*

Yeah, every­body has a dead grand­mother story. They’re not sexy and nobody’s buy­ing. But this story is mine, and it’s not so much about the woman as it is about the place. I’m from a lit­tle coal town, McAdoo, in North­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia. A place where peo­ple still use clothes­lines, and it has noth­ing to do with being green. A place where wed­dings and fam­ily reunions mean at least a fist fight, and maybe one of Aunt Vera’s boys piss­ing in somebody’s car to teach them a les­son. A place where it’s hard to say whose sin will draw the nas­ti­est whis­pers, the cousin who’s sus­pected of covert abor­tions, or the cousin who had the gall to earn a PhD. A place where aunts will still rec­om­mend spik­ing a baby’s bot­tle with Karo syrup, and stare slack jawed when you reveal that all of your chil­dren made it through infancy with­out ever touch­ing lips to a rub­ber nip­ple. A place where a cousin can snarl about all the ille­gal Puerto Ricans and not under­stand why you burst into laugh­ter and shake your head. A place where uncles cap­ture snakes from inside houses in paper gro­cery sacks, where a black bear might just amble out of the strip­pins, where great-grandfathers sit with Phillies base­ball games on their tran­sis­tor radios eat­ing tomato and oleo sand­wiches before they die of black lung and are buried in their Knights of Colum­bus uni­forms, swords by their sides. A place where Grannies yell at kids in words that are not Eng­lish, and the onion domes of Byzan­tine churches rise once-resplendent in once-golden paint above streets crammed with clap­board houses and Amer­i­can flags.
Because this is Appalachia, but this isn’t the Appalachia you think of, with blue­grass and corn­bread and kids named Billy Bob. This is where kids are named Stan­ley, and you can’t pro­nounce their last names, what with the sz’s and cz’s and w’s that sound like v’s. And the Stan­leys all say youse guys. This is the Appalachia where grand­moth­ers don’t flinch to say cock­sucker in front of you when you’re lit­tle enough to only pic­ture an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion for a chicken, but Protes­tant is whis­pered, a dirty word. This is the Appalachia where you vaca­tion Down The Shore, and pep­pers are man­gos and you sit on your dupa and shut your trap for two-tree min­utes now, henna?
The colos­sal maw of an aban­doned strip mine yawned behind my grand­par­ents’ house, the house that my Pop­pop built him­self, just down the big back lawn and across the alley from the loom­ing house that he was born in, the house that my Granny and Grand­pap lived in until they died, where Granny’s par­ents had been laid out for their home-funerals, back when such a thing was what was done. My sec­ond cousins lived in one half of that house, and the youngest was just my age. The sum­mer they finally paved that alley, she and I got in a fight, each of us on either side of the cool­ing asphalt, and one of us hit the other in the fore­head with a well-pitched rock. I can never remem­ber which one of us threw the rock and which one of us bled. We were that close. When she got knocked up at fif­teen, I thought Well hell, I can’t judge. There but for the grace of God and my par­ents’ trusty pick-up truck go I.
Because my mom and dad got out, had packed up every­thing we owned and moved us, pick-up truck­load by pick-up truck­load, to Vir­ginia in 1979. I was four. The world had been all of a cou­ple miles squared, and every per­son I’d ever seen had known my name, known my fam­ily. I’d thought black peo­ple were only on TV. But you’ve heard the Billy Joel song, so you know that part of the story. The coal was gone, the fac­to­ries were clos­ing. “It’s get­ting very hard to stay…”
But back I came, each sum­mer wowed by the hori­zon appliquéd with ghosty blue sil­hou­ettes of moun­tain tops, back to this place that seemed on one hand burst­ing with magic and wild­ness, and on the other just plain back­ward. Down at the bot­tom of Logan Street, behind Poppop’s house, there was the Shit Crick, into which all the borough’s raw sewage was emp­tied. There were no big box stores, no fast food restau­rants. We’d get on the high­way in Poppop’s big green Oldsmo­bile, cruise-control it to the Frackville Mall for that. I’d perch on the arm­rest beside my grand­fa­ther as he sang Sina­tra, keep­ing my eyes peeled to catch sight of the golden arches high atop the hill as the mall came into view. Or we’d wind down the moun­tain to Walt’s Drive-In for soft serve ice cream cones, watch golfers on the dri­ving range behind, bring back a CMP sun­dae for Nanny. Her favorite, chocolate/marsh mellow/peanuts. What McAdoo had was the fire­house, with booze at night. An Ital­ian place, for pitza, the kind that drips orange grease to bleed through stacked paper plates and needs to be folded in half to fit in your mouth. An inex­pertly hand-painted sign nailed up crookedly out­side somebody’s door, adver­tis­ing ETHNIC FOOD, and that means pierohi, halupki, halushki. There was a roller rink, but that was closed down every sum­mer, or maybe just closed down for good.
My cousin and I roamed, played all the make-believe games. We watched Hatchy Milatchy on black and white TV, and put on dance shows for Aunt Peggy when she came home from work­ing at the Kmart in Hazel­ton, and dressed up in Granny Palmer’s old hand­made floor-length slips and her other acces­sories, antique hand­bags and scarves, that my Nanny still had saved in a trunk. We picked Queen Anne’s Lace and put the flow­ers in glasses of water and food col­or­ing, watched the blooms turn col­ors. We argued over which celebri­ties we’d marry, we argued over which of her teenage sis­ters’ boyfriends was the cutest, and when we got a lit­tle older we’d skulk in alleys and sneak cig­a­rettes and sing Guns N’ Roses.
These were my sum­mers, until Nanny got sick.

***

It’s a few days after my four­teenth birth­day, and I’m stand­ing in the Decem­ber rain, strad­dling one of my cousins’ old ten speed bikes, watch­ing some strangers dump back­hoe shov­el­fuls of cold wet dirt on top of my grandmother’s cof­fin. Nanny is down in that hole, not wear­ing the col­or­ful poly­ester pantsuit she asked to be buried in. She’s wear­ing the mint green gown that she wore for one of the twins’ wed­dings. They said what she wanted was tacky. I went back to the house with every­body else after the funeral, but they were all eat­ing and talk­ing, and I didn’t feel like doing either. I came back, by myself, to watch this.
There are sev­eral acres of ceme­tery out here on the edge of town, butting up to the rail­road tracks, before you cross over to the long road through the woods where wild huck­le­ber­ries grow in sum­mer, where cold, cold water bub­bles up from moun­tain springs, the road that leads out past the cigar fac­tory, over to Tresckow, where both my aunts live. Chain link and crum­bling stone walls sep­a­rate sundry grave­yards that belong to dif­fer­ent churches, fences that keep the dead Poles from the dead Ital­ians, the dead Irish from the dead Slo­vaks, the dead Rusyns from the dead Hun­gar­i­ans. I look out and see a wide expanse of gran­ite head­stones jut­ting from the var­ie­gated drab greens, browns, yel­lows of grass that’s been frost­bit­ten. Look­ing back toward town, I see the slop­ing streets crowded with clap­board houses, and the squalid onion spire of St. Mary’s against the low gray clouds.

***

She hadn’t been my favorite. My Pop­pop was ded­i­cated to spoil­ing me, sneak­ing me sug­ary cere­als in tiny boxes and buy­ing me cheap toys at the IGA. She was ded­i­cated to tough love, mak­ing me spend the whole sum­mer writ­ing out my mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables, and telling me that wear­ing those tight jeans like my cousin did would give me crotch-rot. But then she got sick. Really sick. She had at least two kinds of can­cer at the start, one of which required bed rest, the other of which was best man­aged with an active lifestyle. We would walk two miles every morn­ing, in a big loop, very slowly, very care­fully, and then she would spend the after­noon in her reclin­ing chair. I spent a lot of time with her. We talked a lot, like we never had before.
She told me sto­ries. Her toes curled up girl­ishly, and she rubbed her feet together as she told them. Sto­ries about drink­ing fresh hot milk from the goats her par­ents had kept in their yard over on Jack­son Street. Sto­ries about her father Wasyl com­ing to Amer­ica from Rus­sia, how the coal com­pany owned him, how he never really learned Eng­lish. Sto­ries about dat­ing my grand­fa­ther, illus­trated by black and white pho­tos held into the albums with those lit­tle paste-on cor­ner frames; pic­tures of Pop­pop with slicked-back hair, in white tee shirts and blue jeans, look­ing like Mar­lon Brando, her by his side in bobby socks, the cap­tions call­ing her Katie when I’d never heard any­body call her any­thing but Kath­leen or maybe a few times Kathy. Sto­ries about my mother when she was lit­tle, about how she finally got so tired of wash­ing and brush­ing and iron­ing my mother’s hair that she one day sur­prised her by lop­ping it off with a sly pair of scis­sors after her bath; about how she got so sick of my mother sneak­ing out of the house with her bell-bottom jeans rolled up beneath her school skirt, those hip­pie jeans embroi­dered with a big pair of hands grab­bing the ass cheeks, that she stole them and burned them in the fur­nace. Sto­ries about nurs­ing school, work­ing at the hos­pi­tal, trav­el­ing on her cruises. The story of when I was born, two months early, tiny but strong, and she was there in her crisp white uni­form to assist Dr. Lee with the delivery.
But most of all, she liked to tell me about her favorite movie.
I’d never seen it, The Sound of Music. We never watched it together. It was the mid 1980’s of course, and my grand­mother didn’t own a VCR. The idea of pop­ping a tape in and watch­ing a movie when­ever you wanted to was still an absurd exoti­cism. But this was even bet­ter. She recalled the plot for me a thou­sand times over. She described the char­ac­ters, recited dia­logue, sang the songs. I felt like I knew the whole movie by heart. It made her so happy, even when she was exhausted and strug­gling, even when she was so bent that she couldn’t lie in the bed any­more and had to spend all her time in that brown reclin­ing chair. She died in that chair.
We’d come up to visit for Christ­mas. My birth­day is the day after. I heard her the night before, up all night with my mother by her side, beg­ging my mother to help her kill her­self. Ask­ing for her sewing scis­sors, as if she’d be able to do the job with them. She told my mother that she could see her par­ents, stand­ing in the hall­way out­side her bed­room door, wait­ing for her. Then in the morn­ing, on the day I turned four­teen, she took one last gur­gling, labored breath. She was 54 years old.

***

The rain has soaked through my clothes and I am freez­ing. The grave is filled and I’m alone here, the work­men are gone and it’s get­ting dark. I pedal back up to the Slo­vak church, and I slip inside. The doors have never been locked, day or night, any time I’ve tried them. That would never hap­pen in the city where I live. But I’ve come here a lot, this is famil­iar. I kneel in front of the painted plas­ter Blessed Mother in the dim and quiet. Her eyes are like anthracite slag. I light one of the votive can­dles, add one more flick­er­ing flame to the field of squat red glass cylin­ders. I reach deep down into the pocket of my jeans, and I pull out my rosary beads.

***

I’m sure I’ve been gone a long time, but nobody seems to have noticed. Most of my rel­a­tives have got­ten pretty drunk, even the ones for which it takes a hell of a lot. As I walk in, I hear an aunt say She held out for Christ­mas, she held out so she wouldn’t ruin Christ­mas for every­body. My Pop­pop turns his head slowly, slurs, one thick fin­ger pointed at my chest, She died on your birth­day, so you can never for­get her. 
I change into warm, dry clothes. I ghost past them, between them, eat a lit­tle frost­ing from my cake; it’s still in the fridge, pris­tine, with the plas­tic bal­le­rina on top. I go into my grandmother’s bed­room; nobody wants to be in there. I shut the door and curl up in the dark, in her chair. My hair is still damp. I’m remem­ber­ing when I was scared to sleep in the dark, in this room, and she told me The dark is noth­ing to be afraid of. God made the dark so that every body and every thing can rest.
I’m sob­bing now, chok­ing and heaving.
And when I’m done, I breathe deeply. I rub the brown velour uphol­stery on the arms of her chair. I notice the remote con­trol for the tele­vi­sion on her bed­side table, just where she must have left it last. It’s barely vis­i­ble in the dark, but it some­how catches my eye. I sigh, and I pick it up. My fin­ger touches the power but­ton, and there it is. In Tech­ni­color. Julie Andrews, twirling around and around and around:
“The hills are alive with the sound of music,
With songs they have sung for a thou­sand years…” 

***

My grand­mother left me her wed­ding ring when she died, she left it to me. My mother took it, said I couldn’t be trusted with it yet. My mother wore it on her own fin­ger, for years. As my birth­day approached, in 2004, she asked me if I wanted any­thing spe­cial for turn­ing thirty. Yeah I said I want Nanny’s ring. She gave it up reluc­tantly, but now I wear it. It reminds me of where I’m from.
When peo­ple asked, I used to say Oh, from around Allen­town. Or maybe Do you know where Scran­ton is? Wilkes-Barre? But those answers are not quite true. So, you ask me now, ask me where I’m from. I’ll look at my fin­ger, and I’ll tell you:
Yeah, every­body has a dead grand­mother story. They’re not sexy and nobody’s buy­ing. But this story is mine, and it’s not so much about the woman as it is about the place. I’m from a lit­tle coal town, McAdoo…