Up until Mama's death, I experienced herself as moving through life, evolving; in Mama's death, the abstract experience of the outer world penetrated my inner self, pulsing and throbbing with an urgency which blinded me momentarily with pain. I had before thought that the unknown and unknowable reality existed outside and in front of me; the rush of memories invading and possessing me after Mama's death taught me, however, that the mystery of creation, life, and death centers within and demands submission. I winced with shock, going pale with the forces playing themselves out inside me. The cycle that had been my Mama's life must now play themselves out in me; the child had died.
Memories formed vaguely for me, shaping themselves out of obscurity. I remembered early winters in Tennessee, how they had always been long and cold, much of life going dormant, waiting, enduring. In contrast to the gray, cold world outside and the stark dark trunks of trees, bare limbs lifted against overcast skies, we children inside the house often frolicked in the living room's warmth, comforted by Mama's work in the kitchen.
Mama had been in the kitchen for some time, finishing up another batch of fudge, trying to shut out our horseplay but keeping an ear cocked for any unusual or hurt cries. Christmas was nearing, and Mama always prepared ahead, making the house smell for weeks in advance. She would start with cakes, a dried apple version of fruitcake, in particular. Since she didn't take to keeping wine in the house, she would moisten the cake with grape juice, taking it out, spooning just a bit onto it each day. She also made pies-chocolate, sweet potato, and pumpkin-three or four days before Christmas. Fried apple pies were a favorite, too, and she would make these in stacks, sometimes letting the kids sample these ahead of time..
Years after Mama died, I came back home one Thanksgiving to visit Daddy. The years had reduced him, and he was beginning to become fragile. I was surprised to find him in the kitchen, frying apple pies, his pants flour-smeared, him standing over the stove in the same way Mama did. I understood intuitively that a cycle was rounding itself out in him, too. He had loved the apple pies Mama made, never missing them until they were no longer there; now, a drama and ritual unfolded in the kitchen. His arthritic fingers were no longer adept; the pies were roughly shaped and a little burned. Eating one, though, I complimented Daddy, "Don't know who cooks these better-you or mama." I heard myself verbalize "cooks," the hard sound of it stabbing brutally and then cutting into me again the memory that Mama was dead. Daddy grinned proudly, eating his third pie.
At Christmas, Mama made a variety of candy. When she made candy, we kids stood around the stove with mouths drooling until she poured it out to cool; then we'd lick the spoons and scrape the pan, often scuffling and fighting over the treat. Our roughness would be gently reprimanded. That we weren't in the kitchen on this night was the result of Mama's having kicked us out. Mama had already made two batches and was tuckered out; she was too tired to have kids underfoot. This last batch would go into a lard can already almost full, a can strictly off limits, but more than one of us would slip a piece out, sneak into one of the bedrooms, and eat it on the sly. Come Christmas day, Mama was generous, but that candy usually lasted into February, being meted out a piece at a time. Whenever kin or neighbors dropped in, we kids expected a treat, and we had plenty of company come Christmas, even if visitors had to brave cold winds and snows. Mama exuded pride in her cooking, enjoying the rosy glow flushing her cheeks after a compliment. That glow and the touch of coldness I found on kissing Mama's dead cheek opened up within me the full contrast of life and death; life and death are bound together intimately and their mystery gave me birth.
Christmas was still a couple of days away; we had needled Daddy into cutting down a cedar tree a week and a half ago. It stood in the corner now, far enough away from the fireplace to be safe; a few glass balls and tinsel ropes caught an occasional sparkle of firelight and reflected it. For the most part, the tree was shadowed despite the low-key flame of a kerosene lamp. The couch had been pulled closer to the fire, as it always was in the winter, and my sisters and I were pushing and shoving each other around on it. Mama had already called out a couple of times from the kitchen, "Now, I mean it; you girls settle down 'fore I have to git a switch." But we knew she didn't dare leave the fudge; it hadn't cooked enough to form a ball when dropped into cold water, and even if it had, she would still have to stir it while it cooled and thickened. Mama knew just the right time to turn it out onto wax paper where it would spread sluggishly and then have to be spread thinner by spoon. She would let it set just long enough that a knife would move through it cleanly without making it crumble, then she would cut it into squares.
We kids were excited about Christmas, hoping it would snow, but the temperatures stayed in the upper thirties. What fell was rain. Daddy was out slopping around in the rain now, feeding the hogs and milking Ol' Brindle. We knew he would come trudging in, grumpy and tired, and put a quietus into us all. "It's a funny thing t' me that y' kids can't settle down an' give a body some peace of mind," he would say before he separated us into different corners. Even cornered off, we would keep picking at each other, and Daddy would keep warning us about taking off his belt.
The living room was always closed off in the winter except for the kitchen; even the kitchen was closed when the fire was banked and before we went to bed at night. The water buckets would be frozen over the next morning. Getting into bed was something we did quickly in the winter since the outer rooms weren't heated. We sometimes wrapped irons in towels and put them at our feet, but for the most part, our bodies generated what warmth we had into the layers of quilts. I remember having quilts heaped so heavily upon me, I felt I couldn't move. With only an air hole separating me and the night air, I was eager to lie still. Only once in awhile would one of us girls play a trick on the other-like putting an overshoe in a bed for the unsuspecting feet to discover in their dive into and under the covers. Daddy didn't much hold with such nonsense, and his sternness usually overrode our playfulness.
Angie and I had been picking on Reba for some time. Reba was the smallest and most unaggressive of us. Long ago, Angie and I had learned when we wanted something done, it was easy to cajole Reba into doing it. We even made up a little chant that would set her in motion, "Run, little freight train, run..." Once or twice, I used the same chant with my children; they played along the first time but then caught onto the game. Reba had caught on, too; she just didn't resist. She carried a lot of that submissiveness into her later life, living for years with a husband who ordered her to fix supper when he came home late at night drunk. Reba moved back home with Daddy, bringing renewed life into the house and Daddy, who otherwise spent most of his days watching television or dozing in his overstuffed, sagging chair. On this particular night, Angie had been flexing her muscles, and what was going to be was, as Daddy often said, "gonna be." I got put out and told Angie, "If you want that dumb doll, go and get it yourself."
Angie responded, "Yeh, an' who's gonna make me?"
We tussled playfully; Angie fell against the lamp table, knocking the kerosene lamp to the floor. The spreading coal oil blazed towards the corner, igniting the Christmas tree in a second, the flames now licking into the brittle wallpaper. I grabbed the tree and headed for the door, yelling "Mama, Mama" as I went. Tossing the tree off the porch, I ran back into the house to find Mama throwing a bucket of water on the wall. The lamp had already been extinguished. Mama worked quietly, and we kids helped her clean up what we could, waiting to see what direction our punishment would take. All Mama said was, "Now, see what you done gone and done." That was enough. Daddy, coming in to find the mess, stormed, "I ought'a take out my belt an' whip all o'you." We got off lightly, our only punishment being not having a Christmas tree that year.
A few weeks later, Mama bought some more wallpaper. We kids helped her mix the paste, spread it, lift the paper strips to the wall. Mama did most of the placing and smoothing with us just holding the paper as we could. None of us knew then that Mama had spent money she had been saving from eggs to buy herself some shoes. The rest of the winter, she wore a double pair of socks and Daddy's overshoes when she had to go outside.
A year later, lying on the couch half asleep, I was annoyed when Reba started tickling my toes. I didn't feel like being pestered, and my minor annoyance quickly escalated; I kicked out at Reba. Reba lost her balance, lurched, and fell hands first into flames and glowing embers. Daddy, jolted, acted quickly, pulling Reba screaming out of the flames. I lay awake all that night, listening to Reba's soft cries; she was overcome by the pain in her hands, which Mama had salved and bandaged. Mama changed her bandages daily, but they didn't come not off for weeks. Reba's deep burn scars never faded. I met stony silence before I went to bed that night, no one saying anything to me, just giving me long, condemning glances.
Yet another fire burns in my memory. This time the house could have burned. By then, I had gotten married and had been away from home for some time. Not thinking ahead, I called to tell Mama that Fred and I were coming; Mama, by habit, always scrubbed and cleaned the house before the married children came home. Since Fred had not been in the family long, I should have known Mama would want to make a good impression on him and that she would spend hours cleaning before we got there.
Electricity had come to the mountain some years ago, and here and there in the house, Mama had grudgingly consented to convenience-an electric stove, television, telephone, and can opener. These stood out in contrast to old walls, the kitchen having been given several coats of white enamel; although the walls had been washed on a number of times, they were still beginning to yellow and show grease splotches. Water was no longer carried from the spring; a well had been dug in the yard, a pump house erected. Mama dreamed about a stream of water running under the house; they had drilled where she asked, finding water sixty feet or so beneath a limestone cap. When I'd left home, they still used an old red pump, the handle worked manually to bring up the cool, slightly limed water. Although they added the electric pump, they never did put any pipes into the house, so the water buckets were still there. Life was still primitive in other ways, too: while we had gone outside as children and squatted down to wet, Daddy yielded and built an outdoor toilet that smelled-in spite of the ashes he kept there to dissuade flies. Spiders-fat, white, long, thin, dimpled-hung in all the corners. I remember a sister-in-law tearing out of the toilet screaming when her opening the door had caused a snake to slither down from the rafters and exit its Eden.
It never occurred to me as a kid to wonder about Mama's urge to cleanliness. It seemed natural and a part of her personality. In contrast to Mama, I had always felt oppressed by the heaviness of body that seemed to cling about me. Mama sponged herself frequently and wore Avon sachets and perfumes; she always smelled good. We kids would sometimes steal her pillow, smuggling it into a backroom for a nap, transported by the sweetness of Mama's distilled bodily presence.
We learned to tolerate Mama's house-cleaning sprees preceding visits from company. I wasn't sympathetic with all the commotion, seeing it as visionless domesticity, hating how it barred Mama and me from the outside world. As a kid, if I had to work, I'd choose to be outside where the blue summer skies startled me with their brilliance, the twittering chatter of wrens and sparrows shattered to the raucous scream of a jay or the guttural caw of a crow, where a droning insect whirr provided a backdrop for dreams. I volunteered to help Daddy; I would walk along with him weeding potatoes, my bare feet digging mole-like into the cooler, damper soil that lay beneath the scorched surface. Even cleaning manure out of the cow stalls, lifting it in steamy shovel fulls into the wagon we would use to carry it to the fields, there spade it out as fertilizer, I found preferable to the meaningless sweeping, dusting, and moping that went on in the house.
Sometimes Mama's cleaning brought comic relief, like the time when she, squatting and cleaning the oven, lost her balance, tumbled, and rolled back into the kitchen, looking forever like a beetle on its back. I was first startled, then relieved when Mama started laughing. Her slightly rotund body, arms floundering, created, she knew, a ridiculous picture. Mama and I laughed about that spill for years.
Mama kept the house mostly immaculate, neighbors remarking how much better the house looked on the inside than on the outside. Even the outside, Mama tried to spruce up, taking shirt factory money to buy white asbestos siding to hide the old rain-darkened sideboards. She replaced the wood porch with cement; geraniums, petunias, coleuses brightened the corners. Because flowers were important to Mama, we kids tried to keep them blooming even after she could no longer care for them herself. I carried guilt because life took me out from home and away; I wasn't there for Mama during her last years; my visits were always hurried-and of not much use to me or Mama. My brothers and sisters closer to home caught the brunt of Mama's needs in her last days. I'd tried to tell them I appreciated what they did for Mama, but I don't think they felt much more than their own responsibilities. As long as she was able, Mama would sit on the porch and enjoy the flowers lifting and blowing with the breezes.
Mama and Daddy kept a teakettle on the stove for heating water, mostly for instant coffee. The well's limestone water was hard and left a rock-like sediment in the kettle, which Mama would clean by adding some Purex and boiling it. Mama said she had Purex in to soak the kettle this time, but when she looked back, the kettle was flaming. She grabbed the kettle, watching with dismay when the flames spread wildly when the water hit them. She didn't know then she had poured kerosene rather than Purex into the kettle. Daddy got the blame for putting kerosene into a Purex bottle. Mama grabbed the kettle and threw it out the kitchen door, then grabbed baking soda and rags and battled the burning curtains and blackening enamel. Only after the fire was almost out had Daddy come in, this probably prevented the entire kitchen and house from going up in flames. When the fire was out, Mama sank down tiredly, a throbbing in her arm making her aware of an angry, deep burn from her wrist to her elbow. My sisters, arriving, tried to persuade her to go to a doctor; Mama refused, knowing they had no money to spare, "It'll be al'right in a little while."
When Fred and I arrived, my sisters met in the driveway, "Mama's burned herself bad." They had cleaned what they could of the kitchen, but soot still blackened both the kitchen and the living room. The kitchen had to be repainted, the living room paneled. Mama still refused to go to a doctor, although a blister had formed and covered the entire burned area and threatened to burst. One glance at Mama's face told me the pain throbbed inside her was severe. Not until the next day could I persuade her to go to the doctor.
I remembered for a long time that angry tongue of black from the Christmas tree, the livid, florid hands of Reba, and that water-heavy blister on Mama's arms-these symbolized something of the hardship that was so much a part of life in that house, so much Mama, and so much Mama in me. Mama and Daddy did everything they could to make Christmas a special time of the year; always, though, there was little money for much more than stick candy, some fruit, and a small gift. There were other Christmases and Christmas smells, but over the years, the memories weakened. When Mama died, she didn't remember the bright spots, the warm moments; they were eclipsed by her fears of huge black bugs that crawled out of corners and hung on the walls.
Christmas memories hold a mixture of intense pleasure and pain. What I choose to remember, I remember vividly; what I choose to forget, I forget generally. Time and again in my life, I've searched for the easy faith and acceptance of childhood and for a Christmas without innocence shattered. Christmas to this day stirs yearnings in me for something desired, something connected to the ever-reoccurring cycle of ongoing life, death, creation, and pain, a yearning I connect to the disturbing, lyrical call of the unseasonable whippoorwill.