Some fool once called her, “white trash.” And that’s when she made up her mind. She wanted to better herself, and her family. So, that’s what she did.
“That GED test,” she said, while she checked my blood pressure. “That ain’t no joke, now. It’s tough.”
Her accent is so Alabamian it hurts. She’s missing a few teeth, but it doesn’t look bad on her. She’s old. Wiry. Strong.
Where she grew up, country folks didn’t go past the eighth grade—some still don’t. And according to her daddy, “Once a young’un can read, it’s time to get out and work.”
Saying this made her laugh. I’m not sure why. Maybe one’s own private memories are just humorous.
All six of her brothers dropped out, so did she. It wasn’t a big deal to drop out of school back then.
Take me. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade. Nobody said a word about it. I returned to school as an adult and got my high-school equivalency stuff. And to this day, I still have a hard time spelling “equivalency.”
She and I aren’t that different.
She met a man who worked in a lumber mill, they had two children before she was 20. She’s still with him. She calls him Beater. I don’t know why. But personally, it’s not a nickname I would want.
When she was 24, Beater suggested she apply for a job at the hospital. She thought this was ridiculous. Hospitals didn’t hire “poor white trash.” Hospitals were for learned people. People with letters behind their name. Not hillbillies.
“Which is exactly what I am,” she tells me as she checks my temperature with an ear thermometer.
Even so, she inquired with the hospital about getting a job there. The hospital told her she would need college. So she called a college. The college said she needed a high-school diploma. So she called a high…