Children in the Closet - Chapter Eight

 

Chapter Eight

               Mother left Clayton early in the summer of 1960 and we moved to Haltom City to an apartment on Granger Street that our Aunt Ruby’s son and his wife found for us. We had no car and even less money than usual but we were a family again. Mother worked days and rode the bus both to and from her job.

               Lloydine was sick shortly after we moved in and she remembers Mother holding her in her lap and Lloydine thinking, “This is so nice.” Then Mother abruptly got up and said, “I have to catch the bus.” We were left alone as we usually were, but we were used to it by this time.

               I was 12 years old and could take care of my siblings, do all the housework and all the meal preparation. I was excited about having access to a kitchen and we were all happy to be able to use a real bathroom all the time. We used a bar of soap for bathing until it was such a small sliver you could barely get hold of it. Our main food was pinto beans and I could cook up a pot as well as Mother. I had to be careful about the seasonings, though. Once I discovered bugs in the chili pepper. It wasn’t until I had poured a good amount of it into the simmering beans that I noticed them.  I scooped out what I could then just added extra salt and pepper. No one noticed but I learned to check the chili pepper from that time on.

               Just as school was getting ready to start, Mother reunited with Clayton and we moved yet again.

This time it was to the most traditional house we ever lived in. No separation or division of living areas. It was a tract house with a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom with a carport and fenced back yard that had plush St. Augustine grass. The first 24 hours we were there was the most normal hours we ever had with Clayton. He must have promised Mother a few things to get her back. They had quite a volatile relationship.

               That first day we moved our things in and set up one bedroom for the four of us. Then we all went out in the backyard to play while Clayton mowed the lawn. It was a large backyard that sloped downhill from the rear fence line. While the kids played, I read a magazine and watched them while Mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner. I still remember the menu that evening: meat loaf, cheese potatoes, pinto beans, corn on the cob, and peach cobbler. The miraculous part of it was that we all sat in the kitchen around the table and ate as a family. This was the first, last and only time we ever did this. I thought perhaps life would become more normal. That was not going to happen.

               We learned to use the window in our bedroom for a door and we were young and agile enough to climb in and out at will. That way, if Clayton was asleep in their bedroom, we could get to the food in the kitchen, which we would carry back to our room via the window.

               There was a peach tree in our backyard and I would pick the peaches while they were still green and eat them with a lot of salt. I loved salt and ate so much of it that my mother said I was going to dry up and blow away!

               A family lived next door that I could really relate to. Their last name was Hoggard and the oldest of the three boys was named John. He took care of his younger brothers just as I took care of my siblings. His mother was a single mom and they had a washing machine that sat out in their carport and when John did their laundry, the fresh smell of laundry detergent hung in the air. We never had a washing machine and I always did our laundry at a washateria.

 John was good at doing laundry and even did the ironing as did I. Keeping the house clean was a bit of a challenge for him, so one day I decided to help him deep clean their living room. We took down all the dirty venetian blinds and washed them in the bathtub. I was impressed with the assortment of cleaning aids we had to choose from. After we scrubbed them down really well, we took them outside and hung them across the clothes line. That’s when we noticed the threads holding the blinds together had come apart. They were clean, but totally unusable. I didn’t offer to help him again after that!

               On the other side of us lived a nice couple who had no children. I admired the lady so much. She was small and pretty and had an equally pretty house. She had her groceries delivered and I found that amazing. The delivery boy would haul in large cardboard boxes full of food and I would help her put it all up.

               There was another family across the street that had a little girl about my age. I liked to visit her on the weekend. I would go over on a Saturday morning and she and her mother would be cleaning house together. I loved to clean so I helped with the dusting and sweeping and the work went much faster with the three of us, giving us more time to play.

               Mother worked and was seldom at home so we pretty much took care of ourselves. Once Mother working for the day, she and Clayton would go places. Neither Clayton nor Mother smoked or drank and they didn’t dance. They would go to wrestling matches or the roller derby after going out to eat. They both loved to eat. We children always ate at home and I fixed the meals for my siblings and myself. I prepared simple foods and we would eat in the kitchen if no one else was home. If I had a headache or felt sick, I would fix sandwiches for them and a glass of crackers and milk for me. We were a little family of our own.

               The few times Mother was home, she usually stayed in her bedroom with the shades down, lying in bed with a sick headache.  Lloydine and I would take turns going in there and we would sit on the side of her bed and rub her neck. Mother was given to periods of depression and she would simply stay in bed. We would take food and iced tea so she didn’t even have to get up to eat.

               A few times Clayton took all of us to the Roller Derby. We didn’t like it. It was really loud and scary to us. Wrestling matches were even worse. The audience would be yelling and it smelled bad.  Clayton seemed to enjoy exposing us to violence and he took special delight in seeing us react with shock and horror. We liked staying home by ourselves a whole lot more than we did going someplace with them.

               I finished 6^th grade that spring. While I still liked school and made straight A’s, Lloydine continued to be challenged. She was a frightened little girl and would freeze up when she was called on in class. She was so frightened, she never told her teacher when she couldn’t understand the lessons. She struggled every single day. One day her teacher was so excited and shared with the class that her husband was returning from a tour of duty in the armed forces. She singled Lloydine out and said, “How would you feel if your daddy had left and didn’t come back for a long, long time?” Lloydine looked up at her and said, “My daddy did leave and he never came back!”

 

               School let out and we were relieved. In many ways, the summers were less stressful than the school year. We had a small television in our room and if we kept it turned down real low, we could pass the time when Clayton was home by watching Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel and The Real McCoy’s. We especially liked The Flintstones, The Andy Griffith Show and Dennis the Menace. We could escape when we tuned in to The Rifleman and My Three Sons. The Untouchables was the only show that scared me so I made sure none of us watched that one.

              

               Mother’s birthday was June 6^th and to celebrate it, I baked her a cake using a mix. I was still in the kitchen when I heard Clayton drive up in the driveway. We all scattered to the backyard or down the hall to our bedroom before he even got in the house. I nearly froze just as I got to the bedroom door when I remembered I had left the cake sitting on the top of the stove.  In just a few minutes I heard him screaming my name and calling me to the kitchen. I never knew what would make him mad and had no idea me using the oven would send him on a rampage. He told me to watch as he dismantled the oven, rendering it useless for the remainder of the summer and then he burned a dollar bill and flushed a nickel down the toilet. That was what the cake and frosting mix cost. The rest of the summer, I made Jell-O for our treats. I was grateful we could still use the burners on top of the stove – as long as he didn’t find out about it.

               Lloydine had begun to act out at home and cause trouble for us so Mother took her to stay with Granny and Granddad. Granny liked her more than she did the rest of us and would even share her Coca Colas with her! Lloydine remembers coming home and none of us were happy to see her. She went back to Granny’s the very next day. Our lives, even as children, were so stressful and if just one of us caused trouble, it hurt all of us.

               The family reunion was always the first Sunday in August and we looked forward to it every year. By this time, Clayton was working as a car salesman and he was given cars called “demonstrators” to drive. He had a new black Impala with a red interior and he told Mother she could use it to take us to the reunion that year. Mother loved to make a good impression on her family, which led them to believe we were living a good life.

               Every family was supposed to take food to the reunion so I tried to make fudge. I tried a couple of times but I could never get it to set.  Just as it came to a rolling boil, I would panic and take it off the fire. Mother had to buy something for us to take to the reunion and the kids and I later ate the fudge I made with a spoon. It was still good.

               Most of the extended family knew nothing of our real life. One of the very few exceptions to this was Mother’s niece, Paula. They were extremely close and fiercely protective of one another. Paula was Uncle Truman’s oldest daughter and she was married to Paul, who was a real womanizer.

               The week after the reunion, Mother and Clayton took a vacation to California under the pretense of going in search of Sharon, the daughter they continued to claim had been kidnapped.

Mother had asked Paul and Paula to stay with us while they were gone.  I thought it was rather strange that Mother wanted them to take care of us. That was not the real reason. Apparently, Paul, Paula and their four boys had been evicted and had no place to live. Now, not only did I take care of Lanita, Lloydine and Lonnie, but for two weeks, I had to take care of my cousins, Richard, Collin and Daryl and Larry as well! This was a real burden and caused me so much extra work that I was completely worn out. I worked from the time I got up in the morning to the time I went to bed. Paula’s boys were making messes faster than I could clean them up, and Paul and Paula both expected me to prepare the meals and keep the house clean. One day Paula came to me and said, “Linda, my husband would like for you to clean the toilet twice a day. He doesn’t like to use a dirty bathroom.”

               I cleaned. I cooked. I ironed. I did the laundry. I babysat their kids. I was exhausted. My siblings tried to help but they were too young to do much.

               Paul and Paula had their own problems dealing with the boys. Every afternoon, the ice cream truck would drive down our street. We all knew not to stop it because we were well aware of the fact that we had no money. Daryl, however, would run out in the street and stop the truck every single time! Paula would get mad and give all the kids a whipping, including Lanita and Lonnie. They were the ones closest to Daryl’s age, so she whipped them along with Daryl. Several whippings later, they decided to get even with him.  One day Lanita and Lonnie found a piece of dry dog poop. They had an idea! They showed it to Daryl and told him it was candy. He took a bite. It didn’t take but a chew or two and he was spitting it out and yelling, “That’s not candy! That’s DOO-DOO.” Lanita and Lonnie still talk about that to this day.

               It was during the second week they were there that Lanita started having nosebleeds nearly every day. Paul told her to lie down and put a penny above her upper lip. I don’t remember whether this worked or not. We tried to stay away from Paul as much as possible. He hugged all the females in our family, young and old, and hugged longer and held on tighter than he should have.

               At last, Mother and Clayton came home. I heard them talking to Paul and Paula about how much fun they had and all the things they had seen. They had driven all the way up to San Francisco and brought back several souvenirs including a black enameled photo album, printed silk pillowcases and a stack of photographs.  I still have some of those photos. In one of them Mother is riding on a chair lift and it is taking her down the mountain to the cabins below. Their car is sitting in front of cabin number three. I never heard one word about the search for Sharon.

                              Not only did Mother and Clayton have a good vacation, so did Paul and Paula. Neither one of them had done a single bit of work the whole time they were there. I was dumbfounded when Mother thanked them profusely for ‘taking care of my children.’

               With all the mementoes and souvenirs, Mother and Clayton did not bring back one single thing for us.

 

               A week later, right before Labor Day, we moved again.  This was the fifth move in three years.