The Red Flannel Rag

Mom worried about skinny folks not eating enough. Perhaps this reflected her

discomfort with her own weight. She was never allowed to forget her weight because of

the men in the extended family were always saying things to her such as, “Myrtle, when I

walk behind you, your ass looks like two kids fightin’ under a blanket.” Because she

heard these kinds of comments, she always thought she was ugly. I thought she was

really pretty and many other people did too. I often said to her, “Mom, you are so

pr etty.” She always got upset and sometimes responded, “Yea, I look like I was shot at

and missed and shit at and hit.”

She described skinny people as “having to drink muddy water to keep the sun

from souring their guts.” When I was about twelve years old, I wouldn’t eat anything in

the summer time except tomatoes. I always got really thin. Mom yelled at me for not

eating. She said, “I can read the Bible through your ribs.”

As I said earlier, I was born almost nine months and ten days after Mom and

Dad ’s wedding. As was the case with all the women in Hopkins Gap, she wanted a boy as

a first child and had already picked his name. He was going to be named William. But,

my being a female threw her for a loop. She had no name picked out. So the local

funeral director's wife suggested she call me Peggy Lois. I ended up being called Peggy

Ann. My mother never explained the change.

Mom always let me know that she was disappointed in my gender as her first

child. She told me she had wanted a black-haired, brown-eyed boy to start her family.

I had platinum blonde hair and Grandpa Austin’s blue eyes. I began my life feeling

inadequate and misplaced in the scheme of the family. A year and one-half later, she

gave birth to my brother, Larry, who had black hair and brown eyes. This did not help

my situation. She had the perfect child.

77