With a Hammer for My Heart Read online

  “Oh, Lawanda, don’t do this to me!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t drag out Mommy’s old stories.”

  “Mom, it’s important.”

  “I don’t care. If I have to listen to that tale of Mother Jesus again, I’ll pull my hair out.”

  Sheesh. I didn’t know she felt like that. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I did want to hear Mamaw on the subject. I watched the road, the hillside, the swoop of blazing maples.

  “Look, Mom, this boy at school—he’s in my civics class—says Mamaw is a witch, and everybody’s bugging me, and I just want something to say.”

  Mom bit her lip and clutched the wheel. The rings slid down her finger bones. More to herself than me, she said, “The very thing you want to forget about, your kids can’t wait to dig up.”

  “But you’re the one who told me in the first place,” I reminded her. “Mamaw hardly ever mentions it.”

  “I just wanted you to b z prepared” Mom said, her voice tired. “I didn’t want kids to make fun of you and you not know why.”

  “But they didn’t till now.”

  “It’s a miracle.”

  I laughed but Mom didn’t. I don’t think she got it.

  We kept driving. We were across the mountain now and coming down into the crooked valley. Just turn to the left at Turner’s Grab ’n’ Go, drive three miles up the creek, and we’d be there.

  “I always thought you and Mamaw got along,” I said.

  “Lawanda!” Mom’s cheeks got red. “Saying you get along with Mommy is like saying you get along with fire.”

  We hit a dip too fast and my stomach flew up to my shoulders. I studied Mom. She was wearing white “cush shoes”— that’s what she calls imitation SAS sandals—stockings, a lime green wraparound skirt, a yellow-and-white-striped top, and her opal pendant. She’s skinny and tough-looking, with curly blond-gray hair cut close. Her blue eyes were fierce behind brown plastic glasses, one temple of which was held on with a safety pin. Mom. Drives fast. Cooks fast. Makes beds and folds laundry like there is no tomorrow.

  “Just slow down, Junie,” Dad will say. “The Kingdom’s not coming till Sunday week.”

  “Maybe not,” she’ll answer, “but somebody’s got to see that we’re in clean clothes.”

  Mamaw’s as big and slow as Mom is small and fast. I don’t mean slow in her mind; I mean careful, weighing. Mom is like a needle flashing through cloth. Mamaw reels out steady like the thread.

  I was still thinking all this when we pulled into the gravel of Mamaw’s drive. Papaw was sitting on the porch, chewing tobacco and watching for us.

  “Lord, Junie,” he said, hitching up his pants and coming down the steps, “where’d you get that big old girl?”

  “Kmart,” she said, reaching up to pat his bony shoulders.

  “Well, come hug my neck, youngun,” he called, and I did. He was hard and leathery and smelled like wood smoke as well as that Red Man he chews.

  “Where’s Mamaw?” I asked.

  “On in the kitchen, I reckon, cleaning up from dinner. She said send you women on back.”

  Now push comes to shove, I thought, but Mom just said, “You go on, Lawanda. I’ll sit out here with your papaw. Tell Mommy I’ll bring in the quilt top when you get done.”

  I smiled thanks at her, then went on in, letting the screen door bang just enough to alert Mamaw. “Hello!” I called into the stillness.

  “Come on back, Lawanda. I’m knee-deep in pot vessels.”

  Mamaw’s kitchen crosses the whole back of the house, with work space at one end and a round oak table at the other. It’s plain and scrubbed and always full of light.

  “Want a chicken leg?” she asked as I stepped in.

  “No thanks.”

  “How about some tea?”

  “Sure.” I got a glass from the drain board and went for the refrigerator.

  “Where’s your ma? Or did you fly over that hill?”

  “She’s out on the porch with Papaw. She’ll be in as soon as—well, Mamaw, I want to ask you something.”

  She turned around from the sink, wiping her hands on her apron. “Yes?” she said.

  And that one word spooked me, I can’t explain why. It didn’t sound like Mamaw’s voice, but like someone far, far away, like a voice from a well. I didn’t say anything, just stood there with my mouth open and a shiver starting at the back of my neck.

  Mamaw tilted her head and looked at me, then smiled. “You get yourself settled,” she said, “while I take them Smiths some tea.”

  In a minute she was back, seated at the table. Some of her hair had come loose from the bun and been steamed into a gray cloud around her face. Her Mother Hubbard apron was damp in front but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Ask away,” she said, “but if it takes too long, I may go back to my soap pads.”

  I took a breath. “Well, I’ve heard about how you saw God in church and how they kicked you out, but how did you start healing people?”

  Mamaw looked at her hands, still red from hot water, then said, “She give me the gift.”

  “I know that, but how? Or how did you know?”

  Mamaw reached out to smooth the tablecloth. She rearranged the hen and rooster salt and pepper shakers. She straightened paper napkins in their wooden holder. Then she raised her eyes to mine.

  “I don’t mind to tell it, Lawanda, but how come you all of a sudden want to know?”

  So I told her about Jimmy Minniard and how I needed something to say back.

  Mamaw put the palm of her hand on her forehead, then slowly moved it down over her face till it rested at her throat.

  “First off, I’m sorry about this, Lawanda. Second, you got to know that if you said the whole Book from ‘In the beginning’ to ‘Amen,’ it would not change some people’s minds. If this Minniard boy’s more set on bothering you than hearing the truth, you might as well save your breath.”

  I knew as soon as she said that that she was right. And I knew something else. “I’d like to hear for myself,” I told her.

  “That’s my girl,” she said, and began.

  MAMAW: “It was hard being turned out of Little Splinter. I was weaned on that church—it was beans and buttermilk to me. Every time there was a service, my mommy had us all there, scrubbed and shiny, with our hair skinned back. I was baptized from that church, married in it, saw my daddy and mommy prayed over there at the once-a-year funeralizing. And biggest thing of all, I saw God Herself in that church, was lifted up just like the old hymn says. And that was the very thing that put me out.

  “That Sunday, Lord, I went home so down, I felt I’d never get up again. My sign, which had weighed like the world walking over, I didn’t even notice going back.

  “Your papaw was out hoeing corn when I got home. He’s never been a churchgoer.

  “ ‘What are you doing home early, woman?’ he hollered. ‘And where are them younguns?’

  “Younguns? Upon my honor, I had plumb forgot about them! The service was still going when I was throwed out and I had headed home like a horse to the bam.

  “Well, I didn’t even speak to your papaw. I pitched my sign into a fencerow and took off up the road a-flying. Halfway there, I met them coming home.

  “ ‘What happened, Mommy?’ June cried. ‘Where’d you go?’

  “ ‘She was churched,’ Burchett said. ‘I done told you that.’

  “Dolan just stood there with his thumb in his mouth.

  “ ‘Hush, Burchett,’ I said, scooping Dolan up with one arm and with the other hugging June to my waist.

  “ ‘Ain’t it true?’ Burchett insisted.

  “ ‘Can’t tell you what’s true right now. Let’s go home and get some dinner.’

  “We did. I watched them all eat hearty while every bite I took tasted like sand.

  …

  “For the next weeks, months, I don’t know how long, it seemed like there was a skin over everything. Sun was far away; colors was di
mmer. I couldn’t even hear good. I’d stand at the stove and not smell dinner burning, not hear your papaw a-calling in the yard.

  “Then Annie Isom’s boy fell on a wagon tongue and Jeb asked me to sit with her while he went to Cutshin for the doc.

  “It was a long journey he was starting, and this boy, Jess, was bleeding real bad. Annie had gone cold and dumb the way people will sometimes. I sent the other younguns to play in the barn. For some cause, I called to Flo as she went out, ‘Hunt up a feather and bring it back to me, will you?’

  “She did. Brown one, short and wide-splayed, most likely a wren’s.

  “ ‘Better put on some coffee, Annie,’ I said. ‘We’ll be needing to keep awake.’

  “It was full daylight as I said this, but Annie didn’t question, just put more kindling on the fire. I didn’t question either. I was following something with my tongue and my hands.

  “I went over to the bed where Jess was laying, whiter than just-come snow. Ten years old and his breath on my hand no stronger than a baby’s, the sheets wadded around him bright with blood.

  “ ‘Mother Jesus,’ I said, something drawing out my voice, ‘let us keep Jess, this boy that’s just started to grow. Stop his life from spilling. Let his pain fall away like this old wren’s feather. Seal his wounds, Mother Jesus, and heal Sister Annie’s heart.’

  “I had one hand on Jess’s forehead as I said this, and with the other I touched the feather to his shoulder bones, the fork of his legs, his heart. I closed my eyes and laid the feather inside my dress, against the heat of my bosom. And I sang:

  ‘Leave us a while longer

  In this earthly light.

  Our eyes are not ready

  For Your holy sight.

  Mother, comfort

  Your child and take his ills.

  Leave him to work for you

  Among these sacred hills.’

  “I’d never heard this song, mind you, but I heard my voice singing it, hoarse and flat, like wind whining in a door.

  “I opened my eyes, and Jess’s eyes were open too. A little color had come to his cheeks and the blood on the sheets had darkened. No new came to keep it red.

  “ ‘She’s healed him, Annie,’ I said. ‘Mother Jesus has healed him!’

  “Annie rushed over to the bed. She took Jess’s hand, stroked his hair, smiled into his face. Then she looked back at me. ‘Don’t worry, Ada,’ she promised. ‘I won’t never tell.’

  …

  “That seemed a shame at the time, but it didn’t really matter. What I knew, I knew, and it closed the church hole in my heart. I won’t say I don’t sometimes grieve for Little Splinter. But all its members call me when the bad times come. Somebody goes for the doc, somebody for Mamaw. There’s been many a door opened to Mother Jesus since Sam Wilder and the church shut us out.”

  LAWANDA: I couldn’t say anything after Mamaw quit. It was bad enough that they’d thrown her out of church because she said she saw God. Isn’t that why you go to church? I mean, really? But to find out they took her gift of healing and then pretended it didn’t exist— well, it made me want to scream. But I didn’t think anybody had ever screamed in that old soft room. So I just said, “Thanks, Mamaw. That’s some story.”

  “I reckon so,” she agreed, and got up to go back to the sink. “Would you send your ma in?”

  I did, and they spent the rest of the afternoon pinning the pieced top of the quilt to the back and batting. Mom didn’t seem to have her mind on it. She kept puckering the top and having to unpin a section and start again. Driving back, she said her nerves were all to pieces with worry about Papaw cleaning fencerows.

  “He’s seventy-two, you know, Lawanda, and when I told him he should hire one of Jim Creech’s boys up the road to do that, he just grunted, ‘I’d rather die in the field than in the bed.’ ”

  I stayed tuned in to her talk enough to make the right answers, just as she paid enough attention to the road to make the right turns, but I wasn’t really there. I was back in Mamaw’s kitchen. “Mother Jesus has healed him,” she’d told Annie. Even the words shook me up. If God could be a woman, anything could happen.

  …

  We didn’t get back from Little Splinter Creek till almost six, so I made the coleslaw while Mom reheated a pot of pinto beans. We had some biscuits left over from breakfast and a wedge or two of com bread from dinner.

  “Applesauce, Lawanda,” Mom ordered from the stove. “Little sweet pickles.” That’s how she talks when she cooks. I sliced some big yellow onions, too.

  I bet it wasn’t ten minutes from the time we got in the door till we were all seated at the table: Mom, Dad, Dessie, Jeff, and me. Ray was eating at Uncle Dolan’s. He’d been squirrel hunting with Little Jim. Mom set a gallon of butter-milk by my plate and I poured for the kids. Dad put his chin on his collar. “Lord, we thank you for this table full of food and for family to eat it with. Bless the hands that fixed it. Give us the energy and gumption to be good. Amen.”

  Mom handed him the bread basket, then the beans.

  “Speaking of the Lord—” I began, but Mom leaped in.

  “Not at the table, Lawanda.”

  “Dad just did!”

  “If you think the food needs more blessing, go right ahead, but I don’t want a word about Mother Jesus.”

  “But Mom—”

  Dad was reaching me the coleslaw. “Mind your mother, Lawanda.”

  My eyes filled with tears and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. They didn’t want to hear from Mamaw! They didn’t want to hear from me!

  “What’s wrong with her?” Dessie asked as I left the room.

  Mom said, “Some people got to wash their corn bread down with tears.”

  MAMAW: When I got home from that first healing, I fixed supper same as usual. Got the kitchen cleaned up, June, Burchett, and Dolan to bed, then poured some coffee and tried to tell John what had happened. I was still so wound up, I felt like my hands was on fire. He wouldn’t hear a word.

  “Don’t tell me about it,” he warned. “You ain’t been right since that flash of light ruffled your feathers.”

  I reminded him he was not the Lord.

  “You don’t look much like Saving Grace yourself,” he said.

  “But that’s just it,” I told him. “I do. She could nurse a youngun. She could birth a youngun. God ain’t got no pecker. She’s like me.”

  “Ada Marie Holcomb—”

  “Listen at that! You’re unhitching me just at the thought of it.”

  “I’m trying to get sense out of you, woman. See if there’s any left when you shuck it on down to the cob.”

  “Shuck your name off me? Go on. But you’ll only get my pa’s name. My ma’s side was Ashers, but that came from her daddy—so you can go on and on and there ain’t no cob. I ain’t a stalk or a cob or anything that sticks up.”

  “What are you then?”

  “Rivers, I reckon. Paths. Watering holes. Places to hide even. Nests.”

  “Some old broody God you’ve got, running ever which way. ”

  “No. She don’t run. She’s plunked herself down at the middle. And she don’t ask for war or glory.”

  “What does she want?”

  “People to sing and cook dinner.”

  “Some God.”

  “And if you burn the dinner, she’s put out. She don’t call it sacrifice.”

  “You just want—”

  “What I want ain’t got nothing to do with it! I’m saying what I seen.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t marry what you seen. I didn’t marry some queer woman that turns high-and-mighty because she thinks God got her kicked out of church.”

  “I ain’t being high-and-mighty and you know it. Me having a vision is like June having curly hair. They’s good days and bad days, and it don’t make you any better than anybody else. It’s just a fact, John, like you having that tooth turned wrong. ”

  “There’s people that fixes crooked teeth. Maybe there�
�s somebody that can straighten you out.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean ‘No’?”

  “You I married for all earthly time and I aim to keep true to that: trespass no beds, cook your food, wash your overalls. And I must love you, too, or I never would have put up with you. But I didn’t give you ary a promise about what would happen between me and the Lord. It’s not mine to give. And not yours to quarrel with.”

  John shut his eyes. When he opened them, he gave me a look he usually saves for cows. “I can’t see why God would pick on you.”

  “Well, I can’t neither unless it’s because my head is so empty.”

  He laughed then and I did, too, and set our coffee cups in the sink so we could get to bed. About a half hour later, I elbowed him in the ribs.

  “One thing’s for sure,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You ain’t God!”

  We shook the bedsprings laughing that time till we finally snored off to sleep.

  LAWANDA: Garland and I could talk about anything; that’s what amazed me, once I quit being scared. He never cut me off like my folks did, and while his meanness didn’t go away, I figured out it was just a pose, like kids in the hall trying to be cool. He listened too. I could tell him stuff about school I could never tell Mom or Dad—how I didn’t fit in and why I had to go to college, not just to get an education but to see something besides Pine Mountain. He said that was fair enough. And I could tell him about Mom and Dad making me so mad. It was like Garland’s buses were above it all and when I got up there I could see through his eyes, or at least out his windshield. It helped.

  When I told him about Mamaw’s first healing, he whistled through his teeth. “Hell of a woman,” he said, like it was a holy word. That made me feel better. I’d never thought of Mamaw as strange. She was just Mamaw, the way the wind is the wind.

  Garland was such a friend to me and I came to count on him—so much that I didn’t see he was changing. Oh, one time I cried and he made me leave, but I didn’t see he was starting to count on me too. If I had, I might have guessed that when it came down to it, he’d be worse about me leaving than Mom and Dad.