Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers

Flowering Ivy

w z g ai w z C2 w J: t:;: u SHEILA KAY ADAMS Sheila Kay Adams (b. 1953) comes from a small mountain community in western North Carolina. For seven generations her family has maintained the tradition of passing down the English, Scottish, and Irish ballads that came over with her ancestors in the late 1700s. Adams learned the ballads from her relatives, primarily from her great-aunt,.Dellie Chandler Norton. She is an accomplished balladeer, storyteller, and five-string banjo player. A highly sought-after performer who travels extensively to share her heritage, she has performed at numerous folk festivals, conferences, and artist series across the nation and has been the featured performer in several documentary films. Adams was cohost and coproducer of Over Home, a radio show for Public Radio, and has two cassette recordings that contain both traditional and original ballads , Loving Forward, Loving Back (1985) andA Spring in the Burton Cove (1990), and a story tape, Don't Cit above Your Raising (I 992). Under the direction of Lee Smith, Adams compiled a collection ofstories about her growing up years in Madison County, Come Co Home with Me (I995). She has three children and is passing the traditions on to them. Married to Jim Taylor, also a traditional musician and performer, she resides in the county in which she was born. Adams has kept her roots well planted in her Appalachian mountain home. As her great-aunt has said, "She may not always know where she's going but she sure knows where she comes from." * * * Flowering Ivy "How do you know?" he asked one warm, early spring day. Exhausted from the climb, 1paused to catch a breath, leaned down, and plucked a purple flower near my booted toe. "I just do," 1said. "It's been passed down. The words fell soft from Granny's lips, fell like needed summer rain, that puddled up here in my ears." Granny said, "Mother planted flowering ivy. She were fifteen, well, maybe not quite. She carried that poor babe in her skinny, little girl's arms. Wrapped hit up in her best nightgown. Made her walk as the sun went down on a white-hot summer's day. Folks stood and watched. Said now and again she would pause, and lower her face to the bundle she clutched there at her breast. 'Ain't natural,' they muttered from behind their snuff packed lower lips. 'That babe barely formed ...' 'But, hit were a boy-child,' someone said. 'Formed enough fer that 1 reckon.' On she climbed, right up to the spine of the ridge, dug the hole herself ... stopping only to pick up that gown, and rest her head into it, with her long red hair falling wild all around. Dark come on, still she set. Her big thick shouldered man made the climb hisself. Tried to talk her down. 'Come on back to the house,' he begged. What he meant was back to his bed, his life. 'What about me?' he cried, kneeling by the raw, red scar there on the ground. 'What about you?' she asked softly. 'What about you?' The stars rose on her still there. 18 SHEILA KAY ADAMS He come down ... eyes red-rimmed, big hands hanging down, empty as his heart. He stood all night in the kitchen yard, looking to the ridge, listening to the sleep-soft talk from the chickens, roosting in the tree out next to his brand-new barn. Toward daylight he went to the house, fetched his fiddle, put it in an-under his chin, and commenced to playing, them high and lonesome tunes ... The warm-fingered wind picked up his song, carried it right up the hill, laid it gentle-like right next to her ear. She sighed. And then his tune found her heart. And she threw back her small, fine-boned head. Cried out she did. Her cry was snatched away by the startled wind. Was carried high where it spread out into the lightening up sky. ... He never heard. She reached into the pocket of the apron that she wore, pulled out a little sprig 0' green. Used her fingers to make a hole, planted it there." "Now look," I said. "It runs everywhere! One hundred and twenty-seven years ago, Mother sat right there. Now look, her ivy is a laid down rug of green. Covering up that tiny babe, poor...