Children in the Closet....Chapter Nine

 

Chapter Nine

               Our sixth move was to a house right across the street from the Children’s Science Museum and near the Arts District of Fort Worth. It was a real step up from our former neighborhoods.

               The house on Crestline Street was a return to the separate living areas. Our ears were trained to run to our rooms behind the heavy quilts that covered the doorways at the first sound of Clayton’s car driving up. He always walked into a silent house. No one would have ever known there were four children hiding in there. By this time, I was starting seventh grade, Lloydine was in fourth grade, Lanita in second grade and Lonnie was in first grade, so we weren’t little children anymore. Now that my siblings were older, it was a lot easier for us to keep quiet and not get into trouble.

                We were allowed to use the back bathroom but it was right off the kitchen and there was no way for us to get to it directly without being seen by Clayton if he was home. When he was there, we would use the side door of my bedroom and walk down the driveway and around to the back door. The kitchen was also available to us for whatever time Clayton was away. The refrigerator in that house was old and rusty and would give you a slight shock whenever you opened the door. Clayton rented houses that came with appliances.  The gas oven was also a challenge for us. The stove we had at the our previous was electric so we had to learn to light the gas one and that proved to be hard! The pilot light was at the back of the oven and by the time you turned the gas on, struck the match and then reached in to light it, the gas would explode in a swoop and singe all the hair off your arm, eyelashes and sometimes even your eyebrows. Lanita was the bravest of us all and would volunteer to light it so I could cook.

 

Mother had to be at work early, so she was gone when we got up in the mornings. She wore Cotillion cologne by Avon and the fragrance hung in the air long after she left. Mother dressed nicely and wore pretty clothes, nylon hose, high heels and jewelry and she had a beautiful winter coat with a fur collar. Clayton was a sharp dresser, too, and when you smelled his aftershave, you knew he was about to leave. That was our signal that we would soon be able to go to the kitchen and bathroom.

               As soon as I got home from school, I would start preparing supper and when Mother walked in the door after work, I would have a meal on the table.

               One of our favorite meals was hamburger loaf, mashed, boiled or baked potatoes, a can of some green vegetable and Parker House dinner rolls. Mother and Clayton shopped at an old grocery store in an all-black neighborhood that Clayton claimed had the best food at the cheapest prices and would take all four of us with them, only to be told we must sit in the car. We could never figure out why they even bothered to take us with them.

                He would buy hamburger, by the pound, which was wrapped up in white butcher paper. I would take out one of the packages before school in the morning and let it defrost until I got home. To cook it, I simply unwrapped it, put it in a pan and sprinkled it with salt and pepper and slid it in the oven. The dinner rolls were defrosted the same way and the minute I walked in the house, I would set them on a baking sheet to rise. I knew how to make tea from the time I was 6 years old. None of us grew up drinking milk. It was never an option.

               After we ate, we would do the dishes and then go to our rooms. I spent my free time either cleaning or reading.

                By this time, I had read every single one of the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and all of The Boxcar Children so many times I had practically memorized some of them. I would read Gone with the Wind and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson over again every year.              

                Dorothy Parker was another favorite author of mine. I can’t remember the name of the book I read and loved so much, but I remember some of what she wrote. She was living in New York and wrote about entertaining friends. “It’s a small apartment; I’ve barely enough room to lay a hat and a few friends.” Then she would talk about keeping her milk outside on the fire escape as she had no refrigerator. That did not keep her from entertaining her friends and hosting dinner parties.

               Reading her book made me feel better about the way we lived and how I had to improvise with cooking our meals and keeping house. Instead of feeling poor and impoverished, I felt rather sophisticated and glamorous. After all, if Dorothy Parker used what she had and made do, then it was not so bad that we did, too.

               It’s funny the words, sentences and thoughts we remember and hold on to.  For example, Parker said there was nothing she wouldn’t do to be well spoken of. I took that to mean be kind to everyone and be a helper to all who need you.

"Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”

 

               Books were my friends. They opened up worlds I would never have known had it not been for them. Books both inspired and comforted me.

               There was one particular book I read every single day: the Holy Bible. It had, by far, the biggest influence on me. I memorized scriptures and prayed daily. If I had not had the comfort of certain knowledge that God loved and cared for me and that my life was worthy because God had a purpose for me, I would have had a much harder time during those years and the years to come.

               By seventh grade I was in junior high school and I continued to do well in most subjects. Language arts came easily enough for me, but I was slowly falling behind in math. I helped my sisters and brother with their homework and tried to encourage them. When Lonnie started first grade, his teacher took one look at him, literally just one, and said he would never be able to keep up with the other students in her class. We were disadvantaged children with no one paying any attention to us so it is not surprising that we struggled with school. I was lucky in that I had good teachers. While reading was a pleasure to me, for my sisters and brother, it was just one more burden to bear. Lonnie would bring his little reader home and I would try to help him with it. Looking back on it, I’m sure I did more harm than good. Whenever Lonnie would say “run”, it always came out “one.” I would hit him with a hair brush and tell him to try again. Bless his heart.

              

               The one big blessing in his life at that point was that he got to spend every weekend with Aunt Winnie and Uncle Allison. Aunt Winnie was Granny’s sister and they would take him to Lake Weatherford where Uncle Truman was building a lake house. It was a little boy’s dream to watch his uncles and older cousins all working together on a project. After working most of the day, they would stop in time to go swimming and grill hamburgers or hot dogs and maybe do a little fishing. This was to be the happiest time in Lonnie’s childhood. Aunt Winnie loved him dearly and continued to ask Mother if she could adopt him.  In time, Mother quit allowing Lonnie to see them at all.  

 

               This year was the most violent year at home, as I remember. Clayton did a lot of mentally and emotionally cruel things. He kept a police scanner beside his bed and would listen to it all the time when he was home. When he heard of something traumatic happening anywhere near our neighborhood, he would yell for all of us to get in the car, no matter what time of the day or night. Clayton would take off with the tires screeching as he went chasing after the ambulance or towards the crime scene. Clayton had a gun and sometimes he would stick his arm out of the window with it and pull the trigger. The sound was deafening and left us shaking with fear.

 

                One early December day in 1961 we had put up a Douglas Fir tree in the living room strung up with colored lights for Christmas. Clayton had just left the house and we came rushing out from our bedrooms as soon as we heard the front door slam behind him. Lanita was excited about Christmas and crawled under the tree to plug the lights in, but she couldn’t get the plug to stay in the outlet so the lights were blinking off and on. We did not realize that Clayton had not pulled completely out of the driveway when he spotted the lights going on and off.  I had gone to the bathroom off the kitchen when all of a sudden, we heard his car pull back up and he was running up the porch and through the front door. We took off back to our bedroom, there was no time to unplug the tree. I left the bathroom so fast I forgot to turn the light off in there as well.

               He barged in the front door yelling and screaming. He had seen Lanita and me from the window so he called for us to come in living room.

               Lanita was scared to death and felt like it was all her fault. I had already picked up my book, Gone With the Wind, and was still holding it in my hand.  He made us both go in the small bathroom, where the ceiling light was still burning, and watch while he shot out the light bulb with his gun. “That’s what you get for messing with electricity,” he said. Then he grabbed my book, held it up and shot a hole right through the center of it. He threw the book back at me and stormed out of the house, yelling over his shoulder, “That’s what you get!”

               Lanita and I went back to the bedroom and I started reading my book again as if nothing had happened. Because of the trajectory of the bullet, the pages were kind of stuck together and I had to carefully open the book and slowly peel the pages apart so as not to tear them. I had read that book so many times that it was easy to read around the holes in every page. Reading continued to be my one true escape!

               Before this happened, we always felt like it was safe to come out of our room once Clayton had left. But after this, we realized we were never safe.

 

               Christmas that year was a rather somber thing. After the lights episode with Clayton, we didn’t  turn the tree on again. We seldom asked Mother for things but this particular year, Lloydine wanted a pair of tights like the other girls were wearing at school. Christmas came and went without gifts or celebrations and not even a special dinner. It was just another day. A few days later, while we were still out of school on Christmas break, Mother came in to our room and threw a package to Lloydine and turned around and left without saying a word. Her heart gave a happy leap when she saw it was a pair of black opaque tights. She ran in and started to put them on. Her happiness was short lived when she discovered they were too small. Tearfully, she went in to tell Mother they didn’t fit and Mother just said, “Well, then give them to Lanita!”

              

               Clayton was so unpredictable that we never knew what was going to set him off. He delighted in keeping us upset and he would lay traps for us. We never knew just exactly what and where our boundaries were. Once he left the house, we thought we were free to come out of our room. I would go first, pulling the heavy quilt aside and going into the hall,  then into the dining room on the way to the kitchen.

               It was late one Saturday afternoon when Clayton finally left and I didn’t know where Mother was, just that she wasn’t at home. I was in a hurry to get to the kitchen and make us some sandwiches as we had run out of the crackers and peanut butter I had stashed in our room to snack on. I had failed to notice when I crossed through the doorway that Clayton had strung threads back and forth from one side of the door jamb to the other, up from the floor to about my knee height. I had stumbled through them and pulled them loose but the threads were not broken.

               I sat down on the floor and slowly put each one back in place. Then I stepped up and over them and went on to the kitchen and made sandwiches, brought them back and called Lloydine to the door! I handed them to her and then stepped back over the threads and into our room. This was just one more obstacle for us to deal with before Clayton thought up some other way to torment us.

                Mother and Clayton’s bathroom was to the left of the little hall in front of our rooms. We were warned to never set foot in there. One day I noticed Clayton had left the faucet dripping and it was driving me crazy. I really thought it was an accident and that if I tiptoed in and reached all the way across, I could turn it off. I did that. When Clayton got home, he barreled through the front door and headed straight for the bathroom. When he discovered I had turned the water off, he started yelling and screaming. We stayed quiet and huddled in the closet. The next thing we heard was running water. Then we saw water coming in under the quilts that covered the doorway. The water spread across the hall floor and into our rooms, so I took a broom and started sweeping it out the side door.

               When Mother got home, Clayton demanded that she give me a whipping. Mother took the razor strap and came in my room. She put some clothes over a milkcrate that I used as a bedside table and whammed the daylights out of it while I pretended to cry with every blow.

 

                 April of 1962 marked the 50^th anniversary of Granny and Granddad.  They married in 1912 when they were both 17 years old. Mother wanted to make a good impression on her family so she took us to Levine’s where we all got one new outfit each. I was thirteen, Lloydine was ten, Lanita was eight and Lonnie was seven. I have a photograph taken that day, which I looked at while writing this chapter.  I was dressed in a little suit with a flower corsage and am wearing a pair of earrings big enough to show up in the small photo! My hair is long, dark blond and piled up on top of my head. I standing beside Mother, who is wearing a dark dress with cap sleeves and a large corsage pinned on her right shoulder. She, also has large earrings on and her short dark hair was nicely done. Lloydine stands in front of Mother and looks so sweet in a chiffon bouffant skirted dress and a floral headband. She also has a small carnation corsage. Next to her and in front of me is Lonnie in a linen jacket, dark pants, white shirt and a blue bowtie. Lanita stands on my right and looks so precious, with a big smile on her face. Her dress and headband match Lloydine’s and she has on white shoes and socks. To look at us, you would think we were such a normal happy family.

               The celebration was held at Shirley and Doug’s house. Shirley was our Aunt Irene’s daughter and we were excited to be able to see her new home. Everything was so pretty! The table was beautiful, covered with a lace cloth and a centerpiece of candles and flowers. There was a huge white cake and a large punch bowl surrounded by little cups. We felt like grownups as we took our small slice of cake and punch and found a place to sit out of everyone’s way while we ate. I noticed there were small candy dishes filled with after dinner mints, the pastel colors made them nearly too pretty to eat, but we did enjoy several of them.

               Granny and Granddad sat on a small loveseat and everyone would go by and visit with them. Families stood together while they had their pictures taken. Uncle Truman, Aunt Alice, and their three oldest children, Paula, Joyce, and Anthony, smiled into the camera. Their youngest daughter, Mae Ellen, is in another photograph. It was a happy day and Mother was proud of how nice we all looked. We were disappointed when it was time to leave. Our spirits dropped further when we drove up to our house and saw that Clayton was home. We were back to our real life now.            

         

               Clayton despised me with a fierce hatred. I did so many things that annoyed him. I snorted. He hated that. I was a Christian. He hated that. One day he called me in and confronted me about my religion. He tried everything he could to convince me that there was no God. No heaven. No hell. He ranted and raved and when he was through cussing and carrying on, I gathered my courage and told him the plan of salvation. I quoted Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” I then told him what the Bible said in Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” And Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned.”  I went on to quote Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Finally, I said Romans 10:9, “that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”  Romans 10:13 promises “for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

               Surprisingly, Clayton had listened to every word I said without interrupting. When I asked him if he believed, he seemed to consider, then shook his head and said, “No! I do not believe!” He added that he didn’t think any of what I said was true! I asked him, “What if it is? Where will you go when you die if what the Bible says is true?” He responded, “Then I will go straight to hell!” I told him I felt sorry for him and turned around and went back to my room.

               From that time on, he doubled his efforts to discredit me and cause me to stumble. Clayton told me I would be pregnant by the time I was 15 years old.  

               He still owned a pool hall and he paid guys to come to my exterior bedroom door, there was an outside entrance to the room where I slept along with my sister, Lanita. The guys came one by one. Each one would try to talk me into letting him in or he would ask me to come out. I remained quiet and told Lanita to stay silent. I thought if they received no response, they would give up. Alas, the boys continued to knock at the door at all hours of the night but I never once opened it.