by Ruth White
In a little while Grandpa snoozes in front of the fire in the main room. His old stinky smoking pipe is hanging off his fingers, about to fall on the floor. When nobody is looking, I ease the pipe from his hand, and throw it real quick in the flames of the fire. He will never know where it went to.
I let Nell hold Beth Ann for about one minute, but Jewel is too little, and she smells like pee. We suck our peppermint candy, and whisper the day away.
February, 1918
Ice came out of the sky and we can’t go to the school house. Nell and Roxie still have whooping cough, so they have to stay in the bed, but I’m over it, so Luther tells me it's my job to go into the woods and find the baby lamb that is lost there.
I don’t have britches or boots like the big boys got. I don’t have mittens to go over my fingers. But I do have a coat. It usta be Nell’s.
The woods are a fairy tale. A lacey palace. Ice here. Ice there. With the cold white sun making shines on it. The limbs are nearabout laying on the ground. The earth cracks when I step on it.
I call to the lamb. I have named it Curly. My voice is tiny in the big still woods. Like a little bitty silver bell. The wind takes the sound away. I hunker down against a tree trunk and cover my legs with my coat and watch for Curly. I look up there on the ridge where I see a round white hump. I think the wind has blinded me, for I can see only white. Then shapes start to come up from nothing. Someone is laying on the ice bank. It’s the sleeping beauty!
Her face is white. Her dress is white. Her hair is black as coal. She folds her hands at her heart like she is praying to be resacued by the prince. She is fast asleep in her ice palace. Just sleeping and waiting for the handsome prince to come and carry her off on his white horse. And they will live happily ever after.
Then she turns her pretty face to me. She opens her ice blue eyes and sees me. Her little mouth is a rosebud and she is fixing to tell me an important thing, but somebody is here throwing something warm around me and picking me up. It’s Trula. She has put her coat over me. Her breath comes out like puffs of smoke on my face.
I tell her I saw the sleeping beauty and she says back to me that I was about to be the sleeping beauty myself. She says she should whip me good, such a bad girl, going off in this temperature. I tell her about Curly, but I don’t say that Luther made me go find her. I think that would make Trula mad at Luther.
Trula takes me to the house and up the stairsteps to the sleeping loft on the side where the girls sleep. Roxie and Nell cough cough cough, and I am put in between them. They go ooo..ooo..eee..eee when they feel my cold skin, but they snuggle up to me to make me warm. When all the world is frozen hard with ice I think it is a cozy place to be between Nell and Roxie under the quilts Mommie and Trula stitched together from the scrap bag. Daylight has snuck off the mountaintop when Trula comes to light the lantern beside our bed. We don’t have light bubs because we don’t have juice at our house. Uncle Green has the juice, but it’s too modern for Daddy.
With her red raw hands Trula reaches me a jar full of sweet milk and a sidemeat biscuit. She's got one for us each. It is so good. We get the crumbs under our butts. We wipe greasy fingers on our petticoats. Last time Trula had a birthday she was fourteen, and I can see this cold white day written on her tired face. Here you see the sweeping and mopping. There you see the cooking and cleaning. Yonder she is tending to Jewel and Charles. Or she's pouring the slop jars down the toilet hole. Milking the cow. Churning the butter. Stoking up the fire. Fetching water in a bucket from the half-frozen spring. I am sorry then to see my own little self in those Starr blue eyes. With all else she has to do, she hauls me out of the frozen forest where the sleeping beauty sleeps for a hundred years.
Two
September, 1918
I am too old for counting fingers now. I am close to seven. I am in the second grade and I can read awful good. I know my numbers up a long ways. I know how to sew on a button. I can put a patch on a tore place. I can mind Charles and Jewel for Trula. I can help her carry wood, and take ashes out of the cook stove.
We have a whole bunch of laying hens. Me and Nell feed them cracked corn of a morning and snatch their eggs. Luther takes them to Deep Bottom to sell to Mr. Call, who turns around and sells them to people who don’t have chickens. Our egg money is set aside for school stuff like paper and pencils.
Mommie and Trula cook three big meals most days. Roxie helps some now. In our summer garden we grow lots of good vegetables. We don't ever go hungry, not even in the wintertime. We are like the squirrels who store things away for when the ground is too cold to make food. We pack lots and lots of good things to eat in jars with sealing lids. We stash the jars on shelves in the cellar out back of our log house. It is under the ground with the spiders. It stays cool even in the summertime, and always smells like damp earth.
When the sun is orange on a Saturday evening, Samuel comes up from West Virginia. That’s four miles over the mountain. He’s been there all summer working in the hot sun, helping a man build a house. It’s all the work he can find. He tried to join the army, but a doctor said he’s got weak lungs. Me and Mommie and Samuel sit on the porch. I am next to Samuel, and he smells like the last whiff of summer. Mommie is shelling butter beans. She says her life is all up a hill. It’s awful to be borned a female and don’t you forgit it. It’s a cross to bear.
Since the drinking spring dried up, Mommie and Trula have to haul water a right good piece from another spring. And they are sick and tired of it. Mommie begs Daddy to buy our own well this year when the apples come in. She says it does not cost much to drill it. Daddy tells her the apple money is to spend for more important things. Trula says she didn’t know there was anything more important than water, and Daddy gives her a hard look. She is so mad, I reckon she forgets who she is talking to. She starts yelling that he’s not the one who has to fetch pails of water in the snow and mud and rain. And he should try it. See how it hurts your hands to carry it, and it’s so cold sometimes without mittens when it spills on you. But he’s got girls to do that for him, so what does he care?
Daddy’s face turns red as fire, and that’s when I know Trula has said too much. Daddy will not put up with sass, especially from a girl. He tells her to go cut a switch and bring it to him. Then Trula’s face is so pitiful, it hurts me to look at her, but she does like she’s told. Daddy makes the rest of us watch while he switches Trula’s legs and back and behind. She does not let out a whimper. But I cry, along with Roxie and Nell and Jewel. We beg him to stop. I have to close my eyes. I want so bad to forget it now. But it won’t leave me.
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Our black and white dog is Dixie. She is sweet as sugar. She guards the chicken house and keeps the critters away. I hug Dixie in both my arms. Mommie sends us to look for persimmon trees. We go down Willy’s Road. The woods here to the right are dark and overgrown, not like the enchanted forest behind our house where the sleeping beauty sleeps. I stop and listen, for there is something in this patch of woods. It is older than the sun. It is a grieved and lonely thing. I hear it crying tears but I can’t see it. I don’t go in these woods ever, ever.
October, 1918
Samuel says to me that Grandpa Wallace has died. Daddy comes in with some men and they have a long box made of shined wood. They set it in the big room. The box has a lid on it, and somebody opens it. There is Grandpa Wallace, his white face hair laying on his chest. His eyes are closed, and his old freckled hands lay still on his belly. He's the oldest person in the world, but they got him dressed up in young clothes – new britches and a red flannel shirt. I wish Samuel had him a shirt like that.
Samuel tells me Grandpa will be buried out there on the knob. He is talking about that place where some square rocks are standing in the wind. Letters are scratched on the rocks. It’s all right to leave Grandpa’s body there because he is not in it anymore. It’s like a walnut shell with all the kernels picked out of it. Then you just get shed of it.
I tell Samue
l he should get that shirt off of Grandpa before it's buried under the dirt. Samuel makes a funny noise, and I can't tell if he's choked or crying.
Daddy's four brothers come in. There is not a normal one in this bunch. First there's that good-lookin Uncle Ben. He carries a gun on his hip wherever he goes, and folks don’t mess with him. He shot a man one time. And there's Uncle Green who has a wooden leg. His reg’lar one was cut off at the sawmill when he was a boy. Uncle Artemis has a deformed hand. There's just two big fat fingers on it. And Uncle Tom is a Democrat.
They stand around with the neighbors from over the mountain and down the holler. They look at Grandpa Wallace in the box and whisper. When everybody cries over Grandpa’s empty body, I sneak away to the loft. That old man was mean as a copperhead. I did not love him, but now he is dead, so I will keep it to myself.
November, 1918
With the apple money Daddy buys a long barrel shooting gun from Mr. Call. Him and Luther practice with it out by the barn. The noise makes me jumpy. When it’s time to butcher hogs I hide so I don’t have to see. Samuel finds me and whispers that a hog would be a worthless critter if you couldn't kill it and eat it, now ain't that right? He reminds me how much I like bacon. Mommie and Trula salt the meat and hang it in the smoke house out by the barn. We will eat on it till summertime. Tomorrow they will render the lard with lye and make soap for washing clothes. I reckon that’s what hogs are for. Still it’s a lonesome thing to hear them screaming in your dreams.
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Sweet Dixie is so awful sick. While I was at the school house Barney the mule kicked her in the belly and it is swelled up big. Daddy says that something inside Dixie is busted, and she's liable to die.
It’s dark and cold, but I must go and see my Dixie where she lays in the barn. After everybody's asleep I wrap a blanket around me and slip outside. When I open the barn door, I can't see a thing, but I can hear my sweet Dixie breathing heavy breaths in the dark, and I feel my way to her. When I put my hands on her, she tries to get up and wag her tail, but she falls back down. I lay in the straw beside her and wrap my arms and my blanket around her. She whimpers against me and licks my face. I whisper sweet things to Dixie. Her breaths come easier and she snuggles to me in the cold barn. She knows I have come to tell her goodbye, and she is glad in her heart.
Before the frost settles over the mountain in the wee hours I feel the warm spirit slip out of my Dixie girl, and her body goes cold in my arms. My tears fall over the hairy face that usta grin up at me all the time, and the black eyes that always followed me. Now they are open, but do not see.
I go out into the cold night. There is not a moon. When you stand here beside the black sky you can see that Samuel is right – the world is round as a tater. I can barely make out Willy’s Road yonder going past the dark and tangled woods. Yeah, there is something out there. Something wild and broken-hearted. I feel its awful longing.
I squat and pee beside the barn. I shiver, pull my blanket tight around me and creep back into the house. I tiptoe past Daddy and Mommie where they sleep in the big room. I go up the stairsteps and climb over the footboard back into bed with Nell and Jewel. I have the shakes and can’t quit. I can hear Roxie and Trula breathing in the other bed. I wipe the tears that have gone cold on my face. I feel the embroidered yellow ducks that Trula stitched on my pillow case. There is a big hollow place in my chest, and I wonder if it will always be this empty.
Tomorrow Daddy will tell Luther to bury my Dixie girl way down deep in the cold cold ground. I can’t help wondering what it really means to die. All I know for sure is the thing that made Dixie move around and wag her tail, and her eyes to look at me so full of love is gone from her, and I will wonder for a long time where it went.
May 25th, 1919
A sweet wind moves across the mountaintop, and I can smell strawberries in it. They are ripe out there near the pasture. Me and Roxie are fixing to pick them before the birds steal them. Mulberries will come next, then raspberries and blackberries in the hot weather. Me and Roxie and Nell will help Mommie and Trula make jam and preserves and store the jars in the stone wall cellar.
It’s a Sunday morning, and I sit in the new grass, feeling apart from my body. This is a funny way to feel. I know every moment what will come next. Just for a split second before it happens, I know what's coming. I am watching me from the outside of myself. Now Lorelei is going to put her hand there on the grass. It all took place this same way before. There is a cardinal going to light on that branch yonder, and he does it. Here I see Roxie leaning out the window of our sleeping loft, with her golden hair hanging down like Rapunzel’s. She calls to me in her pretty little voice to go in the kitchen and fetch a bucket. Yes, it was like this one time before. But when? Now the moment is gone, and I don’t know what it was or what it meant. I will ask Samuel. He knows about the stars and planets and most everything.
I go in the kitchen for a bucket. It’s hot in here. Mommie is baking bread. It makes her sweat. The windows are open, and the first flies of the season are coming in. By July the air indoors will be thick with them. Samuel wants to buy screen windows like Uncle Green’s, but Daddy says screen windows are too modern.
Mommie has on her dark face. I try to curl up into myself, be as little as can be. I move like a shadow by the wall. I start into the pantry to get a bucket. She turns of a sudden, and I am right there under her feet. In a jiffy I am flying across the room. She has back-handed me good. I am in the corner seeing stars on the ceiling.
I ask her why did she hit me? What did I do? And she growls that I am in her way. She says I am ALWAYS in her way.
As I creep by her to get out, I see that her belly is poking out big. How come I did not see this before? Does it mean another baby will come out of her? Lordy, why is she doing that again?
I go out to the yard with a big knot coming up on my forehead. Roxie wants to know where is the bucket? I say to her if she wants a bucket, she should go get it herself, that Mommie knocked me across the room.
Roxie says sissy, poor sissy, and a tear rolls down her rosy cheek. She pets my head, but she cannot touch the place where it hurts the worst.
Three
August, 1919
It’s so awfully hot. Samuel has been gone for three days, looking for work. I miss him, but he told me to look for a bluebird. When I see one, it means he is on his way home. It's always lonesome on the mountain, but when he is gone, it's more lonesome than ever.
I am on the porch where me and Mommie are going through three big charity bags filled with clothes. They come from the churches of Virginia. There are britches and shirts for the boys, and dresses for the girls. There are also shoes that somebody else usta wear.
Whatever clothes we can’t wear from the charity bags, Mommie will use for making quilts. She lines and pads them with worn out blankets. She makes sheets and pillow cases from muslim. Trula and Roxie embroider the pillow cases. Me and Nell are learning how. We fill the pillow cases with chicken and goose feathers.
Mommie’s belly is so big now, she is having a hard time bending over to pull stuff out of the bag. She looks so pitiful I want to hug her and tell her I love her. Instead I go over and start reaching things to her so she won't have to bend over.
We are working together quiet when of a sudden she clutches herself down between her legs and groans. Oh…oh…oh! Then she tells me to go fetch Trula. And not tomorrow. Right now!
I run to the cornfield for Trula, and she sends Luther for Aunt Sue. When they come back, Aunt Sue says Trula has to help out with the birthing. She’ll be sixteen in December, and that’s old enough. Trula cries out NO, NO, please NO. But Daddy makes her do it. To see Trula cry hurts my heart.
I forgot all about the bluebird, but when it’s nearly dark I see Samuel coming across the mountaintop, walking tall against the sky. I run to meet him. I tell him about Mommie. He makes long, deep breaths and takes my little dirty hand into his big one. He says he is wore out and did not fin
d work this trip, and now we're about to get another mouth to feed.
So here we are again, me and Samuel and Roxie and Nell all sitting out on the porch in the dark waiting for another baby to be born. Daddy and Luther are in the barn with a sick cow. Charles and Jewel went to bed the dirtiest young’uns you ever saw, because Trula was too busy to tend them. Roxie has brung out a lamp and lit it, and the millers are flitting and flying against it. Samuel is telling us fine things he learned from books, but his mind is upstairs with Mommie. This time she does not make noise. We have not heard her cry out even once.
After a while there’s a sound at the door and Trula comes out holding a bundle in her arms. There’s blood on her dress. Her hair has come down from on top of her head, and hangs
in her eyes. The red rough lines on her hands are plain to see in the lamplight. She slumps against the door frame, and Samuel jumps up to keep her from falling.
She pushes the bundle at Samuel and says, ”Here’s y’all’s new little brother. His name's Daniel.”
Next morning Trula and Roxie fix a big breakfast for everybody. Daddy has not gone up the stairsteps to see Mommie and baby Daniel yet.
Aunt Sue is still with us, and she asks him,”Old man, how come you don't go up there to see your wife and your new boy?”
Daddy says the steps are too steep for him to climb right now. He just woke up. But he'll go drekly.
Before we can eat, Aunt Sue makes me and Roxie and Nell take Charles and Jewel to the washing spring and give them and ourselves an all-over scrubbing. The washing spring is a good piece further on past the drinking spring. Standing naked in it, we wash with lye soap. We are so nasty. The lye burns our skin, but the cold spring water is a balm. There’s an old sad willow tree with its weeping branches nearabout hanging down in the water. We shiver in the shade of the willow, and shake the wet off of us, just like my sweet Dixie girl used to do. Then we go into the sunshine where the wildflowers grow, and dry ourselves.
