Kinfolks by Lisa Alther

many years I wondered why my father or grandparents didn’t take us to meet our Virginia relatives. But I’ve had my driver’s license for over twenty years now, and I’ve never gone either. Now that I have a child of my own, I find myself more interested in the gossamer webs of kinship. So I decide to fly to Tennessee, leave Sara with my parents, and at last drive to southwest Virginia to meet some of these strangers who reputedly share my genes.
    After I arrive at my parents’ house, my grandmother’s silver Cadillac materializes in the driveway like the coupe of Cruella De Vil. I go out to greet her. Her frosted perm is afrizzle, but she says nothing. She believes that cultivated people should communicate in ultrasonic squeaks, like bats. And she does get her point across: she doesn’t want me to visit her childhood stomping grounds. But I don’t know why.
    She slides out of her car. As I hug her, I can tell that she’s lost weight. Encased in mink, she feels like a bear emerging from hibernation after a long winter’s nap. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Virginia Club is appalled by my first novel,
Kinflicks
. It’s bawdy and contains some vulgar language. It also implicitly criticizes Tennessee Eastman, Kingsport’s sugar teat, for polluting the town’s air and water. No one has uttered a word about the book to my grandmother, in keeping with the old southern dictum, “If you can’t be kind, be vague.”
    Looking me up and down, my grandmother says, “You know, your father’s a wonderful man.”
    â€œYes, ma’am, he is.” I glance at her quizzically.
    â€œHe never has a bad word to say about you!”
    She sweeps inside to greet Sara, leaving me standing in the driveway feeling as though I’ve just been slapped.
    My father’s response to
Kinflicks
was, with an amused smile, “I ought to take you out to the woodshed.”
    But my friend Nellie reports that he’s written on a slip of paper the amount of money for which the paperback rights sold and pinned it inside his suit jacket. Whenever people bring up the book at parties, he just opens his jacket and flashes the amount at them to shut them up.
    I soak my corn bread in the liquid from my soup beans at a cafeteria in Clintwood, Virginia. Across from me sit my father’s schoolteacher first cousins, Vonda and Zella. I’m trying to figure out why my grandmother has never introduced us. They seem delightful in every way.
    I’m intrigued by their names, but they have no ancestral explanation for them. Their parents just liked the sounds. This isn’t uncommon in our region. Some of my relatives I’ve never met are named Arbutus, Nicatie, Bluford, Darkus, Ordealy, Perlina, Orbra, Bureta, Ancil, Rebeal. One is even named Spicie Dewdrop. And I’ve heard of girls in Riverview called Formica Dinette and Placenta Sue.
    Vonda tells me about a road trip another cousin took with my grandmother. Several hours from home my grandmother realized that she’d forgotten her glasses.
    When they checked out of their hotel the next morning, my grandmother said to the desk clerk, “Sir, I know that your guests must sometimes leave their eyeglasses in their rooms?”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” he said, “plenty do. We save them in a box in case they come back for them.”
    My grandmother explained her plight. She proposed borrowing an abandoned pair to use on her trip, which she’d return to him on the way home. He pulled out the box of glasses. She tried some on, picked a pair she liked, and continued down the road. Vonda marvels at my grandmother’s resourcefulness, insisting there has never been a problem she couldn’t solve.
{Kinflicks
may be the first.)
    A jury arrives at the cafeteria from the courthouse across the street. Our waitress explains that the case they’re hearing involves a football star at the local