A. Blinken... Today a neat young woman, Rose Felize, whom I recognized from our local paper as a frequent high school honor roll student, and a slightly stooped, large boned woman about 65, her Granny, Norma Hamble, whom I know from around town, came in to my shop. I smiled and greeted them and Rose said, "My Granny has something to say to you." I asked her if I could turn on my new recorder, and she and her Granny put their heads together and said I could. Here is the transcript:
Rose: I’ve read my Granny some of the things you’ve written and she wants to tell you and your Granny her story: (She nods to her Granny)
Mrs. Hamble: (in a soft, even voice) My daddy died in West Virginia when I was 14. The seam face fell on him. They brought him home instead of to the doctor because the foreman said he was going to die anyway and the company wouldn’t spend the money. He took three days to die, I sat by his side and touched his hand and looked at his smashed head trying to remember what he looked like before. After a day his smashed places started to heal and I thought he might live, but his head was like a dropped egg, and he couldn’t talk, only cry and moan. I sat by my dad and thought about death for three days, Mr. Blinken, and what got me through was a picture above the bed of our Sweet Lord and my personal savior Jesus Christ. I prayed to Jesus to help my daddy to heaven, and to help me stay on earth and keep me from crying or throwin’ up, and I felt the presence of Jesus, and he eased my dad’s pain and he quieted my heart. When dad drew his last breath the men were waiting and they took him to the hill and rolled him into a hole and a millwright who was a preacher spoke words over him. My mother had spent the three days figuring what we should do, and she was packed and had train tickets. Mama and my three sisters and I boarded a train for Sacramento, where she had a job. We left most of what we had, we packed into crowded rail cars with strangers and traveled across America, not knowing where we were going or what would happen to us, sleeping in our seats, waiting while our cars were moved from train to train. The whole way, Mama prayed and told us stories about Jesus and how he saved the leper and would save us, too. We sang songs about Jesus and sometimes the whole car sang with us, and people gave us coins and food, because they recognized we were traveling under the protection of our Sweet Lord, Jesus. We got to Sacramento and Mama went to work cleaning houses for grand people, and we lived on beans and got nice clothes from the trash bins of the people Mama worked for. When I was 16 Mama wondered if I knew enough and should start to work, and at 17 I was working for people, nice, well off people in wonderful houses. One day a few months after I’d started working a man of the house took me alone and made me take him in, and I wanted to die then, but the face of Jesus appeared over the man’s shoulder, and he smiled at me and I didn’t care what the man was doing. When he was done he told me he’d want to do that a lot, and I should expect it. I told Mama and she said the job was a good one, but I’d get with a baby sooner or later and then I’d be fired, did I have any other choices. I took a choice and married a man from Nebraska I met at the grocery store. He had a good job as a truck driver. He set me up in a little house and would come home twice a month to give me money, get drunk, beat me, have me, and then sleep for two days before he went out again. Whenever he beat me, Mr. Blinken, it hurt. He was a strong man, and he wouldn’t leave a mark where it would show, but he would slap my ears or twist my personal parts and dig his knuckles into my kidneys or smother me with a pillow until I stopped struggling or hold a cigarette to my breast until the skin started to raise, even when I was nursing the kids. When it was time to leave he would say, "I’m going to kiss you goodbye, Norma" and he’d belt me in the arm or the leg or chest to give me a bruise, and he’d say "that little mark will remind you to be a good girl until I come back." It was hard to stay with him, Mr. Blinken, hard to be with him, hard to watch him hit our boy and girl, and I worried worse if they got older. I was lonely because he didn’t trust anyone and wouldn’t let me shop or even go to church alone. I spent twelve years of hard days and hard nights doing right by my children and my husband, and do you know, I was able to do it because I knew Jesus wanted me to, and in the worst parts of it Jesus would come to me, and knowing that he understood made all the hard things better. Whatever Walter did to me, I could pray and be with Jesus until it was over. When he was killed in a wreck, the truckin’ company sent us his last check. They said they knew he had another family in Nebraska, but decided to send the check to us. Like my Mama had when daddy died, I figured how to get us from Sacramento to somewhere I could get a job. I went into a church and prayed, and a woman found me, and the church got me a job in the Hotel up here, and I came up and worked for the Hotel who let us live in the little house in back. I brought my children and my Mama and one sister up and I’ve lived in the little house and worked for the hotel all this time. My Mama got cancer, and the doctors cut on her and shot her up with different poisons, and she wasted away, and the folks at the hotel, who are Christians, let me keep Mama in my little house even when I had to stop working for a couple of months to care for her. The cancer ate out of her body, Mr. Blinken, and it hurt her awful. Her whole upper personal area was rotted away, and you know what Mama and I did? We prayed to Jesus, and He came to us, and he eased Mama’s pain and he eased my pain, and Mama and I rejoiced in our lives together, and in the Lord, and by and by Mama went to Jesus, to be with Him in heaven, and I will see her again there; this is what I believe and what I know from my life. Jesus watched over me and my children, and they grew and they finished school and now here’s one of my granddaughters and she is a blessing to this world. All my children and grandchildren are a blessing to me, and I owe everything to Jesus Christ. Every hard thing I had was so I could be here now, surrounded by my wonderful family, my faith in our Lord came true in the end, which no one can deny. Jesus cared for us, and the bad people are being punished in hell for the wrong they did. Mr. Blinken, you and Mrs. Wise are smart people and sometimes I think your writtin’ has more truth than poetry, but nothing you can think bein’ so smart and nothin’ you can say will change what I know to be true, that Jesus Christ is my personal savior. He knows our lives are hard, and he is with us when we need him. He would be your personal savior, too, if you let Him into your heart. Then, maybe you would be a little happier, and life would make more sense to you. You might not write some of the things you do if your heart was at peace with the Lord. Shall I pray for you, Mr. Blinken?
A. B.: Yes, do pray for me, Mrs. Hamble.
Mrs. Hamble: And, shall I pray for Mrs. Wise?
A.B.: I can’t speak for my Granny, but I don’t think she would mind at all if you pray for her.
Mrs. Hamble: All right then, thank you for listening to me.
A.B.: Mrs. Hamble, can I use your words in my column?
Mrs. Hamble: I don’t know what clever thing you’ll say to make me seem like a fool.
A.B.: There isn’t anything I could say that would make you look that way, Ma’am. It would give other people a chance to hear your story, and what you think of Jesus.
Mrs. Hamble: All right, then.
A.B. Thank you for coming in.
I was ashamed, listening to Mrs. Hamble. It is true, Granny and I both have a jaundiced view of religion, and Christian religion is prevalent and so it is most often Christians we see doing unGodly things in God’s name. I’m very sorry. I never meant to splash my cynicism on people like Mrs. Hamble, who fervently believes in her God, who is helped by Him daily and in the darkest hours of her life, and it isn’t to me to comment or question people like her. I personally am happy to have such a decent and devout person speaking to her God on my behalf. Granny, though, says the idea of Norma Hamble chatting with the Supreme Deity about her behind her back gives her the heebie-jeebies. We are all moved differently by piety.
