Choices Read online

  NEW BOOKS FOR NEW READERS

  Judy Cheatham

  General Editor

  Choices

  Stories for Adult New Readers

  George Ella Lyon

  THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

  This book is dedicated

  to you

  who made the choice

  to learn to read

  The New Books for New Readers project was made possible through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kentucky Humanities Council, and The Kentucky Post. The opinions and views expressed in this book are not necessarily those of the Kentucky Humanities Council.

  Copyright © 1989 by the Kentucky Humanities Council

  Published by The University Press of Kentucky

  Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

  serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

  All rights reserved.

  Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lyon, George Ella, 1949–

  Choices : stories for adult new readers / George Ella Lyon.

  p. cm.–(New books for new readers)

  ISBN-10: 0-8131-0900-0

  1. Readers for new literates.

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS356.Y4454C47 1989

  813’.5—dc20

  89-38082

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-0900-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Member of the Association of American University Presses

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Dear Reader

  Getting Away from It All

  Working

  Singing

  Family Planning

  Falling

  Marrying

  Making Something of Yourself

  Cutting the Pie

  Pleasing

  Trucking

  Crying

  Baptizing

  Staying

  About the Author

  Foreword

  The New Books for New Readers project was made possible through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kentucky Humanities Council, and The Kentucky Post. The co-sponsorship and continuing assistance of the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives and the Kentucky Literacy Commission have been essential to our undertaking. We are also grateful for the advice and support provided to us by the University Press of Kentucky. All these agencies share our commitment to the important role that reading books should play in the lives of the people of our state, and their belief in this project has made it possible.

  The Kentucky Humanities Council recognizes in the campaign for adult literacy a cause closely linked to our own mission, to make the rich heritage of the humanities accessible to all Kentuckians. Because the printed word is a vital source of this heritage, we believe that books focused on our state’s history and culture and written for adults who are newly learning to read can help us to serve a group of Kentucky’s citizens not always reached or served by our programs. We offer these books in the hope that they will be of value to adult new readers in their quest, through words, for an understanding of what it means to be human.

  Ramona Lumpkin, Executive Director

  Kentucky Humanities Council

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to the following people: Ramona Lumpkin, director of the Kentucky Humanities Council, whose vision and hard work designed this project and got it funded; Judy Cheatham, project director, who coordinated and encouraged the work at all stages; Pauline Klein, office manager at the Kentucky Humanities Council, who handled the funds, set up meetings, and answered questions; Steve Lyon, my husband, and Jo Carson, a writer and friend, who read the manuscript and made suggestions; and the people I worked with in the Harlan County Literacy Program: Sister Mary Cullen, Mary Score, Alberta Abbot, Thelma Ball, Betty Colvin, Betty Eldridge, Judy Gingerich, Geneva Grubbs, Mac Hensley, Donald Honeycutt, Johnny Jones, Christine Kennedy, Lorine Lane, Phyllis Middleton, Peggy Owens, Diane Sargent, Diana Smith, Joanne Stewart, and Carol Warren. Special thanks to Atlena Ravizee and Rena Faye Fouts. Thanks to all for helping me with these stories and for sharing yours.

  Dear Reader,

  Here are thirteen stories, all about choices people made or didn’t get to make.

  All the stories are set in or near the same mountain community, and some of the characters are connected. This may be interesting only to me, but I thought I’d tell you about it.

  Lena, the woman in “Crying,” also tells “Getting Away from It All.”

  Joe, in “Working,” and Herschel, in “Baptizing,” are brothers.

  Daryll, in “Making Something of Yourself,” is Agnes’s son. Agnes was the little girl in “Family Planning.”

  I don’t agree with all the choices these people make. You probably won’t either. My job is to let them tell their stories. If they make you mad or make you remember, I hope you’ll write a story of your own. As the momma in “Singing” says, “Stories is where we come from.”

  For words,

  George Ella Lyon

  Getting Away from It All (Lena)

  I’m going to tell you what happened at the supper table tonight. I had made meat loaf, and it turned out real good, firm but not packed tight. It had a red cast where I’d put in the catsup. I don’t like a meat loaf gray or brown. It wasn’t too greasy either. Jimmy is always after me to put in sausage. I’m not about to. His mother did, and it shows. I put corn flakes or bread crumbs or grits left over from breakfast. Jimmy and the baby gobble theirs down, but Lyndon just pushes his around in the bowl. I’ve learned not to give him very much, so there’s always some left in the pot.

  Anyway, I had made this meat loaf and real mashed potatoes. None of the box kind. As my mamaw used to say, “I killed and skinned them myself.” With turnip greens and Jell-O salad, and corn bread to push it all around with, I thought I’d set a pretty good table. Not fancy but civilized.

  You ever try to eat a civilized meal with three men? The baby’s still in his high chair, but he’s as male as the rest of them.

  First thing was Lyndon didn’t want to take off his cap. It’s red and faded and says Stroh’s beer on the front. Not that it makes any difference what it says. A cap is a cap. This one just happens to be ugly.

  “We don’t wear caps at the table, son,” I told him. I could see cold water running down his dirty arm. I’d made him wash his hands. He leaned back in his chair and blew a big gray-pink bubble. It popped and made a skin over his nose. He peeled it off, balled it up, and stuck it under his plate. I asked the Lord for patience and tried to look just at his cap.

  “Aw, Mom,” Lyndon whined. “I got to wear the cap. My hair looks awful.”

  “It does not.”

  “It does too. I’m all out of mousse.”

  Mousse! I can’t believe it. Twelve years old and he’s got to have mousse.

  “I’ll get some at the store tomorrow,” I told him. “Meanwhile, put your chair on the floor and take off that cap.”

  He glared at me. I looked to Jimmy for support. Jimmy—I swear t
his is the truth—Jimmy had his elbow up, hand over his shoulder, and was scratching his back with a fork.

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “Lord have mercy, Jimmy, what are you doing?”

  “It’s that middle part,” he said, his face all squinted. “I can’t reach it.”

  Lyndon, his cap on the table at last, its bill in the bowl of greens, busted out laughing.

  The baby laughed, too, and spit out his mouthful. Under the table the dog howled. Male, of course.

  When he put down his fork, Jimmy like to broke my nose reaching for the corn bread. My glasses landed over by the telephone.

  “I’m glad you all like your supper,” I said. “I’m going for a walk.”

  So here I am at the Burger King. Turns out I only had enough cash for a cup of coffee. I’d forgot Lyndon took my five-dollar bill this morning. “Science fee,” he said. Still, it’s nice to sit here and watch the night come. Nobody belches. Nobody spits up. Nobody whose clothes I have to wash anyway. Women wash the world, you ever think about that? Get down on their knees and scrub its floors, its toes. All the time saying, “Take your cap off in the house, won’t you honey? Remember which towel is yours. Don’t throw food under your bed. If someone speaks, speak back. Don’t just say ‘Huh?’ ”

  “Huh?” they say. “Huh? You talking to me?”

  Working (Joe)

  The other day there came this fellow, sent by the folks up at Lexington, I guess, to hang around the mine and ask questions. He was there when I got done with my shift. Puffy boy in fancy jeans. “Why did I choose mine work?” he asked. “How did I settle on mining as a career?”

  If I hadn’t been so dadblasted tired, I would have laughed. But if I’d had the strength to laugh, I’d have been mad, too.

  “Where are you from, son?” I asked him.

  “Down around Dayhoit.”

  “You mean you grew up in this county?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes sir,” he said.

  “You grew up hearing and reading about miners?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, I reckon your brain ain’t connected then.” He looked kind of pitiful when I said this.

  “Please?” he asked.

  He had pretty manners even if he didn’t have any sense. I looked at him hard.

  “You’re too old to be so clean,” I said.

  “Please?”

  You ever seen a spring pup come out from under the house for the first time? It’s looking for the world and looking for its mammy and not sure they ain’t the same thing. This boy looked like that. I took pity on him, the lop-eared, clumsy thing.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Willard Cox,” he said.

  “And your daddy?”

  “Burl Cox. He was a preacher.”

  “Dead?” I asked.

  “No,” the boy told me. “He heard the Call in Michigan and took off.”

  “Too bad. Let me tell you something.” I motioned him to sit on a rock wall by the parking lot. “If you had a daddy, you might not have such fool ideas about work.”

  “Please?” he said again.

  “Careers, Willard, is what people have when they have money. They start out doing some little old thing and work their way up the ladder. The rest of us work at the same thing all of our lives. What we got is jobs.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t,” I told him. “But I’m going to keep talking, and maybe you will. My daddy mined coal, first at Four Mile, then at Glenmary.”

  “And you wanted to follow after him?” Willard asked.

  “No sir, I didn’t. Going down the hole was the last thing I wanted to do. I knew I could get a job somewhere else, make a lot of money, if I could just get out of these mountains.”

  “So what happened?” Willard wanted to know. He seemed to be getting interested now.

  “Well, for starters, I was no good in school. My folks kept me in, but I fought them the last two years. Graduated a dumbhead and proud of it. Not now. Then I went to Dayton to work construction with my cousin Mike. Our pay seemed like big money to us, but we couldn’t hold on to it. Living cost a lot—plus we had to have a car, work clothes, money for girls and booze, and gas for the trips home.

  “We came home a lot, and at first I didn’t understand it. What were we coming back for? We’d got out, we’d got jobs, everything we wanted.

  “Shows you how much we knew. The place you come from, Willard, is like a mirror. You have to come back now and then just to look at yourself. And if you’ve got people here, and you come back enough, you may decide this is the place for you after all.

  “Mike and I kept working in Dayton, but we weren’t getting anywhere. No promotions. Mike could hardly read, and I was too busy having fun to pay much attention to my job. Then things went bad. First Mike got hurt, then I got laid off. We held on for a while, but the truth was, we’d rather be miserable at home.

  “What money we’d saved up North didn’t last long. What work we could get here was digging coal. Then I met Rita and married and started raising kids. Mike got his fool self killed in a wreck on Black Mountain.

  “That’s my career, son, putting bread on the table. That’s what I chose, to see that my kids had shoes.”

  Singing (Jeanie)

  I’ll be 40 in the spring. It’s one of those can’t-be-true things that’s really going to happen. All I have to do is breathe through three more months. Most of the time I don’t care. Shoot, I say, time is just a hallway to Heaven. Who cares about the numbers on the doors?

  But there are other times when I look at my kids. Clyde is 14, Jessie is 11. I looked at them Sunday getting ready for the Martin Luther King march. I’m 40 years old, I thought. My momma scrubbed floors so I could get an education. I saw Watts burn, I saw King killed. And Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. I saw the Selma march and watched the 1968 convention on TV. I marched to get my hair cut, to eat in a restaurant, to try on clothes in the store. Do Clyde and Jessie have to do it all over again?

  Marching is not the hardest part. Going to jail isn’t even the hardest, not if you go together. Sometimes the hardest parts are the everyday things, the ones you do alone. They don’t get on TV. Let me tell you about one of those.

  I was 14, Clyde’s age, when they closed the black school in Cardin and sent us all to the white school on the hill. Why didn’t they come to our school?

  “Not big enough,” the papers said. “Not a suitable location.” Not good enough for white kids, they meant. White kids don’t do well with rats in the gym.

  Anyway, we had to try to fit where we weren’t wanted, where we didn’t belong to anything. The ball teams took the boys in right away. They wanted to win. But what were girls supposed to do? I could survive without the pep club, the paper staff. The thing I really missed was the chorus. Cardin High didn’t have one. It had a choir for boys and a singing club for girls, the Belle Notes. I told all this to Momma.

  “Try out,” she said.

  “Oh, Momma, I can’t do that. They meet in each other’s houses.”

  “So? Ain’t their houses good enough for you?”

  “Momma—”

  “I know what you’re thinking.” She looked up from the ironing board. “You’re thinking they don’t want you, and you’re probably right. But they ain’t heard you sing. Ain’t nobody in Cardin, nobody I expect in this whole end of Kentucky, that can open just one mouth and sound like you.”

  It’s no credit to me, but she was telling the truth. My voice was a thing I just came with, like some fancy feature on a car. If I had brushed my hair and dollar bills had fallen out, I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “Besides,” Momma went on, “somebody’s got to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be the first. Like your great-granddaddy.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t tell me what you know. You don’t know anything about slavery time. None of us does. Nothing but what the old
folks told us, and we got to keep that alive. Stories is where we come from. You pay attention. And you try out for that choir. You owe it to your people.”

  “I just wish . . .”

  “What, Jeanie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You wish it wasn’t so hard?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and the rest of Creation.” She was wiping sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief. It was one of those years when September was hotter than August. “But in your voice you got something, Jeanie. God give you something you can use.”

  I signed up.

  The tryouts were held in the music director’s living room. There was a grand piano, a brand-new couch, 25 white Belle Notes, 12 white hopefuls, and me. Mr. Henley said they would choose 8 new members. We drew numbers to get the order in which we would sing. I was fifth.

  The first two girls had voices that sounded like mice. The third was better, but she didn’t have the nerve to breathe. The fourth girl, whose braces made spit catch around her mouth, sang “God Bless America” with plenty of feeling and no tune at all. Then it was my turn.

  I started out quiet. I didn’t shake the vases on the mantel till I got to “From the mountains/ to the prairies.” I never did really let loose. They had all they needed and more than they deserved. When I finished, the girls just sat there. The one with braces started to clap, but her friends stared her down.

  “Very good, Jean,” Mr. Henley said. “I believe Brenda Wilcox is next.”

  Brenda Wilcox sang the song in neat jerks, as if she were a music box. The next girl was good, though. Not a great voice but solid. And on it went. In the end there were two useful voices, two good voices, and me. That left them three choices for favorites, relatives, etc.

  When it was done, everybody who tried out had to go to the family room while the Belle Notes voted. It took a long time. I kept looking at the red-plaid rug that was better than any coat my family owned. Then we were called back. We’d have refreshments, Mr. Henley said, while he counted the votes.