Quiet Mountain Essays
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Abbie's Advice
(for my great-grandmother)
by
Lynda L. Hinkle
You were always watching out the window
for the Black Maria…
That’s what they called the cart
they brought the dead men home to their wives in.
As a kid, if you came home from school
and your father’s boots were on the front step that early,
He was dead.
You knew it.
The boots were to give to the oldest son--
You couldn’t afford new ones.
And so my father filled the shoes
of his father’s father’s father
And I, an only daughter, grew my feet big to wear them too.
But there’s no coal left
Just empty caves filled with ghosts
Who know that when the rats leave
you gotta get outta there
There’s no air.
So my father built ships
so the government could warm the Cold War
But they just pushed all the cold into his fingers and lungs.
He worked double shifts to send me to college…
A piece of paper with writing on it that said I could pass
for another class,
And I can still slip into the vernacular so easily
The language of privilege and the language of nothing
Constantly at war with my tongue…
a tongue that has tasted champagne and ketchup bread…
Though not together—no, never together.
At the tombstone of my great-grandmother,
I asked her once what to do
In a world of disparities that cradle me
like the cheese in a socioeconomic sandwich
And in my head, the voice of ancestry spoke
with a gentle Western Pennsylvania accent,
Like a mouth slightly coated in red Pennsylvania mud,
And it said, “Don’t forget me
But get out of here
There’s no air.”
Contributor's Notes...
Lynda L. Hinkle is an educator, academic, writer, poet and independent filmmaker. She has a BA in
English and a Masters in Teaching from Rowan University and is currently a graduate student in English
at Rutgers University. You can find out more about all of her work at http://www.jerseydinerarts.com/llh
