Samantha Drake

ENG 111.01: College Comp I

December 2, 2021
Dr. Ethan Mannon
Fair and Quare

One thing my mama made sure that I knew was, “a man gotta be a man.” We was never rich,

‘specially not when the markets crashed but I ain’t never seen my pa look worried. They say Ma and Pa

been together forever, they got six kids so I guess that oughta be true. All of my siblings are grown now

an’ my sister Annie joke that Ma ain’t ever gonna let me leave the house cus’ I’m her last baby, but I’m

grown now too. Me, Ma, an’ Pa all live in Granny’s house. Pa says it’s cus’ her arthur-itis 1 is getting real

bad but I think it’s just cus’ we can’t afford to live nowhere else or cus’ Pa and Granny real close. They

gotta good bond, Granny and Pa, they’s all eachother’s had for a while. It was just them two since

Granny’s husband’s brain got real sick after he fought in the Civil War. Then Ma came along an’ now

Granny got all of us, we’re all her family now.

I overhear the ladies at church making Granny feel bad ‘cause I still ain’t had a girlfriend at

eighteen, but she ain’t never said nothing to me. When the whole church gets together, the old church

ladies swarm me like bees and pinch my cheeks like I'm still a youngin, they say that I’m a “tall, smart,

handsome young man” and try to pawn me off to their granddaughters. Granny tried to save me a

couple’a times but she want me to get married too so she gave up trying to fight them off after a little

while.

One thing y’all need to know about Granny, she loves her some church. She says in all eighty-two

of her years she ain’t never missed one church service. I reckon there ain’t a thing in this world that would

keep that lady from church. I ain’t never felt what Granny felt about church but she say if we gonna live

in her house, we gon’ go by her rules and so we all go. Granny loves to dress up all fancy for church, she

takes a lotta pride in the dresses she makes. Granny’ll take any fabric she can find and sew it into

somethin’, ‘specially now that we ain’t got much money. Granny’s got a deal with our neighbor, Ray, that

she gets his feed sacks2 from his farm, and in return, she makes his daughter some of her dresses. She find
the prettiest feed sacks and tablecloths and she sews ‘em so good and so quick into the most purty dresses,

I sometimes think she might could sew with her eyes closed.

Granny gave me her husband’s old suit, said it used to make him feel like he ‘ccomplished

somethin’ great, owning a suit so fancy. Granny wants me to be a man like he was. The day she gave it to

me, she took me over to the mirror and said “Theodore, I am so proud of the man you have become.” and

it felt like I was lying to her. When I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who wasn’t me. I was face to

face with an empty shell, a tall bony man that I don’t recognize3 wearing Granny’s dead husbands’ old

suit, while my sisters and Ma get to wear Granny’s purty sack dresses. It ain’t seem fair to me. When Ma

takes Granny to get her gold injections4 for her arthur-itis and the house is real empty, I get out Annie’s

old dresses and go back to that same mirror and I take all the time I can get where I finally somewhat see

what I picture myself lookin’ like in my head. I cherish every second I can and imagine what my life

could be like if God woulda made me a woman.

I heard in a sermon that Pastor John gave one Sunday that there was a fella named Legion who

was deranged or possessed by demons or somethin’ like that an’ Jesus cured him 5. It made me wonder if

these feelings I’m havin’ are like that?... if I’m filled with demons?... if Jesus could heal them? I tried to

ask God a couple of times but I can’t even tell if God is listening to me, it sure don’t feel like it. Granny

says all the time that her soul been touched by the hands of God an’ I ain’t ever felt nobody touchin’ on

my soul. I reckon if someone’s hands were touchin’ my soul, I’d’ve felt it by now. Maybe God don’t

remember that I exist, if he did and he is really as good as they say, I don’t think he woulda trapped me in

this body that doesn’t belong to me.

Me and Ma are close too, kinda like Granny and Pa, and so she noticed I been down lately. Ma’s a

granny woman6, she been one my whole life. When I was younger and Pa and my siblings left to go to

work and school and it was just me and Ma, I would watch her work. I always thought it was funny that

they called ‘em that: “granny women.” Now, Ma ain’t no granny, she was one of the youngest granny

women around when she first started. She’s only just turned fifty but she is good at what she do. Ma

knows lots about everything to do with being a granny woman, she learned it all from her ma. She always
joked that she wish I were a girl ‘cause with everything she taught me, I could be a granny woman too. I

always been closer to Ma than Pa, she notices things that he never would. When Ma asked me what was

wrong, I ain’t know how to answer her. We may be close but she could never be okay with this.

That brings us to the day everything went south... It was a regular Sunday mornin’, Pa went out to

the chicken coop real early and brought back some eggs for Ma to cook up before church. Granny woke

up bright-eyed and ready to get out of our house and into the house of the lord instead, she was excited

cus’ Ray’s daughter, Suzie, was getting baptized. Granny dug out the ol’ suit again for me to wear cus’

she decided it was a special occasion. The air in the house was filled with the scent of ma’s cooking and

hints of mildew that seeped out of the seams of my suit as granny tugged on my shirt collar and

straightened my tie. That morning, Pastor John gave a sermon that was somethin’ about being a man and

providing for your family like God provides for you7. Then, all the church folk headed out to the stream

for the baptisms8. Granny stood up behind me as we watched Suzie get baptized by one of the deacons.

Suzie had that same look that Granny gets, God must’ve touched her soul too.

After Suzie’s baptism, Granny pulled me aside and said that Ray been askin’ if I was interested in

lil’ Suzie, an’ Granny say this would be good for our family. Suzie’s a nice girl, she a little bit younger

than me, just sixteen, but she’s smarter than me, real mature for her age. Granny likes the idea of me

being so close by when I get married. When Granny said this it surprised me. She ain’t give me much

room to think about anything, “I ain’t hardly met Suzie and I ain’t a man like Pastor say, I don’t know

how to provide for a family and I don’t want to either, it ain’t me, I ain’t a man, I ain’t even a boy and i’ll

never be one.”… I blinked and watched Granny’s face fall and it hit me: those words weren’t just

thoughts in my head, I said them out loud.

One thing you need to know about Appalachian folk, the things you say or do, bad or good, all

reflect on your family9. When those words came outta my mouth it felt like everything around me went

silent, like even the earth for a moment stopped it’s spinnin’. The light behind Granny’s eyes burnt out

and for the first time in my life, the church folk had nothing to say. The men of the church looked in

disgust at us all, Ma and Pa stood from a distance in shock and embarrassment, probably wondering how
they could raise a child like this but Granny just stared at me in silence. In a way, the silence hurt worse.

I’ve been quare10 my whole life, I’ve felt the judgemental stares, the embarrassment, all of that before but

the look on Granny’s face was different. I’d taken the hands of God that wrapped around Granny’s soul

and allowed them to crush it.

The church-people sure believed that they could ward away any demon they wanted, that God’s

love was the most powerful thing, til’ they came face to face with a quare person filled with demons

stronger than they believed any bible verse, preaching, or even God himself could heal. On this day, I

broke the strength of God. On this day, I broke my ma, I broke Pa, and I broke Granny but up until this

day, I’d never felt more put together. On this day, I finally became me.

(Fig. 82-10-488) “On this day, I finally became me.”: The church folk gather
and watch as Suzie gets baptized. Theodore is seen standing in his Grandfather’s
old suit. Behind him, stands Granny.

Notes:
1. In “Mountain Talk”, Betsy Dotson-Lewis states that “arthur-itis” is a commonly used term in mountain dialect to describe

arthritis. (Dotson-Lewis, par. 12; par. 13)

2. Natalya Rachael Hopper, author of Feedsack Fashion in Rural Appalachia states that “During the Great Depression, rural

American women began re-using empty textile bags used to package animal feed, flour, sugar and other goods to make clothing

and home textiles. In a culture of material scarcity, excess cloth was a valuable commodity for creative, thrifty women. In the

1930s, 1940s and 1950s, cotton bag manufacturers targeted farmer’s wives by printing stylish and colorful patterns on the sacks

to be used for homesewing” and “Families who did not need or want to use the textile bags for homesewing gave them to a

neighbor or sold them back to the feed store.” (Hopper pg. iv; pg. 52)

3. In “Certain Parts of My Body Don’t Belong to Me”, an article describing transgender people’s experiences with body

dysphoria, participants in a study were said to describe their gender dysphoria as a disconnect from their body, “This theme of

disconnection was described by participants as feeling “jarring,” “wrong,” “off,” or “uncomfortable.”” and “One participant

noted that they felt as though “what I see doesn't match what's in my head”” ( Pulice-Farrow et al. pg. 11; pg. 12)

4. Refers to Chrysotherapy, the use of Gold salts to treat diseases, which is stated in the article, “Gold Preparations”, to have been

“introduced in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in the 1930s and it became a common approach to management of severe

rheumatoid arthritis until the 1960s” (“Gold Preparations”, par. 2)

5. In Appalachian Mental Health: “Religion in Southern Appalachia”, Richard A. Humphrey states that the Appalachians

“believe that prayer is the weapon of god and thus can heal you… They believe mental illness can be cured because, in Mark 5

Jesus cured the deranged man, one called Legion because he was possessed by so many demons.” (Humphrey, pg. 43)

6. In “Women in the Appalachian Home”, Sarah Smith Nester refers to granny women as “elder women in the community [who]

were often the only healthcare practitioners” and many times “played the role of obstetrician, pharmacist, psychologist, and

birthing coach.” most likely learning the skills from other granny women. (Nester, par.17)

7. In Appalachian Mental Health: “Religion in Southern Appalachia”, Richard Humphrey states that preachers “exhorted

[appalachians] with I Corinthians 1, in which the apostle Paul called them to be imitators of Christ and maintain the traditions”

(Humphrey, pg. 39)

8. In Appalachian Mental Health: “Religion in Southern Appalachia”, Richard Humphrey stated that “the old-time religion

requires baptism in a river or a stream, not in bathtubs: or by sprinkling or pouring, in the same way that Jesus was baptized in

the River Jordan”(Humphrey, pg. 39)

9. In Appalachian Mental Health: “Appalachian Family Ties”, Susan Emley Keefe states that “The community judges a person’s

character based on reference to [their] kin ties” (Keefe, pg. 28)

10. In “The Quare Gene” it’s stated that “According to writer's edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, "quare" is an

Anglo-Irish adjective from the early nineteenth century meaning "queer, strange, eccentric."” (Earley, par.1)
Citations:

Dotson-Lewis. “Mountain Talk” Center for Rural Strategies, The Daily Yonder, 2010,

https://dailyyonder.com/mountain-talk/2010/07/19/

Earley, Tony. “The Quare Gene” Personal History, The New Yorker, 1988,

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/09/21/the-quare-gene

“Gold Preparations”, LiverTox: Clinical and Research Information on Drug-Induced Liver Injury

[Internet], National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda,

Maryland, 2012, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548786

Hopper, Natalya R. Feedsack Fashion in Rural Appalachia: A Social History of Women’s Experiences in

Ashe County, North Carolina: 1929 – 1956. 2010. Appalachian State University, Unpublished

master’s thesis. NC Digital Online Collective of Knowledge and Scholarship,

https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/listing.aspx?id=4764

Humphrey, Richard A. “Religion in Southern Appalachia.” Appalachian Mental Health, edited by Susan

E. Keefe, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1988, pp. 36–47. Education

Resources Information Center (ERIC), https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED327347

Keefe, Susan E. “Appalachian Family Ties.” Appalachian Mental Health, edited by Susan E. Keefe, The

University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1988, pp. 24–35. Education Resources Information

Center (ERIC), https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED327347

Nester, Sarah Smith. “Women in the Appalachian Home.” Smoky Mountain Living, 2012,

https://www.smliv.com/stories/women-in-the-appalachian-home/

Pulice-Farrow, Lex & Cusack, Claire & Galupo, M. ““Certain Parts of My Body Don’t Belong to Me”:

Trans Individuals’ Descriptions of Body-Specific Gender Dysphoria”, Sexuality Research and

Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-019-00423-y