2. Corn Bread n' Butter

The first food that I remember is butter - fresh, creamy, homemade butter. The story goes that I was helping my Grandmother churn butter on the front porch. She left for a second and came back to find me with my face covered in butter and grinning ear to ear. It was then I learned of Grandma Ada’s hickory switch. She grabbed me up by the arm and marched me out back to find a good switch, all the time telling me why I was being punished. She told me that this was not to prove that she was bigger than me. It was not discipline for the sake of discipline. It was survival. I had taken what did not belong to me and that meant someone else would do without. Then she asked if I understood. I shook my head yes while my eyes stayed glued to the switch. Then she turned me round and gave me three sharp licks across the back of my legs. I feel it still. Not the switch but the deep disappointment and genuine worry in her eyes. I understood what I had done wrong and knew why I was being punished. That was the first and last time I felt that way. 

Later, I ran away and fell asleep in the corn field. To this day I love corn; corn bread, corn chips, corn on the cob, corn flakes, or creamed corn. I love beans and fried taters. I love biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, okra and peach cobbler. My stomach is southern fried no matter how many times I pretend it isn’t.

My roots are deep in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. I left as a child, and over the years it had become as foreign to me as Tibet. About a decade ago, I went back for family reunion on my father’s side. I didn’t know my father, my parents separated when I was only three. I met him again when I was 17 and he was dying of emphysema. The family reunion meant that I would see the aunts and uncles, cousins and kin I’d met at my father’s funeral. My younger sister was driving up from Florida, my brother flew in from Phoenix and I came from Seattle. My brother and I met up in Atlanta and then my niece, my daughter, my grandson my brother and I made the drive down home together. I hadn’t seen my brother in fifteen years and my sister in six. I believed with all my heart that it would be the last time I’d see them. The last time we’d all be together. It may have been.

As we rode I dared to imagine the re-union of my family. We had been a real family ages ago, with giggles and stories and loyalty and trust. Then divorce, illness, Vietnam, disputes, misunderstandings, accusations and distance pulled us apart. It was as though trouble had exploded into our lives and sent us flying in different directions. We could not move any farther apart without crossing an ocean. And now here we were coming together again for our father’s family reunion. It had special symbolism for me. Now I was dying of my father’s disease, emphysema. I was coming home to visit his grave. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for not understanding and that I knew how difficult it was for him in those last days. Meeting with my brother and sister, I was hoping to mend fences and make peace. I allowed myself to believe it could happen and I was full of anticipation.

As the car climbed up a mountainside there were neat little farms tucked in the valleys and hollers. It looked more like Ireland than America. There was something eternal and soothing about the hills. Like the lilting verses of an Irish song. The earth sang and the music was inevitable. You could hear an occasional fiddle, banjo or squeeze box. We climbed our way up the mountain and then suddenly, the road turned and opened up into a town square. At one end was the City Hall complete with a clock tower. The other end was the local hotel built before the Civil War. It had a wrap around porch full of rocking chairs, each one keeping tempo, a cobblestone walk and a wishing well. It was a picture postcard of a young America.

At the end of town was a large park with a pavilion at the center. It had a red tin roof and was open on all four sides. People were crowded around a huge BBQ that was glowing with ribs and chicken. We found the parking lot and parked the car. As we walked we could hear musicians playing “Teach your Children” and we followed the music home like the pied pipers children. With each step my heart began to sing the words.

“And you of tender years
Can't know the fears
That your elders grew by
And so please help
Them with your youth
They seek the truth
Before they can die”


Already my father’s disease had eaten my lungs. I was barely eighty pounds and every step was a struggle. Nevertheless, I saw my sister get out of the car I did my best to run and embrace her. My hugs met dead arms and my kiss met the back of her head. She looked at the ground, gave me a shoulder and walked away.

I was baffled. But this is behavior is not uncommon. In my family we have gone without speaking for so long that no one remembers how it started and yet we continue to do it. I didn’t know that we were fighting. But then I never do. When I ask I’m usually told, “Well, if you don’t know why I’m mad, I’m not going to tell you!” To which I always reply, “If I knew I was making you mad, I wouldn’t do it.” They get mad and stop being mad on a timetable of their own. It has nothing to do with me.

As we passed by the musicians, I stopped and complimented their playing. They asked who I was. When they realized I was Rush’s kid, they all had stories about him. A couple of them learned to play from my Daddy. I knew he played and sang and wrote songs too, but I never heard him. Buy the time I got to know him, his singing days were over. It was good to hear the stories about him and to know that part of him carried on in his music. Then the guys started to play another set and we headed towards the food.

When we entered the Pavilion I saw tons of kinfolk . Then I saw my mother at the center of a crowd. It was so odd to see her there. All my life she had never had one good word to say about my Daddy or his family, she hated them all. I was only seventeen when my father died, but she made me take my college savings to buy plane tickets so my sister and I could go to the funeral. She wouldn’t spend a nickel for his funeral. That’s why I was stunned to see her with all his relatives at his family reunion. I didn’t understand why everyone was gathered around my mother like she was some kind of Queen Bea. I found out quickly why she was there and why I got the cold shoulder from my sister. I was the target of my mother’s wrath this time round. Bea stings were lethal.

It seems that a few months earlier when my daughter and I had visited Mama, I had failed to be a good and deserving daughter. She was recovering from knee surgery and while we were there. We tried to take care of her. I did a lot of cleaning and my daughter spent all day in the kitchen cooking. About a week into the visit we ran out of groceries and money. We borrowed money to buy more groceries. But according to Mama we were eating her out of house and home and starving her. She had cast me again in the role of that ungrateful, selfish girl who was killing her poor Mama. The kinfolk showed up to take her out to dinner and save her from me. I was just grateful for the refuge from the drama. I had other things on my mind.

One night Mama finished the food on her plate and walked to the kitchen. Her five foot frame drags the 200 plus pounds of her self-indulgence. She pretended to wash off her plate, but from the kitchen we can see her shoveling more food into her mouth from the pots on the stove. I was sitting in a chair at the dining room table, pushing the corn around on my plate. I know I have to eat. I’m less than 80 pounds, nothing but skin over bones. My clothes hang on me like a wire hanger. I take a fork full of mashed potatoes, they get to my mouth but I choke when I try to swallow. The food is delicious – I know it is. My grown daughter has done the cooking. She is an excellent cook. I spit them into a napkin and push the corn some more.

Mama finished eating her second helpings in the kitchen and headed back in the dining room. My throat tightens. As she passes she tells me that it looks like I’d gained weight. I was surprised by her kindness and said, “Oh, you think so? I’ve been trying really hard.” Then the sucker punch, “Well, You KNOW how you are. If you’re not careful, and don’t watch everything you eat, you’ll be fat. You’ve always been fat” , my Mama says to me, the eighty pound anorexic. “No, Mama” I tell her, for the last decade I’ve been fighting to gain weight – not lose it.” She tilts her head and raises one eyebrow. “Well, it never goes away. Once you’re fat – you’re always fat – no matter how much you weigh.” It all seemed absurd to me. I couldn’t believe that this obese woman was telling me that I’m fat. I said in a joking tone “Oh you mean I’ve got a fat person inside of me just trying to get out?” “Yep” Mama quips, “There’s a fat person inside you just waiting for a chance to sneak out.” I push the plate away. One spoon of mashed potatoes and I’m finished with my dinner. “Oh,” Mama says, “don’t let that good food go to waste, hand it over here.”

I didn’t buy her a new oil heater, I didn’t move the refrigerator and clean behind it and I did not strip and refinish her armoire. It did not matter to her that I was not able to do those things. I had no money and worse yet, I had no lungs. In her eyes I was a fat lazy girl who needed to be punished and she waited patiently till the timing was perfect to even the score.

Now, months later, she makes the grand entrance at my father’s family reunion. She gave her “pity me” performance and everyone rushed to cajole and soothe her. They ran to fetch and cater. They did her bidding and froze out me and mine. My brother and my sister clung protectively to Mama, knowing the cost of her disapproval. No one spoke to me. No one spoke to my daughter. Once the Queen Bea made the rounds, even the musicians kept their distance. After an hour or so, my father’s sister came over out of pity. We left early to find a place to stay. My brother and sister would stay with Mama. We were not invited. No one offered us shelter. None of my father’s family dared to cross Mama. Surrounded by family, I was again the orphan. We drove around for hours till we found a funky motel where the rain leaked in and the bedding smelled. We left the next morning.

There is a brutality that lives in the south, along with all the exaggerated manners and false civility. Some of it is born of the need to survive. Some of it is pure sadism. At her center, Mama is a cruel woman who makes no allowances and exacts her vengeance without mercy.

My first food itself was a contradiction, the sweet taste of butter followed by the cut of the switch. Decades later, it was still the sweet sound of music and then the bitter silence.