once Hattie was old enough, her and Ma were often invited to tea, would take down a basket of apples, pears and cherries from the farm
Ma said she’d once been told that Hermione came from an aristocratic family and Ruth had been the estate gardener’s daughter, they’d eloped as soon as they were of age
they died within a year of each other shortly after the war
Hattie has put flowers on their graves ever since
so Hattie was never going to have a problem with Morgan being that way as well, but a while back Morgan took it to extremes when she declared, as they were taking their usual walk across the fields with Bibi, GG, I no longer identify as a male or a female
Morgan went into a big explanation of it, might as well have been talking Chinese
Hattie asked her outright if she’d been to see a doctor because you sound mental, dear?
Morgan didn’t say another word, they walked back to the house in silence, her and Bibi left a day early
Hattie doesn’t have a problem with Bibi who was born male, because she’s never known her as anything other than female, which makes a kind of sense
to say you’re neither is so far-fetched it’s absolutely ludicrous
the next time Morgan showed up, two months rather than two weeks later (a big sulk, even for Morgan), Hattie sat her down and said, look, I was born in the nineteen-twenties, you’re expecting too much of me to even begin to understand what you’re going on about
just be who you want to be and let’s agree not to talk about it
the funny thing is, nothing’s changed about Morgan since she became a gender granary non-binding whatsit, other than changing her name from Megan to Morgan, which is fine, Hattie can live with that
at least she didn’t name herself Reginald or William
Hattie absolutely won’t pander to calling her they instead of she, as requested
Morgan looks the same (like a boy), acts the same (boyish) and to all intents and purposes is the same (Megan).
2
Hattie turns her attention to Ada Mae
sitting at the table all gnarled up from working in a factory as a clicker who cut out leather shoe shapes with a knife
what sort of job was that for forty years? the sort that gave her dowager’s hump, rheumatism, that’s what
she still straightens and dyes her hair, currently an unseemly grey at the roots, pulled back from a face that’s gone slack except for a mouth that holds all her misery like a drawstring tightened around a pouch
she’s talking across the table to Sonny who’s got emphysema, rattles as noisily as the washboard Slim used to play, worked down the mine at Bedlington until it closed, then as a barman, retired a few months before the smoking ban came in, too late, he’d inhaled more nicotine than oxygen
from lunchtime to closing time
for twenty-odd years
Hattie’s as likely to outlast him
as him her
all of her family live in the diseased atmospheres that wash about the centrally-heated homes they insist on living in
greenhouses for bad bacteria
her usually windswept Long Room is too hot for her now, what with all body heat on top of the fire at full roar and cackle
the farmhouse has got so many cracks in the window frames it’s usually warmer outside than in, keeps a person long-living and weather resistant, she tells the complainers, nothing wrong with being cold, she’s been cold her whole life living in this remote part of the country near the Borders
number of times she’s come downstairs to mounds of snow under the Long Room windows after a blizzard’s blown in
shovels it out again, if it doesn’t melt beforehand
(best not to have carpets)
she’s not against a mild log fire, mind, heating the way God intended, the shirkers in the family complain when she gets them chopping up wood for a few hours in the woodshed
when they visit
when Hattie looks at her children these days she sees a pair of crippled wrecks who rejected life on the farm where they’d have stayed fit in body and mind
she’s only ever wanted the best for them, but children don’t listen to their parents, do they?
she admits it was tough for them growing up, she understands why they wanted to leave but once Ada Mae ended up working in a factory for so long and hating it, and Sonny went down a mine to work; they should have come back to live the outside life, to use their bodies as God intended, working on the land, and investing in an inheritance neither deserves
Ada Mae and Sonny got shoved down into mud once when they were young at the winter fair
one minute they were standing behind her, eagerly awaiting the candy floss she was buying, the next they were on the ground covered in mud and tears
the culprit had disappeared into the crowds
if it’d happened on the farm, she’d have gone after the bastard with an axe and beheaded him with the strength of a woman who’s been chopping firewood since her father gave her an axe for her tenth birthday
she’d have thrown him in the trough for the hogs to demolish all traces, who’ll go through bone like butter
she’d have thrown carrots and cabbage in while she was at it (meat and two veg)
any serial killer worth their salt knows you just feed your victims to starving sows
no need for the palaver of digging graves in the woods in the middle of the night, or dissolving bodies in metal drums full of acid, like on those American crime documentaries that make her feel grateful to be living so far away from such goings-on
Slim was less sympathetic when his children came home with their ‘sob stories’, as he put it, such as when a child pinched Ada Mae’s arm to see if she bruised, or scratched her with a compass to see if she could bleed, and if so, what was the colour?
or the boys asked Sonny if his colour could be scrubbed off, held him down, applied a scrubbing brush to see for themselves
rise above it, Slim said as they sat around the table at teatime to have a glass of cold milk and jam sandwiches in the one hour of the day they convened as a family before more farm work beckoned
cow-milking being first on the list
it’s teasing, that’s all, Slim told them, don’t come crying to me about it – if someone attacks you, attack them back and move on
y’all ain’t living in the segregated society I come from where you ain’t got no rights
y’all ain’t got a fifteen-year-old younger brother called Sonny who was soaked in coal oil before he was strung up on a sugarberry tree and set alight while still alive in front of thousands cheering
a boy called Sonny whose murder by mob was photographed and sent across the country as a postcard because folks were so damned proud of witnessing his lynching
y’all didn’t discover that the woman who cried rape gave birth nine months later to a child so white, even her daddy came round to your daddy’s house to apologize in person
y’all ain’t been through that now, have ya?
so negroes, please, hold it down
Hattie asked him to tone it down with the stories, it was scaring their children and would make them hate themselves, he said they needed to toughen up and what did she know about it with her being high-yaller and living in the back of beyond?
you liked that I’m high-yaller, as you put it, so don’t you go using it against me, Slim
he said the Negro had reason to be angry, having spent four hundred years in America enslaved, victimized and kept downtrodden
it was a powder keg waiting to explode
she replied they were a million miles from America and it’s different here, Slim, not perfect but better
he said his little brother Sonny was the children’s uncle and they needed to know what happened to him and about the history of a country that allowed him to be murdered, and it’s your duty to face up to racial issues, Hattie, because our children are darker than you and aren’t going to have it as easy