Diary of a Wildflower (3 page)

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
find 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.

While
we are eating breakfast, we see Uncle Martin through the window.  He has
come to walk Aunt Sue back down the mountain.  Daddy goes out on the porch
to meet him, and we hear him telling Uncle Martin that he’s gotta see the new
calf that was born last night.  Says it’s the prettiest calf ever
was.  Says he’s sure to get top dollar for it at the cow sale next
year.  So the two of them go into the barn to see the calf.

That
makes Aunt Sue so mad, she starts muttering and mumbling about calves and
babies.  Samuel pats her shoulder.  Aunt Sue says that Willy Starr
might be her brother, but she’s got no more use for him than for a
two-hundred-pound slug.  I freeze to my seat.  Who would believe that
Aunt Sue has the nerve to say such a thing?

Then
Nell says a two-hundred pound slug would be of some use.  You could charge
people a nickel to look at it.  Next thing you know we’re all giggling,
even Aunt Sue.  That’s our Nell.  When you need a little laugh, she
can give it to you.

June, 1920

Since
our cousin Grace got married, Trula has boys on her brain and nothing
else.  She and Grace's sister, Pearl, are both sixteen.  Pearl comes
over to see Trula, and they hole up in the

kitchen together, whispering about Grace and Ken blissfully
wallowing in the holy state of macaroni, and they giggle, giggle, giggle.

They
also talk about boys they know, who fancies who, and who’s getting
married.  I know Trula wants a husband of her own, but when will she ever
find a beau?  All she does is work and take care of Mommie's babies.

Pearl
is a sweet girl.  She tells me things that happen down in the bottom where
people live in houses close together and drive around in cars.  She's been
to Skylark a few times, and once she went all the way to Bluefield where she
saw some colored people.  She brung back a piece of oil cloth for Mommie
to put on the eating table.  It was mostly white with red berries for
decoration.  Mommie thanked her nicely and said she’d pay her back. 
But Pearl told Mommie no, it was a present.  I could tell Mommie was
tickled.  She loves pretty things, and does not get to see many. 
There was a bit of a smile on her faces as she spread the oil cloth over the
table.

********************

We
are all outside after a big noontime dinner.  Dad and Luther are having a
belching contest.  Trula is bouncing Daniel on her knee while she and
Roxie look through a magazine Samuel brung to us.  President Woodrow
Wilson is on the cover.  Dad calls him the worst president ever was. 
He’s a Democrat.

While
Nell and I patiently wait our turn to look at the magazine, we watch Charles
tormenting a big fat June bug.  He has tied a string to its poor little
leg.  He likes to watch it trying to fly away.

Mommie
is sitting on the side of the porch, fanning her face with a funeral fan. 
She’s not feeling good.  Since Daniel came, she’s been falling off so bad,
she’s down to nearly nothing.  Samuel is beside of Mommie, and he says to
Dad that Mommie needs to see a doctor, but Dad says he does not have money for
doctors.

We
see somebody coming up Willy’s Road with a horse and wagon.  We know it’s
a peddler because we can hear his goodies clanking around in the wagon a long
time before he gets to the house.  When he reaches us, we’re all standing
around in the yard, waiting for him.  Everybody says hello, and the
peddler climbs down off his seat and commences hauling things out for us to
look at.  In a few minutes we are clustered about him.

He’s
got skillets and pots and knives and plates and aprons and clothes pins and
nails and screw drivers and slop jars and coal buckets and I don’t know what
all.  He's got toys too, and they are real toys, not June bugs on a
string.  Dad has to slap Jewel’s hands away from a baby doll, and
Charles's hands away from a set of make-believe six-shooters in aholster. 
The rest of us hold our hands behind our backs.

The
horse hauling the wagon is an old white good-for-nothing swayback, with red
bows and tinkly bells on its head.  But I can’t look at it for the pity I
feel.  There is too much sadness in its old moldy eyes.  It stands
there jerking around, making the bells tinkle as it swishes the flies away with
its tail.

Mommie
is looking at the sewing notions, and after a while she says she’d like to have
her a new embroidery pattern.  We look at the patterns.  They are
fifteen cents apiece.  There are sunsets and evening stars and all kinds
of flowers.  But Mommie wants one of the ocean.

“That
one,” she says, “I want that one.”

We
all look at the ocean waves on a far-off shore.  Then Dad tells her we
don’t have the money for such as that.

About
that time I see a hand mirror and brush, a matching set with tiny bluebells
painted on the pink handles.  I walk over to get a better look, but I
don’t touch.  The peddler comes up beside me where I am gazing at the
brush and mirror.

He
tells me, “Go ahead little girl, you can touch it.  Ain't it pretty?”

I
am so bashful I hang my head down and twist my hair round my fingers.  The
man is quiet, and when I glance up at him I see a strange look about him. 
Then I figure it out – his eyes are dark brown.  We don’t see many of
them.

Suddenly
he says to nobody in particular, “This child has the prettiest color for hair
there is in the world.  It’s the same color as my mama’s hair usta be
until she died.  I was real young then.  Some people call this color
chestnut.  You can see splashes of gold where the sunlight hits it.”

Nobody
says a word about that.  They are too busy day-dreaming over the peddler’s
things.

I
fancy the fairytale brush and mirror are mine to keep for my very own.  I
imagine me brushing my hair with one hand and holding the mirror with the
other.  The mirror in the big room over the dresser has dark spots where
the shiny stuff is skinned off, but this mirror is smooth and clear as spring
water.  It makes every reflection prettier.

Dad
bumps into me and says, “Move, Nell, you’re in my way.”  Sometimes he
calls me Jewel or Trula.  Then he asks the peddler, “How much is that
pistol yonder?”

The
guns are hung up high on the inside wall of the wagon.  The peddler climbs
in and fetches the gun for Dad to see up close.  He tells Dad he just a
while ago sold one of these pistols to a good-looking fella by the name of Ben
Starr.  Dad tells him that Ben Starr is his baby brother, and he might be
a good-looking fella – everybody says so – but when it comes to guns the man is
possessed with the devil.

I
see that Mommie has lost interest and gone back to the porch.  Samuel goes
into the house.  Dad says he’d buy him that gun if it didn’t cost so much,
but it’s marked up way too high.  So he hands it back and says to the
peddler that he reckons he has wasted his time coming all the way up on the top
of Starr Mountain, since we got no money to waste.

Samuel
comes out with a pan of water.  He gives the pan to Luther and tells him
to hold it there for the horse.  Then he passes something to the
peddler.  I see a nickel and a dime changing hands, and Samuel says he
wants that embroidery pattern for Mommie, the one with the ocean waves on the
shore.  Samuel takes the pattern to Mommie.  She can’t keep from
smiling, so she puts her hand over her mouth to hide her bad teeth.

I
look at the brush and mirror some more.  I want it so bad, but I know I
won’t ever have anything so useless and girly.  If Dad had the money he’d
buy something important like a pistol, not a brush and mirror with bluebells on
the pink handles.  I almost want to cry for the longing that is in me, and
I think of the old old thing in the woods by Willy’s Road, how it goes on
wanting and wanting day and night, year after year, but never gets satisfied of
its wanting.

The
peddler is putting his stuff away to drive back down the mountain and try to
sell to somebody else.  I take one last look at the hair set as his hands
fall on them.  Then the man takes the brush and mirror and pushes them at
me.

“Take’em,”
he says in a grumpy voice.  “I can’t sell’em, and they’re no good to
me.  Somebody orta get some enjoyment out of them.”

I
stand there with the brush and mirror in my hands, not able to speak or move or
anything, as the peddler climbs onto his seat and tells the horse to gitty-up,
you old nag.  In another moment they are gone and Nell and Jewel are
trying to take the brush and mirror out of my hands.  But I hold on.

Way
deep in the night when it’s too late to be yesterday and too early to be
tomorrow, I wake up and touch the brush and mirror where I have stashed them
under my pillow.  I think of the peddler with his kind brown eyes.  I
think of him traveling around in the hills with just that sorry horse for
company.  He’s probably sleeping beside of some road right now all
alone.  It gives me strange warm feelings, and I wish I was there with him
in the dark, real close.

July,
1920

The
traveling nurse comes up from Granger the county seat on a wagon loaded down
with nursing stuff.  She is big-boned and brown from riding in the
sun.  Her hair is pulled back in a knot.  With a heart listening
thing around her neck, she sets up in the kitchen, and orders us to come to her
one at a time so she can examinate us.  While she's checking Dad first,
Mommie makes us young'uns run quick to the washing spring and clean our ears
and necks and faces.  We take some rags and soap, go at a good trot and
wash the parts she told us in the cold water that gurgles up near the willow
tree. 

Back
at the house Mommie is finishing up, and Samuel tells Trula to go in there
next.  The nurse comes out and says to Dad he better get Mommie into
Skylark to the clinic for some blood tests.  Says she might be anemic, and
that’s not a thing you mess around with.  Dad says not a word.

When
it comes my turn to go in and see the nurse I don’t want to go.  I’m
scared.  But Mommie smacks me and tells me to get on in there.  So I
go.  The nurse sets me on a stool and listens to my heart and lungs. 
Then she looks in my eyes and ears and taps me on the knees to make them
jerk.  She looks at my fingernails that are gnawed down to the quick, and
clacks her tongue.

She
asks me do I hocky regular?  I do pretty regular.  Then she gives me
this little cup and tells me to pee in it.  I like to fall off the
stool.  Did everybody have to do this?  I shake my head no.

“Get
over there in that corner and piss is this cup, you silly girl!  I’m not
gonna look if that’s what worries you.”

I
take the cup and go into the corner.  When I glance at her, sure enough
she's not watching me.  She's writing with a yellow pencil in a notebook
she’s got there, and not paying me any attention.

When
I finally do the deed and deliver the cup to the nurse, she pops a lid on it,
then takes a piece of white tape and writes Lorie Starr 8, and Willy/Gertrude
below that.  She slaps the tape onto the side of the cup.  I gotta
admit that’s clever of her to do it right then before she goes on to somebody
else and gets the cups mixed up.

As
the county nurse leaves in her wagon with all of our pee stashed away, Dad
says, “That big gal told me she got a hundred and fifty-five samples of pee
today.”

We
all sit quiet for a minute and think about that.

Then
Nell says, “Well, I hope that big gal does not wreck her wagon on the way back
to Granger.”

And
we laugh so hard.  All of us laughing together on this day.  Like a
happy family.

August, 1920

I
am alone in the girls sleeping loft on a pretty summer morning, not too
warm.  Yesterday it rained buckets and I washed my long hair in it. 
Now it’s as fluffy as goose down.  As I brush it with my bluebell brush, I
think of the peddler with a warm mushy feeling.  I look out across the
mountaintop under a clear blue sky, and wonder where out there in the world
he’s at.

Samuel
is taking Mommie to the doctor.  And he’s also taking Trula, Luther,
Roxie, Nell and me too!  Dad was contrary to the whole idea, but Samuel
had the nerve to tell him that if Mommie should get real sick, Dad would have
it on his conscience for not taking better care of her.

That
made Dad mad, but after a while he said, “All right.  Go on then. 
But I don’t have money for doctors.”

Samuel
said he had a little money put away.  So he has hired Mack Call to drive
us in a 1913 Ford Model T.  Mack is the son of Mr. Call who owns the Deep
Bottom store.  It’s Mr. Call’s automobile, but he can’t drive it, so Mack
gets to do it.  He hauls a lot of people to different places.  I
never rode in an automobile before, but today we are going all the way to
Skylark, Virginia.  That’s nearabout sixteen miles from Deep Bottom.

You
can’t drive an automobile up Gospel Road but just a little ways before you run
into ruts and rocks, and deep mud when it rains.  You can barely drive a
horse and wagon on it.  And Willy’s Road is worse.  So we will have
to walk down off the mountain and meet Mack at the mouth of Gospel Road. 
It’s only two miles down, but as Nell likes to say, it’s much further coming
back up.

Jewel
is too young to know what all the fuss is about, but Charles understands, and I
feel sorry for him.  He wants to go real bad.  He has cried and cried
for days.  Samuel explains to him there is not room for all of us in the
car, but he will bring him something special.  But Charles wants to go to
Skylark in an automobile.  That’s all the something special he
wants.  Aunt Laura has said she will tend to Daniel, so we drop him off on
our way down the mountain.

Mack
Call is waiting for us in his automobile as promised.  Trula slips into
the front seat with him, and Mommie gets in beside her.  I scrunch up in
the back with Nell and Roxie and Luther and Samuel.  I have to sit on
Luther’s lap behind Mommie, and Nell sits on Samuel’s lap on the other
side.  Roxie is squeezed nearly flat in the middle.  Mack has the top
folded back so we can see out around us.  As we drive through Deep Bottom,
I am hoping that somebody from school will walk by, so they can see Lorelei
Starr riding in an automobile.  I would not be stuck up about it.  I
would wave at them.  But I don’t see anybody, and we head out a road I’ve
never been on before.  It twists and turns going towards Skylark.

As
we screech around the curves, I feel the biscuits and gravy I had for breakfast
go swooshing around in my tum.  I don't think Mack Call has to go this
fast.  I believe he might be trying to show off for Trula.  And it
looks like it’s working for him.  Even from the back seat I can see she’s
got the dreamy eyes.  I glance over the side of the car.  We are
right on the edge of the road.  You can see a long ways into the
holler.  I hope Mack is as good a driver as he thinks he is, else we could
find ourselves in the branches of one of the trees down there.

It’s
hot and sticky with all of us so close, even with the top of the car rolled
back, and pretty soon I have to say, “I’d like to puke please.”

Roxie
says, “Me too.”

Nell
says, “Me too.”

Luther
laughs and calls us sissies.

Samuel
says to Mack, “I think we’d better pull over and let these girls get out for a
minute.  They're car sick.”

So
Mack pulls off where a cliff is hanging over the road, and we all pile
out.  Me and Nell puke on the weeds over the side of the hill, but Roxie
says she can't.  Luther tells her to stick her finger down her throat so
we can all upchuck at the same time and get it over with.  So she does,
but not much comes out, just some yellow slime.  When I see it, I go back
to the weeds and puke some more.

All
this time Mack Call is standing close to Trula, and both of them are laughing
at us, like puking is the most entertaining show in the world.  Mommie is
in the shade, looking up at the sky.  Her face is not dark today. 
Her dress is one she got out of the charity bag.  It usta be nice before
it was washed.  Then the color came out and it drew up.  It still
looks better than her everyday dresses.  She smiles at Samuel when he
comes up beside her and he smiles back.  They say a few words together.

After
puking I feel better, and so does Roxie and Nell.  When we get to Skylark
we can’t get enough of looking at things and people.  I never imagined so
many stores in one place together.  Mack takes us to the clinic and we
pile out of the Model T. again.  Samuel goes in with Mommie while the rest
of us wait beside the automobile.

Now
I am mortified at the way Mack and Trula are hanging all over each other. 
He places his hands around her waist and she puts her hands on his chest and
looks up into his face.  This is a worry because I happen to know Mack
Call is married with two little bitty kids, and another on the way. 
Everybody knows it, including Trula.  What’s the matter with her anyhow?

When
Samuel comes out, Trula jumps away from Mack, and smoothes her dress with
nervous hands.  Her face is like a tomato, but Samuel does not seem to
notice.  He tells us Mommie will have to wait to see the doctor, and there
is a long line ahead of her.

He
gives some money to Trula and says, “Y’all go on to the pictures.”

Just
to make sure I heard him right I ask, “Do you mean the picture show?”

And
he grins at me and says, “That’s what I mean.  Go on and see your first
picture show, Lorelei, honey.”

Mack
tells us
The Miracle Man
starring Lon Chaney is playing, and he thinks
he will go with us.  I am so happy I can overlook how him and Trula were
acting.

To
me
The Miracle Man
is a miracle itself.  The beautiful people on
the flickering screen.  The words that come up in front of you like a page
in a book telling you what the people are saying.  The clothes they
wear.  The houses they live in.  All miracles.

Trula
and Mack, Luther, Roxie, Nell, and me, Lorelei, not one of us speaks a word for
an hour and a half.  When it’s almost over I notice that Trula and Mack
are holding hands, but I tell myself I didn’t see a thing.

Outside
the dark movie house the sunlight nearly blinds us.  We stand there
shading our eyes till they’re tuned in.  A man walks by, puts out his
hand, and barely touches my hair.

“Curly
Locks, Curly Locks,” says he.

I
jerk myself away from him, and my sisters giggle.  They say the man was
just telling me that my hair is pretty.  He didn’t mean anything.

Mommie
and Samuel are waiting for us at the clinic.  The doctor has sent home a
poke full of medicines for Mommie.  He can’t say for a sure fact what’s
wrong with her, but he thinks she’s got female trouble.  He says if she
takes all these medicines she’ll be fine.  I don’t know what female
trouble is, but I’ve got a vague idea.

Samuel
has gone to one of the stores and bought a monkey on a string for Charles, and
a rubber baby doll for Jewel.  He has also bought a hunk of baloney and a
chunk of bread, which we practically inhale.  Mack treats everybody to a
bottle of pop from his own pocket, and I feel happy as we drive back through
the hills on this lovely day.  We tell Mommie and Samuel about the movie,
and Samuel says next time he and Mommie will go along with us to the
show.  Next time?  Oh, I hope with all my heart there will be a next
time.

In
the dead of night I am wide awake again remembering it all.  The
automobile.  The town.  The people – maybe a hundred of them. 
The picture show.  Trula and Mack holding on to each other.  That man
touching my hair.  He called me Curly Locks.  I know that nursery
rhyme.

Curly
Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be mine?

Thou
shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine.

But sit
on a cushion and sew a fine seam

And
live upon strawberries, sugar and cream
.

And I
know it’s the biggest lie ever was in the world.  Trula knows it too.