Leaving Grady, Ark…
GRADY, Ark. – Whenever the train comes through this town, all the windows, tables and kitchen tops shake as the reverberations are felt by the people living closest to the train track. That’s my family. All of them live within
a few hundred feet of it, some even closer. The noise is so deafening all conversations, television watching and sleeping, are interrupted by the rat-a-tat-tat of the locomotives.
Each time I come down here I walk away with some insight or appreciation for our family’s geographic roots, what it means to be from a town of 500 and more importantly what it means to have escaped. More than anything this last trip I am committed to writing a book proposal that will help me excavate the landscape and rich themes of American religion,
dislocated sexuality, mental illness and addiction so carefully placed in my family.
It never fails that when I leave Grady, when I’ve wave goodbye to my cousins and kiss my grandmother on the cheek, tears always seem to gather in my eyes. Life on the other side of the train track is freedom. This last time my grandmother, Muh Deah, had a more poignant reaction.
“Goodbye Muh Deah,” I yelled as I walked toward the screen door.
“Don’t say goodbye to me,” she snapped back, her body slumped over in a chair facing the TV. She’s unable to hide the pout on her face.
“Alright then, farewell.”
She waved her hand without even looking up from the TV.
I never realized how trapped she must feel when we drive off.
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