Susan Rivers's Blog - Posts Tagged "troublefield"
Babe Hadn't Never Bought No Hair-Curlin' for Mammy
Mary Cox, a woman born on a hardscrabble farm in Sylva, NC, early in the 20th century, led a hard life. She fled her mother's dysfunctional family when she was young and came down from Appalachia to live with her father and stepmother in Spartanburg, SC, where they worked in a textile mill. Mary married and quickly regretted it, but divorce was illegal in South Carolina until 1949, so she moved through a series of three "husbands" before settling with a man she called 'Babe.'
Babe had a job at the time they met, but once they were married he drank more than he worked, and Mary had to drum up income for the pair of them any way she could, including raising chickens. One day she took some of her egg money and went into town with Babe in order to get a permanent wave done on her hair. On the way home, however, Babe's three grown children blocked the road, one of them brandishing a shotgun. They ordered her to get out of the wagon and lie in the road. Mary relates that she did what she was told, at which point the oldest son Lloyd put his foot on her neck to hold her down while his sister Ola "cut every inch of hair off my head, down to my scalp, with sheep shears, saying Babe hadn't never bought no hair-curlin' for their mammy and from now on I better look out."
This hair-raising tale is one of many oral histories set down by WPA workers when they roamed the south in the thirties interviewing the rural poor. In fact, I found the story and words of Mary Cox in a bound collection of WPA oral history out-takes when I went searching for voices of poor white women who lived in upstate South Carolina early in the 20th century, and Mary's voice jumped out as one deserving of special notice.
Not only was her life story compelling and darkly funny, but her unique way of expressing herself spoke volumes. The distinctive double negative commonly used by working class southerners ("Babe hadn't never bought no"…), the dropping of the "g" sound on words ending with "ing" ("hair-curlin") and the use of the pronoun "Mammy" for "mother" conjured a young woman who was the full-blown product of her class, her region, and her time. Mary's voice was preserved long past her death in the obscure profile I unearthed in the Kennedy Room's archives at the Spartanburg County Public Library, and I like to think it was given new life in influencing the voice of the fictional white southern woman, Calla Stout, who is my protagonist in the book that will be published next.
In crafting dialogue for this novel, especially dialogue between Calla and members of her troubled family, I had to find a way to create a shared vocabulary that was based in authentic experience but which allowed me some freedom to innovate. This could only be accomplished once I'd immersed myself in the relevant primary sources: oral histories, interviews, letters from state archives, first-person accounts from mill town dwellers and chain gang prisoners, notes on spoken phrases I heard from living descendants of farmers and factory workers in the area, and so on. I continue to revise these voices and their language, seeking to make them as truthful as possible while maintaining their effectiveness in advancing the objectives of the individual characters.
Here's a sample of dialogue from TROUBLEFIELD (soon to be published by Algonquin), from a conversation Calla has with her brother Tennyson, a volatile man who's just been released after eight months on the county chain gang for disemboweling a fellow millworker in a knife fight.
Seeing in his eyes what he'd been through in the last eight months, along with the proud look that promised he could handle that and eight months more without batting an eye, I got the balks. "Tell me how you been," I said when I could find my voice at last, and when he answered with the same old joke that had been our daddy's, "I been better but it cost me more," he laughed but I couldn't even smile.
"Your husband know you're here?" he asked, and added, before I had a chance to speak, "Right enough. He sent you, didn't he."
"I'd have you to the house, Tennyson. If I could."
Tennyson sighed, turning his back on me as he joined the pipe to the stove and fitted the other end to the length sticking out the chimney.
"Ain't a problem for me. I like Abernathy's. Her rules make sense, leastways."
"And you're making the rent all right?"
He nodded, plucking a screw from his mouth and twisting it into the joint. "Got work. Got a place to stay. That oughter keep me off the chain gang."
I winced. "Don't you miss us?"
He looked at me, but then turned away, swallowing hard. "Maude ever ask about me?"
"Sure she does. About when she's going to see you again." The thought came to me that we'd missed him for Thanksgiving dinner, thinking he was still in the camp out on Copperhead Hill. Where had he gone that day? Who would have been willing to take him in? Maybe that's why Juanita Reid took the gingerbread from me without so much as a "thank you."
"She's missed you. And she misses Dolphie. Wilbanks' friend. He got married a few weeks back."
"That McCready toff?"
I nodded. "He can't come 'round Dunnet Head no more."
Tennyson made a snorting sound. "I reckon not. It's just as well Maudie finds out what those stand-up-collar folks are like. She's not going to learn that from her ma."
"Don't start in on my husband, Tennyson. We been down that road already." To my surprise, the smug look on my brother's face melted away.
"The truth is, I don't have no chicken to pick with that lawyer-man of yours," he told me. "He's does for you and Maudie, which is more than Jimmy Goforth cared to do. More than I did, as your brother. I still believe you're owed better, but we got to do our best with what we're handed, don't we."
I bit my tongue when he said that, because I'd been this close to telling him about States Rights Ramseur and how I was thinking more and more that I might run off with the undertaker who found all my living parts so pleasing.
"I been thinking about what you told me in the courtroom," he went on. He was studying me now, to see if I remembered it. "Do you --"
"I told you not to be the mule."
He nodded, a tiny smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. His hair fell unevenly over his ears -- it looked as if they'd barbered him in camp with a dull handsaw. "That's right. I was too lobber-headed to hear it that day. But I hear it now. Always have had a powerful anger inside me. In the cage-wagon out at Copperhead I studied on how that temper might could do me some good, if I could only get a holt of it. I'm hurting for a plan. Otherwise I'm going to end up like Peckerwood Pennington, digging my grave with every day I spend in the back end of bad luck."
"What's the plan, then?" I asked. "What should you be doing different?"
He shook his head, easing the jointed pipe into the top of the dirty stove. "I'm not sure," he said. "I might just lay it to God, this time. Wait for a sign."
* * *
Out on the stoop I looked up and down the line before stepping down. Tennyson stood on the porch behind me, using a rag to clean the grease out of his fingernails. It troubled me that I'd made him feel low-class, showing up out of the blue at a run-down three-room, watching him fit dirty stovepipe together. It had been a bad idea to dress up. "Where's that mean dog gone to?" I asked. "I don't want to get bit."
Now he laughed again, but in a harsh way, like he'd just as soon spit. "Where do you expect him to go? This is home. The family who bolted out of here ahead of the rent left a pan of liver mush to spoil on the stove and that hound locked out in the yard." He shook his head. I tried to make some mealy-mouthed excuse for the tenants, like "those who have never known kindness..." but he cut me off. "Would you do that? Truly? Not even give the liver to your dog before you tied him to a tree and moved on?"
He didn't expect an answer to this, so I made none. I said, "Look after yourself, Brother," and walked home to Dunnet Head.
Babe had a job at the time they met, but once they were married he drank more than he worked, and Mary had to drum up income for the pair of them any way she could, including raising chickens. One day she took some of her egg money and went into town with Babe in order to get a permanent wave done on her hair. On the way home, however, Babe's three grown children blocked the road, one of them brandishing a shotgun. They ordered her to get out of the wagon and lie in the road. Mary relates that she did what she was told, at which point the oldest son Lloyd put his foot on her neck to hold her down while his sister Ola "cut every inch of hair off my head, down to my scalp, with sheep shears, saying Babe hadn't never bought no hair-curlin' for their mammy and from now on I better look out."
This hair-raising tale is one of many oral histories set down by WPA workers when they roamed the south in the thirties interviewing the rural poor. In fact, I found the story and words of Mary Cox in a bound collection of WPA oral history out-takes when I went searching for voices of poor white women who lived in upstate South Carolina early in the 20th century, and Mary's voice jumped out as one deserving of special notice.
Not only was her life story compelling and darkly funny, but her unique way of expressing herself spoke volumes. The distinctive double negative commonly used by working class southerners ("Babe hadn't never bought no"…), the dropping of the "g" sound on words ending with "ing" ("hair-curlin") and the use of the pronoun "Mammy" for "mother" conjured a young woman who was the full-blown product of her class, her region, and her time. Mary's voice was preserved long past her death in the obscure profile I unearthed in the Kennedy Room's archives at the Spartanburg County Public Library, and I like to think it was given new life in influencing the voice of the fictional white southern woman, Calla Stout, who is my protagonist in the book that will be published next.
In crafting dialogue for this novel, especially dialogue between Calla and members of her troubled family, I had to find a way to create a shared vocabulary that was based in authentic experience but which allowed me some freedom to innovate. This could only be accomplished once I'd immersed myself in the relevant primary sources: oral histories, interviews, letters from state archives, first-person accounts from mill town dwellers and chain gang prisoners, notes on spoken phrases I heard from living descendants of farmers and factory workers in the area, and so on. I continue to revise these voices and their language, seeking to make them as truthful as possible while maintaining their effectiveness in advancing the objectives of the individual characters.
Here's a sample of dialogue from TROUBLEFIELD (soon to be published by Algonquin), from a conversation Calla has with her brother Tennyson, a volatile man who's just been released after eight months on the county chain gang for disemboweling a fellow millworker in a knife fight.
Seeing in his eyes what he'd been through in the last eight months, along with the proud look that promised he could handle that and eight months more without batting an eye, I got the balks. "Tell me how you been," I said when I could find my voice at last, and when he answered with the same old joke that had been our daddy's, "I been better but it cost me more," he laughed but I couldn't even smile.
"Your husband know you're here?" he asked, and added, before I had a chance to speak, "Right enough. He sent you, didn't he."
"I'd have you to the house, Tennyson. If I could."
Tennyson sighed, turning his back on me as he joined the pipe to the stove and fitted the other end to the length sticking out the chimney.
"Ain't a problem for me. I like Abernathy's. Her rules make sense, leastways."
"And you're making the rent all right?"
He nodded, plucking a screw from his mouth and twisting it into the joint. "Got work. Got a place to stay. That oughter keep me off the chain gang."
I winced. "Don't you miss us?"
He looked at me, but then turned away, swallowing hard. "Maude ever ask about me?"
"Sure she does. About when she's going to see you again." The thought came to me that we'd missed him for Thanksgiving dinner, thinking he was still in the camp out on Copperhead Hill. Where had he gone that day? Who would have been willing to take him in? Maybe that's why Juanita Reid took the gingerbread from me without so much as a "thank you."
"She's missed you. And she misses Dolphie. Wilbanks' friend. He got married a few weeks back."
"That McCready toff?"
I nodded. "He can't come 'round Dunnet Head no more."
Tennyson made a snorting sound. "I reckon not. It's just as well Maudie finds out what those stand-up-collar folks are like. She's not going to learn that from her ma."
"Don't start in on my husband, Tennyson. We been down that road already." To my surprise, the smug look on my brother's face melted away.
"The truth is, I don't have no chicken to pick with that lawyer-man of yours," he told me. "He's does for you and Maudie, which is more than Jimmy Goforth cared to do. More than I did, as your brother. I still believe you're owed better, but we got to do our best with what we're handed, don't we."
I bit my tongue when he said that, because I'd been this close to telling him about States Rights Ramseur and how I was thinking more and more that I might run off with the undertaker who found all my living parts so pleasing.
"I been thinking about what you told me in the courtroom," he went on. He was studying me now, to see if I remembered it. "Do you --"
"I told you not to be the mule."
He nodded, a tiny smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. His hair fell unevenly over his ears -- it looked as if they'd barbered him in camp with a dull handsaw. "That's right. I was too lobber-headed to hear it that day. But I hear it now. Always have had a powerful anger inside me. In the cage-wagon out at Copperhead I studied on how that temper might could do me some good, if I could only get a holt of it. I'm hurting for a plan. Otherwise I'm going to end up like Peckerwood Pennington, digging my grave with every day I spend in the back end of bad luck."
"What's the plan, then?" I asked. "What should you be doing different?"
He shook his head, easing the jointed pipe into the top of the dirty stove. "I'm not sure," he said. "I might just lay it to God, this time. Wait for a sign."
* * *
Out on the stoop I looked up and down the line before stepping down. Tennyson stood on the porch behind me, using a rag to clean the grease out of his fingernails. It troubled me that I'd made him feel low-class, showing up out of the blue at a run-down three-room, watching him fit dirty stovepipe together. It had been a bad idea to dress up. "Where's that mean dog gone to?" I asked. "I don't want to get bit."
Now he laughed again, but in a harsh way, like he'd just as soon spit. "Where do you expect him to go? This is home. The family who bolted out of here ahead of the rent left a pan of liver mush to spoil on the stove and that hound locked out in the yard." He shook his head. I tried to make some mealy-mouthed excuse for the tenants, like "those who have never known kindness..." but he cut me off. "Would you do that? Truly? Not even give the liver to your dog before you tied him to a tree and moved on?"
He didn't expect an answer to this, so I made none. I said, "Look after yourself, Brother," and walked home to Dunnet Head.
