-
A Country Woman
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
72 a CountrY Woman There is a country woman now among us. We can see her from most of our backyards. Whatever you lack she will exemplify in your view— that is, if you are slothful and prone to depression she will be whistling and weeding in the single place in her yard that you can see from the recliner you have not left since last night. If you are needy and rattled when alone you will catch a glimpse of her through her window sitting down with a three-course meal she made for herself. You might even hear the music on her radio—old bluegrass—and hear her sing along. If you are lacking in purpose and passion, you need only see the peppy flick of her muck boots on the sidewalk as she heads out for the day. “With these two hands and a day’s time, I can move a mess of earth,” she likes to say, but only to those of us who become impotent thinking of the brevity of days. She is referring to the koi pond she’s digging, which she plans to stock with “offspring of her daddy’s fish farm salmon,” a losing proposition considering salmon’s need to migrate , but it seems like a dreamer’s envious boldness to those that hear this particular detail. If only they could throw themselves into something so hopeless with such aplomb! She is at all the parties. To invite her is to send the message: I can face up to my faults. A kind of sweet torture is to engage her in conversation in a corner after having a few glasses of wine. The country woman speaks of many things: her family, the farm, weather changes, ham hocks, apple butter, the orneriness of old roosters as opposed to the sass of old hens . . . None of it means anything to you—why should A Country Woman 73 it?—but the telling is full of charm and homespun wit. Things you clearly lack, if she’s displaying them. The only recourse is to keep listening until she loses her charm, thereby affirming yours. It is a convoluted game, and the longer you listen, the more you are entertained and delighted, the more you wince at your own delight, and the more the country woman tries to amuse, sensing your discomfort and trying to alleviate it . . . you end up drunken with your arm around her shoulders, drooling compliments in her ears, as if by foisting your admiration on her you will somehow take on her traits. It is like taking a rubbing of a gravestone with a pencil and paper—the closer you press the better impression it will leave. It might seem most logical just to avoid her, to keep the shades down and the eye averted, and this we try. One neighbor invests in heavy drapes, tightly locking blinds, and tall wild hedges for her front walkway so she can avoid seeing the country woman in the few steps from the driveway to the front door. And indeed if you walk fast with your head down you need never see the country woman in full. You might hear her whistle as she reams her gutters with a toilet brush or peripherally see the flash of a tartan plaid work shirt through a thicket, but the county woman herself is never again manifest. Then as sudden as “sow-to-trough” (her saying) she is gone. The flash of her yellow raincoat through the gap in the drapes, the squelch of her Wellington boots, the sound of burning, cooking, nailing, feeding , mucking, whetting, basket braiding, carcass cleaning, pie frying , and meat baking (her order): all this came quietly to an end, as if the country woman had scuttled away in secret though she was the one from whom we hid. We listen for her like the clear tone of a bell long after being struck, a kind of warbling vibration that held us in thrall while we waited for it to cleanly end. Had she gone back to the country? Would she be back? Hers is the most palpable of absences , a not-aroundness so forceful that even her yard, left intact, is ragged, as if something had been rent from it—the pond and roosters and wheelbarrows seem too small for the space they take up, rattling [44.192.107.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:52 GMT) A Country Woman 74 stand-ins...