A Girl Named Alabama by Richard Ford

Author:Richard Ford [Ford, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781663251534
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2023-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

CYNTHIA

During one of Cynthia’s visits, she and I were sitting on the patio alone. Mama had gone to bed, and Robert was out of town. During our conversation, I asked her about her family and childhood. She threw her head back and laughed in that special way that only Cynthia could—unrestrained, pure, and straight from her heart.

“Oh, that,” she said. “Just your typical life, I guess. I was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, in 1931. My parents were both Comanche Indians of mixed blood. I was named and baptized Cynthia Ann Parker, after my great-great-grandmother. My great-grandfather was her son, Quanah Parker, chief of the Comanche nation. I’m descended from Quanah Parker and his wife, Maria Stephania Yellow-Wolf, through their only son, John Star Parker. My mother’s name was Hiopi, or “Sunflower,” Caesaron, and my father’s name was Kobe, or “Wild Horse,” Parker. I was one of their two children, but my brother, Kobe Jr., was killed on Okinawa in World War II.

“My father was a rodeo rider and rode wild horses, broncos, and bulls for a living. We traveled frequently all over the West, but mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. My mother worked in the concession stands at the rodeos. When I started school, my mother and I settled down in Lawton so that I could attend to my studies. My father made a pretty good living for us, until he was thrown off of a bull and broke his hip. He was laid up for about six months, and even though he tried to go back to riding after that, his rodeo days as a rider were over. Instead, he worked as a rodeo clown and doing whatever else he could to make money. My brother worked part-time as a farm equipment mechanic to help with the family’s support, until he joined the marines around 1939. My mother cleaned houses to bring in some money too, until she took sick. Daddy got hurt again when a horse kicked him and shattered his kneecap. After that, he couldn’t walk without a crutch; he was crippled and couldn’t work. The times really got hard for all of us.

“Mama had breast cancer, but she worked as long as she could, until her illness became unbearable. After that, we survived on charity. I tended to Mama night and day, but I could tell in her face and her speech that she was going downhill fast. I sat with my mother for long periods, and I wanted to quit school to stay with her continuously, but she wouldn’t let me. I sat by her bedside, and we talked about everything—all the things she wanted to teach me but hadn’t because we thought there was time for that later. But there wasn’t. We used that little time left to us to do it.

“There were all sorts of practical things, like cooking, sewing, and tending the vegetable garden, but one thing in particular that she focused on was teaching me what she called, ‘Indian attention.’ As

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