Space Enough for God, Mama Hattie, and a Whale (Part One)

It’s the small things that keep a person alive, often unnoticed until they rise from memory’s grave. Take my grandmother, Mama Hattie. She made it to ninety-five. She was born in a wagon-and-mule era and died the day an astronaut stepped from the space shuttle to test heating devices in the toe caps of his boots.

Her obituary said she was somebody’s wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and aunt. But she was so much more. I penned a few memories the day after her funeral. I put them together in an essay reprinted in the anthology Appalachian Mountain from Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.

The Sunday-school teacher’s full-skirted, bluish-green dress puddled as she scooched down on the brown-speckled floor that looked like skin on aging hands. The tips of her white gloves rested on the edge of our maple kids’ table. She rocked on her heels. Her midnight-black pouf shone but didn’t move. A careful curl wisped along either cheekbone. Bright blue buttons punched down the front of her dress. They were large, round, and flat, and I wanted to steal one to hide in Mom’s button box.

The teacher looked at each of us and solemnly said, “This is God’s house.” Confusing. The week before, another teacher had said, “God is so big he’s everywhere.”

Poor God. How did he fit in “his house”? Guessing he could pass through walls like a ghost, I pictured him trying to sleep at night—his head stuck out of the stained-glass window in the sanctuary and his feet protruding from the gym that doubled as a fellowship hall and smelled waxy and sweaty after church teams played on Saturdays.

Mom said God lived in our hearts and pressed a hand to her chest. A favorite church song said God had the whole world in his hands. That stuck with me on the way to Mama Hattie’s house as Dad drove our rattle-trap white station wagon.

We reached Spooky Hollow—a densely wooded stretch between Fairmount and Hinton, Georgia—just as night crept across gray dusk. Dad rolled down his window and called into the rush of air. “Here it comes, Spoo-ooo-ky Holler!” A twang always stole into his syllables whenever he headed to his mother’s house. “Hollows” became “hollers” and “over there” became “over yonder.”

Crammed in the middle seat, we squished from one side to the other as the car lurched and pitched. When riding home from church with Dad, we called it “playing corners.” His sedan was cavernous and round. Sometimes we took turns crouching over a peephole in the worn floorboard, staring at the pavement and counting how many times the car wandered over the yellow line.

Our early sixties station wagon had tailfins. Wings to me. I wished for sharper, longer ones so we would blur past the inky trees walking in the fog of Spooky Hollow, with crooked arms and skeleton fingers thrusting through the leaves. My sisters and brother shrieked.

“Look, there’s a lady in a long dress, right behind that tree.”

“That man doesn’t have a head.”

“Spoo-ooo-ky Holler!”

“Ghost deer! Do you see them?”

My eyes squeezed shut. Fly. Just fly.

By night or day, there was something mysterious about the swells of the Blue Ridge. My Sunday School teacher counted off the six days God labored to create the world. On Wednesday, he separated land from water. Recalling pictures of the Grand Canyon in National Geographic, I figured God spent most of the day pounding his fists into the ground and splitting rocks. But as shadows fell, he must have lightly pressed his thumbs to form hollows and coves and push up the North Georgia peaks.

In summer, the mountains rolled green, purple, and blue, hazing in the distance. Near Jasper, Old Sharp Top—the mountain Dad hiked as a boy—pointed to the sky like a pyramid. When warm weather gave way to cool days, it left a trail of heat—tree canopies flaming crimson, copper, gold, and yellow. Plenty of space for God, my dad said. I knew another reason God hung around Sharp Top; it put him near Mama Hattie. Mom called her an angel on earth.

The summer before kindergarten, my sister Mary and I sat in a window seat in Mama Hattie’s rambling house. The morning light made a big square on the floor, inches from our bare feet. We slid our toes into the warmth. The floor creaked. Tiny particles swarmed in the sunlight, like layers of gold dust. Our fingers chased in and out of the rays, whirling and scattering sparkles.

I squinted. The chairs and table receded and became shadowy as I focused on a photograph of Mama Hattie. Under the smudged glass, her hair fell long and black.

I shook my head. To my way of thinking, Mama Hattie always had gray hair. Only her eyes were black. But a time ago she was not old. After bathing and putting on airy nightgowns, we climbed on her heavy oak bed and sat on either side of Mama Hattie while she told of school days, cotton picking, and corn shucking.

Her stories wandered and never really ended; they just ran into each other. She paused frequently, and her voice was whispery, like the velveteen dresses that Mom sewed every Christmas. After a while, I would lay my head against her shoulder and feel her jaw moving as her voice rolled and slurred and drifted into the past.

“Well, we’d go to this country school part of the year, but they’d turn out for the students to help their parents on the farm. When we was in school, teacher called roll, and we had to answer with a little memory gem. I still recollect those memory gems. Let me see . . ‘Be kind and gentle to those who are old; kindness is better and dearer than gold.’ And, um, it’s a-comin’ to me . . . ‘If you’ve work to do, do it with a will. Those who stand at the bottom never climb the hill.’”

“Them cotton pickin’s? Now those was a sight. Long about the end of pickin’ time, the bolls wouldn’t open real wide. In cold weather, we’d just run and get the bolls and then pick the cotton inside the house. Then we’d have a candy pullin’! Boys and girls would gather ’round, and we’d pull that candy made from syrup till it turned plumb white. They’d have big corn shuckin’s, too! And the gal and boy that was a-settin’ next to each other, if they come to a red ear, he got to kiss her. Nope, I never did have to kiss a single fellah.”

Her shoulders shook, and we drowsily joined in her laughter.

Stay tuned for Part Two next week and “meet” the North Georgia whale. To order the anthology Appalachian Mountain, contact pmsg.journal@gmail.com.

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A veteran of Time Inc. and Dotdash Meredith (People Inc.), Catherine Hamrick is the author of The Tears of Things: Poems (Madville Publishing). The above essay is an excerpt from a book in development, so please comment if it resonates.

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