Backwoods Girl

                                                    By Paloma Moonjava

                                                                 Chapter One

I was told I would never amount to nothin’. My daddy told me that. My mama never told me nothin’ cuz I never knew my mama. She died when I was in her belly and the doctor had to cut me out. I think that’s why my daddy never really liked me much account of I killed my mama. I think he loved me, but I don’t think he liked me ever. He did love my mama. Sometimes he’d sit and hold the one picture he had of her and look real sad. It was of my mama on a swing danglin’ from ropes on a tree. She was wearin’ a real pretty dress. I think the dress was white and had little green flowers on it. I was never sure account of it was in black and white. More brown and yellow, really. The picture was so old and the way my daddy cried over it, it was all stained and greasy from his hard workin’ hands and his hard cryin’ tears.

But my mama looked real fine. Her dark hair was in pretty waves, framin her face. She had a beautiful smile, showin’ straight teeth. She was wearin’ lipstick in that picture. It was prolly a real pretty shade of red, but it looked black in the old photo. I bet her eyes were brown like mine. I couldn’t never tell for sure and I never asked my daddy. I only know my mama’s name cuz it’s writ on the back of the picture; Althea. Isn’t that prettiest name you ever heard? My daddy gave m the name Marie, after my mama’s middle name, Althea Marie. That’s what is says on the picture. Althea Marie, July 1922. I was born 5 months later, so I was with my mama in that picture. It always made me feel real nice knowin’ I am with her in the only image I ever seen of her. I imagine she was a real nice lady. From her smile, she had to be.

My daddy was from Kentucky and on account of him raisin’ me, I guess that’s how I ended up with a deep southern drawl, just like him. I don’t notice it but I’ve had lotsa people ask me what part of the south I’m from, haha.

I grew up on a hog farm outside a real small town in the middle of Indiana called Langsdale. There was about 300 people livin’ there back then. We was a poor farm town, but we was all real close, like kin. Those of us that weren’t really kin felt like we was. My daddy worked hard and he made me work hard too. He didn’t give one rat’s ass that I was a girl. He made me pull my weight. I got up before sunrise ever’ mornin’ and helped feed all them smelly hogs. I didn’t mind it too much though. You get so used to the smell of that nasty hog shit that you don’t even notice it anymore. I’m sure most days I went around reekin’ of sweat and hogs, but nobody ever said nothin’ cuz we prolly all smelled the same bad way.

I remember one mornin’ it was real cold outside and there was a bad ice storm the night before. I was helpin’ Daddy feed them ol’ smelly hogs and I slipped on some of that frozen hog shit, smackin’ my head real hard on the ground. Next thing I remember I was wakin’ up in my bed with a bag of water on my head. I got up and wandered around the house shouting, “Daddy!” but he wasn’t nowhere to be found. I finally trekked outside, feelin’ real wobbly and disoriented and I found my daddy feedin’ hay to the horses. He said I’d been sleepin’ for two days straight. I asked him if Doc Sharp come to see me and he said, “No, you was alright. Nothing but a big egg on your head. I checked on ya now and then.” He didn’t even care enough about me to call for Doc Sharp or even get me fresh ice for the egg on my head. I had to go on and help him feed the horses. When I was leanin’ over gatherin’ up some salt to scatter for our horses, Peggy, Breezy, Maude and Gable, I got so dizzy I fell over. Daddy had just been headin’ out the barn door to start sloppin’ the hogs when I fell. He dropped his slop bucket, spillin’ it all over, and ran to me. For a second I thought he was gonna help me up, but when he got to me, he just stopped and stared down at me for a second. “Dammit, December Marie!” he didn’t often use my first and middle name, so I knew he was real mad, “Quit bein’ so foolhardy. Get your skinny butt up and finish the feedin’.” So, I finished feedin’ all the livestock by myself while he went in the house, prolly to cry over Mama’s picture.

I spose my daddy was a nice man once. To have a wife as pretty and sweet lookin’ as my mama, he had to be nice and good. I spect my mama was perfect. I spect Daddy may have been perfect before my mama died. Sometimes I imagine the two of ‘em holdin’ hands and laughin’. When I imagine that it makes me real happy, to think my grumpy ol’ daddy was prolly a real fine young man and real happy too. It made me sad to see him cryin’ all over that greasy, grimy picture all the time. I spose his heart was just filled up with loneliness from missin’ my mama. I wish he woulda emptied out some of that missin’ my mama and filled it up with lovin’ me. I woulda really liked that.

My Grammy Maxine raised me from birth to the age of four. She died one night in her sleep. My first real memory is when I woke up one mornin’ and rolled over to give her a big kiss and a hug. I put my lips on her cheek and her cheek was as cold as a naked butt in winter. While I shook her shoulders real hard, I cried, “Grammy, Grammy, why you so cold?” But Grammy didn’t answer me. Her face was gray and her eyes were fixed on the ceilin’. There was a trail of spit comin’ out her mouth, too.

I ran to my daddy’s room and told him somethin’ was wrong with Grammy. When he went and seen her, Daddy simply said, “Well, December Marie,” usin’ my middle name so I knew he was upset. “Her heart just got too sad and weak from missin’ your Mama, on account a you killin; her and all.”

That was how I learned I killed my mama. When I was six years old, I finally got brave and asked my daddy how I killed her. He said I hurt her real bad the whole time I was in her belly. He said when the time came for me to get born she started screamin’ real loud, yellin’ somethin’ was wrong and to hail Doc Sharp. Daddy said by the time he got in town and back to the house with Doc Sharp, Mama was dead, blood all over the bed and herself. Doc Sharp had to cut her belly open and pull me out. He said I screamed and hollered and I was a right disappointment the second I came into this world. He said he didn’t look at me for three weeks after I was born. That was when he sent for my mama’s mama, Grammy Maxine, to live with us. He said til she got there two days after I was born, Mrs. Kendrick from the next farm over took care of me. He said when Grammy Maxine got there, the only thing he did was tell her to call me Marie.

But I don’t think I hurt my mama the whole time like my daddy said. My mama had me in her belly that day on the swing and she looked as happy as a lark. I bet she was excited at the prospect of bein’ a mama; my mama. I think Daddy was just so hurt and sad he wanted me to be hurt and sad too.

                                                        Chapter Two

My daddy married Miss Emma Hall when I was ten years of age. That ol’ Miss Hall was a real bitch. She didn’t care nothin’ for my daddy and she certainly didn’t have love for no step-daughter. That lazy piece of hog manure did nothin’ all day but lay in my daddy’s bed, readin’ some kind a smut stories. I was at the pharmacy one day pickin’ up my daddy some pain arthritis cream when I heard Mrs. Jenkins talkin’ to Ms. Clea Patrick about how smutty Miss Emma Hall was and how “Maxine Potts is probably spinnin’ in her grave if she knows that ungodly woman is raising little Marie. And can you imagine what Althea Marie would think? God rest her sweet, sweet soul.” Mrs. Jenkins didn’t know I heard her. This was one of the very few times in my entire life I ever heard anyone speak my mama’s name. Mrs. Jenkins was a real nice lady and was always very kind to me. It made me happy to hear someone thinkin’ of my mama and my grammy.

Miss Emma never paid no attention to me unless she needed somethin’, like her hair put in curlers or her back washed or her clothes ironed or her breakfast made. If she wanted a ice cold glass of lemonade, I was her best friend.

I can still hear her sayin, “Marie, darlin’, why don’t you make Miss Emma some nice, fresh lemonade?” She said this while she was dressed in some god awful pink lacy nightgown, covered up with a fluffy pink bathrobe, all fat and sprawled out on my daddy’s bed. I never like to use that word, fat, but when you’re as mean and nasty and fat as Miss Emma Hall, you deserve it.

I always made her that damn lemonade. I guess it was so good cuz I gave her some of my own sugar in it, a wad of spit fresh from my mouth. If she’d a known, haha. I woulda love to seen her face if I ever told her.

Miss Emma had a nasty habit of strikin’ me across the face for no good reason. She’d give me a good slap because her mashed potatoes was cold, or if I didn’t get all the ironing done to her liking. She once smacked me across the face with the smutty book she was readin’ just because her bath water was a bit too frigid, and boy, that smut book across my ten year old face hurt somethin’ awful. She never did this when my daddy was around. She knew I’d never tell him and she prolly thought he wouldn’t do nothin’ if I did tell him. My daddy never one time struck me, though. He might not a liked me much, but he was above hittin’ a girl.

One day I was bringin’ in fire wood for our wood stove. It was a terrible cold day outside and I had been workin’ hard out in a near blizzard since before sunrise. Miss Emma Hall had been sittin’ on her fat fanny in front of the hot wood stove all day, the fire goin’ only cuz I had to come in ever’ now and then and stoke it. Well, shame on me, I trekked in some snow and mud on the clean floor, the floor I mopped that very mornin’ and Fat Fanny Miss Emma Hall had a conniption! You'd thunk I spilled hog shit all over her smut books!