My Country Sister

FEATURED AUTHOR—CRYSTAL WILKINSON My Country Sister Silas House One night, while teaching together at the Spalding University MFA program in Louisville, Crystal Wilkinson and I went for a long walk on the streets of Louisville. We were with a large group of other people, but we straggled along behind them, caught up in our own conversation . It was October, but very cold, since we were walking toward the Ohio River. The sky was gray as a coffin and twice as dreary, but music spilled out of some of the storefronts, and there were drunken, laughing people who sometimes staggered by. The city was full of life. The wind sliced up the street, and we leaned into it, never stopping our talking, which sometimes overlapped. But friends can talk that way, not fearing being impolite by interrupting. I remember that night in particular because in the course of seven blocks—from the Brown Hotel to Main Street—we had discussed just about everything. Literature (both our books, as well as books by others ), Prejudice (that day both of us had been made fun of because of the way we talk; both of us remain defiant and refuse to lose the heritage that lives among our teeth), Dancing (we were headed to a great blues bar—Xena's—and we planned on doing a lot of dancing), Food (the lack of home-cooked food in Louisville being our main topic), and Family. This last thing is something Crystal will always talk to you about once you become friends with her. Family is her great beating heart, the thing that makes her get up out of bed in the morning. We cried a lot during that long walk. We cried from laughing about being called hicks, about dancing. We cried from a deeper place when talking about our families (we were both terribly homesick), and we cried from having a fellow country person to be able to talk to in our own language. Crystal Wilkinson is my country sister. I always breathe a sigh of relief when she's in the same room because I know someone else understands the art of cornbread. And because I know that she understands that one little word placement in a sentence means everything in the mouth of somebody who is country. I always feel better when she's around because she, too, was raised up to get up and dance in a hotel lobby if the notion struck her to do so. And because I love the way 24 she throws back her head to let her laugh—a thing of purejoy—lift its wings and float out above us all. I haven't even mentioned her writing yet, which is, like her laughter , a thing of pure joy and pure beauty. The reason Crystal's writing is so wonderful is easy to articulate: because her writing is just like her — real, compassionate, earthy, strong, thrumming with love for the world. I said earlier that we had cried together that night in Louisville. Well, sometimes it makes me want to cry just because I love Crystal so much. Everyone can see what a beautiful writer she is, just by opening up the pages of one of her books and diving in. But more important, anyone in the world can see what a beautiful person she isjustby looking into her face or by hearing that throaty laugh or by feeling the joy she spreads across the room when she can't contain herself any longer and either dances or smiles: both things are luminous. 25 ...