Whatcha Know, Girl?

My grandmother, Janet, who I called Nanie (pronounced Nan-EE), not to be confused with the paid for kind who trains at an academy for au pairs, grew up the oldest child out of ten siblings, nine living (one died right after birth) of two tenant farmers in a holler in Kentucky. A holler is just what is sounds like. It's named a holler because if you yell someone's name, the sound is magnified because of the rolling knobs and mountains. If you've never been to the middle of fucking nowhere, just imagine a valley, but way more fucked up. Less Air BNB and more Final Destination.

I hated the mountains. I hated the hollers. I was forced to visit them as a young child. Appealing names for towns, if you could call them that. Most of them had one store at best and maybe a gas station. Towns with names like "Turkey Town" and "Crab Orchard" and "Rabbit Hash". Ironically, Crab Orchard had no crabs or orchards but it did have a lot of pear trees, prescription drugs, and people who couldn't escape.

Turkey Town is probably the worst of all of them. I remember being forced to go there with Nanie. She went to visit Aunt Elizabeth, her mother's mom. I never saw Aunt Elizabeth get out of the makeshift hospital bed that was in the room. I could never figure out if it was her living room the bed was in or the bedroom.

I would get the privilege of pissing in an outhouse. Not a port-o-potty, I'm talking a legit outhouse. If you have never been in an outhouse, it smells horrific. An outhouse is not attached to the main dwelling and usually involves you walking on gravel to get there. I'm not sure if the gravel is an aesthetic thing or the remnants of the hope of the people there.

Outhouses are wooden but not good wood. This isn't like Lowe's wood or Home Depot wood. This is like you saw down a tree and cut it but never evenly and then you kinda just nail it together. The best imagery I can come up with is like a preschooler glue-ing Popsicle sticks together to make a house. Except that it's life size and you are going to shit in it.

You can feel the wind, there's always wind, except when it's hot. There's never wind or a breeze then. Just staleness. You can hear the buzzing of some sort of God-forsaken bug. It's like radio static or some kind of Chinese torture except the Chinese wouldn't even fuck with this place.

I will never in my life forget how awful it smelled using the bathroom in the outhouse. If you were lucky, a snake or some other animal wouldn't be in there when you decided to go. Oh, an important fact I left out . . .

This was in 1992.

After surviving both Aunt Elizabeth who I am still not quite sure she was anyone's aunt and pissing with the copperheads in the outhouse . . . we would traverse the great highway to go to worst place on Earth , , ,

MAMAW'S HOUSE

Mamaw (pronounced Mam-AW) was a skinny, wrinkled hag of a woman whose legs were always covered with sores. Her face was wrinkled, her hair was brownish-gray, short, and wiry . . . almost like she had stuck her hand in a light socket. She wore cotton slippers from the Dollar General and house dresses that most ladies would have used to sleep in but she seemed to be in pseudo-pajamas no matter what time of day it was. I would love to say she was an alcoholic, a gambler, or even had a pill addiction but no, she was just old, bitter, and hateful.

It was quite the juxtaposition for a then 8 year old me, looking at my well put together "fancy" Nanie and then seeing this shadow of a woman. I still don't know how a woman like that had a daughter like her. Nanie made me go with her to visit both Aunt Elizabeth and her mother, Mamaw. Anna was her legal name. Even typing that name puts a sense of dread in me. I would always be hopeful that maybe one of my cousins might be at Mamaw's house which overlooked the Crab Orchard Cemetary which was up on a hill and you could see it from the front porch, most of the time they werent there . . . but other times I might be saved from the wretchedness that was a visit with Mamaw. But most of the time, I wouldn't be.

Nanie went to Mamaw's to cook and clean. Nanie's house was always well decorated and pristine. At Mamaw's house, your shoes would get stuck to the floor because they were so sticky when we first arrived. And it smelled like . . . musty isn't the word . . . it wasn't garbage . . . image "giving up" had a smell and that was the smell that was in that house.

Mamaw had been moved from Turkey Town to the big city of Crab Orchard much to her chagrin by my Uncle Jack. Mamaw's husband who everyone called Pappy was a womanizing, gambling alcoholic. Pappy was killed in a tractor accident right outside of Crab Orchard when a truck hit him. The settlement money from the lawsuit paid for this house in Crab Orchard. Mamaw hated it.

I think looking back, that Mamaw wanted death but the universe rarely if ever gives us what we ask for, and Mamaw damn near outlived all of us. She did eventually get her wish to leave Crab Orchard and was moved to a nursing home in Danville that smelled like decaying diapers. The nurses loved her and I could never figure out why. She did try to escape once but once she realized there wasn't anywhere any better to go, she decided to return.

So, each weekend, Nanie would promise me ice cream or maybe a trip to the "candy store" which really was a dusty old pharmacy where I could buy candy cigarettes and lollipops for cheap. I would hop in the Buick, only to realize I had been tricked once again. First we would go to Aunt Elizabeth's and then to Mamaw's, so we could cook and clean for a woman who fussed at us the entire time.

Mamaw didn't live alone. Stanley, one of my Nanie's brothers lived with Mamaw. Stanley was a tall man, most of the Turpins are tall people, I do believe I may clock in as the shortest grown female of the family at 5'3". Most of my female cousins are 5'9" and taller. I think I get my height from my father's side of the family but my mom was also a chain smoker so that may have something to do with it too.

Stanley had a protruding lower lip, was tan no matter what time of year it was, had dark hair, and the Turpin blue eyes. Stanley was friendly and never met a stranger. He knew everyone in Crab Orchard which isn't that difficult to do but most people didn't try to, but Stanley did. Stanley also always had work, some odd job someone needed done for money.

When that blue Buick of Nanie's would pull up to the front of that white house, Stanley inevitably would crack a grin, and look at me and say,

"Whatcha know, girl?"

And I would tell him all about what I was learning in school. Stanley didn't talk completely clearly and I didn't understand why but he always wanted to ask

"Whatcha know?"

in his somewhat slurred country accent. Stanley in some ways was scary to 8 year old me, I think because I knew something was different. But he was always nice to me so any reservation I had completely melted away when we would talk about school.

The scar on the back of Stanley's head is something I have never seen before or since then. When Stanley would turn around, he had what appeared to be almost like part of his brain sticking out but it was as if it had been shrouded over. Like his brain had tried to escape but then his skull at the last minute regretted the decision to let it leave and grew back over it. No hair grew on the scar. It was maybe four inches long.

No one ever pointed it out or mentioned it. And like any dysfunctional but trying to be functional family, if anything seemed out of the ordinary we just didn't point it out. Like if we didn't say anything or give something attention that would make the imperfections almost magically disappear.

I finally got the courage up to ask Nanie one weekend what happened to Stanley and why was he always asking me

"Whatcha know?

Nanie hesitated which wasn't like her. Our family isn't known for being conservative or afraid to speak. In fact, we are quite the opposite. As her eyes glazed over you could see she was transported back in time. Worse times. Her childhood. And she began to tell me

"Jessie, when we were growing up there were nine of us, well ten but your Mamaw had that one baby that died when it was born. My daddy, your Pappy, you don't remember him, he died the year after you were born in the tractor accident. He was an alcoholic. And we were tenant farmers . . . share croppers . . . Daddy would work in those old fields stripping tobacca and we would work alongside him.

Daddy would get paid what little was left after the tobacca went to market and the landlord took what he owed, and he would disappear. Sometimes for days, weeks, one time for almost a year. But he always came back and always with no money left. We could never get off of the farm. My poor old Mama, your Mamaw would stay pregnant. She loved him and always welcomed him back home.

Well, when Mamaw was pregnant with your Uncle Stanley, she was fine. But when she went into labor, we called the doctor to the house to help deliver Stanley. Stanley got stuck in the birth canal and the doctor had to use forceps to pull him out. Except the doctor didn't know how to use them the right way. So when they were pulling him out of her, the forceps went into his skull and hit his brain. That's where Stanley's scar came from.

They got him out of her and she almost bled to death. They weren't sure if Stanley was going to make it or not but somehow he lived and she did too. We probably should have sued the doctor but we didn't know what a lawsuit was and it wouldn't have fixed the problem anyway.

We all looked out for Stanley and tried to help him. The doctors said he was slow. But he was our brother, slow or not.

Sometimes we were allowed to go to school if we didn't have to help on the farm. We were always the poorest and the dirtiest no matter which school we went to. I remember not paying attention in class because I didn't know what was going on anyway I had missed so much but it was Stanley's first day of school, except I didn't see him once we got into the building.

I looked out the window because Jessie, I would have rather been outside than trapped inside listening to things I didn't know, when I saw my brother outside, picking up garbage out on the lawn. I asked my teacher why wasn't Stanley in his class? And she said, "Listen girl, that's where the slow ones go. They can't be learned like the rest of you. Might as well have him do something useful."

And my Nanie stopped as the tears went down her face.

"Jessie, Stanley asks "Whatcha know?" because he wasn't allowed to be in school and he thinks it's great that you get to go to school every day and be in the building and learn all the things we didn't get to learn as the poor, dirty, slow kids."

Whatcha know?