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.
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