I grew up moving around. Little towns. My dad was a radio announcer, a drive-time morning man. Anytime a better offer came his way, we were gone. Up until my sixth-grade year, I never lived anywhere more than 18 months. Then there were the problems at home. Mom and Dad were that couple who loved one another but just got on each other’s nerves. They pushed all the right buttons.
Every so often, in between my mother’s teaching jobs and my parents’ separations, I ended up living with my grandmother, Miz Lena, in Middle Tennessee. Her ways were pure country. She was starchy strict. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that my grandmother was in charge. Her way or hell to pay. No possibility of getting around her.
Miz Lena had me convinced that she and the Almighty spoke often. Apparently, and according to Grand Mom, God peeked in on what I was doing and reported his findings back to her.
Wagging her finger in my face, she’d say, “If you lie to yore elders, them Carmen Gods’ll come gitcha! They’s green and yellow and can come right through doors and walls. They can smell a liar from a mile away. They don’t come from heaven, but they work fer God. They know the devil too.”
She was referring to Karma. Grand Mom usually stuck to her made-up, self-serving quotes from the Bible. Karma was a new one on me. Folks raised in a farming family, as was she, seemed to have firsthand knowledge about things of that sort.