one of his baby bibs. I cut the letters
G, E, R, M, Y
out of his black-and-red plaid shirt to sew under the snake. I figured BJ was laughing up there in Heaven about having root beer jars and a black snake on his quilt. It made me smile just to think about it.

I stopped for a minute to scratch behind Ears’ ears. He looked up at me real grateful-like.

“Mama, it sure was nice of Aunt Ethel Mae to talk her neighbor into letting me have Ears. I still ain’t figured out why she done that. She was always a-telling me what a awful, smelly old dog he was.”