Mama and Barney Part 1

They All Live Happily Ever After

Kissiah “Kit” Smith was born on January 16, 1817. She entered this world on the wings of grief an’ loss, just a few hours after her father’s passin’.

Her name would become a prayer whispered in anguish an’ a curse muttered in dark corners, when at seventeen, she became The Sin-Eater of Mount Pisgah, Kentucky. Not by choice but by necessity.

It was a role she inherited when her mother, a hard an’ broken woman, passed with a slice of bread clutched in her hand an’ the sins of another lodged in her chest. “You’re the only one left, girl,” the elders had said, their eyes refusin’ to meet hers. “You’ll carry on, won’t you?” Kit didn’t know how to refuse.

Life in 1834 Mount Pisgah was hard enough without carryin’ another’s sins, but Kit Smith, like the ground under her bare feet, took what was laid on her an' kept goin’.

The first time she stepped into the role, the widow Granger led Kit into the cabin where her husband, Amos, lay cold an’ stiff on the table. A small loaf of cornbread rested on Amos’s chest, along with a clay jug of whiskey. She knew what was expected. She’d watched her Ma do it a hundred times.

Kit’s stomach churned as she sat beside the body, her tremblin’ hands reachin’ for the bread. She felt the weight of a hundred secret sins in ever’ bite. The petty lies, the grudges, the midnight transgressions no preacher’s prayers could cleanse. The whiskey burned like fire in her throat, an’ when it was done, the widow whispered, “Thank you,” as if she’d saved Amos from hell itself.

Word spread quickly. She was Kissiah Smith, the girl who ate sins. Families came to her in the dead of night, each seekin’ to unburden their loved ones, an’ themselves. The food they left was her payment: a ham hock, a basket of apples, or sometimes just a few biscuits. It was enough to keep Kit alive, but barely.

With each ritual, she felt the weight of the community heavy on her shoulders. It wasn’t just the sins of the dead she carried; it was the guilt of the livin’, their secret relief that someone else bore the burden. Over time, she became a figure of suspicion. Children whispered about the strange woman who dined with the dead. Mothers pulled their skirts tight when she passed by, as though her presence alone might bring a curse upon their homes.

Once, little Annie Doyle dropped a bushel basket of fruit when she saw Kit comin’ down the lane. Paradise apples from her family orchard went rollin’ ever’where while Annie ran home sobbin’ about the ‘Sin Witch.’ Kit just kept walkin’, but the sting of the words followed her all the way back to her cabin.

Yet, there were moments when in the stillness of a mournin’ family’s grief, Kit glimpsed somethin’ sacred: a widow’s tears easin’ her heartache, a father’s hand restin’ on his grievin’ son’s shoulder. They needed Kit, even if they couldn’t love her anymore.

At night, Kit wrestled with the sins she had taken into herself. She dreamed of Amos Granger’s bloodied fists, of Mary Colton’s whispered confession of infidelity, of the despair that drove young Jacob Haynes to end his life in the woods. The sins didn’t just fade; they lived inside her, carvin’ out pieces of Kit’s soul.

She wondered if what she carried would send her to the same hell she was tryin’ to save others from. Was she cleansin’ their souls, or sacrificin’ her own? She stopped attendin’ church, certain the walls would collapse if she dared to cross the threshold.

One autumn evenin’, Kit sat alone on the rocky bluff overlookin’ Mount Pisgah, the world below painted in gold an’ red. She thought of her Ma, who had carried this same burden an’ died a bitter, hollow woman. Was this her fate too? To live a life no one wanted, to become a ghost long before death claimed her? An’ how far back did this weight go? Would it end with her, or find another to haunt, like a bloodline curse?

As the sun dipped behind the mountains, Kissiah made her peace with her role. She wasn’t a holy woman, nor was she a monster. She was simply a vessel, a bridge between the livin’ an’ the dead, between sin an’ redemption.

But she also made a vow: she would carry the sins of others, yes, but she would not let them consume her. She would write them down in a book, a ledger she kept hidden beneath the loose floorboards of her cabin. A testament to the humanity of the people who left those sins behind.

Kissiah “Kit” Smith, The Sin Eater of Mount Pisgah, would not vanish into the shadows of this burden. She would remember the brokenness, an’ in rememberin’, she would reclaim somethin’ of herself that had gone missin’ when she took her first breath, the day her daddy died.

Kit learned early that some burdens aren’t chosen, they’re passed down, from parent to child, from family to scapegoat, until the line between guilt and innocence disappears.

And though Kit herself would fade into the past, the weight she carried never really left this family.

As a four-year-old little girl growin’ up in the Deep South, in the panhandle of Florida in 1961, it never occurred to me that Mama had a life before I’s born. As far as I knew, I's the center of her universe.

I never thought about my father’s life. Why would I? From ever’ perspective, that of a child in the 60s, an’ now, an adult many decades later, he was absent from my existence. It made sense that I's absent from his.

But Mama’s story would one day shape ever’thing I thought I knew about her, and myself. I didn’t know it then, but Daddy’s story would one day do the same.

It was 1950 in Rock Island, Illinois, an’ Mama had just started gettin’ supper ready for five-year old Bunnie an’ three-year-old Bonnie when Glen busted through the front door. Red faced an’ boots slammin’ hard, he pulled up the livin’ room rug, an’ started tearin’ the house apart. The girls were sittin’ at the table, so Mama left her work at the stove to shield her babies from this new chapter of their daddy’s madness.

“Get over here an’ help me, Darline! G-men are comin’!” he hollered, his eyes wild with panic.

“What are you talkin’ about, Barney?” That had been Glen’s nickname since he was a kid. A name that stuck, though it didn’t always suit the man he’d become.

“We got one hour to clear these guns outta here 'fore they come an’ cart me off to jail. Get over here an’ help me!”

Mama married Barney in 1945, when she was seventeen. By 1950, I’s still seven years away. But ever’thing that was happenin’ here would one day become part of my story.

After my grandfather abandoned their family when Mama was eleven, she turned to Richard for comfort. When he an’ Dickie Lee died an’ her world went to hell, she needed somethin’ to hold onto, somethin’ to quiet the pain that wouldn’t let her be. Glen Alfred Barnhart, aka Barney, was there to pick up the pieces, or so it seemed.

Barney lived on his family’s Missouri farm most of his life, but by the time they met, he was workin’ as a flagman on the railroad, keepin’ the train safe as it moved along the tracks. It made him feel important.

Life on the farm had been way too predictable an’ way too hard. The endless rows of corn, the clatter of the chicken coop, the same sun risin’ an’ settin’ over the same fields, it was all a prison.

When Barney was old enough to get a job, he did. He liked the money, but workin’ on the railroad meant goin’ places, meetin’ people he’d never have known back in Putnam County. The whistle of the train, the rumble of the tracks, it made him feel alive.

The last thing he wanted was a life of plowin’ fields an’ raisin’ chickens. He wanted excitement. Life on the rails gave him that, so Barney left the farm behind, but some things you can’t escape, no matter where the train takes you.

Barney’s route passed through Grinnell on its regular run to the Rock Island Arsenal. Iowa’s farmin’ communities an’ Illinois’ military production were partners in supportin’ the troops fightin’ in World War II. Barney had been given a deferment from military service because he worked on the railroad.

He had never been the patriotic type anyway, so stayin’ home instead of gettin’ shot at in a foreign country, somewhere across the ocean, was fine with him.

In the summer of 1944, on a run through Grinnell, Barney found himself at the local Maid-Rite Hamburger stand where Mama worked as a Maid-Rite girl. He was lookin’ for a quick lunch. What Barney found was my Mama, all 5 feet 9 inches of her.

She was standin’ behind the counter, her thick strawberry blonde hair in a ponytail with what looked like wisps of cotton candy dancin’ around her freckled face. She was a long, tall drink o’ water, he later said, an’ he was gonna take a dip. But it was much later, well into their courtship, before Mama heard him describe their first encounter this way.

When she told me this story in 1970, Mama said, “I wasn’t sure if I should feel complimented or commodified. But it proved your Granny wrong about girls who wear glasses. I was gettin’ attention from men after all.’

“What do you mean, girls who wear glasses, Mama?” I asked. The uncertainty on her face told me she was debatin’ what her answer should be.

As it turned out, lots of men were attracted to Mama. Barney was just one of ‘em. But that day she told me she never thought she’s much to look at. Why would she?

One of her earliest memories was of her mother, my Granny, combin’ the tangles out of her hair. Granny believed that beauty lay in blue eyes and dark curls. Somethin’ Mama would never have.

“Why did you have to be born a ol’ girl?! I only wanted boys.” Granny leveled this complaint ever’ mornin’, accompanied by a whack on the crown of Mama’s head as tangles were ripped out in frustration that sent her glasses flyin’ across the room.

Mama clenched her teeth, the pain in her scalp was nothin’ compared to the ache in her chest. Even at six years old, she knew she’d never be loved like her brothers were. You might think this would make her resent ‘em, but Mama loved those boys with all her heart. She said they loved her too and that was more’n enough.

In 1935, the doctor had declared Mama legally blind. Her thick-lens spectacles brought her blurry world into focus, but they took Granny’s complainin’ to the boilin’ point. There was never any chance of missin’ the anger in Granny’s voice. Now, with her new glasses, Mama could see it on her face, too. It was pure torture.

“Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” Granny said, twistin’ Dorothy Parker’s words into Mama’s heart like a knife. “The boys will never look at you, Darline. You’re too tall, you got straight hair, an’ you wear spectacles! You’ll never get married. You’re just gonna be a ol’ maid.”

The words stung more’n the tangles bein’ ripped out of her hair. Mama didn’t even know what bein’ an old maid meant back then, but she knew it wasn’t somethin’ good.”

But I’ve seen the pictures an’ Granny was wrong. Mama was a real beauty. Her cat-eye style glasses frammin’ those big brown eyes sat over a smile that made you stop in your tracks. No wonder the fellas followed her around like puppies.

Mama’s looks an’ the feisty spirit that matched her blonde hair an’ dark eyes was impossible to ignore. She had learned years ago that the gentle woman ways her mother tried to instill in her would never give her the rush she needed to forget her pain.

Mama an’ Barney were thrill junkies. The excitement they both craved was easy to find when they’s together. Cheap thrills that would eventually come at a high price, set her on a path she really hadn’t planned on. And that path would eventually lead to me.

When these and many more details of Mama’s history came out into the light, I began to wonder if Kit wasn’t the one guidin’ me there from the start. She knew somethin’ about secrets kept in the dark. And like those in her ledger, these were the sins Mama carried.

Kit’s ledger didn’t survive the years, but her story did. It lived on, weavin’ itself into our family, into the life of her great grandson and his children, Junior, Darline, Bill, Gene, and Dickie Lee.

Some days I can feel Kit standin’ nearby, and it’s hard to tell where her story ends and mine begins.

She’s handin’ me back pieces of my life that were lost along the way. Pieces I never had words for.

And the only way to make sense of any of it is to go back to Mama.