MOUNTAIN MAGIC with ANN HITE

MOUNTAIN MAGIC with ANN HITE

The Great Palace Lie: Every Family Has One

I always tell my writing students to read, read, read. To be a writer, you must read. In the words of others, we find inspiration to write our own stories. This month’s column started when I was reading a book about Appalachian conjuring. This has nothing to do with my piece, but the book inspired me to think about the meaning of family bibles in Appalachia. And that made me think of my granny and there I went. See how reading and writing go together. How inspiration trickles from stories. Here is the column that came forth. 

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Granny had a bible with a cracked leather cover that she kept in the drawer of her nightstand beside her big four-poster bed. Back in those days, everyone owned some kind of bible and displayed them on coffee tables or bookshelves. In Appalachia, the bible was more than just “the good book” that went to church with a soul on Sunday. In Appalachia, believing in God and conjuring, healing, and having sight went hand-in-hand. Still does. Being a Christian in Southern Appalachia was a whole different ballgame than down here in Atlanta. My great aunts went to the small, one room church every Sunday morning. And when I stayed with them, I went too. The place was jammed packed with folks. No one cared what a person did the night or week before, mostly everyone was accepted. Uncle Dogun (pronounced: Doo-gun) would stay out drinking until daybreak, drag himself in the front door, and go clean-up for church while Aunt Stella (pronounced: Stellar) made a pot of black coffee for him to drink before leaving for church. The “men will be men” attitude prevailed in their holler. It wasn’t so much like that for women, who were held to higher standards and considered the bedrocks of their families. In many cases they were the healers, the granny women. Bibles were seen as the granny woman’s guidance to conjuring their spells and saving a person from some sickness. Many outside of Appalachia would view this activity as not very Christian. This was far from the truth. Every act of healing—pulling fire, stopping bleeding, lowering sugar in the blood—was associated with a bible verse. The only thing that would get a person kicked out of church, especially women, was adultery. 

Unbeknownst to me, Granny had fallen out of grace within her childhood holler. If I have to be honest, I only saw her inside a church once in my whole life when she married her second husband after being a widow for forty years. That’s not to say she didn’t believe because she did.  Her bible stayed tucked away in her bedside table, and she never offered it to me. 

Bibles in Appalachia were used to preserve family records for generations. A person could learn about the distant past from the front pages of these books. While visiting my great aunts, I was allowed to flip through the giant family bible that belonged to my great-grandparents. There were pages of people I had never heard of, going back to my second great grandparents on Granny’s maternal side. There was a list of Granny’s brothers and sisters and their families. I flipped the page expecting to see Granny’s name. Instead, I found nothing. Granny wasn’t mentioned. This bothered me and I tracked down Aunt Stella, who frowned at my blunt childish question. “You’ll have to ask your granny about that story.” 

And that was that. Granny had told me many stories about her childhood. If she didn’t mention the big family bible, she had a secret meant to be kept. The subject was buried. When I returned home from my great aunts’, in my first quiet alone moment in the small, overcrowded house, I slipped the bible out of the beside drawer, took a deep breath, and opened it to the front page. There was the writing I wanted to see. 

Granny always said to be careful what questions you ask because you might get an answer that you can’t live with. 

On the page was Granny’s chicken scratch writing. Written as if she had pressed down so hard she wrinkled the tissue thin paper. Ink was smeared. No, it was a mark through. A whole name next to hers was crossed out with a black inky blob. All that was left was J.D., my grandfather’s initials. Well, I already knew his last name. The same as Granny’s, Loyd. Then I spied a name under Mother’s. A girl’s name, Estelle. The birth and death date revealed she was two when she left the world. Mother was not the only child she claimed to be. This was the biggest question mark in my life. How would I keep it a secret, pretend I never saw this little girl’s name? 

I couldn’t. Well, that’s not true. I kept it close to my heart for three whole days. Then one evening as I stood in the small, heated kitchen with Granny as she cooked supper after work, I blurted out the burning question. 

“I took your bible out of the drawer and looked at the front pages.” I prepared myself for her disappointment. Instead, I saw a flicker of fear cross her face. 

“Did you have a little girl that died?” 

This time her expression relaxed and a big breath was released, as if the question she feared wasn’t the one I asked. Of course this is my opinion in adult hindsight. “Yes. She was younger than your mother. She died at two.” 

“So, what was the big deal? Why didn’t someone tell me?” 

Granny paused a full minute. The old clock ticked on the wall above the kitchen table. “Sometimes a person just can’t tell the stories that hurt the most. You’ll understand when you grow up and you have your own hurt. It’s just easier to sweep it out the door and go on with life.” She went on to tell me how Estelle died. Meningitis. The subject was rarely brought up after that. Only once many years later, when my middle daughter was two and we sat in Granny’s living room within view of the nightstand that once held the bible. 

“She looks just like the baby girl I lost. All those blond curls. It seems like yesterday.” 

I almost asked about the bible but decided against it. After all, I had become an adult with children of my own. The bible was something Granny saw fit to keep tucked away for her own reasons. 

So, you ask what is the mountain magic in this story? Remember sometimes the question one asks could produce an answer you aren’t expecting. 

To be honest, I never thought about that bible again until today when I was wondering what to write for this month’s column. I should have thought about this mysterious book many times after, but for some reason, I shoved it in a drawer in my mind. Of course I kept asking questions. In 2020 seventeen years after Granny died, I wrote a memoir about her, Mother, and me. While writing this manuscript, I found many questions and sought answers. The book, Roll The Stone Away, began when a second cousin told me a shocking secret at my mother’s funeral. “You know, Ann, your mother’s maiden name wasn’t really her name. Your grandmother changed it when your mother was six.” 

Granny’s last name, Loyd, wasn’t her last name? Still I didn’t put that day of looking at the bible together with this news. 

This morning as I thought of writing about family bibles in Appalachia, I realized why Granny looked so relieved when I asked about Estelle that day in the kitchen. The real secret wasn’t Estelle’s death. Granny truly hurt too much from the loss to talk about her. No, that wasn’t the secret hidden in the bible that was hidden away. The secret was the last name of J.D. (my grandfather) that was marked through with such a force that it wrinkled the page. In that moment, I realized I didn’t even know what J.D. stood for. That Mother died not knowing what her father’s initials stood for. That the ink blot in Granny’s bible should have made me suspicious. 

And this is mountain magic. A memory emerging fifty years later, connecting to an ink spot in a hidden bible. A memory that showed up exactly when I was ready to understand, when I was plenty old enough to see that the details of the past can be forgiven, that we can move forward. 

I know. I didn’t tell my dear readers the true secret, but only revealed the name change, leaving more questions than answers. Seems to be a nasty habit in my family. But this story is such a long and winding tale, I don’t have enough room here to do it justice. But you can read whole truth in the memoir. Mountain magic helped me to understand Granny’s great palace lie and how life is never just black or white. That all people have flaws. Remember every family has skeletons in their closets. Maybe that’s why Granny never seemed to judge a person even when they deserved it. 

Forgiveness and acceptance are the ultimate gifts passed on with this memory. May we all experience this magic in our lives.