Child of the Mountains (20 page)

F
RIDAY
, F
EBRUARY 5, 1954

After school today, Mr. Hinkle asked me iffen I was okay. He said it wasn’t like me not to do my homework and that I seemed very quiet. I told him I was sorry and that I hadn’t felt well.

“Are you concerned about the trial, Lydia?” he asked as he patted my shoulder.

“A little,” I said. How could I begin to tell him everthing I was worried about?

“Well, that’s understandable. I need you to try to stay caught up with your work, though. We don’t want you getting behind.”

“I’ll get caught up tonight,” I promised.

I sure was glad to see Ears trotting up to me when I
walked home from school. I sat down on the curb aside him and buried my head in his neck. I wrapped my arms real tight around him. His body tensed up like he was asking me, “What’s wrong?” He licked my face. I couldn’t talk, not even to him.

Me and him sat together until he had licked all the tears offen my face. I patted him for a bit. Then I said, “You and me be alike, Ears. You seem to think you belong to me, but you really belong to the people in that house over there. I don’t know who I belong to, neither.” Ears whimpered a little like he knowed what I meant.

I was just about to stand up and finish walking to the house when I saw my uncle’s car coming around the corner. My heart started beating so fast I thought I might faint. I wanted to run, but I was like a rabbit trapped by a bobcat—too afeared to move. Uncle William pulled the car over and opened the door on my side.

“Get in,” he ordered. Ears barked at him.

My voice shook, but I said, “Go home, Ears,” and pointed to his house. Ears looked like he didn’t want to leave me alone. But he did what I told him.

I climbed in the car with my uncle. He didn’t say nothing. I didn’t, neither. He drove to his house, parked the car, and told me, “Stay put.”

I did. I twirled a strand of my hair and was surprised to see I had pulled a few hairs out of my head. I didn’t even feel it.

Uncle William got back in the car and handed me the shopping list. “I told your aunt that I took off a couple of
hours early to get some hunting supplies at Sears and Roebuck for this weekend. I picked you up on the way home and figured I could drop you at Evans to do the grocery shopping. She said she wanted to go shopping, but I told her she needed to stay home on account of being so sick. I said I would bring her something.”

I knowed Aunt Ethel Mae wouldn’t be happy about that, but I didn’t say nothing. She loves to shop at Sears and Roebuck. I wondered iffen Uncle William got in trouble for taking off early. I wanted to ask him what he told his boss, but I was afeared to.

Was we really going shopping? I pulled out a few more strands of hair thinking about it. We drove offen the hill and turned left toward Charleston. Then Uncle William pulled over at a little park at Hometown.

It ain’t much of a park, just a couple of picnic tables and signs. One tells how George Washington acquired all the land up in these parts. His nephew lived close to the park in Red House. The other one tells how the highway was the path of a Colonial army that defeated Cornstalk at Point Pleasant. I knowed all that because we took a field trip to the park when I was in fourth grade. We even had a picnic after we read and talked about the signs. I figured me and Uncle William weren’t going to have no picnic.

“Get out,” Uncle William ordered me.

I got out. At least I knowed he wouldn’t hit me. Too many cars kept passing by. He sat hisself down at one of the picnic tables. I sat down across from him. I shivered and my teeth chattered. I don’t know whether it was
because it was so cold or on account of being so afeared of him. I pushed my hands deeper in the pockets of the coat he bought me. Most times the smell of cold air makes me feel clean inside. Today it just made me feel numb.

Uncle William looked hot. His face was all red. “How did you find it?” His steel-blue eyes drilled holes in me.

I told him without looking at his face. I stared at a knothole in the picnic table as I forced them words out of my mouth.

“You had no right to open that envelope!” he yelled, and slammed his fist on the table.

I jumped like he had slammed that fist down on me. Tears ran fast down my cheeks. I covered my face with my hands. My gloves caught the tears, but now my hands was wet. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I moaned.

He stood up and walked away from me. I watched him through my fingers. He put his arm on a oak tree that was dead of leaves for winter and leaned his head on his arm. He stayed that way for a while. Then he comed back to the table and sat down.

He sighed. “What do you want to know, Lydia?”

I still didn’t look at him, but the tears stopped coming. “Is my mama my real mama?”

He didn’t say nothing for a while. Then he said, “Yes, Lydia. Your mama is your real mama. But she’s not your birth mother.”

“The lady in the picture is my birth mother?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you my daddy?”

“No, I’m your uncle William by law.”

“What do you mean?”

“I gived you up to your parents for adoption soon after you was borned.”

I tried to imagine what my life would have been like iffen I had growed up with Uncle William. I couldn’t even get a tiny picture of it in my head. “You didn’t want me?” I asked.

Uncle William fidgeted a little and then cleared his throat like he had to make room for the words to come out of his mouth. He didn’t look at me when he talked. “Helen—your birth mother—and I wanted you more than anything.” He thought for a bit. Then he said, “I dropped out of high school to take a job in a machine shop in Charleston. Times was tough, and I wanted to get out on my own and make my own way. I had me a little one-room apartment. I ate at Jack’s Place most days. That’s where I met Helen. She worked there as a waitress.”

“You thought she was pretty?”

“Beautiful. She always had a smile for me. I could talk to her.”

That was saying something. I knowed how hard it was for Uncle William to talk to anybody about anything. “So you married her.”

“Yeah. We eloped. Most folks couldn’t afford a fancy wedding back then. We didn’t have much money, but we saved up what we could for a house. We was real happy when we found out Helen was going to have a baby. I didn’t know nothing about raising young’uns, but I
knowed Helen would help me learn. She loved kids—always talked to them and liked to give them special treats when they comed in the restaurant.”

“What happened to her? Where is she?”

Another real long sigh blowed out of him and his face tightened up. “She died, Lydia. They had a special waiting area at the hospital for what they called expectant fathers. After a time, the doctor called my name and took me to another room. He said you come out fine but your mother didn’t make it.” One tear crept out of his eye. It didn’t slide down his face very far until he pushed it aside with his sleeve and cleared his throat again.

My throat got tight. “I killed my mother?”

He looked me straight in the eyes. “It ain’t right for you to think of it like that, Lydia. Helen never would have wanted you to see it that way.”

“But iffen I hadn’t been borned, she would still be here. Is that why you gived me away? You hated me for killing her?” I cried again. I was shivering hard.

“No, Lydia. It ain’t like that.” He looked at me for a minute. “Come on. Let’s go back to the car, and I’ll put the heater on. We’ll finish our talk there.”

So we walked back to the car. It took a few minutes for the heater to warm up. We didn’t say nothing for a while.

“You was borned three months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,” Uncle William started up again. “You know about World War Two, right?”

I nodded without looking at him.

“I wanted to do my part to make the world safe for
you and Helen. I enlisted in the Army Air Corps a month after Pearl Harbor. I would have been drafted anyhow, so I wanted to choose the branch where I would serve. I knowed that Helen could take care of you on the money I made in the service. I thought I could take the two of you with me wherever I had training in the States afore going overseas. Helen thought it would be a adventure to live in another state. You was borned in March. I was scheduled to leave in May.”

“You couldn’t get out of it to take care of me?”

“No, Lydia. I couldn’t. War don’t work like that. A lot of soldiers died in that war. I didn’t know iffen I would come back. I thought about leaving you with my folks, but they was getting up in years. I tried to figure out what was best for you. I knowed that Sarah would be the best mother a young’un could ever have. Her and me both got married just a few months apart. John was 4-F and couldn’t be drafted. Iffen I gived you to them, you would have a mother and father to love you and care for you. I signed the adoption papers for them to take you.”

“Did you try to get me back when you comed home?”

“I had signed them papers, Lydia. You seemed real happy with Sarah. It felt best to leave you with her. It took me a while to figure out what to do with myself when I got back.”

“You become a coal miner,” I said, still trying to sort it all out.

He nodded. “I thought about getting my GED and going to college on the GI Bill—maybe be a chemist.
They’s good jobs for chemists in Charleston. But I took a job in the coal mine so I could be close to Mom after Dad died, in case she needed me. I sent her part of my check each month. And then Sarah and John moved in with her.”

“I loved being with Mama, but Daddy was real scary sometimes,” I said. I looked out the car window, but I didn’t see nothing but my thoughts.

“What?” I could feel Uncle William stare at me hard.

I looked at him, surprised. “You know. When he got liquored up.”

His hands was on the steering wheel. He balled them into fists. “Did he ever hit you, Lydia?”

“No, I hid when he got like that. But he hit Mama and Gran sometimes.”

Uncle William stared out the windshield like he was a-trying his best to see Daddy. His hands tightened up until they looked like rocks. “Iffen I had knowed that, I would of killed that son of a …” He looked at me. “I would of put a stop to it. He died in that accident about a year after I got out of the service. It would have been sooner iffen I had knowed.”

I figured out then why Mama and Gran didn’t tell him about Daddy. Uncle William would have killed him and ended up in jail or maybe even worse. I wondered again about the plan they had to get away from Daddy. I figured I best change the subject.

“I recollect when you and Aunt Ethel Mae got married,” I said. “I was your flower girl.”

His hands opened up again. “Yeah. You done real good tossing them rose petals up the church aisle. Everbody thought you was real cute.”

I smiled, but just a little. “Do you love Aunt Ethel Mae as much as you loved Helen?”

He frowned and gived it some thought. “You can love people for different things and in different ways, Lydia. Ethel Mae was a lot of fun when I met her, and I sure did need some fun in my life. I could talk to Helen. But when I met Ethel Mae, I didn’t want to do much talking. I knowed Ethel Mae would do all the talking that needed to be done.”

I had a hard time picturing Aunt Ethel Mae being much fun. But then I thought about the night we had ice cream when it was cold outside. I sure don’t think that was Uncle William’s idea. “Does Aunt Ethel Mae know about Helen?”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know about you being Helen’s daughter. I thought a lot about this. Iffen Sarah comes home, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you belong with her.” He looked at me like he was trying to see inside my head. “I will always be there for you, any way I can, Lydia. Iffen your mama don’t come home, you will always have a home with me. Do you understand what I’m a-telling you?”

I nodded. I was still all confused with everthing, but I understood them words he said.

Some of the wrinkles eased out of his face. “I hate to put this on you, Lydia, but you must keep this a secret
from your aunt Ethel Mae. Will you promise not to tell her or anyone else?”

I felt queasy thinking about having to keep all this bottled up inside. “I promise,” I said. I was glad Ears wasn’t a person. At least I could confide to him.

“Good. I put the birth certificate and picture of Helen in a safe deposit box at the bank afore picking you up. That’s what I should ought of done in the first place.”

“Why did Gran and Mama lie to me?” I asked. “I remember Gran telling me that she tickled Mama’s nose with a feather and I whizzed out of her like a pellet from a shotgun. Mama said I was her only shining star in a dark, dark sky when I comed to be.”

He thought for a minute. Then he pushed some more words out, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes. “From what you told me about John, Sarah told you the truth. You probably asked Gran about being borned when BJ comed and Sarah was in the hospital. Your gran tried to spare you from something you was too little to understand. Most of the births she midwifed probably was that easy. Life ain’t simple, Lydia. Most people want to do what’s best for the people they care about. Sometimes it’s just real hard to figure out what that be.”