Visiting Nora

Nora briefly rested her cigarette on the ashtray next to on the couch. “Baby doll, I’m so glad you came to see me. George will be here soon. You met him before.”

“Yeah. I remember him.” I glance around the room.

Nora smiles. “Just finally got everything put back in order. My sister-in-law came over with sissy yesterday and they cleaned house.”

The tables, shelves and TV overflow with “what nots.” Each one clean, dusted and rearranged. The lace dresses on the porcelain dolls were stiffly pristine.

“How was your family reunion?” I ask. I haven’t seen Miss Nora since July when she’d gone to Indiana with her siblings.

“Oh, baby doll! It was good!” She immediately gets up and crosses to the dining room. She returns with a photo. “We was all there. All nine of us. Cept for my oldest brother. He’s been gone ‘bout ten years now.”

“Where do you fall in the line?” I ask.

“I got one baby sister.” She tells me and points her out to me on the photo. “That’s her. Anna. And me. Oh, I looked a sight that day. I ain’t doing so good these days, honey. I went to the doctor yesterday and he had the test results and he asked me, ‘Nora? You still smoking?’ And I couldn’t lie! Cuz right there he had the evidence right in front of him. What good would lying about it do? But I’m doing good today. I don’t know why. Yesterday I woke up and just couldn’t move to get myself out of the bed. But this morning I woke and my first thought was ‘Lord, I feel good.’”

“I’m glad.” I smile up at her then point out her brother whom I’ve met. “I remember his stories about hauling a raft of coal down the river.”

“Oh, honey! Him and Lee usta take that raft up the Cumberland and they’d find little seems of coal. Nobody cares who digs at those little seems by the road and the rive and they’d break up the coal in big chunks and load that raft full with a ton, sometimes two tons of coal. It’d be so full they couldn’t ride it down cuz it would snag rocks, so they’d swim along with it and push it around the rocks. Oh and Mama’d be so happy. You’d think they were bringing her the sweetest present in the whole world bringing her coal to keep the house warm all winter.”

Nora paused for a minute as if lost. “Course, that was when we lived up in the Redbird Camp. Those boys had already moved out by the time Mama moved into this house.”

“Redbird Camp?” I ask. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Oh, there’s still a couple families live up there. They’re all crazy.”

“I know where Redbird Road is. Up and over the railroad tracks, then you follow along beside them on the gravel. There’s maybe three homes back there.”

“That’s it.” She tells me. “That’s the old camp.”

I can’t imagine it. It’s just an empty slope near the river but Nora tells me about the houses, the church, the commissary, and life by the mine.

“There was a baby before the nine of us.” She tells me. “Emma.” She points to a black and white photo on the wall of a wide eyed whispy haired little girl with her leg wrapped around the leg of the chair she’s perched on as she leans toward the photographer. “I think she has the face of an angel. Mama said she used to say she called her Mudder. Never could say Mother, just Mudder. And that she was so sweet. When Mama was afraid or worried at something Emma would come to her and say “Don’t worry Mudder. It be alright. Mudder, we be alright.’ She died when she was three.

See, Daddy worked nights in the mines and he’d come home in the early hours of the morning when it wasn’t daylight yet and so Mama would get his bath ready before she went to bed. She’d get the water boiling and scalding hot and set it out in the tub and by the time Daddy got home in the morning it would be warm just right for him to bathe.

One night Mama had his bath all ready and went on to bed. And Emma’d been asleep for hours but she got up in the night and was wondering the house. She fell in and was burned and scalded real bad. The camp doctor came and he doctored her real good. He was good at caring for everybody. Little Emma, she caught pneumonia real bad. There wasn’t no use going to the hospital. There wasn’t nothing anybody could do. Sissy died about two weeks later.”

I stayed quiet.

“That’s the only picture was ever taken of her.” Nora continued. “I found it and I knew I had to get it made real big. Such a sweet baby. She must be an angel.”

I stared into those deep baby eyes. “Your Mama must have been young.”

Nora just laughed. “Yeah, closest we can figured she musta been 14 or 15 when she married Daddy and had Emma.”

“Then the rest of you all!” We laugh together even as we both see in our minds that seventeen year old girl comforted by her daughter while winter is cold, stomachs are empty, and her husband is miles below the earth.

“She was a strong woman.” Nora says. “Ain’t nothing could get past Mama. She was wanting a door between the kitchen and the back room. Cuz you always had to come in through the kitchen, through the living room and this, then the bedrooms. And it just makes sense to have a door between the two! Daddy didn’t think she needed no door, but one day she caught him gone for the afternoon fishing. Now, she just had what tools she found, a hammer and a hand saw, but Mama could make do with anything! When Daddy came home she’d already done cut out and framed up her door! There was no stopping that woman!”

We laugh again while George comes through the new gate and across the porch into the house using the first front door. Soon the two of us walk around back to view the work on the house while Nora rests on the sofa. Her breath is still heavy from hurrying to find the photos to show me.

“She’s won’t take care of herself.” George tells me. “I keep trying. Coming by and seeing her. But she don’t listen to those doctors. She’s still smoking. Now they’re saying it’s congestive heart failure. Her heart is real weak.”

I nod. Her spirit is very willing. Her flesh is weak.

We both know that her heart is very strong.