In My Heart and Mind

By Marti Lyons

When religious leaders preach one way and act the complete opposite, when people turn the other cheek on someone who needs help, and when parents become estranged to each other, a seven-year-old girl struggles to find the meaning of it all and tries to understand the madness that surrounds her.

The story of a young girl named Nora brings to light a place predominantly inhabited by devout Christians. As a little girl who lived on a farm with her siblings and parents, Nora learned the type of peo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781681392295

Book preview

Dedications

For Ed---my anchor

and also

For Steve, Luke, and Aaron—my pride and joy

In My Heart and Mind is a work of fiction.

Chapter One

How shall we know

the things which we are to believe?

—An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine

question no.10, page 32

This is a very important day. I can feel the tension being transmitted through some unseen and unexplainable source from my mother to me. I do not remember a time when I was unable to discern this unspoken code. Not that I claim to have always known what Mom was thinking. Far from it, she is much too complicated for that, but I seem, at least in my own mind, to always have been able to sense the most subtle change in my mother’s being, that part which is the essence of her, though there is nothing subtle about the change this morning. My mother, whom her children call Mom, and whom everyone else in the community calls Liddy, actually has a lovely name that probably not but a handful of folks have ever bothered to learn. It is Lydia, which appears in the Bible in Acts 16. This is a fact that Mom seems especially proud of and always mentions should anyone ever ask where she got her name.

Stand still, Nora, Mom says.

And I do stand still as my mother combs my long thick, straight black hair. The hair color, as well as the texture, is from my mother’s people. I have been told that I have some American Indian blood. This fact is evident in the rare black-and-white photographs of some of my mother’s people. The almost blue-black hair color is unmistakable even in the dull black-and-white pictures taken with a crude camera. The high cheekbones of my people in the photos also attest to my heritage; however, this particular physical characteristic is not as pronounced in me as the hair. I have often studied the few photographs that have been passed down to my parents by their parents. They seem to be made of a delicate, easily bendable black tin substance, and I am intrigued with them. It is not so much the mystery of how a little black box can transfer images onto a thin metallic material that fascinates me, although I have wondered about this as well; it is the images of the people themselves that cause me to sit and stare at them for long periods of time and wonder about the living, breathing people behind the images. It is the knowledge that these are my people. Their experiences have helped to shape who I am. They have the same blood running through their veins as me. Perhaps, I often think, if I could just get to know their needs and desires and fears and triumphs and failures, this knowledge would unlock the secrets that would answer many of the questions I already have about my own short life. But the pictures that I study from time to time reveal little other than a suggestion of height and weight and perhaps the fashions of the day. And even though the high cheekbones and blue-black hair are unmistakable, that is where the revelations end. The always somber expressions on the faces in the photographs reveal nothing of the possible struggles or triumphs and defeats of my people. Occasionally, there is a glimpse into a trait of one of my ancestors from my mother or one of my grandmothers, but it is always fleeting and never elaborated upon, usually leaving more questions than answers.

Girls are not to think of themselves as pretty, as this would be vain and most certainly a sin. Probably, no one would call me pretty or vivacious anyway like some of my classmates with their natural blond curls and blue eyes, and I think that I do not have the carefree innocence and trusting nature and ready smile that some of my classmates possess that wins friends and causes adults and children alike to notice them. People do seem to notice me just the same. While no one would call me pretty, neither could I be thought of as plain. It is just that my looks are not what is at first noticeable about me. I am not noticed because of my dark hair and green eyes or the color of my skin. And I am not noticed because of the expression that reveals nothing of what I am feeling, an expression that I have automatically and unknowingly copied from my mother. After today, people in the congregation will ask, Who was the girl with the dark curls? because of a presence I have been told I possess that cannot be named. I have been told that I stand out not because I am the best looking or the smartest or the funniest. I am simply different. Different in an intriguing way.

I stand still while the brush rollers are removed and my hair is brushed. Over and over, the stiff-bristled brush is brought to the front of my forehead where the hairline begins and firmly continued all the way down to where the hair ends in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades, starting at different angles on my forehead until Mom is certain that every strand of hair has been brushed to silky, shiny perfection. The forcing of curls into naturally straight hair has created tangles that must be brushed out. I do not squirm or object but stand perfectly still and listen to the electric crackling of the brush through my squeaky clean hair. I also listen to Mom’s barely audible murmurings under her breath. I think to myself that surely my hair has been brushed enough. Surely whatever the brushing is to accomplish has been done by now, or never will be. It has been a daunting task to force my naturally thick and straight and heavy hair into curls. Daunting for both mother and daughter. But the current culture dictates that little girls should have curls, preferably blond like Shirley Temple, but nothing can be done about the color. So on this very important morning, I will have curls. Even though the brush rollers I have slept on have been very uncomfortable and have left imprints of the brushes around the edges of my face. Hopefully, the brush roller imprints will be gone by the time I receive my First Holy Communion in just a few hours now. Also, hopefully, while the brush roller marks will be gone, the curls and waves will hold until the ceremony is over and we are back home eating the fried chicken dinner that is our special dinner every Sunday after mass, not just on the Sunday of First Holy Communion.

Fried chicken and green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn and bananas rolled in salad dressing and crushed peanuts and homemade biscuits and chocolate pie, along with lemonade, are the usual Sunday fare. This Sunday will be no different except that, in addition, there will be country ham, just to mark this as a special occasion. The green beans and corn have been frozen and put in the huge freezer that sits on the closed-in back porch. They are from our garden from the summer before. There is always a big garden of cabbage, onions, green beans, corn, tomatoes, Idaho potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Also, there are watermelons and cantaloupes and pumpkins. There are apple, peach, and pear trees in an orchard sitting off a little way to the right side of the house in the back as you go out through the small back porch. Some years, the trees are loaded to the breaking point with fruit, and other years, they bear hardly any fruit at all. Whatever the good Lord sends in the way of weather and varmints is what folks accept. There are no irrigation systems and no sprays to kill bugs. Folks plant their crops and their gardens every year with sweat and faith that whatever happens is simply God’s will.

The country ham has been curing from the hog killing on a cold day late in the fall, also from the year before. The temperature on the day the hogs are slaughtered must be just right, not too warm or the meat will ruin and not too cold or it will freeze. The hog that has been put in a pen and fed and fattened is shot. Its throat is slit to allow it to bleed out. It is put into boiling water, and the outside skin and fat are removed before the meat is cut into different pieces and separated for processing. The hams and bacons are put into salt to cure. The other parts are wrapped in heavy wax paper and frozen. This process has taken the better part of two days to complete. I have only been an observer in this process, my folks both believing that the best help young children can be when there is real work to do is to stay out of the way.

Even the chickens at Sunday dinner are not store bought. Every spring, the mailman brings crates of baby chickens that Mom and Dad have ordered from a catalog. They arrive small and yellow and chirping. They live in a small house out in the backyard with several large lights, called heat lamps, shining down on them to keep them from getting too cold. Although I have at times been tempted to make pets of the soft, furry creatures, I am, after all, a farm girl and have learned early on their fate. Chickens are for eating, and grown folks and kids alike have to be fed. There is no place in the farmer’s life for sentimentality. This is a hard truth that every kid brought up on a farm learns early, something that just is, and you can’t remember ever having to be taught this fact. The baby chickens eat corn and sleep under the heat lamp. When they have grown a little bigger and the weather is warmer, they roam around in a fenced-in area in the yard and peck at the ground, seemingly content and blissfully unaware that in a few short weeks, their lives will be painfully and violently ended.

One day, Mom decides the chickens are big enough for the table. What happens next always leaves me slightly sick at my stomach. My petite, fragile, delicate, nervous mother chases the chickens around the yard. As she catches each one, she takes a sharpened knife and cuts off its head. The chicken then runs around the yard, flapping its wings and bleeding from its severed head, slinging blood in every direction until it dies. Mom now takes the chicken and puts it into boiling water and removes the feathers. She then cuts the chicken up into parts and puts it into saltwater and later either cooks it or freezes it. This barbaric act is carried out over and over until all the chickens are eaten or put in the freezer every year. Even though watching this has always made me slightly nauseous, it has never diminished the taste of the chicken. The best chicken ever and it is always fried. No self-respecting farmer’s wife would ever be caught dead baking a chicken. Chickens are born to be fried; this is just another fact of farm life.

I have stood perfectly still now for what seems like hours. At seven, I instinctively know that Mom will be a little more rough with the hairbrush on this important morning, partly because she wants me to look nice since she takes much pride in presenting her family to the public as clean, well fed, and well taken care of and partly because she is nervous. Mom does not like to be around people, especially the people she will be around today. I have studied this ever-present person in my life, this person who is vital to my survival and well-being. I have studied her words as well as her silences and her body movements and facial expressions and every nuance of this woman who is my mother. Partly, I have studied her because she is a very complicated person who reveals little of her true self through words and partly because I love her beyond all reason or explanation and strive to please her and to not add to her seemingly ongoing agitation. My mother’s nervousness is almost never mentioned but is most always present. I, along with my brother, Ron, and sister, Clair, have learned very early to walk on invisible eggshells in order not to add to our mother’s anxiety. We do this not out of fear of punishment but rather out of a sincere, but misguided, desire to protect our mother from the world.

Many years later, a little while before he had died, my dad had said to me, If something happens to me, take care of your mother. I had simply promised that I would, not bothering to mention that I had been doing this in my own way for as long as I could remember. I feel as if I have been born knowing that my mother is fragile, and that it is my and my siblings’ main purpose in life to protect her. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother doesn’t really need protecting, for she is a woman ahead of her time just as her mother had been. This woman that everyone calls Liddy possesses intelligence far above most in her community and a gentleness and decentness that make it hard for her to relate to people who are crude and ignorant in comparison. People such as my mother are often mistaken for weak when they are, in fact, strong in ways that most people can’t even recognize. Lydia was simply born in a time and place that was not suited to her temperament. A different time and place and she might have gone on to be highly educated, and perhaps she would have achieved something she might have considered worthwhile, but at this point in time, family and children are her lot in life, and she accepts this and does the best she can. One day, I will come to more clearly understand the legacy of integrity, truth, and strength that are mine because of my mother and her mother.

But today, I am seven and about to make my First Holy Communion. According to Sister Jean Marie at school and the priest at church, this will be one of the most important days in my life. After my hair has been curled and brushed to my mother’s satisfaction, the tiny white wedding gown and veil are brought out of the closet. The dress is fitted to my slender waist with a wide white silk band. Also, this dress has three-quarter length sleeves that reach almost to the tops of my white-gloved hands. Starting right below the waist