“You should be known for the beauty. . .of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.”
Young Della McGraw—the author’s grandmother
It is 1968. I am my mother’s mother, an Appalachian coal miner’s daughter, an 8th-grade education my only defense against the trials of the world. I feed three mouths with wages from an automotive assembly line job. It’s work that abuses my body and my spirit, but it’s work I’m lucky to have. At least it puts food on the table. No bellies were ever filled up with dreams.
Besides, hope is a luxury no one can seem to afford. Dr. King and Senator Kennedy have been shot. The war in Vietnam carries on. This violence has found its way into my own home, oozing in under the doorways like so much spilled blood. My husband stumbled in drunk and held a gun to my head as I napped on the couch before my shift, our older daughter screaming at him from the stairs.
Alice Blankenship with her husband, Jefferson McGraw
It is 1948. I am my grandmother’s mother, nursing the last of my ten children on my West Virginia farm. I have learned to read and write in my four years of schooling, so I can read about life outside of the hills, but I haven’t learned enough to find my way out of them, away from my abusive husband, who drinks away his wages from the coal mines. And once I have been paralyzed by a stroke, I have no hope of escaping anything at all.
Rachel Stacy on the farm in Rock Lick, Virginia
It is 1918. I am that mother’s mother still. I cannot read or write, but no one in Rock Lick can save for the preacher. He tells us everything we need to know to live in service to God.
It is 1878. I am Mother Sarah, married at 14 to a man ten years my senior. Neither of us is literate, but we don’t need books to know how to make 20 children. I will bury three of them in the span of five years, and six more that I carry after my fortieth year will be born still. Preacher says that children are a gift for the faithful. Why can’t he see it is loss that has made me faithless?
Della. Alice. Rachel. Sarah. What more would you like to hear? Our voices? They were only a whisper. Our thoughts? They had no more relevance than the wind.
How far back shall I go before you understand?
Our dreams could only rise up from the steam as we cooked, from pots of water we watched on purpose, just to prove that they would boil.