“Macaroni and cheese makes your boobs grow. Everyone knows that,” they said.
I was a picky, scant eater when I was a kid. In attempt to get me to eat more, my stacked grandmother and her six equally well-endowed sisters shared with me that the secret to an ample rack was mass quantities of mac and cheese. Thus began my life-long love affair with that gooey orange goodness – and, with not letting the whole truth get in the way of a good story.
The Conley Seven were dynamic as individuals, but they turned into an unstoppable force of nature when they were together. When they would gather at my Aunt Pat’s cozy cottage house, I would tuck myself into the tufted red velvet couch in the living room. It was not a particularly comfortable sleeping arrangement but every crick in my neck was worth it because from that scratchy sofa I could eavesdrop on their late night conversations.
The smell of a fresh pot of coffee danced through the house despite the fact that darkness had sauntered in hours before. Once the kids were tucked in and the men were out back drinking PBRs and listening to baseball on the radio, the women would pull up their chairs around the dining room table and crank the window unit air conditioner until one of the more cold-natured sisters said, “Turn that damn thing off. It’s freezing in here, for Pete’s sake.”
As spilled splashes of coffee in varying shades of brown dried across the white eyelet tablecloth and chairs got out the last of their groaning complaints, I would wait for the familiar crack of the Jack Daniels lid as a few of them would hit their cups with a just a “nip” – to take the edge off.
The table was always littered with packs of Winstons, Lucky Strikes and Marlboros and inevitably one sister would accuse another of stealing her lighter. As the squabbled over their Bics, my gran, the oldest and the Lucky Strikes enthusiast, would inform her younger siblings that it was the filter on their cigarettes that was going to kill them. I made a mental note to make sure that when I started smoking, because I definitely planned to start, that I would only puff on those that did not have a filter.
Since I did not have the benefit of caffeine and nicotine coursing through my body, I had to fight hard when my eyelids started to lose their battle with gravity. But, I needed these stories more than I needed sleep. I craved them like some kids long for a new toy. They were often about their hard-drinking, quick-swinging, oft-unemployed father who bounced his brood of 12 children from one dusty coal camp shanty to the next, and their saintly, revered mama who somehow not only managed to keep them fed, but also encased them in an unquestionable love.
“Remember when Anna was about seven and daddy whipped her for cussin’,” my gran asked in her single-malt and honey voice.
And, at that the laughter would start to roll between them until their words became a secret language of jumbled gasps, snorts, hoots and hollers that made it next to impossible to discern who was actually talking.
“Yeah, and when the whippin’ was over she said, ‘Well, g*dd*mn, daddy! Why the hell did you do that?’”
I buried my head in my pillow to stifle the laughter rippling through my young body, not knowing what was funnier – the deadpan delivery or hearing these women, several of whom belonged to a strict religion, cursing like their wilder, much less pious brothers.
It was also during one of my pretend sleep eavesdropping sessions that I was able to piece together that the scandalous act that I heard whispered about in the halls of my junior high actually had no blowing involved. The revelations that my gran and aunts knew what it was made me briefly consider giving up my life as a spy.
As the sun stretched itself awake the seven sisters would crush out their last cigarette and put their mismatched coffee mugs in the sink. They would unhook their white, cone shaped bras and drop them to the floor before falling into two beds: three in one, four in the other. Disagreements over the distribution of blankets would have to be resolved before they drifted off to sleep with the familiar closeness of the ones who knew them best.
The Conley Seven buried husbands, children, grandchildren and all five of their brothers. Only three of them remain today. Their love for each other is unrivaled…as are most of their stories.
When my world was swirling in a storm of chaos these women protected me. They slipped me twenties and backed my mom down when she was taking her bullying too far. They taught me how to take a shot of whisky and they ensured that I have tits that won’t quit.
But, above all they instilled in me that I can get through anything with: a good story, a ton of coffee, a little booze and most importantly sitting up much later than I should before falling into bed with my sisters.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
