SHE SIGNED WITH AN X by Dawn Amory

My grandmother, the only biological grandparent I’d ever known, passed away when I was eight years old.  It was the first time I’d ever experienced death and I’ll never forget when Mom told me.  

It was early November and I was asleep on the couch.  The tobacco barn house my step-father James had built for us only had a wood burning fireplace and a few gas heaters for heat.  My bedroom was upstairs without either, so most winter nights, I slept on the couch by the fireplace.  I slept that deadening sleep that only youth can give, and I normally slept through all the sounds of the household waking.  But that morning, I woke quickly when Mom sat down beside me.  She shook me gently, saying ‘Grandma Pope died last night’.  I remember seeing my Mom’s worried face, her glistening eyes, the catch in her voice. It is seared into my memory.

Grandma, Lillian Bell Pope, born in November of 1910, lived most of her life in a little house at Galloway crossroads near Greenville, NC.  It was on a lone country road with woods protecting one side and behind it. It was an L-shaped, 3-room, wood-panel house with no electricity or running water.  The kitchen sat on the short side of the L and had a gas range for cooking and a table and pie safe built by my grandfather.  The back porch ran the length of the kitchen and held a sink with a hand pump.  The living room and bedroom were on the other side where a long front porch, with a swing and a rocking chair, ran the length of the two rooms.  The living room was sparsely furnished, there was a couch and an end table with a gas lamp and her husband’s Bible on it. The bedroom held a bureau, a trunk, and a bed with a chamber pot beneath it.   

Before my parents divorced, we visited there on weekends.  My father would do any repairs she needed, and we would help in her garden. She cooked collards, potatoes, dumplings, fatback, and cornbread for us.  I can still see her there in her little house, in her straight feed sack dress with a V neck and short sleeves, watery blue eyes, long thin nose, graying straight hair always pulled back, hobbling around, cooking, fussing.  

Up the road from the house was a little country store.  We would walk down from the house and buy a Pepsi for nickel.  Across the street from the store was a grand, two story Victorian house with a wide front porch and lacy curtains in the window.  This was my great-Grandfather’s house. 

My great-Grandmother died when Grandma was just 15 years old.  She was the oldest child with two younger brothers and a sister.  Two years later, my great-Grandfather remarried and had five more children.  By the time I remember visiting, my great-Grandfather had already passed but his second wife still lived there.  Being the oldest, my Grandmother often had to take care of her siblings.  I am unsure of the relationship she had with her stepmother, but we always visited her and called her Grandma Mae.  

Grandma Mae was a stooped little woman with glasses and a shock of long, wavy, white hair that was always tied in a bun at the back of her neck.  I always though it looked too thick and heavy for her small head and body. I remember her being nice to me and giving me peppermints.  Grandma Mae’s life seemed privileged in comparison to Grandma’s.   

When Grandma died, she could only sign her name with an X.  Grandma never went to school past the second grade, she always worked on other people’s farms, harvesting tobacco or whatever crop was in season.    In 1937, when she married my Grandfather, John Pope, he was fifteen years older than she.  I hope that they had some happiness in their life together. He was a blacksmith and they settled on a little tobacco farm.  They had four daughters, like

doorsteps.  Mary was the oldest, then Nancy a few years later, then my mother Daisy, and finally Alma.  Alma was called Johnny Faye because my grandfather was so hoping for a boy that time. I still call her Aunt Johnny today. 

In October of 1947, when my Mom was two and Johnny was still an infant, my Grandfather died.  Grandma sold the little farm and left with those four girls and moved into the little wood house with her stepmother’s mansion down the road.  She took care of her girls as best she good.  Aunt Mary remembers their life there with Grandma caring for them, all sleeping in that little bedroom together, hanging clothes on the clothesline at the back of the house.  Grandma telling them stories after supper on the wide front porch, her in the rocking chair and the girls in the swing.  

In the fall of 1950, a visit from a county welfare agent would change their lives forever.  It was determined that the living conditions for my mother and aunts could not continue and they would have to be put into an orphanage.  In January 1951, my Grandma would have to say goodbye to her three oldest daughters. Johnny was too small at the time and would follow a few years later.  Grandma visited as often as she could and they would return home to that little house for just two weeks a year, one in May and one during Christmas. She worked in the fields for her cornbread and collards, walked to the store in the shadow of the mansion’s lacy curtains, buying Pepsis with her hard-earned nickels with the memories of her daughters following her like the dust from the road.

In the late 1970’s, when her health started failing, she came to live with us.  My Dad had left by this time and it was just my Mom and us four kids.  She was struggling to keep us all fed and the bills paid by working long hours at a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop.  There were a lot of empty cabinets and Mom’s tears at night in those years.  As a little kid, I mostly remember missing my Dad, thinking our house was haunted and how funny my Grandma was.  My sister had this huge Raggedy Ann doll that Grandma loved.  She would hold it, hug it and talk to it.   Grandma would take that doll, holding it out in front of her and shaking it, and say, “You are so lucky, you are so lucky!  You don’t have to get up and go pee every five minutes!” 

 She had her snuff box that she carried in the front of her dress.  She always had a little bit stuffed in her bottom lip.  I remember seeing her green ceramic ‘spit jar’ and thinking how gross it was and I made sure never to touch it or tip it over.  She had little change purse in the front of her dress too.  I remember her giving us nickel and telling us to go to the store and buy a Pepsi.  She didn’t believe us when we told her they now cost a quarter.   I remember being an avid reader in the second grade and being concerned that Grandma couldn’t read.  I got it in my head that I was going to teach her how to read. I remember trying to explain the alphabet to her. I think that was the only time I ever saw her get angry.  We only had one lesson.  

Mom started dating James, who would later become my step-father.  He built the tobacco barn house in the country for us and Grandma had her own tiny room in the back.  For reasons I never knew, it was decided that Grandma would go live with my Aunt Mary in Ohio for a while.  We took her there in James’ Volkswagen van.  It was square and orange and I thought it was awesome.  I don’t think I ever rode in the front.  The back had two single seats butted up against the driver and passenger seats facing backward and a bench seat across the back width. I spent most of the ten-hour drive curled up on the floor, my brothers and sister were either on the floor with me or sitting in the single seats.   Grandma had the bench seat all to herself.  As we were riding through the winding roads of the mountains, Grandma kept sliding from side to side the full length of the bench, flailing at each bend in the road.  She had finally had enough and yelled to my brother, “Michael!  Come sit beside me so I’ll quit sliding!”  I think we laughed a few miles about that.

My Aunt and her family did all they could to make Grandma feel welcome.  My Aunt didn’t have a full-time job and was able to devote more time to her.  They cut and permed her long gray hair so that it curled around her face and was easier to manage.  They taught her do crafts like gluing buttons and seashells onto a Mason jar and spray painting it silver.  They took her on outings and showed her the sites, but I don’t think she was happy there being so far away from North Carolina, from home.  I imagine it was difficult for her to be away from her little house and the solitude she had for so many years.   She came back to live with us right before she died.  I don’t remember her being back with us long before Mom and her sisters decided she needed more care than they could give.  I remember Mom struggling with the decision, she kept saying Grandma would die if they put her in a nursing home.  Three weeks later, she was waking me up on the couch.

After the funeral, my Aunt and Uncle took all of us cousins to visit Grandma’s little house one last time. We spent the night in sleeping bags on the hard, thin, plank floor in the drafty living room.  I remember us laughing and telling stories about Grandma, I remember Aunt Mary getting teary eyed many times.  We only had a few kerosene lamps for light that cold November night, but the warmth of that memory has stayed with me.  I think Grandma would have liked the fact that we were there again.  She would have liked that we said our goodbyes in the place where she lived alone for almost 30 years, without even the words of her husband’s Bible to keep her company.