Children in the Closet - Chapter Ten

 Chapter Ten

When school let out for the summer, we were relieved. Life was easier for us when we didn’t have to worry about clothes, lunches and homework. We watched TV, my siblings played and I cleaned, cooked, ironed and read books. Our neighborhood didn’t have any children, none of us had made friends at school and Mother worked and was seldom at home, so we entertained ourselves.

I was determined to make the house pretty and keep it clean. There was a huge red crepe myrtle tree at the end of the driveway and I would cut bouquets and put them in jars. It was disappointing that they immediately started to drop the flowers within an hour of being cut. I turned to the bushes and made arrangements with greenery and a few wild flowers instead.

Mother became more involved in her extramarital affairs and didn’t come home after work anymore. I continued to cook our meals, and my siblings and I ate by ourselves. Sometimes Mother and Clayton would cook in the kitchen late at night and there would be a horrible mess for me to clean up the next day. Every cupboard door would be open and all the counters littered with the food preparations and the sink filled with dishes. They were heavy eaters so what food they had cooked was all gone. I would have to clean it all up before I could even make something for us to eat. Mother made delicious tartar sauce and would fill a mayonnaise jar full of it. We didn’t have any fish to eat with it but we did like the sauce.

One afternoon, I decided to clean the kitchen top to bottom. I had this feeling that if I could just get everything clean, our life would be okay. Lloydine and Lanita agreed to help me and we made some soapy water and sloshed it out over the kitchen floor, got down on our hands and knees and scrubbed. In one corner of the kitchen was a metal cart with wheels. It had an electrical outlet on one side and the toaster was plugged into it. Lanita had got down to wash the floor under it and as she touched the cart to push it back, her hand was gripped tight with an electric current. Suddenly there were blue and yellow electric sparks flying up and away and no matter how hard Lanita tried to pull her hand away, she couldn’t. None of us were wearing shoes and Lloydine and I were terrified. We ran outside to see if we could find someone to help us, leaving Lanita scared to death and all by herself with the electricity still glowing around her.  There was no one around to help us so we ran back to the kitchen just as Lanita’s hand loosed and she pulled herself away from the cart. 

It was not the first time God had sent His Guardian Angels to rescue one of us from danger. All of us faced dangerous situations throughout both our childhood and adult lives, and were miraculously saved from harm.

It was a Saturday in July that I spent the night with my cousin, Darla. She was Aunt Viola’s granddaughter and another one of the few people who knew what our life was really like. They lived near the Historic Stock Yards area. Darla and I had taken the bus to the Isis Theater to see a movie. A couple of boys sat behind us. One of the boys was named Jesse, and he asked me for my address and I gave it to him. I was only thirteen and he was eighteen so I doubted I would ever see him again. Still, it was flattering to have someone cute pay attention to me. 

After the movie ended, we lingered for a few minutes, talking to the boys and then left in time to catch a bus back to Darla’s house. We accidently got off the bus too soon and didn’t realize our mistake until it was already driving away and was too late to get back on. We had no choice but to walk the rest of the way home. We had gone just a block or two when a carload of boys pulled up beside us and slowed down. They started calling us names and saying ugly things.  We began to run but they kept following. We were scared and ran down an alley but, to our dismay, the car followed, jumping over curbs and the guys kept yelling. We were grateful the boys stayed in the car and none of them hopped out to chase us on foot. We turned down another alley, this one so narrow that their car couldn’t fit. But they went around the block to cut us off at the other end. We found a man and woman just getting out of their car in a nearby driveway. We asked them if they would take us home because some boys were chasing us. The couple had been drinking but we were more afraid of the guys harassing us than we were of riding in a car with a slightly drunk driver. When the boys saw us getting into the couple’s car, they followed. The couple dropped us off at Darla’s and we ran in the house and locked the door. Darla’s parents were not home, but we thought we were safe. However, the boys did not go away! They rattled the doorknobs and went all around the house trying to find a window to get in. Darla and I sat down and huddled together in a corner where we couldn’t be seen and stayed there until the troublemakers finally gave up and left.  For once in my life, I was glad to get back home the next day, no matter if Clayton was there or not.

Once a week, Mother would take us to visit Granny and clean her house. I was a good cleaner so I worked while Mother visited with Granny and my siblings played. Sometimes we stopped at a roadside produce stand on our way over and we would buy whatever was cheap. Once we got a bag of freestone peaches, which I cut in half and handed out to the kids. It was the first time I ever noticed how beautiful a peach could be. I can still remember the lovely peach color of the flesh and the dark alizarin crimson around the burnt sienna colored pit. I admired it for a little bit before eating it. 

We never seemed to have any money, and, while most mothers teach their children to tell the truth, our mother taught us to lie. When she let us go to the movies, I was to tell them I was 11 so I could get in cheaper. Once I got rattled when the lady at the box office asked me what year I was born. The truth was 1948 but I was trying to think what year it would be if I really were younger and stammered out 1946. I have never been good at math. The lady must have felt sorry for me because she let me get by with it.

Mother told me that Granny had a lot of money and that she would distract her and I was to go to her purse, get her wallet and slip out whatever bills Mother instructed me. Sometimes it was a couple of twenties, a time or two I was to take a hundred-dollar bill, other times just a few fives or tens. I was always amazed at the huge roll wad of money Granny kept and I wondered if she ever noticed some of it was missing. I don’t think the other kids knew anything about it. At least I hoped they didn’t. I took them to Sunday School and church with me and I knew it was wrong to steal, as did they, and I didn’t want them to know what a sinner I was or that I taught them one thing and did another.

We just took it as a matter of fact that Mother had her relationship with Bob. They even took us out with them on occasion. One particular Saturday, I had stayed home because I was sick. Bob was driving down Hemphill Street with Mother in the front seat and my sisters and brother in the back, when she spotted Clayton with another woman in his car. She was furious and slid over to the wheel while Bob jumped in the back seat as Lanita and Lonnie crawled over to the front. Now that she was driving, Mother sped up and gave chase. Clayton noticed and took off fast! Mother lost sight of his car and slowed down. She drove Bob back to where he had left his car and then they returned home. 

Mother and my siblings came in through the front door thinking Clayton wasn’t home since his car wasn’t there. The first thing they noticed was a strong smell of cigar smoke. The kids had just come in our room where I had been sleeping and were waking me up when we all heard a blood curdling scream. Mother had opened the closet door and Clayton was standing there with his hat and arm covering one side of his face. I frantically ran into the room thinking something horrible had happened. Clayton was so angry that I had come into their bedroom that he turned all the furniture over in a rage and dumped all the drawers out, screaming and yelling the whole time. Lloydine was hiding and Lanita and Lonnie had run to Mr. Star’s house, our nearest neighbor, because he was the only one they knew who had a gun. There was quite a scene and it was several hours before any of us calmed down.

Apparently, Clayton had parked the car a block away and walked back to the house and was lying in wait for Mother to get home. Looking back, I see that he was creating a disturbance to turn all attention away from his being with another woman. I failed to see what he meant to accomplish by tearing up their room. I wasn’t allowed in there so they were the ones who had to pick all their own clothes up.

I remember when Marilyn Monroe died. It was August 5th, 1962. I can even tell you where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news on the radio. It was a Sunday afternoon and the weather was hot. Mother was lying on her bed and had asked me to rub her neck. I was looking at the clock and watching the time pass, minute by minute. Mother wanted me to massage her neck and shoulders until she went to sleep. I was 17 minutes in when I heard the announcement. I was so shocked that I shook Mother and told her the news! Later, Lanita had to come in and massage her neck so she could go back to sleep.

Finally, it was time for school to start and I was as happy for that as I was happy when it had let out in the spring. I guess I just wanted a change.  I started eighth grade, Lloydine was in fifth, Lanita in third, and, once again, Lonnie was in first. Mother took us to Levine’s Department Store and used one of the hundred-dollar bills I had stolen from Granny, to buy our school clothes.

Lanita was learning cursive in school and was so proud of herself. Mother was sitting in the living room and Lanita showed her an entire page of vocabulary words she had written in cursive.  Mother glanced over at it and said, “I can’t read that!” After she saw the look on Lanita’s face, she said, “You’re left-handed!”  Lanita thought, “Can right-handed people not read left-handed writing?” So, she took it over to Lonnie, since he was also left-handed. However, Lonnie hadn’t really learned to read yet.

It was the middle of September on a Saturday afternoon when a handsome young man knocked at our front door. He was wearing a nice pair of jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt with the tail out. His hair was combed Elvis Presley-style and he was driving a 57 Chevrolet. I was surprised to see it was Jesse, the fellow I had met at the movie theater back in July. He said he hadn’t come to see me sooner because he had spent the rest of that summer up in Amarillo picking cotton and had just come back to Fort Worth in time to start his senior year of high school.

While it was exciting that a boy had come to see me, we were all so frightened that Clayton would come back to the house and find him standing on the front porch. His car was parked right smack dab in front by the curb!

We hurriedly explained about our step-father and how crazy he was. Jesse sized up the situation and ran out to his car, drove off and parked around the corner and then walked up behind the house next door, through the alley, and back around to my house, this time coming to the side door that opened to my bedroom. I invited him in. The irony of it all was lost on me at the time. 

While Jesse and I met in the Stockyards, it turned out he lived very near me. I had two sisters and a brother that I took care of. He had two sisters and a brother that he took care of. He was five years older than I was at the time, though I turned fourteen a few weeks later. I was amazed that he liked me. I was very shy and insecure, weighing a mere 87 pounds and only five feet tall with dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes and a chipped front tooth. He was eighteen and would turn nineteen in November and was five feet and four inches and 129 pounds with dark wavy hair, blue eyes and dimples. He was a very handsome guy. 

Jesse’s brother had recently been sent to Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch for setting a church on fire so he was only responsible for caring for his two sisters now. They turned out to be very close in age to Lanita and Lloydine. We were all excited to have friends and Jesse would bring his sisters with him whenever he came to visit. It was always on the sly and it was a great adventure to sneak around. I was now doing the very thing that Clayton had been bribing other boys to get me to do. 

Whenever Clayton came home, and Jesse’s sisters were there playing, they just went in the closet with us and we stayed really quiet. Thank goodness it was a big closet! Mother’s boyfriend, Bob, worked for a company that changed out 45 RPM records on the juke boxes that were so popular back then, and he would give us a couple of records from time to time. I kept my record player in that closet and we would play Johnny Angel sung by Shelley Fabares, keeping the sound just high enough that we could hear it but not so loud that Clayton could.

Since Mother was dating Bob, when I told her about Jesse coming to see me, she seemed perfectly fine with it. She just warned me to keep it secret and not let Clayton find out. When Jesse and I would go on a date, we took his sisters with us as well as all three of my siblings. Mostly we went to the drive-in picture shows. Your entrance fee was by the carload and we had a whole carload! We never bought anything at the concession stand, though. Jesse would go by Mrs. Baird’s Bread Outlet and get a bag of day-old donuts for us to snack on.  There was a playground down at the front of the drive-in right under the big screen where the kids loved to play. Lanita’s shoes were too small for her so she went barefoot as much as possible, squeezing her feet into them only when she went to school or church. There were stickers, though, that hurt her feet so she would hunt around for discarded paper cups and stick her feet in those for makeshift shoes.

Occasionally, we would go to a park for a picnic and once we went to the lake. Jesse’s mother would shop for the picnic supplies and we were impressed with how much food she packed. There would be sandwich fixings, bread, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mayonnaise, mustard, chips, fruit, cookies, donuts and all manner of treats that we seldom got to enjoy any other time. We were used to mustard, bologna and bread sandwiches so these picnics seemed more like a feast to us!

It was nice to have someone pay attention to me. Jesse would bring me little treats like a package of salted cashew nuts or a candy bar.  I would meet him around the corner by myself on some Friday nights and we would go to a drive-in hamburger place. He always had a little bit of money from his mother since he was such a help to her in taking care of his sisters. We would order French fries, mostly. Sometimes we got a hamburger to split or a milk shake.

One Friday night I was out with Jesse and Mother was out with Bob, leaving the kids home alone.  Clayton came home early and called the kids in to the living room. I wasn’t there and he kept asking them, “Where is Linda??” Lloydine was so scared that she could barely breathe and Clayton assumed she was lying. Finally, he wore her down and she got so nervous she blurted out, “She’s on a date!” Then he wanted to know where Mother was. Lloydine lied and said, “She went to the store!”

When Mother got home, Clayton was fit to be tied and demanded we all get a whipping. Mother was so mad at Lloydine that she beat her black and blue. She had welts and bruises that lasted for days.  Lloydine remembers thinking to herself at the time, “Well, I could have told him that Mother was on a date!” She hid the bruises on her arms with long sleeves when she went back to school but she had grown a few inches so her dress was short and she couldn’t cover up the ones on her legs. Sadly, the teacher never seemed to notice, or if she did, she didn’t say anything.

I don’t remember celebrating any Thanksgiving days growing up, except for the one in 1962 when Jesse and his sisters, Lynda Kay and Sherry, came over and we all ate chicken and dressing in the kitchen together.  I don’t remember where Mother and Clayton were, just know they weren’t at home. It was a happy time and I was glad we could all be together like a real family. The kitchen had a banquet type table and we filled both sides. Jesse had brought the chicken and dressing while I had made mashed potatoes. We opened a can of green beans and called it the best Thanksgiving meal ever.

Jesse was a father figure to his sisters and was their primary caregiver. Their mother would disappear for days at a time. He tried to teach his sisters manners so, as we sat at the table eating that day, Lynda Kay put a good-sized bite of food in her mouth. Jesse then asked her, “What’s your name?” When she replied, “Lynda Kay!” he reached across the table and popped her one and said, “Don’t talk with food in your mouth!” My sisters and brother took notice and learned something about manners that day.

Jesse and I had so much in common and we felt so comfortable with each other that it was natural for us to fall in love. I wasn’t used to anyone paying attention to me. At least not since I was eight years old. He seemed to genuinely care about me. That was a good feeling and I was grateful. Until that point in time, I had cared for others, my sisters and brother and my mother, but now someone cared about me! 

I was sad when I learned just a few weeks later that Jesse and his family were moving to Dallas. Jesse’s mother, Mrs. O’Dell, was a waitress and had taken a job at the famous Zuider Zee seafood restaurant in Dallas on Maple Avenue. They were gone so fast I couldn’t believe it. Jesse had to transfer to North Dallas High School to finish out his senior year. I thought that was the end of our relationship and I was disappointed.  Jesse told me about them moving the Sunday after Thanksgiving and they left that same week. I thought that was the end, so I was surprised when Jesse and his sisters came sneaking up to my door the very next Friday evening. I was thrilled and so were my siblings! They counted his sisters as good friends and it meant a lot to them that they would come back to see us. It wasn’t as if it were easy to be our friends. You had to sneak around and hide in the closet and all sorts of stuff! Still, we all felt connected in some way. They seemed to take our strange living conditions in stride and simply adapted to them.

It became a routine thing for them to come over on Friday night and his sisters would stay the weekend with us while Jesse slept over at his cousin’s house. They would all pack up and go back to Dallas on Sunday morning. So far, Clayton had not suspected a thing. Clayton never came into our rooms and with thick quilts covering the door openings and muffling sounds, he seldom saw or even heard us.

During the week, Jesse and I wrote letters to each other. I mailed my letters to his house and he mailed his to Mother’s office. It wouldn’t do to have them come to our home address for Clayton to see.

I got sick the week before Christmas. My throat hurt so bad I could barely swallow and I was too sick and weak to even get out of bed. I asked Lloydine to write Jesse and let him know, which she did immediately and then walked right down to the corner and dropped the letter in the mailbox. 

It was a surprise, then, when he came to visit on Saturday morning. He hadn’t planned to bring his sisters since I was sick, but he didn’t want to leave them by themselves either.  I was pretty sure I had strep throat by that time and was running a high fever. Jesse could not understand why Mother hadn’t taken me to the doctor, and I tried to explain that I guess we didn’t have enough money, but my voice was little more than a whisper and trying to talk took more energy than I could muster. He left to go to the drug store to at least buy me some Sucrets and aspirin, and said he would be back soon.

While he was gone, Clayton had come home unexpectantly.  He had a habit of taking his clothes off and was naked in the kitchen cooking some dinner for himself and Mother. She hadn’t come home yet so I guess he was wanting to surprise her. As usual, my siblings sat quietly in our room watching TV turned down low while I stayed in bed. 

When Jesse returned, he came in the back door by the kitchen intending to get me a glass of water so I could take the medicine he had bought. Jesse was shocked to see a fat naked man standing at the counter chopping onions with a big butcher knife! Clayton, in turn, was shocked to see a young man coming in the back door! He flung the butcher knife at what he thought was an intruder and Jesse pulled the door shut just as the knife penetrated the wood. Since Clayton was naked, he had to put on some clothes before he could give chase and this gave Jesse a head start. He could have simply jumped in his car and gone back to Dallas. However, he was worried about me and concerned that he hadn’t been able to give me the medicine he’d bought. So, he had to think of some way of hiding both him as well as his sisters. 

It was nearly Christmas and a nearby house had set up a nativity scene in their front yard. Thinking fast, he hid one of his sisters under a shepherd’s cloak and the other one behind the manger while he squatted down in the back behind the cow and donkey inside the stable area.

They stayed there for the next hour and a half as Clayton drove wildly around the neighborhood searching for the intruder. Clayton didn’t know about Sherry and Lynda Kay, because he had not seen them. Once Clayton got tired, he called Mother and as soon as she got home, he lit into her and demanded to know who that boy was! Mother had to admit he was my boyfriend and told Clayton his name. While Clayton interrogated Mother, Jesse sent one of his sisters up to my door and she slipped the bag of medicines to Lloydine. 

I was too sick to get out of bed or go in there to answer any of Clayton’s questions. So, he called in my siblings, one by one, and interrogated them. We were all so frightened and had no idea what would happen next.

A few days later, Clayton gave me a copy of a police report showing that Jesse had a record. It was probably a fabricated report as Clayton had lots of contacts at the police department. He threatened to kick me out of the house if I ever saw him again, which caused me to wonder since he had been sending boys up to my bedroom door for months.

Mother also forbade me to see Jesse again. I was devastated. The one bright spot in my life was being taken away from me and now my life looked so bleak I didn’t think I could bear it. 

I wrote to Jesse explaining all that had happened and that I could never see him again. It was long distance to call between Fort Worth and Dallas back then and we were not allowed to use the house phone anyway. I was depressed and went about in a fog. I stayed in bed a lot and missed more days of school than I attended. 

Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, we moved again. Normally we moved every summer right before school started. This was the first time we all had to change schools in the middle of the year. Life was hard before but it was even harder now. This house didn’t have as much space as the other and the closets in our bedrooms were very small. We did have two rooms, though. But access to the kitchen and bathroom was more limited than before. It didn’t matter to me. For the first time since August 1957, I didn’t try to make a house into a home for me and my siblings. 

Finally, Mother felt sorry for me. More than likely, it was because I had been so despondent and had lost all interest in keeping the house and preparing meals. Many days I was so depressed that I couldn’t even muster up the energy to go to school.  In the end, Mother and Bob took me to Dallas to visit Jesse.  He started coming back to Fort Worth to see me, but this time we were extremely careful to meet away from the house. Since I could escape from time to time and be with Jesse, my life did not seem nearly as hard as it had been. But by the end of January, I had another burden on my heart. I was 14 years old and pregnant.