Carry the World

by Susan Fanetti

  Here at home, the women were at work. While her mother sat in the sun and knitted, Ada and Bluebird were sowing their patch.

  Well, Ada was sowing the patch. Bluebird was distracted by the new kids. Their little herd of goats was getting big enough that they’d need to trade off one or two—or butcher them, but since they all had names, it was unlikely they’d end up on their table.

  “Blue, come now. I need your help.”

  Bluebird finally trotted over, her ponytail swinging. She wore a little pair of patchwork overalls Ada had made from scrap fabric. They’d turned out cute.

  “Sorry, Ma.”

  “You can play with the babies when we’re done. Follow behind me and cover up the seeds, like I showed you.”

  Bluebird nodded, and they got to work.

  “I know their names now,” Bluebird said as she patted earth over the lettuce seeds. “They told me.” She insisted that she understood the animals, and that she didn’t give them their names. They told her their names. Since Ada had had some of her most serious conversations with a horse, she wasn’t one to dispute her daughter’s truth.

  “They did?”

  “Uh-huh. The boy with the white face is Arthur, and the girl is Aurora.”

  Ada smiled. Names from legends and fairy tales. “Those are very good names.”

  “That’s what I tol’ ‘em.”

  At the end of the row, a strong bout of vertigo struck Ada suddenly. The remains of her breakfast spun in her belly as she lurched to grab a fencepost and keep her feet under her.

  “Ma? What’s wrong?” Bluebird ask, coming up behind her.

  Henrietta came over and brushed a worried nose on her arm. On her free days, the horse grazed contently among them, with the run of their yard. There wasn’t a pasture for her to run in, just the small paddock where Petal and Polly lazed their days away, and the crowded goat pen. But Henrietta didn’t need more exercise than she got every day, and she enjoyed moseying through the yard like a giant dog.

  The world settled, and Ada took a breath. “I’m alright, sweetheart,” she assured her daughter. She leaned her head on Henrietta’s nose. “I’m alright, Hen. Just a little dizzy.”

  Her mother’s preternatural hearing picked up every word. “Ada Lee? You dizzy? Come sit and rest. You should be off your feet.”

  “Momma ...”

  “Don’t ‘Momma’ me. Come sit. Rest.”

  Maybe for a minute or two. She really was tired. “Okay, Blue. You can go back to the goats—but come when I call you back.”

  “Yes, Ma!” she chirped and ran back to the goat pen.

  Henrietta followed behind Ada like she expected to be needed.

  As Ada sat beside her mother, she said, “I really need to get the patch planted, Momma.” But she leaned back in the chair and turned her face up to the spring sun. Already, she felt a bit better.

  Momma’s hand came up and reached for her. Ada took it. “The seeds will be sown, Ada Lee. Never you fret about that. ‘Tis the time for sowin’. How long since you’ve had your time?”

  “It’s due, I think.” Ada sat straight and thought. “Yes, it is.” She put her free hand on her belly.

  They’d decided to wait until spring to really try for a baby, and Jonah had completely stopped withdrawing about two weeks ago, when it was consistently warm enough for them to return to their own beds each night. They’d never been diligent about preventing it happening sooner, though. From their very first time, their commitment to waiting had only been slightly better than even, and she hadn’t caught pregnant yet.

  She and George had never been blessed. In those days, Ada had wondered whether it was something possible for her. She supposed it was too early yet to pick up that worry again.

  Especially if her weariness now might mean hope.

  “Do you think?”

  Her mother turned and faced her, and looked so keenly at her that Ada nearly forgot she was blind. “You been run down all week, and you’s dizzy today. I think it’s worth bein’ careful, yes I do.”

  Ada rested back again and closed her eyes to think. A baby. A child growing inside her. Oh, she hoped it was true. But it would mean giving up her work.

  She’d known that, prepared for it. Made a choice—her own choice, not one forced upon her. But it would not be easy to give up the work she loved.

  Her life would be full and happy here without the work. In fact, in many ways, she would be happier without it. Certainly, she’d be glad to be home with her family, and could devote her time to a full curriculum for the children. They didn’t need her wages to live day to day, and they’d saved a tidy nest egg over these months, to cover them should trouble arise.

  Moreover, the people of Red Fern Holler, neglected for years by the state board of education, had raised the idea of Ada teaching their children, coming down once or twice a week to give lectures and correct assignments they did on their own during the other days of the week. She wouldn’t earn a wage that way, but she’d accumulate both goodwill and favors owed—and personal fulfillment as well.

  It would be hard to leave her route, but there was ease in the choice. And joy to be growing their family.

  But she wanted to be sure. “Don’t say anything yet, Momma. I want to wait a little. I have my meeting in Callwood next week. If my time hasn’t come by then, I’ll see Doc Dollens while I’m down the mountain. I don’t want to say a word about this until I see the doctor.”

  Her mother made a face. “You should be stoppin’ that work right now, if you got a seed growin’.”

  Her mother knew better than that. Mountain women didn’t have the luxury of putting their feet up while they carried a child. But she still didn’t like Ada’s job, and latched on to any opportunity to make it end. Still, it was true that her work had risks she wouldn’t want to take for long in this condition. “If I am, a seed is exactly right. Tiny as that, and safe because of it. I will work until I show. And Jonah is already fretful about the thought that I’ll someday carry a child. Remember how he lost Grace. When he knows, he’ll start worrying that very moment and not stop until the baby’s born and we’re both well. I want a little time to live with the idea before he knows. Please.”

  Ada could see her mother didn’t like it, but she nodded, and that was as good as a promise. “It’s your news to tell, Ada Lee. Only yours.”

  “Thank you, Momma.”

  The following week, after her trip down the mountain, where she’d seen Doc Dollens and had her librarians’ meeting in Callwood, and a fairly long private meeting with Mrs. Pitts as well, Ada rode Henrietta up to her perfect, beautiful, humble home.

  Since she stayed in Callwood overnight, there was still a gleam of afternoon sun in the holler. The spring day had been summer warm, and her family was still outside. Elijah and Bluebird chased the new puppy they’d given Elijah for his birthday, from a litter one of the Dickersons’ hounds had whelped. Jonah and Momma sat on the porch, chatting. Jonah had his book of Emerson essays upside down on his lap. He struggled with some of Emerson’s vocabulary and turns of phrase, but he kept trying and learning and improving.

  Jonah rose and came down the porch steps, walking to meet her. It was one of her favorite things in the world: to see that man, her man, so strong and quiet, so beautifully devoted to her and their family, walking toward her, a smile full of love spreading over his ruggedly handsome face.

  She swung down from the saddle and snuggled close when his arm came around her.

  Her mother stood, too, and stepped to the porch rail. She faced the direction Ada had come from, her sightless eyes not quite in line with Ada’s position. Her mother knew what today might mean, and Ada wished her mother could see her. If she could have, Ada would have simply nodded.

  She’d kept the news from Jonah until she was sure. Now it was time for him to know. But not quite yet. Tonight, when they were in bed. Alone, in their most private, personal, intimate togetherness. When she could assuage his worries and be sure he
felt all the joy.

  He wrapped her up tight, and lifted her from the ground. She coiled her legs around him, and they kissed each other until his knees buckled. Then he set her down and kissed her head.

  “Hey, darlin’.” He took Henrietta’s reins from her. “Missed you.”

  “I missed you.”

  “Good trip?”

  “A wonderful trip,” she said and held him close.

  Epilogue

  Present Day

  “That was Uncle Easy she was carryin’—Ezekiel, named for her daddy. Hold on—lemme see.” Lizzie’s mother rose from the sofa and knelt before the bookcase across the room. Lizzie was surprised to see how dim Nannie’s front room had gotten, and she leaned over to switch on a lamp.

  The hours of this long day had rolled by unnoticed. At some point, they’d decided the attic was too hot and dusty, and they were thirsty, so they’d carried the scrapbook and a few other pieces from the chest and come downstairs. They’d sat at the kitchen table and had a meal, and they’d eventually meandered to the front room to sit among Nannie’s carefully tidy things, but now, the memory of all those actions and decisions seemed as faded and curled as the pages of Mamaw’s scrapbook. They’d spent these hours in a haze of story, Momma telling all she knew, and remembering more as Lizzie asked questions. The 1930s seemed far more real to Lizzie just now than the year they were actually sitting in.

  “Here, I think this—yeah, this is it.” Momma brought an old photo album over and returned to her place at Lizzie’s side. The album was the kind with little paper corners glued to the pages, and each of the grainy, faded photographs was trimmed with a scalloped white border. She flipped past a page or two without more than a glance, and then stopped. “Here. This is all of ‘em, right out in front of that old house.”

  Lizzie leaned over and studied the photo. Three rows of people, men and women, girls and boys, seated and standing, were arrayed on the steps of a long wooden porch. Though the photo was old, and sepia-toned, Lizzie could see the age and wear of the wood. The porch, and its house, looked as if it had been standing long past its best days and was ready for its time to end.

  She was a little shocked. Though her mother had said many times in her story that the family was so poor money hardly featured in their lives, that those lives were hard and humble, the image that had been painted in her mind had been different. She thought of bright windows and cozy fires, of good food and good cheer.

  The house she’d hardly heard of before today and now felt as if she knew its every wall and corner was remade to her once more. This was the home of a poor Appalachian family, like those she’d studied in school, with little in the way of comforts or conveniences.

  Yet all those faces were happy. Most were smiling broadly. They sat and stood arm in arm and hand in hand.

  “That’s Mamaw,” her mother said and put an elegant fingertip on the figure of the oldest woman in the photo. Wearing a loose, simple dress, she was small and thin, and had a braid of pale hair wrapped around her head. Her smile was bright and pretty. She had an infant in her arms. “She’s holdin’ Micah, so this’d be about ’48, I guess? He was her last, and the only one that was sickly. He died ‘fore he was two. That makes Mamaw about thirty-eight here, and Papaw”—she tapped the tall, serious man beside Mamaw, wearing bib overalls and squinting at the camera—"forty-eight or forty-nine.”

  Her mother’s accent had deepened through the day until she sounded just like Nannie, every word full to the brim with the mountain.

  “Where’s Elijah? And Bluebird?”

  “The boy in the uniform, that’s Uncle Eli. He’s too young to join up durin’ the war, but he wanted it somethin’ fierce. Nannie al’ays said it broke Papaw’s heart when he joined up soon’s he made eighteen. Made a life of it. He was a combat pilot. Fought in Korea and did four tours in Vietnam. Came home in a box from the last one.”

  “Oh no!”

  Her mother sighed and nodded. Lizzie felt her heart crack a little. Elijah had died long before she’d been born, and she’d never thought of him before this day, but now she loved him fiercely and mourned his death.

  “And Bluebird? Is this her?” She pointed to a lovely young woman with long, straight hair, so pale it looked white in the photo. With that hair held back with a plain band, she looked like Alice in Wonderland.

  “That’s Aunt Blue, yep. She loved the mountain and never left it. Married a boy from Red Fern Holler, and they fixed up one of the old houses by Mamaw and Papaw and lived there her whole life. We went to her funeral, but you were jus’ six or so.”

  Lizzie didn’t remember.

  “That there would be Uncle Easy,” her mother continued. “The one she was carryin’ when she quit the librarians.”

  “I understand why she quit, but it must’ve broken her heart. She loved the work so much.” That much, Lizzie had known before, from the stories Nannie had told about her mother’s life as a librarian. Mamaw had always spoken wistfully of those days, when she’d carried the world to forgotten people. When she’d met her great love and built a vibrant life.

  “She did, yep. Even though she chose to stop and build a family, she missed the ride. But Mamaw wasn’t one to sit and feel bad. She got to doin’. She had all those babies, one right after another—and two at once, even—so she had her hands full, but she taught ‘em all every subject, and she even started a little school down Red Fern Holler, towing her babies along, sometimes with one swaddled on her chest. Didn’t get no pay, but it didn’t matter. She was a hero to those folks. They stopped the librarian program a few years later anyway, but she kept teachin’, and doin’ her book parties, until they finally got a road all the way up to Red Fern and the state remembered they was children up there. They brought in one of they own teachers, and Mamaw didn’t teach down there no more, but she al’ays taught her own.”

  “I can’t believe they didn’t let her teach for the state, just because she was married. That’s nuts.”

  Her mother shrugged, and suddenly she was a Chicago heart surgeon again. “Lizzie, you grew up in a very different world than Mamaw, or Nannie, or even I did. Every generation, things have gotten better for women, but it’s still a fight. You know damn well it’s still a fight.”

  Lizzie nodded. She’d experienced her own kinds of unfairness because she was a woman.

  Her mother returned her attention to that humble photo full of riches. “And there’s Uncle Luke and Uncle Luther—the twins—and that’s your Nannie, right between ‘em. Look how pretty she was. You look just like her, you know. She was a real beauty.”

  Lizzie considered that pretty little girl, just five years old or so, with dark pigtails and a serious look. Not Nannie back then. Just Bekah Rae, with the whole world before her.

  She’d seen plenty of photos of her grandmother, as a girl and a young woman, a newlywed, and a young mother. With her dark hair and eyes, she’d looked like Rita Hayworth. Lizzie had dark hair and eyes, just like her mother did, and her mother was beautiful, but she didn’t think her own resemblance extended to that degree of beauty. Lizzie was cute, not breathtaking.

  “And that little sprite makin’ the face, that’ll be Aunt Ella Beth.”

  “So many children.”

  “Mamaw wanted a big family, and she got it. When her kids started having kids of their own, the family got enormous. I remember that house. It was rundown as hell, but I never really noticed it when I was little. By then, it had plumbin’ and electric and propane, but I still thought I was roughin’ it. It was fun, and always busy and full. I’d go up in summers and spend weeks with Mamaw and Papaw, and those were the best times. It wasn’t ever jus’ me, a buncha cousins’d be there. Like our own little summer camp. Even chores was fun. And Papaw, he was quiet, but he loved to watch our play. The whole holler was full, too. Aunt Blue and Uncle Cade lived there with their kids, and Uncle Easy and Aunt Lottie with theirs. They built the old houses back up and moved in. For a while, it was bustlin’ as muc
h as it ever did, but the world below finally made it up that high, and after that, people started drainin’ off again. Once it got easy to get down the mountain, people stopped goin’ up. The kids grew up and went down to live and work, and when the old folks died or got brought down, the holler jus’ died off. Papaw and Mamaw both lived into their nineties, and they stayed in that house till he died. Then Mamaw came down here to live with Nannie. Those last years without him, she was like a lady at a train station, sittin’ quiet and prim, waitin’ for her time to go. When she died, the family finally sold the holler off.”

  Lizzie sat back and swallowed down a lump of tears. “Well, that breaks my heart.”

  But her mother smiled and took her hand. “No, Lizzie. Cable’s Holler was wonderful, but without Mamaw and Papaw, it was just a place. They made a home, and a family. They made a whole world, and every one of us carries it with us every place we are.”

  The End

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Susan Fanetti is a Midwestern native transplanted to Northern California, where she lives with her husband, youngest son, and assorted cats.

  She is a proud member of the Freak Circle Press.

  Susan’s website: www.susanfanetti.com

  Susan’s Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/authorsusanfanetti

  ‘Susan’s FANetties’ reader group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/871235502925756/

  Freak Circle Press Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/freakcirclepress

  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susan_fanetti/

  Twitter: @sfanetti

  Carry the World Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.com/laughingwarrior/carry-the-world/