Children in the Closet...Chapter Six

 Chapter Six

 

               The summer of 1958 was the happiest we ever had as children. We three sisters were together again while Lonnie remained with Aunt Winnie, who loved him dearly. We were happy and safe. We loved everything about staying with Aunt Ruby and Uncle Hummie, Granny’s brother. They took us to church with them every Sunday. Aunt Ruby played the piano and I purposely chose The Old Rugged Cross as my favorite hymn. That was the hymn the organist played the day I was baptized and it has remained my favorite all these years.

               Our aunt and uncle were not wealthy by any means. They loved in a small frame rented house and didn’t have much in the way of furniture. Uncle Hummie was a hard worker and Aunt Ruby was a dedicated wife, mother and full-time homemaker and a writer. She published a book that I still have somewhere as well as several books of poetry.

                She fed her family, and now us, from a huge garden which she tended diligently. There were rows of corn, black eyed peas, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, carrots, several kinds of squash, peppers, radishes, onions and collard greens along with strawberries and peach and apricot fruit trees. Every morning after breakfast, Aunt Ruby would lead us all out to the back yard where we would help her tend her garden. Since we were young and agile, it was our job to crawl up one row and down the next one pulling up weeds. After all the weeds had been dealt with, we helped pick the produce for that day. Aunt Ruby always wore a great big apron and filled the large deep pockets with tomatoes and onions before holding the apron out like a basket so we could fill it with green beans or black-eyed peas. Then we all trooped back into the house and unloaded Aunt Ruby’s apron onto the counter beside the sink. While she washed everything and started preparing lunch, we were allowed to go play until it was time to eat. Then, after our naps in the afternoon, we would sit out on the screened-in back porch and shell peas or snap beans or whatever Aunt Ruby needed us to do. She didn’t waste anything, canning whatever extra produce we didn’t eat so there would be plenty of vegetables stored away in the pantry for the winter.

               We ate three meals a day and they were as regular as clockwork. Uncle Hummie came home to eat lunch at noon during the work week so every meal was a family meal eaten at the kitchen table. We had access to a bathroom whenever we needed and we brushed our teeth every morning and again at night plus we took a regular bath before we went to bed.

               We were so happy that we nearly forgot about life in the shed and the scary people who lived in the house. We wished we could stay there forever. None of the family knew the conditions we lived in when we were with Mother. We learned early on and really fast not to tell anyone anything about our real life. Aunt Ruby assumed we missed Mother and longed to go home again as soon as we could, but she was wrong. I knew enough to know this wonderful summer would not last forever, but Lloydine and Lanita seemed to think we would continue to live there for a long time.

               It was the second Sunday in August and Aunt Ruby and Uncle Hummie took all of us to the Hancock/Carlton Family Reunion. This was the highlight of our every summer. It was as close to a vacation as we ever had when we were growing up. Aunt Ruby had cooked all day long that Saturday before the reunion and early Sunday morning, Uncle Hummie carried a big cardboard box to the car filled with all sorts of good things to eat. There was a container of thickly sliced tomatoes and onions fresh from the garden, along with ears of corn wrapped in foil to be reheated once we arrived at the Community Center in Stephenville, Texas. A big pan of black-eyed peas seasoned heavily with salt pork sat next to an iron skillet of homemade cornbread.  A 5-pound meat loaf was the only thing that didn’t come from her garden. Dessert was a huge peach cobbler made from her own peaches. We arrived early and stayed late playing with our cousins the whole time we were there.

               I remember the ride home that evening, thinking it was the best reunion since I was a little girl and had spent Saturday night sleeping on a pallet in the gymnasium year Mother and Daddy took us when life was good and we felt safe and happy.

               Sadly, the following weekend, we had to go back to Granny and Granddad’s to stay for a week and then we would go “home.” By this time Aunt Alice and Uncle Truman had moved back to the house on Poinsettia so it was a little crowded but at least we were inside with the grownups.  Lonnie was already there so it was good to see him again even though he had been crying since Aunt Winnie had left. I’m sure it was hard for her to leave Lonnie; she loved him so. She had become the true mother figure in his young life and we later found out that she had pleaded desperately with Mother to allow them to adopt him. Mother refused. Looking back, I think she didn’t allow it because of what her parents would have thought. She didn’t want any of the family to think badly of her nor did she want anyone to know just what our life was really like.

               Mother gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, on August 25^th, 1958. They named the baby girl Sharon. The baby boy was Clayton Albert Collins, II, but he only lived 24 hours. Clayton went wild with his grief.  He had the baby embalmed and put in a white satin-lined casket while Mother was still in the hospital, and he brought the deceased child over to Granny and Granddad’s house.  Our Aunt Alice had just finished giving Lonnie a bath when Clayton arrived. Lonnie was only 2 years old but he still remembers seeing the dead baby and not understanding what had happened to him. Clayton caused such a commotion with his rantings and ravings that Uncle Truman called the police but Clayton left before they arrived. He roared out of the driveway like a mad man with his dead infant son in a casket on the seat beside him.

               We were sad when we returned to the little shed just a few days later. Once more, we all made a trip to the Public Health Center on University Drive in Fort Worth to get the vaccinations for Lloydine to start school. Luann and the new baby stayed with Grandma Collins.  Lloydine and I stood in a long line in the summer heat, while Mother stayed in the car with Lanita and Lonnie. She was still recovering from having the twins and not feeling well.  When it was nearly Lloydine’s turn, I ran back and changed places with Mother so she could sign the papers and show her birth certificate.

               We started school at Morningside Elementary. Lloydine was still traumatized by all the changes that had been happening in our lives the past 12 months.  She had relaxed in the security of Aunt Ruby’s love and our stable life there only to be uprooted once again. We had learned all about fear and uncertainty and that just as you think you are safe, something else happens that proves you aren’t. She showed her insecurity by running home every time they let the class out for recess, but instead of Mother reassuring her, she just got mad and yelled at Lloydine for this.

               Sharon was just one month old when Mother found a job as a switchboard operator but she needed a sitter for the baby. Her hours were from 3:00 in the afternoon until 11:00 at night. Mother kept an eye on Lanita and Lonnie while I was at school, although, more often than not, they went outside in the backyard to play and then would go in the shed if Clayton or Pap was home. We were all scared of both of them. Lloydine was in first grade so she would watch the younger two until I got home an hour later. If Grandma Collins was working, then we took care of Luann, too, but she had to come out to the little house since we were still not allowed inside as a general rule. I was soon to be 10 years old and was used to taking care of my younger siblings but even Mother knew I was not old enough to take on the care of a newborn infant as well. Grandma Collins and our Aunt Viola came up with a scheme.   Reginald was a cousin of Clayton’s and he and his wife couldn’t have children, so she asked them if they could take care of the baby during the week and then Mother would get her on the weekend.  Mother took me with her to pick up the baby one afternoon and discovered the house vacant. Reginald and his wife had taken the baby and disappeared. Mother and Clayton told us she had been kidnapped. That’s what Mother told her family, too, although the police were never contacted and no official report was ever made. It was much later when we learned the plan was to give Sharon to Reginald and his wife all along. The faked kidnapping was all part of the scheme.

               Fact is stranger than fiction and in later years, Sharon found her birth mother. Again, Mother insisted that she had been kidnapped. There were many strange things about this. The first was that Sharon has an adopted brother named Jimmy Carlton. He was disabled and later he was put in a home. Carlton was a family name on Granny’s paternal side.  It was the Carlton/Hancock reunions we had every August.

               Both Sharon and Jimmy had their birth certificates and, as it turned out, neither one of them had been legally adopted. We believe Grandma Collins and Aunt Viola had arranged for them to be taken away. Sharon’s life was a nightmare worse than ours, but we wouldn’t know that for another 45 years.

               All of a sudden, our baby sister was gone. We had only seen her a few times at best and we knew not to make a fuss or ask questions. Life returned to much like it was the year before.  Luann was a year older and continued to live in the “big house” with Mother, Clayton, Pap, and Grandma. We did manage to sneak in some visits with her when Clayton and Pap were gone. We all called her Tootie and she was a happy baby and laughed and smiled whenever we were with her. It’s funny how quickly children adapt to whatever life is like for them at any given time. Sneaking around to see our baby sister became second nature to us. Only Lloydine and I had memories of our previous life. Our current unsettled way of living was all that Lanita and Lonnie knew. My sister and I remembered being cared for and feeling safe and protected and loved while Lanita and Lonnie did not.

               Grandma Collins was kind to us and saw to it that we had adequate clothes by frequenting the Salvation Army. We were grateful for all the clothes she bought for us, and especially the ones that actually fit. The rest we wore anyway.

               What we were all getting used to was the sudden and unexpected changes that continued to happen in our life. Just as we got used to a certain situation – it changed, and it was not always for the best.

                

               It was early October when we relocated again. Clayton moved out of his parents’ home for the first time in his life. He rented a small frame house on Stuart Drive in an industrial area of Fort Worth. It was right next door to a lumber mill and the backyard went all the way down to the railroad tracks behind the house.  Not many houses were in this rough district. It was a boxlike structure with four rooms – two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and small bathroom in the middle. It was much better than the shed, however, and we were glad to be living in a house again.

               Our room had one full size bed and a baby bed. Lloydine was soon to be 7 and Lanita would turn 5 in November while Lonnie would be 4 in January. All three of them wet the bed, with Lanita and Lonnie starting again after we had gone back to living in the shed at the end of August. I had just turned 10 years old so I slept in the baby bed curling myself up so I could fit but it was the only dry place I had.

               The rules were that when Clayton came home, we would run to our room and close the door and stay there being very quiet. If we needed to go to the bathroom, we had to use the coffee can. Then when we heard him leave, he always slammed the front door on his way out, and we could go in the rest of the house.  We had a ritual of running into the living room holding hands and we would dance around in a circle singing, “Clayton’s gone! Clayton’s gone!”

               On Halloween that year, I took my siblings to the only two houses within walking distance. No one was home at the first house so we walked on to the second one. An elderly lady was so surprised to see children trick-or- treating when she opened her door. She had no candy but gave us each a banana. She was kind to us and I would later go over to visit with her from time to time. Her name was Mrs. Jones and she had velvet pictures of scripture verses on her walls. I would read and then memorize them. Occasionally, Mother would ask her to babysit us. I thought this was rather odd since we had been living all by ourselves in a backyard shed for months at a time.  We were just a block away from Hemphill Street which was an extremely seedy and unsafe area. We became inner city kids that year and remained so for the rest of our short childhoods.

               Mother drove Lloydine and me to school each morning. It was too far away for my sister to run home now, so that problem was solved. Luann didn’t move with us to Stuart Drive. She stayed on Waggoman Street living with Grandma Collins and Pap. She was just a little over a year old. Sometimes on a Saturday, Pap would drive up to our house in his big black car, get out, walk around to open the door to the back seat and Grandma would get out with the baby. She would leave Luann with us for a few hours and then Pap would bring Grandma back to pick her up. This was always when Clayton was not at home and if he happened to come back unexpectantly, we hid Lu Ann in the closet and stayed in there with her to keep her quiet. In every house we lived in during the next years, the closet would be our safe place and we would go in there and stay as quiet as little mice. Then, when we heard the front door slam shut and the car start, we would scramble out, much like the roaches that would run all over the place when we would turn a light on.

               She was at the house one day when Clayton came home unexpectantly. She was napping in Mother’s room so as soon as we heard him drive up, we all scattered to our room to hide. I had been ironing earlier and had forgotten to unplug the iron. Lanita saw a long thread on the ironing board and thought she would pick it off. Lloydine was playing around and decided to pretend she was ironing Lanita’s hand not realizing the iron was still hot. Lanita started screaming, waking the baby up. Mother rushed in with a belt and started whipping Lanita. When she finally saw her burned hand, she stopped and said, “Sorry.” Then started whipping Lloydine.

               That night Lloydine wet the bed again. She had just gone a whole week staying dry at night. Mother was still so mad at her the next morning that she told her she was going to get a whipping when she got home from school. As Lloydine was nervously getting dressed for school, she kept thinking about the whipping to come. Mother whipped with a leather belt or one of Granddad’s old razor straps from his barber shop days. She decided to wear as many pairs of panties as she could. She ended up with seven pair on – some of them were Lanita’s and therefore much too small. She wore them all day long with the elastic cutting into her legs. It was all for nothing because, by the time she got home, Mother had forgot all about the whipping.

               We were allowed to go in the living room, bathroom and kitchen if Clayton was not home. We cooked whatever food we had and watched old movies on the TV in the living room. We had a real problem with rats at that house and they would eat up our potatoes if we didn’t eat them first. One day I went to the cupboard to get the very last potato, and there was a rat in the corner eyeing it. I grabbed it first and washed it good, peeled it and sliced it very thin and cooked it in hot grease. It was nearly like potato chips and we gobbled them up. Usually there was some kind of food in the house. Mother and Clayton were both good eaters and both were overweight. As far as I can remember, we were allowed to eat whatever we had available in the refrigerator or cupboard. My favorite food was boiled potatoes with butter and lots of salt and pepper. We also ate a lot of oatmeal and bologna and cheese sandwiches.

               Many days I had a headache and if I didn’t have a headache, I had a stomachache, and if I didn’t have a stomachache, I had a toothache. I would lie as still as I could get and pray for God to take away my pain. I would try to picture something really nice to think about - like fresh slices of cantaloupe sprinkled with black pepper. Or fried potatoes, or watermelon. I would tell my siblings, “I am going to be sick for five more minutes and then I will get up and make you something to eat.”  My responsibilities weighed heavy on me and I took care of my siblings as well as I could.

               Mother worked nights and Clayton was supposed to be at home from around 10 PM on.  We lived in a really bad part of town with a high crime rate. She got off at midnight one time and came home to find that Clayton wasn’t there. She hid in the closet in their bedroom and when he came home, she jumped out with a butcher knife in her hand and stabbed him. It wasn’t a fatal wound but more of a bad cut. I had slipped out of our room to peek in and see what was happening. All their screaming had woken me up. I saw Mother leaning over Clayton with that butcher knife and he was bleeding. She was screaming at him that the next time she would kill him. They both saw me and immediately Clayton started cussing loudly at me and he began to turn the furniture over, pull out the drawers and throw them up against the wall. I guess he did this to show me how mad he was that I had come into their bedroom but I wondered if he ever stopped to think that this chaos he was making was with their furniture and their clothing and didn’t affect me.  I also wondered if Mother stabbed him because she was jealous and thought he was running around on her. Surely, she wasn’t serious about him protecting us. For the next 20 years, I would have dreams of stabbing someone and mentioned this to Mother one day. Mother told me the story of how she had stabbed Clayton late one night. I had blocked out this memory, but after that conversation with Mother, the dreams stopped.

               I found a church (most of them were Baptist or Methodist) within walking distance and on Saturday nights I would wash our hair and lay out the best clothes we had. Lanita and Lloydine let me roll their hair in those pink spoolies and then cover their heads with doilies attached by bobby pins to hold them in place. We didn’t have hair nets so I used what was available. It made me feel good to do our Saturday night routine. There was a door to the back yard in our bedroom so we would slip out and walk to church.

 We seldom missed a Sunday. Not that we were really made to feel welcome at that church or any of the ones we attended in our childhood. We went anyway and sat up front on the second or third pew. I listened to the sermon and my sisters and brother would fidget or go to sleep. Lloydine fell asleep so soundly one Sunday morning that she wet her panties. She was mortified. She took her coat off and used it to clean up all the pee. As far as the congregation was concerned, we were just a bunch of poor pitiful kids and instead of reaching out to us, they made sure to keep their distance and did a pretty good job of totally ignoring us. I had memorized Matthew 19:14, “But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” I never once doubted that God wanted me to go to church and that he wanted me to take my siblings with me so that’s what I did.

               Christmas that year was nice. Mother had bought a Douglas Fir and we decorated it with what few ornaments we had. We always had silver foil icicles. Mother had managed to buy a few things for Christmas. She was given a gift of a small compact with a mirror from her work and she gave it to me. On Christmas Eve, she loaded the other kids up and took them to look at Christmas lights while I set out gifts from Santa Claus. We had two things that would become traditions. One was a small bowl made out of peppermint candy wound around like a piece of pottery and filled with small peppermints. Another was a bag of chocolate covered crème drops. Every Christmas from that time on, we would always have these two things under the tree on Christmas Eve and I would continue this tradition after I left home. I was sad when I could no longer find the peppermint bowl but I continued to buy a bag of the crème drops long years after they didn’t even remotely taste as good as they did that Christmas. Grandma Collins had left a bag of wrapped gifts– one for each of us, including Mother. They were simple things from the dime store but Grandma gave them to us with love. I have no memories of ever receiving a gift from Granny and Granddad.

               We would do all our Christmas celebrating on Christmas Eve which left Christmas Day with absolutely nothing special to do. We didn’t have a Christmas dinner, only whatever we could find in the kitchen. Mother and Clayton would leave and that was a good thing for us because we didn’t have to hide away in our room and we could at least watch TV. Christmas Day seemed sad to me so I tried to make it a little special for my siblings by playing games like Hide and Seek, I Spy, chase or whatever I could think of to do. I loved to read so I would tell them stories using books I loved as material. I was glad when the day was over.

 

               That winter was another cold one. It rained and turned to ice in the back yard. There was an old concrete foundation that iced over and we pretended it was a skating rink. Lloydine would hold Lonnie’s hands and I would hold Lanita’s and we would pull them across the ice. We didn’t have any gloves so we wore extra socks on our hands.

               Some days it was just too cold to go to school. We didn’t have enough warm clothes so we would all stay home huddled in the bed and I would read to them. There was a donut shop just a block away on Hemphill Street and one winter day I put on as much clothing as I could to walk over there and buy a dozen donut holes for a nickel. I was so proud of myself for doing something special to cheer my siblings up.

                Clayton was a billiard pool shark and part owner of a pool hall on Magnolia Street where there were a lot of bars and small cafes. He had played all of the famous pool players that would come through Texas like Minnesota Fats. Apparently, he made a lot of money playing pool. Years and years later I was telling a lady about Clayton being a pool shark and she said he had actually met and played pool with him.

               Lloydine was too sick to go to school one day. I stayed home from school so I could take care of Lanita and Lonnie while Mother took Lloydine to see about getting enough money from Clayton to take her to the doctor.  Since children were not allowed in a pool hall, Mother stopped the car at the corner of Oleander and S. Henderson streets and told her to wait there on the corner for her. Lloydine stood there, alone and frightened, for over an hour. She feared that Mother had just gone off and left her. She was frantic by the time she came back. She never did take her to the doctor or even get some medicine for her. Why could she have not simply left Lloydine in the car rather than have her get out blocks away from the pool hall and wait in the cold? She seemingly forgot all about Lloydine being sick and just drove her back home where I put her to bed and we piled on some extra covers to get her warmed up.

              

I associate trash with that house on Stuart Drive. Trash would blow in from all over the place and litter and would line the entire length of the cyclone fence. We would make a game of picking it all up but we never succeeded in getting it all cleaned at one time. There was simply too much of it.

We didn’t have much to keep us occupied, so we resorted to doing naughty things like playing with matches. All four of us would crowd into the closet in our room and close the door. I would strike a match and hold it while we watched it burn. Not one of my brighter ideas and I am grateful I didn’t catch the place on fire.

              

               The spring of 1959 brought some severe weather. It was a Saturday afternoon and we were in the living room watching an old movie starring Ida Lupino. We only had a couch in there and it wasn’t positioned to see the TV so we brought in kitchen chairs and set them in a semi-circle right in front of the television. All of a sudden, the wind started howling and blew so hard that the linoleum flooring lifted up along the edges of the room. The house was of pier and beam construction with no underpinning which allowed the cold and the wind easy access. We were all so scared and didn’t know what to do so we kept sitting there for several minutes before we all got up at once and headed to our closet. We sat in a tight little group until things died down. Closets were our safe places. We tried to tell Mother what had happened when she came home but she didn’t believe us.

               After the weather warmed up that spring, we spent nearly all of our free time outside. We roamed along the railroad tracks that were so close to the backyard that the small house would shake when the trains roared by. There were often friendly hoboes who would gather under the bridge. We never saw any of them drinking and they were all kind to us. Mostly they talked and told us stories. Perhaps they were missing their families and we reminded them of children they may have left behind. No one hobo stayed for long. They were just passing through, riding the rails.

               There was one, however, that stayed. He had come up to the house and talked to Clayton. I think Clayton took Mother’s threat to kill him if he left us alone at night seriously because he hired Bill, that was the hobo’s name, to stay with us. He would arrive in the afternoons on school days and stay until Mother or Clayton came home late at night. Bill would cook for us and that was nice. He helped me with my homework and taught me the states and capitols. When we got to Alaska, he would say, “You know this one!” Of course, that was my clue to say “Juneau, Alaska.” Bill was fun and often played with us. He would turn his eyelids up over his eyeballs and run around chasing us while we screamed in laughter.

               No one is all good or all bad. Even in the worse people, you can find a little bit of goodness and in the best people, there will always be a bit of darkness to them. Bill had a dark side. One night I got up to go to the bathroom and Bill put his arms around me in the hall. Then I felt something wet in my ear. I thought a critter or a big bug had got in there so I started flailing around and screaming. Bill never touched me again. However, unbeknownst to me at the time, he turned his attention to Lloydine.

               One day I was cleaning in the house and the others were outside playing under the bridge. Lanita was playing around an overgrown bush and got into a nest of bumble bees. They stung her all over her face. She began to scream and Lloydine and Lonnie stared running to the house for help. Lanita passed both of them up and came screaming through the back door. I put ice on her face but it still swelled up so badly she looked deformed.  The swelling had not gone down by the time Mother got home. She grabbed Lanita up and carried her to a beauty shop on Hemphill Street close to the donut shop. They bathed her eyes and put some ointment on her. No one would let Lanita walk but carried her from station to station so each beauty operator could look at her and try to help. My sister began to wonder if there was something wrong with her legs too, since they wouldn’t let her walk. When things like this happened to us, there was never the option of going to see a doctor.

We were supposed to go see Granny and Granddad the next day and Mother was concerned that Lanita’s face would still be swollen. We would always get cleaned up and wear the nicest clothes we had when we went to see our grandparents. No one knew the conditions we were living in. All our relatives though Mother was doing very well. They never knew the truth.

               When Tootie was nearly two years old, Grandma put an ad in the paper offering Luann for adoption. Mother thought this would be for the best. It was June 1959 when a lady answered the ad and she made arrangements to take Luann for a picnic. Grandma had brought Tootie over to the house on Stuart Drive and we were playing with her before Jo Ann arrived to pick her up. She put her in the car and drove off. She simply took her home with her like a stray puppy. I suppose that may have been the plan all along because Mother wasn’t the least bit surprised when she didn’t return. The police were never called and no missing child report was ever made. We were used to upheavals in our life and just accepted the fact that Tootie was gone. It would be 17 years before we saw her again.

              That summer we spent most of our time in the backyard. We would get eat up with chiggers and scratch until we were bleeding. Clayton did have pity on us and bought some sulphur powder. We took baths and dried off before laying across the bed in a row while Mother sprinkled us with the Sulphur. Then we would roll over and she’d sprinkle our back sides.

        We were always afraid of Clayton and never knew what he was going to do. He knew Mother would kill him if he ever struck us, so he resorted to tormenting us in other ways.

               When Labor Day weekend arrived, we discovered we were moving again.