avoid confusion, references to Kim’s mom from here forward mean Annette, her aunt-by-marriage. (Jim and Kristin married a few years later.) Her birth mother will be called Kristin. The arrangement between the two women was a handshake; Annette received no money via KinCare. The formal adoption flew through uncontested; use of the legal system remained minimal, or someone might have cried foul on Jim’s signature as birth dad and questioned the “agreement” Annette and Kristin drew up regarding visitation rights.
Although Kim’s mom had signed a document written by Kristin stipulating she could come see Kim on a regular basis, Annette began to find ways to prevent these meetings. Because the agreement was less legal than a gesture of good faith between them, both sisters-in-law stretched its nonbinding language until it broke. Ties were cut by the time Kim started school.
Without a state stipend, her mom sent Kim to the county elementary school in designer clothes, had her hair professionally cut and styled, and enrolled her in dance lessons—which Kim hated. Part of the tension that developed between the women may have stemmed from their different economic classes. Annette’s husband, Rick, was career military; Annette was a teacher. For whatever reason, her mom didn’t want Kim associating with Kristin and Jim (no fixed source of income) as she grew up.
But Kim had questions and a wound that wouldn’t heal. “Why did she want to get rid of me? Why was I not good enough for her? How come she handed me off and ran away? I really, really wanted to know why she gave me up without a fight.”
Yearning to know why blotted out the sun in her world, gnawed the strength from her bones, and destroyed her self-identity. Kim managed to keep the anger bottled inside until need met opportunity one winter weekend when she was visiting her grandmother.
Spending a few days with Mamaw was not unusual for Kim if her parents went out of town. Don’t confuse Mamaw with Kim’s maternal grandmother, who raised her older sister, Janice. The family called that woman Grandma. Mamaw was Annette’s mother. As readers have already worked out, that also makes her the mother of Kristin’s boyfriend-turned-husband, Jim—the guy who didn’t want Kim and her sister around. Such an inconvenient detail not only complicates the story but invites the inbreeding jokes for which Coalton residents have no patience.
It is perhaps easier to turn pain into humor at the expense of others than to consider the implications of Kim’s stepfather’s sister also being her mother, the stepfather being the reason she couldn’t live at home, or his mother’s being the babysitter of choice, when Grandma-by-blood sat eight miles away with Kim’s older sister, Janice, in her home.
One fateful weekend while staying with Mamaw, Kim just up and asked her to call and see if Kristin and Jim could come over.
“I don’t know if Mamaw was surprised. She’d didn’t act like it. She’d raised two generations of teenagers [including Jim’s daughter from another relationship] by then, so maybe not. Not much phased that woman, I have to say. She just picked up the phone and called them, and they said they’d come over.”
Understandably nervous, Kim tried to calm herself: It’s not like you’ve never seen them before. You’ve talked to them plenty at funerals and weddings. But this time, she would be able to ask The Question without extended family hanging about, eavesdropping and reporting back to Annette. Kim knew her mother wouldn’t like what was about to happen and didn’t want to hurt the woman who had raised her.
Mamaw lived by the side of a two-lane highway that was the main thoroughfare for the holler. On pins and needles while waiting for Kristin, Kim remembers thinking every car that passed might be her mom (Annette), come home early. She feared Mamaw might have called and told Annette what Kim was doing. But she had to know. There was no turning back.
Kristin and Jim lived about six miles away. They entered Mamaw’s dark-paneled living room as night was falling, and things started out awkwardly. In the midst of Mamaw’s fussing over getting everyone soda and a snack, Kim realized that she couldn’t find the nerve to ask. Instead, they sat, Kristin and Jim on the couch, Kim on the piano stool, Mamaw flitting through the room like a butterfly, taking her armchair, rising to the kitchen, and returning. Kim recalls that they “talked, had a few good laughs.” As Kim recalls, the closest she came to asking what she really wanted to know was her question “Why don’t you ever come see me?”
But she knew the answer before Kristin gave it: Annette didn’t want her around. Kim accepted this; the moment passed, and so did the opportunity to ask The Question.
Two years later, Mamaw died, prompting “the funeral of the century. I’m there at the funeral home with my real family, and my bio family is there, every last one of them, including my sister, and my grandma by blood, and this cousin named Dewey, and he was a really nice guy, and you have to remember, I haven’t seen any of these people in years. Once Mom found out about that night at Mamaw’s, we had us a real crackdown. But my mom is upset that her Mama’s dead, and she’s all raw inside, and all she sees is me hanging out with the enemy instead of by her side. Please keep in mind I was only twelve. There were a lotta things I didn’t get then that I can see now.”
Tension mounted. Annette had wanted her daughter to read a poem Annette had written for Mamaw, but when the time came, she told Kim not to trouble herself, stood, and read it in her own breaking voice. From then until Kim left home for good, that funeral became “the festering sore that could not close.” The first insult thrown in an argument, the baseline measurement against which everything Kim did wrong as a daughter was pitted, the yardstick for inadequate parenting: Mamaw’s funeral.
Kim describes her teenage years as “ups and down, just like any teen and her parents.” Options not available to a more traditionally formed family didn’t help. When it became difficult to deal with her mom, Kim had “another mother,” a woman she didn’t think of as Mom but could turn to if she wanted to leave home. Of course, between the normal teen angst and the added weight of “too much family” in a tight geographic space, she inevitably did. One night in the middle of a fight that included the funeral yet again, Kim packed a bag, called Kristin and Jim to inform them that she was on her way, and left.
She stayed two, maybe three weeks in Kristin and Jim’s trailer that first time, until her mother came over and begged her to come home. Annette swore things would be different. Kim’s dad (Rick) was an alcoholic; he never raised a hand to either of them, but he yelled. A lot. Annette was the classic description of bipolar, although not formally diagnosed. Kim had grown adept over the years at interpreting how her mother’s footsteps sounded coming into the kitchen; treads ranging from light to heavy indicated what kind of day Annette was having, and consequently what kind of day Kim and her dad could plan to have.
Kim doesn’t feel victimhood or hold grudges about the alcoholism or the bipolarity. “I knew she loved me, and if it was a different kind of love than I wanted, she was still my mom. I went back, but every time we’d get to fighting, I’d pack or she’d up and tell me to pack. It was like the yo-yo from Hell, back and forth up and down the road between the two of them.”
Crazy-glue families splintered and put back together in mismatching patterned pieces abound in the rest of the world just as much as in Coalton. Adrian LeBlanc’s dissertation-turned-narrative entitled Random Family is set in New York City; it’s an excellent read on the myriad ways people in big cities create affiliations regardless of DNA’s bonds. Paula McLain’s memoir Like Family describes a similar confusion of foster care life in California. The added burden in places like Kim’s back holler is, odds are good that some of your neighbors are part of your crazy-glue family, while others are members of your blood kin. Some are both. Thus the networks of dysfunction are smaller, tighter, and probably sharing the same roads to get to and from most places. You can run; you can hide; but by the time you’ve settled into your secret refuge, someone in the
