Chapter Eight
Mother
left Clayton early in the summer of 1960 and we moved to Haltom City to an
apartment on Granger Street that our Aunt Ruby’s son and his wife found for us.
We had no car and even less money than usual but we were a family again. Mother
worked days and rode the bus both to and from her job.
Lloydine
was sick shortly after we moved in and she remembers Mother holding her in her
lap and Lloydine thinking, “This is so nice.” Then Mother abruptly got up and
said, “I have to catch the bus.” We were left alone as we usually were, but we
were used to it by this time.
I was
12 years old and could take care of my siblings, do all the housework and all
the meal preparation. I was excited about having access to a kitchen and we
were all happy to be able to use a real bathroom all the time. We used a bar of
soap for bathing until it was such a small sliver you could barely get hold of
it. Our main food was pinto beans and I could cook up a pot as well as Mother.
I had to be careful about the seasonings, though. Once I discovered bugs in the
chili pepper. It wasn’t until I had poured a good amount of it into the
simmering beans that I noticed them. I
scooped out what I could then just added extra salt and pepper. No one noticed
but I learned to check the chili pepper from that time on.
Just
as school was getting ready to start, Mother reunited with Clayton and we moved
yet again.
This time it was to the most traditional house we ever
lived in. No separation or division of living areas. It was a tract house with
a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom with a carport and fenced
back yard that had plush St. Augustine grass. The first 24 hours we were there was
the most normal hours we ever had with Clayton. He must have promised Mother a
few things to get her back. They had quite a volatile relationship.
That
first day we moved our things in and set up one bedroom for the four of us.
Then we all went out in the backyard to play while Clayton mowed the lawn. It
was a large backyard that sloped downhill from the rear fence line. While the
kids played, I read a magazine and watched them while Mother was in the kitchen
cooking dinner. I still remember the menu that evening: meat loaf, cheese
potatoes, pinto beans, corn on the cob, and peach cobbler. The miraculous part
of it was that we all sat in the kitchen around the table and ate as a family.
This was the first, last and only time we ever did this. I thought
perhaps life would become more normal. That was not going to happen.
We
learned to use the window in our bedroom for a door and we were young and agile
enough to climb in and out at will. That way, if Clayton was asleep in their
bedroom, we could get to the food in the kitchen, which we would carry back to
our room via the window.
There
was a peach tree in our backyard and I would pick the peaches while they were
still green and eat them with a lot of salt. I loved salt and ate so much of it
that my mother said I was going to dry up and blow away!
A
family lived next door that I could really relate to. Their last name was
Hoggard and the oldest of the three boys was named John. He took care of his
younger brothers just as I took care of my siblings. His mother was a single
mom and they had a washing machine that sat out in their carport and when John did
their laundry, the fresh smell of laundry detergent hung in the air. We never
had a washing machine and I always did our laundry at a washateria.
John was good at doing laundry and even did
the ironing as did I. Keeping the house clean was a bit of a challenge for him,
so one day I decided to help him deep clean their living room. We took down all
the dirty venetian blinds and washed them in the bathtub. I was impressed with
the assortment of cleaning aids we had to choose from. After we scrubbed them
down really well, we took them outside and hung them across the clothes line.
That’s when we noticed the threads holding the blinds together had come apart.
They were clean, but totally unusable. I didn’t offer to help him again after
that!
On
the other side of us lived a nice couple who had no children. I admired the
lady so much. She was small and pretty and had an equally pretty house. She had
her groceries delivered and I found that amazing. The delivery boy would haul
in large cardboard boxes full of food and I would help her put it all up.
There
was another family across the street that had a little girl about my age. I
liked to visit her on the weekend. I would go over on a Saturday morning and
she and her mother would be cleaning house together. I loved to clean so I
helped with the dusting and sweeping and the work went much faster with the
three of us, giving us more time to play.
Mother
worked and was seldom at home so we pretty much took care of ourselves. Once Mother
working for the day, she and Clayton would go places. Neither Clayton nor
Mother smoked or drank and they didn’t dance. They would go to wrestling
matches or the roller derby after going out to eat. They both loved to eat. We
children always ate at home and I fixed the meals for my siblings and myself. I
prepared simple foods and we would eat in the kitchen if no one else was home. If
I had a headache or felt sick, I would fix sandwiches for them and a glass of
crackers and milk for me. We were a little family of our own.
The
few times Mother was home, she usually stayed in her bedroom with the shades
down, lying in bed with a sick headache. Lloydine and I would take turns going in there
and we would sit on the side of her bed and rub her neck. Mother was given to
periods of depression and she would simply stay in bed. We would take food and
iced tea so she didn’t even have to get up to eat.
A few
times Clayton took all of us to the Roller Derby. We didn’t like it. It was
really loud and scary to us. Wrestling matches were even worse. The audience
would be yelling and it smelled bad.
Clayton seemed to enjoy exposing us to violence and he took special
delight in seeing us react with shock and horror. We liked staying home by
ourselves a whole lot more than we did going someplace with them.
I
finished 6th grade that spring. While I still liked school and made
straight A’s, Lloydine continued to be challenged. She was a frightened little
girl and would freeze up when she was called on in class. She was so
frightened, she never told her teacher when she couldn’t understand the
lessons. She struggled every single day. One day her teacher was so excited and
shared with the class that her husband was returning from a tour of duty in the
armed forces. She singled Lloydine out and said, “How would you feel if your
daddy had left and didn’t come back for a long, long time?” Lloydine looked up
at her and said, “My daddy did leave and he never came back!”
School
let out and we were relieved. In many ways, the summers were less stressful
than the school year. We had a small television in our room and if we kept it
turned down real low, we could pass the time when Clayton was home by watching Gunsmoke,
Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel and The Real McCoy’s. We
especially liked The Flintstones, The Andy Griffith Show and Dennis
the Menace. We could escape when we tuned in to The Rifleman and My
Three Sons. The Untouchables was the only show that scared me so I
made sure none of us watched that one.
Mother’s
birthday was June 6th and to celebrate it, I baked her a cake using
a mix. I was still in the kitchen when I heard Clayton drive up in the driveway.
We all scattered to the backyard or down the hall to our bedroom before he even
got in the house. I nearly froze just as I got to the bedroom door when I
remembered I had left the cake sitting on the top of the stove. In just a few minutes I heard him screaming my
name and calling me to the kitchen. I never knew what would make him mad and
had no idea me using the oven would send him on a rampage. He told me to watch
as he dismantled the oven, rendering it useless for the remainder of the summer
and then he burned a dollar bill and flushed a nickel down the toilet. That was
what the cake and frosting mix cost. The rest of the summer, I made Jell-O for
our treats. I was grateful we could still use the burners on top of the stove –
as long as he didn’t find out about it.
Lloydine
had begun to act out at home and cause trouble for us so Mother took her to
stay with Granny and Granddad. Granny liked her more than she did the rest of
us and would even share her Coca Colas with her! Lloydine remembers coming home
and none of us were happy to see her. She went back to Granny’s the very next
day. Our lives, even as children, were so stressful and if just one of us
caused trouble, it hurt all of us.
The family reunion was always
the first Sunday in August and we looked forward to it every year. By this time,
Clayton was working as a car salesman and he was given cars called “demonstrators”
to drive. He had a new black Impala with a red interior and he told Mother she
could use it to take us to the reunion that year. Mother loved to make a good
impression on her family, which led them to believe we were living a good life.
Every
family was supposed to take food to the reunion so I tried to make fudge. I
tried a couple of times but I could never get it to set. Just as it came to a rolling boil, I would
panic and take it off the fire. Mother had to buy something for us to take to
the reunion and the kids and I later ate the fudge I made with a spoon. It was
still good.
Most
of the extended family knew nothing of our real life. One of the very
few exceptions to this was Mother’s niece, Paula. They were extremely close and
fiercely protective of one another. Paula was Uncle Truman’s oldest daughter
and she was married to Paul, who was a real womanizer.
The
week after the reunion, Mother and Clayton took a vacation to California under
the pretense of going in search of Sharon, the daughter they continued to claim
had been kidnapped.
Mother had asked Paul and Paula to stay with us while
they were gone. I thought it was rather
strange that Mother wanted them to take care of us. That was not the real
reason. Apparently, Paul, Paula and their four boys had been evicted and had no
place to live. Now, not only did I take care of Lanita, Lloydine and Lonnie,
but for two weeks, I had to take care of my cousins, Richard, Collin and Daryl
and Larry as well! This was a real burden and caused me so much extra work that
I was completely worn out. I worked from the time I got up in the morning to
the time I went to bed. Paula’s boys were making messes faster than I could
clean them up, and Paul and Paula both expected me to prepare the meals and
keep the house clean. One day Paula came to me and said, “Linda, my husband
would like for you to clean the toilet twice a day. He doesn’t like to use a
dirty bathroom.”
I
cleaned. I cooked. I ironed. I did the laundry. I babysat their kids. I was
exhausted. My siblings tried to help but they were too young to do much.
Paul
and Paula had their own problems dealing with the boys. Every afternoon, the
ice cream truck would drive down our street. We all knew not to stop it because
we were well aware of the fact that we had no money. Daryl, however, would run
out in the street and stop the truck every single time! Paula would get mad and
give all the kids a whipping, including Lanita and Lonnie. They were the ones
closest to Daryl’s age, so she whipped them along with Daryl. Several whippings
later, they decided to get even with him. One day Lanita and Lonnie found a piece of dry
dog poop. They had an idea! They showed it to Daryl and told him it was candy.
He took a bite. It didn’t take but a chew or two and he was spitting it out and
yelling, “That’s not candy! That’s DOO-DOO.” Lanita and Lonnie still talk about
that to this day.
It
was during the second week they were there that Lanita started having
nosebleeds nearly every day. Paul told her to lie down and put a penny above
her upper lip. I don’t remember whether this worked or not. We tried to stay
away from Paul as much as possible. He hugged all the females in our family,
young and old, and hugged longer and held on tighter than he should have.
At
last, Mother and Clayton came home. I heard them talking to Paul and Paula
about how much fun they had and all the things they had seen. They had driven
all the way up to San Francisco and brought back several souvenirs including a
black enameled photo album, printed silk pillowcases and a stack of
photographs. I still have some of those
photos. In one of them Mother is riding on a chair lift and it is taking her
down the mountain to the cabins below. Their car is sitting in front of cabin number
three. I never heard one word about the search for Sharon.
Not only did Mother and Clayton
have a good vacation, so did Paul and Paula. Neither one of them had done a
single bit of work the whole time they were there. I was dumbfounded when
Mother thanked them profusely for ‘taking care of my children.’
With
all the mementoes and souvenirs, Mother and Clayton did not bring back one
single thing for us.
A
week later, right before Labor Day, we moved again. This was the fifth move in three years.
