Tuesday, February 11, 2025
We are on the Mend!
Monday, February 10, 2025
Children in the Closet....Chapter Five
Instead of boarding a train for Kansas City, we were loaded into a big black car. As it took us away from the station that day, it also took away all our hopes of seeing our Daddy. We were in a state of stunned confusion and could not make sense of anything that was happening. Lloydine and Lanita cried softly and Lonnie was fussy and fretting in my arms. Mother was holding Lu Ann close to her and neither she nor the ugly old man said more than a few words as he was driving and I couldn’t understand them.
The man turned out to be called “Pap,” and was the father of Clayton Collins with whom Mother was having an affair. Mother was 31 years old while Clayton was in his 20’s and still living at home with his parents. That’s where we were taken.
That
first day was a waking nightmare for the four of us. Even Lonnie was upset and
confused by the unfamiliar faces. We were given some sandwiches for lunch and
then we sat huddled together, not knowing what else to do. Our first night we
slept on the floor with just a thin blanket to provide a bit of cushion. It
made a big pallet, though, and we found some small comfort in sleeping close to
each other. Lloydine and Lanita cried themselves to sleep and I put my arm
around Lonnie and crooned to him until he slept. Then I spent a long time
staring up at the ceiling and tried to make sense out of what was happening to
us. I simply couldn’t.
The next morning, just as in the
previous one, I was the first to wake up. However, this awakening was a world
away from the happy one of just 24 hours earlier. Sometimes, you go to sleep
and wake up with no immediate memory of what has happened. I did not know where
we were or why we were there. I looked around and saw a strange house and then
slowly and painfully, I remembered.
I got up and walked around a
bit. We had slept in the living room and all my siblings were, thankfully, still
asleep. I went into the kitchen. No one was there. I found the bathroom and was
happy about that except that there was a huge old fashioned wringer washing
machine in there and it looked like a monster to me. I continued to wander around
from room to room. It was a small house so it didn’t take long. A kitchen, a
bathroom, two bedrooms and a living room. One bedroom had the door closed and I
knew better than to open it. The other bedroom didn’t even have a door so I
looked in there. There I saw two people in a bed together. I recognized Mother
immediately but not the other person lying with her. All I could see was an arm
draped around my mother’s shoulder. It was covered with freckles and, in my
confused state of mind, I thought it was my Aunt Irene. She was the only one I
knew who had freckled arms. I tiptoed into the room and whispered to Mother,
trying to wake her up, but she didn’t budge. However, the naked man in bed with
her did! He rose up and ordered me to go back to bed in the living room. This,
then, woke my mother. I did as the man
said and it wasn’t too long before I heard Mother in the kitchen making coffee
and looking for things to fix for breakfast. From the way in which she was
searching, I could tell that she had never been here before either.
Lloydine
woke up next and got up so quietly that Lanita and Lonnie stayed asleep. She
came in the kitchen with her eyes bright with tears. I could tell she was as
shocked as I was when she woke up.
Mother was at the sink and Lloydine held onto the counter
with one hand and standing in a crane position wailed, “You told me we
were going to see my Daddy! I don’t know where
I am!” Then she started to cry. I went to her to try and comfort her but all I
really wanted to do was cry, too.
Clayton’s
mother was up by this time and she had gone into the living room to check on
Lanita and Lonnie still lying on the floor. She had taken a cup of coffee with
her and was dressed all in white, ready to go to work. She was a nurse. The
ugly old man got a cup of coffee from the kitchen and joined her. Lanita’s very
first memory was when she opened her eyes and saw an old man and woman drinking
coffee on the couch and just looking at her. She was just three years old, so
naturally, she started to cry. This, in turn, woke Lonnie up and he began to
cry.
We were quick to learn that crying was not something that was tolerated in this strange place.Instead of holding and comforting us, Mother became angry and told us all to hush. We were herded back to the living room and she turned the TV on and told us to sit there and be quiet.
I
changed Lonnie’s diaper while Mother went back to the bedroom where she had
left Lu Ann asleep in a basket. We were scared and didn’t know what to do so we
just sat and stared at the TV.
I
heard the grownups talking together in the kitchen and, just as it had been at
Granny and Granddad’s house, the air was charged with tension. Lu Ann was Clayton’s daughter and he wanted
to keep her but wanted nothing to do with Mother’s other four children. Clayton
and his parents were trying to talk Mother into taking us to the Lena Pope
Orphans Home there in Fort Worth but she was insisting she wanted to keep us.
They came up with a compromise.
That
afternoon we were shunted out to the backyard to play with strict instructions not
to climb the big plum tree in the center of the yard. There was a small
shed out there that was divided into two tiny rooms each with its own separate
doors to enter. We learned that Pap was a hatter and half the shed was filled with
the tools of his trade. The other half of the shed was to be our home. Mother
took our suitcases out there and put them in a corner which would serve as our
closet and then fashioned two makeshift beds for us to sleep on. From then on
we lived in the shed while Mother, Clayton, Lu Ann, Pap and Grandma Collins all
lived in the house. We were allowed to go inside only if neither Clayton nor
Pap was home. That afternoon we began to learn the art of becoming invisible.
In time, we became quite skilled at it.
We had thought it was mean of Granny to make us stay outside all day, but now we faced living by ourselves in a small shed with no parental protection at all. When I asked Mother how we would go to the bathroom, she brought out a big Folger’s coffee can and said we could use that. It was a metal can and the rim was sharp and cut our bottoms before we learned not to put all our weight down on it. Lonnie was still in diapers and I wondered what would happen when we ran out of clean ones.
That
evening Mother brought a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter out to us
and said we had the water hose for our drinking water. She also put a small
plastic children’s wading pool at the side of the house then gave me a bar of
soap and a pile of old rags to use as towels and that’s how we took a bath. We
were grateful it was August but what we would do when winter came?
I
tried to pretend that we were playing house and it would be fun. In fact, I was
scared. Our whole world had changed and it was impossible for us to understand
why that had happened and so suddenly.
With
only one more clean diaper for Lonnie, I put Lloydine, Lanita and Lonnie in bed
and, once they were all sound asleep, took the wet and dirty diapers out to the
wading pool and scrubbed them in our used bath water. I hung them on the line
and went back in to check on my siblings and make up a bed for myself out of
some rough blankets I found in the corner. I went to sleep that second night on
Waggoman Street with my mind full of questions and no answers to them.
What
had happened to our mother that she would lie to us and trick us the way she
did? Why did she give no thought to how traumatized we were with all that had
happened to us in the last 36 hours? Why did Mother even have the taxi cab take
us to the train station if she had no intention of us going to Kansas City? Would we ever see Daddy again? Who was going
to take care of us?
That night both Lloydine and Nita wet the bed. They would continue to wet the bed for years to come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It has been said that children are extremely resilient. I
suppose that is true. We began learning how to cope and survive. Lanita and
Lonnie were so young that they were just now forming memories that would stay
with them. They remembered very little
of our life before. It was different for Lloydine and me. We could remember the
“normal” years, as brief as they were. We were old enough to remember and to
mourn our present situation.
I
finally confronted Mother about what was happening to us one day when no one
else was in the house with her. She told me that Clayton was supposed to have
set up an apartment for all of us and she thought that was where Pap was taking
us. She didn’t even pretend that she
hadn’t been lying to us all this time about taking the train to Kansas City.
She told me how much she was counting on me to help with the younger children.
I tried my best to be brave but I was scared, and now I wasn’t even certain I
could trust what Mother was saying. I wanted to ask her for reassurance that we
would get to stay together. I wanted to tell her I had heard what they were all
saying in the kitchen about taking us to the orphanage. But, in the end, I
didn’t ask her anything. By this time I knew she probably wouldn’t tell me the
truth anyway.
My
siblings and I settled down to our new daily routine. Every morning Lloydine
and I would hang the wet sheets on the line to dry from the nightly bedwetting.
We tried to spray them with the water hose and rinse out some of the pee if Pap
wasn’t around. He was a mean man and didn’t want us to use his water hose.
The
backyard was actually a nice safe place for us to play hide-and-seek and other
simple games. There were few neighborhood children and the ones we saw were
afraid of Pap and kept their distance. I found some paper and a pencil and
practiced “school” for Lloydine. I would draw pictures or letters and numbers
using the dot-to- dot system and then she would connect the dots. We would
pretend to wear high heels and Lanita took it a step further. She found a
couple of pieces of wooden blocks and put them in the heel of her socks and
pranced around on her tiny feet. I was so proud of her for thinking up that
idea all on her own.
Clayton
was still driving an ambulance for Smith and Harris Funeral Home. His hours
were random so we never knew when we would be able to go in the house.
Sometimes on Saturday mornings, if he was gone, Mother let us come in and eat
bowls of cereal sitting on the floor in front of the television watching
cartoons. We were allowed to use the bathroom and I would bring in the Folger’s
Coffee can and dump the waste down the commode. We used that scary wringer
washing machine to do our laundry and then I would hang them outside on the
line. We loved getting to wash the sheets in real soapy water. No matter where
we were or what we were doing, when we heard Clayton’s or Pap’s car pull up in
the driveway, we ran like little mice back to our shed. When Pap was working in
his hatter’s shop, we tried to be so quiet that he would not know we were
there. Days and days would go by with neither Pap nor Clayton seeing or even
hearing us. Grandma Collins wasn’t like her husband or son. She was kind to us
and was, in fact, much nicer to us than our very own Granny. We didn’t have to
run and hide from her.
One
other thing we had to be careful about was seeing Lu Ann. Clayton isolated her
from us and refused to even allow us to see her. She was kept in the bedroom
and we didn’t see her for weeks after that first day when we arrived.
I
heard that Social Services had been to visit but we never saw them. The
neighbor told me over the fence one day that she had called them. No one seemed
to like Pap and this neighbor sure didn’t either but they seemed to like us
well enough. Looking back, I’m sure she felt sorry for us. One day she gave us
a few pieces of candy. We learned not to tell anyone where we really lived and
not to answer questions. The less we said the better.
The
one bright spot in my life during that time was books. Clayton bought huge
cardboard boxes full of books at auctions. After he went through the books,
Mother would let me take any that he didn’t want. Reading was my escape. Even
though I had only finished second grade, I could read very well. I read Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson. While I
didn’t fully understand it at the time, I would read it again and again in
later years. It was rather thrilling seeing the scenes in my mind of David
groping around in the dark on the stairs with the dreaded fear of falling
through as they abruptly stopped. He had no light to shine in order to see his
way. This struck home with me and I could relate to the feeling of being
surrounded in darkness and not knowing where the next step might take me.
I remember the day I opened up a copy of Martha Mitchell’s book, Gone With the Wind. I could read and lose myself completely in that book. I was back in the old South with Melanie and Scarlet and all the wonderful characters and drama of that time. It felt good to disappear for a little while. Books would continue to be a comfort and pleasure to me for the rest of my life and I suppose that, even as evil as Clayton was, God can use whatever good there may be in a situation for our benefit.
When
we got back, we walked straight down the driveway to the shed without even
going through the house since Clayton was still home. I cleaned up my sister’s hands as best I
could, but that black stuff just would not come off. It would have helped if we
had been able to get in the bathroom and use a bar of soap.
On
school mornings, I would get up earlier than the others and get dressed for
school, then I would go outside and brush my teeth by the water hose. I just
turned it on a little bit so the sound would not draw Pap’s attention. Then I
would go up to the back door to see if Mother had left some breakfast food out
for us. She usually did but sometimes she forgot.
While I had been taking total
care of my siblings since we arrived on Waggoman Street, Mother now had no
choice but to keep them inside the house with her and Lu Ann while I was at
school. Once I got home, they were back in my care and the door was shut again.
I was happy to go to school. It gave me a sense of security. My teacher’s name
was Mrs. Matney. School was my safe place so I was always in a hurry to get
there. I walked much slower when I returned to Waggoman Street knowing I would
be expected to collect my younger siblings and we would all have to go back to
the shed or backyard to play.
Mother
hadn’t been able to buy new school clothes for me that year like she had the
previous two. I tried to keep my dress as clean as possible for as long as
possible. Mother would do our washing at the same time she did the other
laundry while I was at school and when I got home I would hang all the clothes
on the line. After they dried, I would put the adults’ clothes in a basket and
leave it by the back door. Lloydine and I would fold ours up and put them back
in the suitcase. I no longer had to wash things out by hand in the little
wading pool and for that I was grateful. We were all still growing so I would
give Lloydine the clothes and shoes that no longer fit me and Lloydine, in
turn, handed hers down to Lanita. Poor Lonnie was growing fast and did good to
get just a diaper and a shirt. Our Aunt Alice would send me some of Mae Ellen’s
outgrown clothing so we all at least had something to wear even if it was ill
fitting.
On
Saturdays, Mother would tell us to get in the big old black car which she drove
as hers by this time and we would make the rounds. That meant she would drive
and I would run in at the different places to do errands. One of our favorite
stops was the August Pie Factory on College Avenue. I loved that place. It had
a great big wooden screen door and I liked the sound it made slapping against the
frame when I would go in and then back out. They sold seconds of their baked
goods, things that didn’t turn out just perfect, as well as day old goods. There
was a huge dark wood counter and everyone who worked there wore big white
aprons and white hair nets. Mother would send me in with some coins and I would
get as much as they would buy. They often had day old apricot pies and those
were my favorite. Bread, donuts, pastries, everything was fairly cheap. We
couldn’t store much food in the shed due to the ants so when we got a pie we
had to eat it up fairly quickly.
From
there we would go to the Vandervoort’s Dairy Company on South Main where I
would run in and get milk. After the errands were done and, if we had been very
good, Mother would take us to get a snow cone and we would drive around while
we ate them.
My
favorite time for going on a drive was in the early evening when people were
just turning on the lights in their houses. I dearly loved seeing in the
windows of cozy little houses as we drove slowly past. I most liked the ones
that had curtains draped up in swags at either side of the window and with a
lamp in the middle. I would daydream about us living in such a beautiful place
with a pretty bathroom, real towels and washcloths and bars of scented soap and
tubes of toothpaste. I would imagine that nice families lived there and everyone
was happy. If it were dinner time, I could see them in my mind’s eye all sitting
at the kitchen table holding hands and saying grace.
As
September and October went by, the weather got colder and life in the shed
became harder.
We didn’t have enough warm clothing or bedding. I was nine
years old and yet I was taking care of three younger siblings. Mother continued
to keep Lu Ann inside with her. Just as I was about to ask her what we were
going to do now that it was getting cold, she told me that Aunt Ruby and Uncle
Hummie would be taking Lloydine, Lanita and me to live with them for the winter
and that Lonnie was going to stay with our Aunt Winnie. This was good news to
us. We would get to live in a house again.
No other family was allowed to come to the
house on Waggoman Street, so early in November, Mother dropped us off with Aunt
Ruby and took Lonnie to Aunt Winnie. Mother must have been grateful that our
maternal relatives helped take care of us even when our grandparents would not.
I suppose they thought they had done enough over the years.
Lanita
had the one and only birthday party of her childhood on November 5th,
1957. She was four years old and Aunt Ruby made her a birthday cake and had a
record made that played Happy Birthday. We loved our Aunt Ruby! She loved us and made us feel welcome. She
showed us great kindness when we were in desperate need of some. We regained a
bit of stability during the months we stayed with her.
I was
the only one in school at the time so I rode the city bus to downtown Fort Worth
where I changed buses to one that let me out close to my school. I had to get
up real early and it was a cold winter. Aunt Ruby made hot chocolate for me to
drink before I left and bundled me up for the walk to the bus stop. They didn’t
have a lot of money so when she ran out of hot chocolate she would weaken down
a cup of coffee and add some milk to it. It was wonderful of them to take us in
and assume the expense of feeding and clothing us.
It
was a little scary to ride the bus downtown and then change to another one.
Aunt Ruby wrote the directions down on a piece of paper and I kept it in my
coat pocket in case I forgot which bus to take.
The first bus stopped at Kresge’s drugstore in downtown
Fort Worth. It had a long soda fountain where commuters would sit and visit
over a cup of coffee. I waited just inside the doors and watched for the next
bus to arrive, always terrified I would miss it and not knowing what I would do
if that ever happened. It never did. I reversed the trip after school. Once
there was a nice lady inside the drug store and, after seeing me get off the
bus every day, offered to buy me a Coke. I was extremely shy and had been taught
not to speak to strangers. Also, this lady smoked. Smoking was unheard of in my
small world. Preachers said it was a sin to smoke, drink, cuss or dance. I
didn’t do any of these things and didn’t know anyone who did except Pap. So, I told her, ‘Thank you, but I’m not
allowed to talk to strangers.’ I told my aunt all about it when I got home that
afternoon. I even told her about seeing the lady smoking. Aunt Ruby assured me
that it would be okay to accept her offer of a Coca-Cola if she ever asked me
again. Sure enough, she was there the next day and I told her my aunt had said
it would be okay for me to have a pop as we called Coke, Diet Rite Cola, 7-Up
or any other carbonated beverage. I felt so grown up sitting at the counter with
her.
Aunt
Ruby and Uncle Hummie still had two daughters living at home. The oldest was named Vada Merl and the
youngest was Rose Mary. Rose Mary was 16 years old and had just become engaged.
She showed me her diamond engagement ring. The very next morning she could not
find it! She was hysterical and searched and searched but the ring was lost.
When I got home from school and learned she couldn’t find that beautiful ring,
I joined in the search. I found it for her! You know where it was? Rose Mary
had a book case headboard and she must have flung her hand up as she was
sleeping during the night. The ring had not been sized yet so it was loose on
her finger. I found the ring up against the inside of the bookcase right there
by where she slept. Once again, I felt so grown up and pleased that I found it
for her.
Lanita
and Lloydine stayed with Aunt Ruby while I was at school. Every single morning,
Aunt Ruby would help Lloydine bathe and put on fresh underwear. She never once
complained about having to change the sheet every day and she never made
Lloydine feel badly about it. Lanita stayed dry at night now but Lloydine could
not stop the bedwetting even though she wanted to. At least she was able to
sleep in a clean bed every night.
We
had a Christmas party at school that year. I loved my teacher and wished I had
something to give her like the other children did. We had to bring one gift for
the gift exchange and Aunt Ruby had bought a box of 10 rolls of Life Savers for
my gift. It cost fifty cents. Then we drew names and exchanged our gifts before
eating the Christmas cookies some of the mothers had sent for the whole class.
I noticed that every single child except me had a gift for the teacher. Mrs.
Matney knew that I was living with an aunt and uncle because they were the ones
who signed my report card as well as my homework papers. Before I left school
that day, I slipped up to my teacher and told her how sorry I was that I didn’t
have a present for her. She put her arms around me and told me I was gift
enough.
We
spent Christmas with our aunt and uncle that year. It was not like the family
Christmas we had loved a few years ago, but it was not as unhappy as the one we
had experienced the year before.
They were so very good to us. Aunt Ruby and Uncle Hummie
have been gone from this world for many, many years and yet we will always
remember their great kindness.
After
the holidays, Mrs. Matney invited me to live with her and her husband for the
remainder of the school year. It made going to school ever so much easier and
nicer. I even had my own bedroom with a single twin bed just for me. Sometimes
Lloydine would get to come over and spend the weekend with me. Mrs. Matney was
a very good housekeeper and she cautioned us to keep our feet off the furniture.
Since Lloydine still wet the bed, she would sleep on the vinyl sofa. However,
she never once let her feet touch the sofa, even though she was barefoot. She
always hung her feet off the side so she wouldn’t get into trouble. We didn’t
understand then that it was only if we had shoes on that we shouldn’t put our
feet on the couch and we would never even have dreamed of doing that!
Mr.
and Mrs. Matney had not been able to have children and they thought seriously
of adopting me. So much had changed in our lives recently that I was wondering
if I would be separated from my siblings and would ever get to see them again.
One Saturday night the Matney’s were going to an event and Mother came over to
babysit us at their house. That’s when Mother told me they were considering
adopting me. Lloydine cried and I tried not to. In the end, they decided
against it and later went on to have three children of their own. I was both
disappointed and relieved at the same time.
Mother
had told us that when school was out we could come back and live in the shed
again.
However, that didn’t happen as she said it would.
Instead, my sisters and I continued to live with Aunt Ruby and her family for
the summer and Lonnie stayed with Aunt Winnie.
Mother then promised we could come home in the fall when school began.
Lloydine would be starting first grade.
We
soon learned the reason we couldn’t come home. Mother was pregnant again.
This time it was with twins.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Children in the Closet.....Chapter Four
Chapter Four
My second-grade
teacher was named Mrs. Angel and I thought she was the prettiest teacher in the
entire school. She wore dresses and often a colorful scarf around her beautiful
neck. She also had the most stylish high heeled shoes! I looked forward to
seeing what she wore to school each day and I developed an obsession with
shoes. I wore shoes handed down to me from my cousin, Mae Ellen, but in my
mind, I was walking around on tall heels with clever little bows on the straps
around my ankles. At home, I would sketch out the shoes I had envisioned each
day and I would draw some for Lloydine as well. She didn’t go to school yet but
I told her she could wear them anyway. I developed quite a few designs that,
instead of drawing the shoes I would be pretending to wear that day, I would
simply pick out a sketch from my collection.
Recess
was on the asphalt playground outside and we had only one hard and fast rule – don’t
run. One day, for whatever reason, I did the unthinkable and ran! I fell
down and scraped my knees pretty badly. Mrs. Angel came running over and before
she could say anything I was blurting out, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I ran!!”
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was disappoint her!
I
would come home after school and immediately change out of my nice school dress
into play clothes. Lloydine, Lanita and even Lonnie were always watching and
waiting for me. It was nice being the big sister and we all played so well
together. We probably fussed with each other as all children do but, by and
large, we would play sweet as Granddad would tell us.
We all dearly loved Granddad. It was
fascinating to watch him drink his morning coffee. He would pour some-which was
piping hot – into the saucer, blow on it and then pour it back into the cup
before taking his first sip. “Saucer blown coffee – oh, man, that’s good!” he
would say.
In the evenings, right before he
went to bed, Granddad would pour a small glass of Mogen David Concord Grape
wine and sip it slowly. Granddad also smoked a pipe and I thought the scent was
heavenly. Granny, on the other hand, dipped snuff which we thought was a nasty
thing to do. The snuff came in small glass jars and Granny would stuff a tissue
down in the bottom of an empty one and use it to spit in. She used some of
those many snuff jars as juice or milk glasses for us. We had to try hard not to
think about how those glasses had been used before they showed up on the table.
Lloydine
and I usually had supper time chores. It was our job to set the table each
evening. The plates didn’t match, each one having a different pattern. Some
were chipped a bit and one had a hairline crack that didn’t go all the way
through so you could still use the plate but it was unsightly. My sister and I
had a game of choosing which plate to give to each family member. We all had
our own place to sit at the table so we would assign the plates accordingly. I
would give Granny the cracked one and Granddad the prettiest one and we made
sure Mother and Daddy got plates that weren’t chipped. All of us kids got snuff
glasses for tea and the adults drank either from goblets or shiny bright
colored aluminum glasses. We didn’t drink milk and now I wonder why that was.
The four of us grew up drinking tea and water. Milk was used only for cereal.
Perhaps it was to save some precious pennies since money, seemed to be an
ever-present issue.
After
setting the table, we would use two saucers for bread plates and stack slices
of white bread on them and place one at each end of the table. Daddy or Granddad
would say the blessing before we would eat. After supper, Lloydine and I would
clear the table and scrape any leftovers onto Granny’s cracked plate then take
it out to feed the chickens next door. Then we would come back in to wash and
dry the dishes. I washed and Lloydine dried.
At
night we all slept together in the same bed and each of us would wrap ourselves
up our own blanket, wrapping around us Indian style and lie down. For some reason, we feared what might be
under the bed so we never allowed our feet or arms to dangle off the edge. One
night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I opened my eyes and blinked in
fright. There was a hand right there by my face. It looked exactly like someone
was under the bed and reaching up to get me. I was so scared! I did the only thing I could think of, I bit
down on that hand with all my might! Then I screamed out in pain! It was my
hand! I started crying and Daddy came in to see about me. When I told him what
happened, he took me to the kitchen and fixed a hot dog on a piece of bread for
me. That was the best thing he could have done. I sunk my teeth into that
weenie and forgot about sinking them into my own finger!
On Sunday
Mother and Daddy would walk with us up the hill to Trinity Baptist Church.
That’s where I accepted the Lord as my personal savior, inviting Him into my
heart and giving my heart right back to Him for safe keeping. I remember that
moment to this very day. I was later baptized in that same church wearing a
billowing white baptism gown.
One
of the girls in my Sunday School class got a permanent wave in her hair and I
thought it looked gorgeous! What’s more – I absolutely love the smell of
the permanent wave solution. Mother was good at fixing hair and she often gave what
we called perms to family members, then one day she gave me one. I was thrilled!
Mother no longer went to church with us by this time, but she knew how
important it was to me and she knew how much I wanted to fit in with the other
girls in my class. Daddy continued to take us to church but Mother had begun
working on Sundays.
While
none us children ever received any special attention that I can recall, there
is one memory of the summer of 1956 that still stands in my mind. Photographers
with Shetland ponies would canvas a neighborhood and offered to take pictures
of us sitting on a pony. Of course, they charged for this, but Daddy arranged
for Lonnie to have his picture taken. We were all so proud of him as he was
dressed up in chaps, vest, a cowboy hat and bandana. He wasn’t one bit afraid
of that pony. I still have that photo of him to this day.
It
was in the fall of 1956 that Mother began an affair with another man. She was
working at Hotel Texas at the time and had met a man named Clayton Collins while
working there.
Daddy
was not an overly ambitious man but he was a steady worker and was kind to
everyone. While he was not well received by Mother’s parents, and they made this
abundantly clear, Daddy was always respectful of them and never spoke a word
against them. After four children, and still struggling financially to feed,
house and clothe them all, he had a vasectomy shortly after Lonnie was born.
Things
were changing. Mother became distracted and was not at home as much as she had
been. She worked and then didn’t come home until hours after her shift had
ended. This did not sit well with Daddy, Granny or Granddad. Clayton would bring Mother home – unashamedly
driving right up into the yard (there was no driveway) and letting her out of
the car. Other times he would bring her home in an ambulance because he worked
as a driver for Smith and Harris Funeral Home. Before becoming involved with
Clayton, Mother had taken the bus to and from work or Daddy would pick her up
if it was late at night. She didn’t bother with the bus anymore.
The
holiday season of that year was very strained. There was no real excitement
other than what we children felt. Mother was absent from home even more
than she had been and she seemed to have little interest in us. Mother didn’t
even try to make Christmas special that year. The scrawny Christmas tree was
left unlit and undecorated. Lonnie was still a baby, he would turn two in
January, and Lanita had just turned
three, so they didn’t really understand about holidays. They just knew they
missed their mama. I was eight and Lloydine was about to have her 5th
birthday so, as big kids, we knew there was something dreadfully wrong but we
didn’t really know what it was.
Normally
we all dressed up on Christmas Eve and watched Scrooge on television. Santa
would visit the tree in the living room while we didn’t notice and then we
would spy on our presents. Not so this strange Christmas. No watching Scrooge
as a family and no giggling anticipation of Santa’s visit. No Christmas Day
trip to our cousins. We opened our few small gifts of puzzles, coloring books
and paper dolls on Christmas Eve and played with them for a few minutes before
we were all told to go to bed.
I was
glad when Christmas and New Year’s Day were over and I could go back to school.
But even as life returned to regular routine, our home became increasingly
tense. Now even Daddy was distant and preoccupied and then he seemed to lose
all interest in us. That winter was especially cold and bitter, both in the
weather and in the attitudes of the adults around us. By February I knew a
little bit about why the relationships among the adults in our life were so
stressful. Mother was pregnant again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Mother
continued to work at Hotel Texas through the spring when it became obvious to
everyone that she was pregnant. She had become heavier with every pregnancy and
by early summer it was difficult for her to get around and do much. Once again,
Granny begrudgingly took care of us while Mother rested. Now, every morning as
soon as we ate breakfast and put our clothes on, not only my sisters and I were
shooed outside, but our baby brother, too!
We would
play all morning up close to the house. One of the games we played was call
Butcher Shop. Trash gathered along the fence lines and we would take the
newspapers, smooth them out as much as possible and then hunt around for some
good size rocks. We would take turns being the butcher and the customer. I
especially loved being the butcher as I would take the orders and wrap the make-believe
meat up in the newspaper, just like they did at the little store around the
corner. Lonnie and Lanita didn’t quite understand this game that Lloydine and I
had made up, so when they wanted to play, we changed the game to “Christmas”
and pretended to wrap presents and they would get to unwrap them. We knew all
about catalogs as we would play with Granny’s old ones, so we would describe
each gift trying hard to find things that would really please them!
Whenever
we were thirsty, we would drink from the water hose at the corner of the house.
We were always allowed to come inside for lunch and we didn’t even mind taking
naps afterwards, as that just meant we got to stay in the house awhile longer.
The
afternoons were spent at the back of the yard around the mulberry tree. That
was our snack, eating fresh mulberries straight from the branches. Sometimes we
would find an old tin can and make mulberry soup.
Before
we were called in for supper, Lloydine and I would lie down in the tall grass
and watch the clouds form pictures in the sky. We could play that game for
hours and taught it to our siblings. Even a small child can see things……in
nature as well as in the faces of our parents and grandparents. We saw lots of things. The thin line of
Granny’s lips. The sadness in Daddy’s eyes. We felt things, too. The
preoccupation of our mother to the point that she seldom even seemed to see her
own children anymore. The hostility of our grandparents toward our parents. We
especially felt the lack of feeling important to anyone. No one seemed to pay
any more attention to us than was absolutely necessary. It is to our credit
that we were, by nature, such good and obedient children that we actually
required even less attention than most children our age. At the ages of eight, five,
three and two, we were a family in and of ourselves. Lloydine and I acted as
parents to our younger siblings, making sure they were taken care of, ate
enough food and I even changed Lonnie’s diapers. Mother was coming to the end
of her pregnancy and seemed to draw more and more into herself with every
passing day.
At
night, we children all slept in one bed out on the “sleeping porch.” This was
really a closed in room but it had screened windows that allowed for air flow.
Since there was no air conditioning, we were grateful to be able to sleep there.
We would be covered in chiggers and mosquito bites after playing outside all
day. After our baths, Daddy would sprinkle us with powdered Sulphur to stop the
itching.
We
had an old radio on the table beside our bed and I would tune into whatever
station I could get so we would have music to go to sleep by. One of my
favorites was Dinah Shore singing, “The Shrimp Boats Are Coming.” It was my
responsibility to get the younger three to sleep so I would turn the volume
knob slightly up and then back down over and over, thereby gently lulling them
off into slumber. Then I would lie there wide awake late into the night,
wondering about what was happening to our family.
It
was impossible for us to understand at the time that everyone in the family
knew Mother was not pregnant with Lloyd’s child, especially since it was a
known fact that he had a vasectomy after brother Lonnie was born.
Mother
gave birth to our new baby sister on Monday, August 5th, 1957. She
was named Lu Ann Ewing, born at 11:03 PM. Daddy and Granny took care of us
while Mother and baby were in the hospital for a few days. Both of them were
grim faced and expressed no joy over the baby’s birth.
There
were no baby showers or happy birth announcements when Mother came home from
the hospital carrying her brand-new baby girl. No happy clucking over the baby
and no nurturing aunts and uncles bringing in casseroles and fawning over the
newborn. This was Mother’s fifth child and she used the baby clothes from her
other babies to dress her. She still had several tiny, white cotton flannel
dresses with tiny white buttons that Granny had made for me. At least I always
thought she had made them especially for me, but as it turns out, they were
hand me downs she had sewed for her other grandchildren.
Just
days after Luann was born, Daddy and Mother gathered all of us children
together and announced that Daddy was going back to Kansas City and would get
an apartment He would get an apartment ready with plans for us to join him
soon. They explained we would take the train as soon as he got settled. It’s
very easy to lie to children. Apparently much easier than telling them the
truth. Children want to believe. As much as we loved hearing these plans, we
could still feel the undercurrent of anger between our Mother and Daddy. We could hear them arguing when they thought
we were in bed fast asleep.
Lonnie
can recall his first real memory that came about this time. He can see Daddy
wearing a pair of khaki pants and standing at the open refrigerator door,
drinking milk straight out of the bottle. It is funny what our first memories
are. This was to be the first, last and only memory he had of his Daddy, for he
never saw him again. Neither did Lloydine or Lanita. Later in life, when Lonnie
was 18 years old and wanted to contact his father, Mother lied to him and told
him he had died. The truth was he lived to be 83 years old and passed away in
2001 when Lonnie was 46 years old. Later when I was 17 years old, I went to
Kansas City on the train in search of my biological father when I met him and
his second wife. But more about that later.
Daddy
left us on his birthday, Sunday, August 11th. He didn’t leave with
suitcases full of things to start our new life. As a matter of fact, he left
with very little. He went out the side door with only a shoebox and a pair of
Argyle socks on top and the clothes on his back. He slipped away without saying
goodbye to any of us, but Lloydine was watching and saw him go. He that one
last argument with Mother and then he was gone.
We
left Granny and Granddad’s house on a sunny day in late August of 1957. It was
a Saturday morning and the taxi picked us up and carried us to the train
station. We were being promised one thing, a reunion with our daddy and a new
life in Kansas City, while all along much different plans had been made and
were now becoming our reality. A horrible and terrifying reality. We would
never again go back to being the young innocent children who had woken up all
happy and excited that morning. Our lives changed forever that day and not for
the better.