morethanenoughtruth

October 28, 1958 began inauspiciously enough, a clear cool sweater kind of day, not unlike many others that fall.  Deciduous trees had done their annual best to make me happy to have landed in a quiet West Virginia hollow with the silent intent of making a family.  I had always wanted one, and it seemed reasonable to assume that the best way to have one was to make one.  But since it was a hidden agenda, I didn’t like to make a big fuss about such things.

When I set out that late afternoon to the monthly meeting of the Ritchie County Farm Women’s Club, I had a lovely setting for my trek to Josephine Wilson’s house in time for the official call to order.  There’s no telling where Jim Taylor was.  My husband wasn’t much for farm work.  It was I who always helped my in-laws with the milking night and morning.  He would probably wonder where I had gotten to when he finally made it home, but Garnie would remind him that I was off to my monthly meeting.  She had legitimized my evening off.

There was nobody to see me as I set off across the hills, making for the Wilson Place.  I was a sight.  My belly had gotten way too big to hold just a baby, and I wondered what else could be making me so excessively rotund.  Two of them?  It didn’t help that I had to carry so much stuff.  There was always a load to take to meetings, program materials, project paraphernalia, and of course there was my purse.  Even out in the boonies, a girl can’t leave home without her accouterments.

The first hill wasn’t all that bad, especially since I was used to running up and down chasing cattle, and I made that one in good time.  The next one was OK too since I could cut across the hay field.  Last month all the hay bales had been stored in the high barn for wintering beef cattle.  The only thing that slowed me down was the electric fence that kept the dairy herd out of the meadow.  The gap was right at the bridge of the hill, the barbed wire stretched taught across the lane.  I typically didn’t bother to open the gap.  Too much trouble.  Unless it was muddy, I always just ducked down and rolled under.  It didn’t occur to me that maybe I wouldn’t roll so well this day.  I was already down and halfway under before my belly got caught on a barb.  It snagged the soft wool of my hatchin’ jacket, as it was called in WV parlance.  I was in a fix.  There was no room left in me to suck it up and pull loose, and I couldn’t touch the fence and risk a painful shock.  I doubted it would have killed me but you never know.

So I lay there assessing the situation.  The meadow larks kept me company, swooping repeatedly across the field collecting late persisting insects for their winter fat potential.  Finally I decided to study the contour of the barb and make minute adjustments to my own position until I might wriggle free.  It worked.  With a sigh of relief, I scooted out from under the fence and gathered myself for the rest of the trek.  The sun was getting low, and I needed to get moving to make that call to order.

Since Josephine’s house was on my side of the river, I didn’t need to cross the swinging bridge to get there.  That river crossing would have been another complexity, climbing steps on each side and balancing all the way across.  My route was on through Uncle Paul Headlee’s pasture and down Lynn Camp Road a mile or so, and I would be there. 

I was getting hungry with all that hiking and toting.  The meeting was to be a potluck, accounting for yet another thing I had to carry that day.  I had baked Minnesota Harvest Bars.  They were my favorite autumn dessert, rich with farm butter and redolent with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and pureed pumpkin.  Yum!

My stuff and I made it to the meeting with no additional excitement, and I set about filling my plate with enough for two of that farmer’s wife cooking.  It was always a treat at these meetings to leave a casserole for the farmers and feed each other instead.  Of course we talked non-stop since we were all isolated on separate farmsteads and relished the opportunity to see each other and exchange gossip.  Most of us were on the same party line and everybody knew pretty much what was going on, but this was a celebration.

I enjoyed the meal and was no worse for the trip except for a bit of a twinge in my back, but that was understandable given the length of the hike and the enormity of my load.  I must have eaten a bit too fast, since I began to experience a bit of gut discomfort.  I kept quiet though.  Nothing of concern here.  The meeting proceeded, and eventually I asked Josephine for a spoonful of sodium bicarbonate.  She complied, and we moved on to new business.  But the anti-acid didn’t seem to help much.  I was having a hard time sitting still in my chair and focusing my attention on the trip we were to take to a coal fired power plant in Ripley next spring.  Finally, this group of very experienced mothers rounded on me and accused me of being in labor.

“What?”  I squawked, denying the assuredly improbable.

“When is your due date?” Bessie Barnard demanded.

“I dunno,” I muttered—“Sometime soon.  Dr. Santer said early November.  But this is only a stomach ache.  And besides, it’s still October.” 

But one thing led to another, and within the hour I was packed into Nancy Collin’s Buick and barreling down US Route 50 for Parkersburg and St. Joseph’s Hospital’s Emergency Room.  Around eleven o’clock, Dale Warren Taylor made his unscheduled appearance on the scene.  His exuberant expression concerning the situation more than made up for my own reticence.  He was late to the meeting, but once present and accounted-for, he offered more than recompense for his tardiness. 

Later I found out that if my taught belly had made contact with that 10,000 volt charged barbed wire fence, I would have delivered him right there on the hilltop with the cows and meadow larks as midwife attendants.

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I loved Lillie-Mae.  She was my second mother and owned a very special place in my psyche.  She made the best liver and onions in the world.  When we talked, she would look at my face, her eyes going deep, trading her intelligence with mine.  She must have understood how eyes speak to each other.

She nursed me through measles, back before there was a vaccine, piling the covers deep and waiting for the sweat.  Months later, spying the forbidden gloss on my mouth, she handed me a Kleenex and warned me to “take off that color before your Aunt Judy gets home.”  I could tell her anything and could trust her to keep my secret.

It was Lillie-Mae who advised Aunt Judy it was time to buy me a training bra, when new and tender nipples responded to all that starch in my blouses.  I’m remembering a time when she loved me well enough to iron pretty ruffled blouses for me to wear, so I could head for school, all that starch and cotton announcing to the world, ‘Somebody loves this girl.  Pay attention to her.  No matter what you think, she is worth something.’

It’s no wonder that world wobbled when one day Aunt Judy announced, “Lillie–Mae says you think you are better than she is.”

“But I’m not,” I squawked.  “I’ve never said anything like that.  It’s not true.”

Judy explained that it was because of my attitude toward her.  “She can tell from the way you talk to her, as if you know more that she does.”

Lillie-Mae doesn’t love me anymore, was all I could think.  I must be a monster.  I never asked Lillie-Mae what made her decide I wasn’t her sweet girl any more.  It was too much to face.  I just kind of hid inside myself and waited—for what I don’t know.  When would it be safe to come out and ask what I had done that was wrong?

In 2012 Cincinnati I attended a meeting designed to heal racial differences.  It seemed simple, merely a scholarly update, especially for me, a person who loved black people just on principle, having so adored the Lillie-Mae of my youth.

The meeting leader announced that all white people are racist.  When I corrected her, she insisted that just because I loved my childhood nanny and liked “The Help,” I wasn’t pure of heart.  She said that I appreciated that movie because it reminded me of my days of privilege as a daughter of the south.  I walked out of the meeting—seething.  So much pain!  How could—how can—we live with it all?

In 2019 my Episcopal church worldwide began a year-long journey of addressing our country’s original sin—slavery.  They named the journey ‘Beloved Community.’  I find myself asking some new and difficult questions:  If our congregation becomes truly diverse, how much will we have to change?  Can I enjoy worship in a style different from what I have always treasured?  Why does it seem that I like black people as long as they behave as if they were white?  Does that make me a racist?  Our country has elected a black president—twice.  My votes helped.  The Anglican Communion has chosen a black leader, the Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, and I—I must face my Lillie-Mae quandary.

Somewhere in that place where loved ones wait silently upon the wind, Lillie-Mae wonders when I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry.’  She has a big hug waiting—one shaped just for me.  We are sure to share a good talk, and an even better listen.  Maybe I’ll finally be a big enough girl to hear her own dear story, and give her the hug she has earned, and waited through both our lifetimes to wrap her arms around.

In October I told my Lillie Mae story to the ‘Sacred Grounds’ group at our first Beloved Community meeting.  The man who led our group, a Xavier professor, cautioned me to not make it personal.  He said it was systemic—institutional.  I didn’t know what to think or feel, or even if I could take another meeting on those terms.  If it’s about love, how can it not be personal?

When I later asked Redeemer’s Minister of Communications to help me unpack this conundrum she responded, “I don’t think any of us can go down this path towards reconciliation and redemption alone, and yet, of course, it is personal.  Both/and.  We can’t avoid how our lives have influenced our very beings.  And yet, perhaps what Adam meant was a kindness.  Maybe he wanted to reassure you that the problem ultimately lies in the system and that together we can begin to address that system.  But there is no way to avoid the pain and the guilt and the bewilderment we will feel along the way.  Stick with us, Dorothy, it is going to be really hard, but we will all need each other to find our way to the other side.”

Yes it is hard, but worth turning our insides out and asking some soul questions.  The answers may put each and every one of us on Sacred Ground—together.

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