Child of the Mountains by Marilyn Sue Shank Page B

kept on staring with a stone face at Cora Lee.
    “Come with me, Lydia,” Mr. Hinkle said. “Let’s go inside and talk. I’ll deal with you three young ladies later.”
    “But we didn’t do nothing, Mr. Hinkle,” Cora Lee said, all big-eyed and innocent-like. You could of poured her words on flapjacks, they sounded so sweet.
    Mr. Hinkle gived them girls one of his see-right-through-you looks. They just walked away. I knowed Ihad landed myself in big trouble, but a grin still tried to sneak onto my face when I got to thinking about them girls being put in their place.
    When we got inside, me and Mr. Hinkle sat down at the round table in the back of the classroom. “Lydia, your aunt told me your situation before you came here. I’ve seen those girls teasing you, and I’m sure Cora Lee asked for what she got. I know you must have felt angry when Cora Lee tried to give you those dresses. You must know, too, that I can’t condone fighting. Can we figure out a better way for you to handle their teasing in the future?”
    I bit my lip and didn’t say nothing. I looked down at the floor so I didn’t have to see his face.
    Mr. Hinkle sighed. “Lydia, I care about you. I know you’ve had a hard time, but you’re very bright. I hope you’ll graduate from high school and maybe even go to college someday.”
    I looked up at him. “Like Anne of Green Gables?” I said.
    He smiled. “Why, yes, just like Anne Shirley.”
    I looked down at the floor again. “Them girls made fun of my story on account of I used
ain’t
. I can’t figure that out. Maggie and Penny use
ain’t
all the time, too.”
    Mr. Hinkle sighed and shook his head. “Knowing correct grammar and using it are two different things, Lydia,” he said. “Those girls were just looking for an excuse to give you a hard time. Almost all of your classmates and the people around here talk the way you do.”
    He explained to me, “Most people don’t understand that mountain dialect is an earlier form of English, dating back hundreds of years. When your ancestors came to America from England, Scotland, and Ireland, the way they spoke English didn’t change much from generation to generation as speech did in other areas of the country. The mountains kept West Virginians from having contact with others from different states, where speech patterns were changing.”
    Mr. Hinkle stopped looking at me and stared out the window. “I love the colorful, well-seasoned dialect of the Appalachian Mountains,” he told me. “That’s one of the reasons I decided to teach in West Virginia—that, and a very personal reason. I learned as much as I could about West Virginia before I came here.”
    I wondered about the very personal reason, but I figured he wouldn’t want me to ask.
    “Lydia, the way you use words echoes Chaucer and Shakespeare,” he said. “Did you know Shakespeare loved to write double and even triple negatives? He used multiple negatives to emphasize a point, just as mountain people continue to do today. A poet named Thomas Gray lived in the seventeen hundreds. He wrote a famous poem titled ‘Elegy Wrote in a Country Church-yard.’ Over the years, somebody decided the title needed fixing and changed
wrote
to
written
.”
    Mr. Hinkle smiled. “I’m probably making you feel as though you’re getting a lecture. I promise I won’t give you a test.” That made me giggle. “I’m sorry to go on likethis,” he said. “It’s just that it frustrates me to see my students feeling ashamed of their heritage.”
    “I don’t care none, Mr. Hinkle.”
    “You just gave a good example, Lydia. If you lived in Ohio and said ‘I don’t care’ to a teacher, the teacher would think you meant that you weren’t interested in what he had to say.”
    I could feel my eyes get wide. “I’d like you to tell me more,” I said. “I be glad to know them famous people talked like I do.”
    “I know, Lydia,” Mr. Hinkle said. “The way you use ‘I don’t