Unto These Hills (19 page)

It was myself I’d never forgive.

~~~~~

On a lovely April day, Muffin squalled her way into the world. I named her Hope Elaine but Walter quickly nicknamed her Muffin. It fit. And stuck. I loved my little Muffin, who was my spitting image, as Walter happily pointed out. She became my whole world, which seemed okay with Walter because he was, from the moment I birthed her, just as smitten as I.

On one level, I was grateful for my lot in life. A beautiful daughter and a husband who was the most wonderful, attentive father imaginable. On another level, something inside me closed off, the part that feels deeply, and mourns. The part that rejoices and celebrates.

I knew something drastic had taken place. But it would be years before I knew what it was that had hulled up so deeply inside me, what became, overnight, untouchable.

Passion.

Part Two

“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness.”
Proverbs 31:26

The Eighties to the present

Chapter Ten

“All things change.”

Daniel’s words rang in my head like a Tibetan Monk chant in years to come. With him gone, change rode the swords slashing at me from all sides. Nobody saw the altered me. I never let on. I simply kept shuffling one foot in front of the other, chin high, like an android, smiling, smiling, smiling my way through life’s motions.

Trying not to think of Daniel. Trying not to see what was all around me, like a plague of mold, spreading so slowly one couldn’t detect it at first, not until the green goop and stench of it smacked you in the face.

The smell of mold, to me, embodies departed life. It symbolizes death.

Nowhere in those next decades did change occur more dramatically than in the textile industry and its mill hills. Textile employment in Spartanburg County held steady at 19,500 jobs in the 1970’s. But more than 5,000 jobs disappeared in the 1980’s, and another 6,000 in the 1990’s. Even as new, state-of-the-art mills were being built, and struggled to piece together a work force, some of the oldest mills began to go under.

Village life, solidarity as I knew it, slowly and unrelentingly disintegrated before my stunned eyes. It was especially heartbreaking for me. My sense of roots, as well as my fortitude-glue, was an outgrowth of the acceptance and nurturing of my mill hill family. At least it seemed so during those early days.

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, some villagers sought outside jobs and moved away, while others hung in there until the last minute, buying their houses at nominal fees, getting their mill walking papers, then stoically changing vocations.

My brother Timmy chose carpentry, a skill picked up in high school Shop. Actually, both he and Walter, being pretty good with the hammer and skill saw, initially went into business together until…well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The majority of our mill hill folks remained intact, albeit imbedded in livelihoods ranging from auto mechanic to college-educated professionals. In the nineties, Walter Montgomery, Sr. died, leaving us true orphans. No one would paternally care for us villagers again as he had. Eventually we would be on our own, fighting for sewage service and streetlights, services once taken for granted.

But in the eighties, we who chose to remain mill hill villagers continued on as though things were as they had been. Especially me.

I clung to mill hill roots like an alert orangutan whose spike-nails dug in on the lookout tree from which it dangled. I gazed about me, vigilant, wary.

More and more, I pushed my button labeled ‘denial.’

~~~~~

Tucapau Methodist Church buzzed with the excitement of change. This time, change meant
good.
I tethered myself to the pew. Outside, I was a calm lagoon. Inside, the child-
me
jiggled and twirled like whirly-birds loosed in a gale, an exceedingly rare occurrence in recent years.

My pizzazz of youth had not, yet, totally vanished. It just took more to lure it from that dark inner psyche in which it hibernated. Like this event.

I’d shamelessly haggled my family into coming today. Nana, now ancient and frail, Aunt Tina, joints twisted with arthritis, Francine, Timmy and Noreen, along with their teenage tornado, Gale, already occupied an entire pew. I perched on seat’s edge behind them, saving seating space and watching for my other sister and my oldest daughter, Muffin.

My younger daughter Libby’s advent had trailed Muffin’s by two years. I missed my Libby but felt real peace about her life. She was everything Muffin was not.

I quickly pushed away the disturbing comparison.

I swiveled again, checking the door for Sheila, who’d promised to be there for the great return. At least it was great to me. Mostly, I could count on my siblings to support me at such momentous times. Not always
together,
Lord
no
! Caging Sheila and Francine in the same room, at precisely the same time, required steely, inspired cunning.

Over the years the rivalry between those two had escalated to untapped pinnacles, causing me untold grief until I’d one day decided to stop sweating unchangeable stuff.

Tack Turner, now suffering complications from advanced diabetes, seldom ventured outside his and Francine’s roomy ranch-style brick home. Francine’s lust for a fine house had not, years back, dimmed her familial zeal.

Yeh, despite her unflagging irreverence and, though her devotion was unorthodox and remarkably muddled at times, she
was
a family gal. In final negotiations she’d balked at being ripped from her roots, so Tack’s dad had finagled a couple of acres from a friend on the village outskirts upon which to build.

Seemed Francine always got her wish, according to a dismayed, jealous Sheila, whose luck, had it not been lousy, would have been non-existent. Now divorced for the second time, my youngest sister was more beautiful than ever but, according to her, had never found a man who adored her as Tack did Francine.

And I wondered if there was enough adoration in the world to pacify Sheila. Truthfully, I didn’t think so.

A flash of green tugged my gaze to the vestibule door, where Sheila hovered, extremely uncomfortable in spiritual ambiance. She was breathtaking in a kelly-green outfit, whose hem hit the top of her slender bronze knees while sun-streaked, wheat hair tumbled gloriously over shoulders peeking from beneath a sleeveless sweater top. I motioned for her to join me, knowing that sliding her into the row ahead of me would prove disastrous since Francine occupied the end seat. We hugged and settled down to wait.

Strange thing…no matter how bloody my female siblings’ territorial skirmishes, each remained close and affectionate with me, considering me a composite of Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, and Martha Stewart, with the beauty of a blonde, albeit
fluffy
Charlie’s Angels’ Jaclyn Smith. Mymymy. It did wonders for my self-esteem.

If only Muffin regarded me so.

Will Muffin come?
I gazed down at the two little heads next to me, bowed over coloring books — a device to calm pre-Sunday School fidgets — and grieved again that my daughter didn’t share my faith. Neither had her hero-father, Walter, who, true to his long ago warning, had put little stock in God-stuff. Not then anyway. Not for a long time.

I should have listened to my heart.

All water under the bridge
. I sighed deeply. Instantly, seven-year-old Gracie’s towhead snapped up to gauge my gesture. I smiled into the concerned little face, easing her puzzlement. A pang of longing shook me to my toes.
If only Muffin loved me like they do.
I’d cared for her babies from the cradle up, doing all the things a mother does for little ones, all the while praying that my daughter would one day magically snap into maturity and gush maternal love.

And daughterly affection.

Again, I thought of Libby, our little ‘accident,’ as Walter put it before his wit scattered like petals in the wind. Like Muffin, Libby had a mind of her own. Difference was, her spirit was predominantly compassionate. She was generous and giving. Oh, she went through a short period of adolescent emancipation when she mimed Muffin. But that soon got old and she began to scold Muffin for being mean to Mama.

Never mean to Daddy. Just to Mama. Somehow, I think Muffin’s Mama-disparagement drew Libby closer to me, made her more protective. Now, however, Libby, her husband, Scott, and their daughter, Kara, lived over two hundred miles away in Summerville, outside Charleston.

It could have been a thousand miles as I rarely got to see her. Scott’s successful land-development business kept him busy. Only on holidays would the little family migrate to Tucapau. How I looked forward to those times.

The girls’ resemblance to each other was striking. Same coloring, build, and features. But somehow, Libby’s was a softer demeanor, not as glamorous, yet just as pretty. I was the only one surprised at the similarities. At times I figured, in my altered, somewhat cynical frame of logic, that maybe God had felt He owed me and made the two girls like twins, to throw folks off the truth. In the end, I surmised it was simply a trick of Mother Nature to endow both girls with so much of my DNA. Libby’s pool definitely drew my maternal genes.

I grieved anew that Muffin seemed to possess so little of them.

I sighed again and glanced at my watch. Nearly ten. It wasn’t that Muffin didn’t love the kids. I knew she did because there were moments when her heart and soul poured from those beautiful blue eyes, ones so clear that, in them, you glimpsed infinity. In a crisis she was fantastic. Day to day was another story.

Muffin’s will was and is the strongest I’ve ever encountered. Her brilliance is inestimable, surpassed only by her stunning beauty. Her presence commands esteem. Her ice-queen aloofness inspires wonderment.

My flesh and blood, my daughter. After twenty-five years, I am still in awe of her. Until her twelfth year, along with Libby, she was my shadow, my greatest love,
myself.
She wallowed on my lap and snuggled beneath my covers, touching my face and eyelashes, wishing for the day she would be ‘
growed up’
and ‘
boo-ti-ful’
like Mama.

Then, in one moment, the light in her eyes, the one just for me, went out as succinctly as a cigarette lighter’s closing
snap.
The change affected not only Muffin’s feelings for me, but for others as well. It was as though, finding that turn-off button inside herself, she decided it was better to not feel anything soft. That way she wouldn’t get hurt. I could understand, to a degree. My own mama had let me down. But I wasn’t my mama. I hadn’t intentionally let Muffin down.

Oh, it was so complicated because, in her eyes, I had ruined her life.

Yet, there were moments when the light would glimmer briefly and she would say, “Love ya, Mama,” and my heart would sing like no tomorrow. It never lasted long, the sweetness. Just a word tumbling from my lips could set off that terrible rage gathered inside her like a hornets’ swarm. But for those brief sweet moments, mother’s and daughter’s hearts touched, spawning fresh hope for better tomorrows. Still, against her remoteness, against her distancing, against her detachment from her children, I longed for restoration.

I prayed daily that she would come to love me — us — as she did her father.

Walter gleaned what nobody else in the world did; Muffin’s affection. In her cerulean eyes, Mama could do no right. Daddy could do no wrong.

Even when, within his fogged psyche, she had no history as she did in mine.

Why,
I pondered, did my life daily careen to the bizarre?
Is God punishing me?
I wondered again.
No! I did it all for her.
I closed my eyes and focused on Libby’s phone call, earlier this morning. Libby — Muffin’s antithesis.
“On my way out to church, Mama. Just wanted to tell you I love you.”
I lived for those calls. They validated me. At times, they kept me sane.

I stirred restlessly, glancing again at my watch. Ten o’clock.

Footsteps in the vestibule sent butterflies a’flapping and flailing in me. The sense of pleasure was so rare as to feel almost spooky. Like it knocked my chemistry off-balance. But today, I brushed the disturbing impressions aside.

Emaline’s come home!
After all these years apart, my buddy and I would be together again. Cousin Wayne had long ago departed this pastorate, reassigned to a foothills church.

When a heart attack felled the last pastor at Tucapau Methodist, forcing an early retirement, the Upper South Carolina Methodist Conference assigned Emaline’s husband, John Davidson — now a twenty-year veteran of the cloth — to Tucapau Methodist Church. Chances were that they could stay with us indefinitely, seeing as how the conference pastor-supply was so sparse.

Today I’d come early to my roost, loath to miss a moment of the new parish couple’s arrival. They were to finish moving into the village parsonage within the week. Of their two grown children, one son, David, now attended Clemson University. The other, Johnny, owned a real estate company in Myrtle Beach.

The approaching footsteps belonged to Doretha and Alvin.

Dear Lord
! I felt as honored as royalty. Doretha had not, in all the years I’d known her, darkened a church door. Even when marrying Alvin she’d opted to wed in her living room, joined by Rev. Pate, the Baptist pastor.

I still had to blink twice, seeing them together after twenty years of marriage. Alvin, short and stocky like his dad, reminded me of a blonde, aging Mickey Rooney. Miracle-worker Doretha had taken Aunt Tina’s spoiled brat and pivoted him 180 degrees. Mystically, her understated, muscled-will overrode Alvin’s s passive self-absorption.

He remained devoted to Doretha, even when, in her soft-spoken way, she laid down the law about sharing the cooking and cleaning. She still hated domesticity. Alvin patiently picked up the slack. And he was an attentive, giving father to their adolescent daughter, Tammy. Would wonders never cease? When I’d invited them to this special service, I had no idea they would show.

On their heels came Emaline and John.

Their entrance elicited an exuberant burst of applause. I rushed to hug Emaline, who seized me mightily. “Home, at last,” she whispered in my ear, after which we erupted into brief tears of joy.

Muffin swooped in behind them, moving in that graceful, long-legged stride of hers, causing my mother’s heart to leap even higher. She surprised me at times like this, smiling that big old white, white smile of hers and hugging me like she’d never let go, exuding some exotic, expensive fragrance. Sheila and the kids scooted over, making room for her to join us. “Wish Daddy could be here,” she murmured as she slipped past me.

“Me, too. That summer cold has sapped his energy so I told him to sleep in. He’ll be at Nana’s to have lunch with us.”

The service was sweet and melancholy and poignant as John spoke of meeting Emaline twenty-seven years ago on these very streets. During the rites, Emaline surprised everyone by singing
Amazing Grace
in a beautiful lyrical soprano timbre that sounded nothing like her lazy, slightly nasal speaking voice. She’d studied voice for years and I was so proud of her I could have burst into a million strands of confetti.