Not One Single Scar
Through vivid imagery and raw emotion, Zoe explores the complexities of faith, family, and identity in the heart of coal country.
Loretta Remembers Something Important
When Momma got hit by that car
up on Rockaway Street in front of the VFW
by those boys from Jackson,
Uncle Luten showed up. Out of nowhere,
said a voice told him to come. Momma was in a coma
for three months and Pappa wouldn't come home
till she did. Uncle Luten stayed with us
and cooked chili and washed our shoelaces,
polished five pairs of saddle shoes three times a week
and set them to dry on the top of the stairs
while Momma fought hard
to open her eyes.
When Momma come home he fried her eggs
the way she liked them, made coffee
in the morning, and every morning
he brought her up breakfast in bed on a tray
with a single rose. And when I caught fire
up on the hill he sat with me for four days straight,
scraping raw potato pulp with a spoon
and laying it on my back, drawing the fire
from my burn till them potatoes turned red as blood
and talking to me real slow about
Florida and Christmas. At Pappa's funeral
he wore new shoes and did tricks with quarters
for the grandkids. He washed
casserole dishes for Momma and made coffee
for the neighbors. Momma said
the 7th son of a 7th son was magic
and we was lucky for Uncle Luten, said
he did things nobody could explain.
But I knew that. He told me himself we were two
of a kind, that I had something he had
that nobody else could see. I remember that now.
He died somewhere in Georgia
a few years after Pappa died—old, lean,
and in peace is what we heard. Those cool palms
pressing raw potato pulp
on burnt skin lives with me still—
you can see now
I don't have a single scar
that you can see.
Inside the Mountain
I.
What they told me was this: that my soul was right here on my chest and it was white, and every time I cussed or told a lie a little black dot would appear right across the face of my soul. Daddy cussed so much I was sure his soul was black as coal, and I thought my daddy was going straight to hell. He drank too. He drank because he had a bad back from working in the mines for 33 years, but now he drinks cause he has to. He can't stop now, but that was before he turned Catholic.
When he was 17 years old his best friend got drunk and missed a turn on Blackey Road. After he died, at the funeral, the preacher said he was going straight to hell cause he was mean and evil, him as drunk as he was, and with that boy's mother sitting right there in the front row. My daddy told me he turned around and walked right out of that church and never went inside another one until he turned Catholic.
II.
My mother turned Catholic too. Her folks never went to any one church. They just went anywhere they could, so she wasn't particular about where she went, but when my sister wanted to have her second baby baptized she asked me to be the godmother and that priest in the Catholic church said me and my brother couldn't come into his church cause we had a dirty lifestyle and my Daddy got mad as fire and he did it again—this time for good. He turned his back on the church and he hadn’t set foot in one since that day.
Momma took some classes at the community college and my daddy moved down to the lake to live after he retired. He went down there to work on the boat dock and he still drinks too much. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve laid awake praying that my phone wouldn’t ring so I wouldn't have to hear that he wrecked his truck out drunk one night.
Last time Momma went to see him on the lake he was so drunk he got crazy jealous cause Momma was wearing shorts—said good Christian women didn’t wear shorts, said he never let her wear shorts at home so who did she think she was now. She just wanted some sun on her legs. I don't worry a whole lot about his soul anymore cause I know he’s a good man. He reads the bible even if he don’t go to church and he lives by it according to his own understanding. That’s what he told me, and I believe him cause I KNOW he’s good, as hard as he’s worked for Momma and us kids all his life and that oughta count for something. Sometimes I don’t know what to think.
III.
In 8th grade Arlene Fugate told me about the black book. She said her black book was so filled up she couldn’t imagine ever getting enough marks in her gold book to ever be able to catch up. Poor Arlene, she was all but done for before she even got out of high school. Somehow a little black book doesn’t bother me as much as a black soul, you know, cause your soul, it’s with you all the time. I don’t cuss much and I drink beer sometimes cause although I don’t really know what to believe I have to say I think about a white soul, and I see mine is white. I know it is, inside I know it.
About the author
Lucinda Zoe is an Eastern Kentucky native and transplanted Southerner who moved to New York City in 1989. A librarian and archivist by training, she has written and produced plays and monologues, both in Kentucky and New York, and recently completed a collection of poetry, which will be published byRare Swan Press. She divides her time between New York City and a home in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.