The brand name "Aunt Jemima" comes from a 19th century minstrel song. To build name recognition the pancake company sponsored a promotional campaign featuring performances by live Aunt Jemima’s who flipped pancakes and told stories about the old days. In 1989 the company replaced the old Aunt Jemima with a black housewife figure in pearls.
There was a 1934 movie, "Imitation of Life" with Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers that was loosely based on Aunt Jemima. Except the character Louise Beavers played was Delilah and both the single mothers started a pancake shop on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, then started boxing and selling "Aunt Delilah's Pancake Mix."
They were like sisters and lived with their daughters in a beautiful Brownstone mansion in East Manhattan, but the white woman lived upstairs, while the black woman lived downstairs. There's a scene where Jane and Delilah say goodnight after a grand party and Claudette Colbert walks up the huge sweeping staircase, while Louise Beavers walks down the same staircase, separate but equal, right?
It made them rich, but even with all that money they still had problems with their daughters and unhappiness. It's one of my favorite movies. Lana Turner did a re make of it in 1957, much more glamorous and a great deal sadder, but I still like the 1934 version best. Seems it caused quite a stir in the thirties regarding all the racial issues.
When I was little my Aunt Ruby employed a woman named Jessie Mae and often got up early in the morning and drove to the "Colored" section of Monahans to pick her up and take her home. She always made a huge fuss over me and would run to pick me up and hug and kiss me, I loved her.
When they could no longer afford her my aunt would drive me over to her house for a visit. Once when I visited I found out she'd moved to San Antonio and I cried and cried. Maybe that's why I've always liked that movie and Aunt Jemima so much.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
INDESCRETIONS
Have you ever learned something about a senior citizen relative that totally knocked you on your ass? I didn’t find this out until I was in my thirties and I was totally taken by surprise. Agnes was Ruby’s younger sister who was born Cora Agnes Ragsdale on November 26th, 1907.
Agnes was a “character” she didn’t get married until she was thirty nine and once said, “And honey, don’t think people didn’t talk about me.” She loved to drive over to Midland Air Field during the war and dance and drink with the soldiers. One of her boyfriends once said, “If the back seat of my car could talk……” Once my grandmother said my grandfather handed her a flask of bourbon while they were walking down Grant Street in Odessa, she took a sip and then began clawing the air like she was climbing a wall. She got her beauty license back in the days when you didn’t have to have any formal training and she did hair for over forty years retiring in 1973, but she didn’t like for people to know she hadn’t gone to school. She’d owned her own beauty shop since the 1940’s and made a good living. Pretty much everything she and Sonny had was because of her.
I remember once while I was living with Ruby, I was on my way to an optometrist appointment in Odessa and I had some paperwork with me as well as a hidden half pint of Bacardi rum. It was hot as hell and Agnes caught me on my way to my car to ask where I was going. I really didn’t have time to talk, but I reached in and started my Cadillac so the air conditioner could at least start cooling the car down. As I tossed my arm load of stuff on the front seat the bottle of rum shot out on the brocade and lay there all by itself. I thought, “Oh shit!” “What’s that?” She asked. “Rum.” I said. “What do you drink it with?” She asked. “Coke.” I said. “That used to be my favorite drink during the war, you be careful.” She scolded. She’d been there and done that, so she wasn’t as judgmental about drinking as Ruby was.
Once in the late eighties they came to Dallas to visit after my uncle Sonny died and we went to the “Spaghetti Warehouse”. We talked them both into getting frozen Daiquiris and Ruby sipped hers through pursed lips, while Agnes thoroughly enjoyed hers. She kept saying, “I think I’m getting tight, I haven’t been this tight in years.” That apparently what they called getting drunk in their youth. Every time Agnes ate anything it was the best she’d ever had in her entire life. She could buy a hot dog from a street vendor and say, “Oh my, this is the best hot dog I’ve ever had.” She loved off color jokes and always had one to tell you from one of her beauty shop clients.
She could have her moments though, she didn’t suffer fools easily. Once she ordered hamburgers and fries for five of us and as she got to the drive in window to pick them up and pay for them, the girl handed her one bag. She handed it to me expecting there to be another. The girl gave her the total, she paid her and said, “Is that all of our order?” The girl said, “Yes mam that was three cheeseburgers, two hamburgers and five orders of fries.” Agnes said, “Well why’d you cram it all into one damned sack for?” Then threw her Oldsmobile in gear and screeched the tires, Danny and I thought it was hysterical. Another time Danny didn’t find it as funny, she was taking us to meet our grandmother, and had given us some money to buy a toy. She went out to the car to wait while we decided what we wanted. I was easy I always bought a toy car, but Danny would walk up and down the isles forever trying to make up his mind. I went out and got in the front seat. “Where’s Danny?” She asked. “He’s still looking.” I said. After quite some time she said, “What’s taking him so long? I’ve never seen anybody take this long to pick out a toy. Go in and tell him to hurry up, we have to meet your grandmother.” I went in and told him for what little good it did and then went back to the car. After a while she sent me back in again and I said, “Agnes said if you can’t make up your mind then you’ll just have to wait.” He finally decided on something and as he was walking out to get in the back seat Agnes stopped him at her window and chewed him out for being so inconsiderate. When we drove to our grandmother’s pink 1962 Buick and transferred our luggage from the Oldsmobile and drove off, my grandmother cracked up when Danny said, “That’s the gripeinst woman I ever saw.”
I guess it was sometime in the mid eighties when mother told me something I’d never even heard a whisper about. Apparently in the forties Agnes had an affair with my uncle Earl, Ruby’s husband. I knew there’d been mention of him either buying her a car, or helping her buy a car and even once heard Ruby and Agnes argue about it with Agnes saying, “Ruby I paid him back for that car.” I didn’t know he’d also bought her a diamond engagement ring. Of course hers was only a one half carat, while Ruby had a carat and a half. Mother mentioned once when my grandfather noticed Ruby was down and depressed he asked her what was wrong. “Earl’s trifling on me.” she told him. He asked, “Is it someone we both know?” “Yes.” she said. I don’t think they said very much more about it and somehow the affair ended. I think my grandfather may have had a little talk with his baby sister about her behavior. I myself couldn’t believe she would do something like that to Ruby. In fact they were so close that “Ruby and Agnes” seemed like it was all one word to me when I was growing up.
Mother also told me that when she and her younger sister were teenagers Earl would try and feel them up and come into their rooms late at night after Ruby was asleep trying to get them to have sex with them. She told her father who supposedly confronted Earl about it who of course denied it. When her father took Earl’s side in the matter she told her mother about it and they spoke with either a lawyer, or a judge and when he told mother that Earl could possibly go to prison and loose his business, mother decided not to press the issue because of what it would do to Ruby. No wonder she married at seventeen and got out of that house as soon as she could. I never knew any of this growing up and except for the car issue I never heard it discussed. I do however have that half carat diamond set in a mans ring that I wear all the time.
Agnes never seemed daunted by anything in life no matter what. Whenever I’d get down or depressed about something she’d say, “Well you’d better back your self into a corner and have a little talk with your self young man.” She had such a cheery outlook on life, but all that changed when she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s in the early nineties. Ruby went to stay with her while she was suffering from shingles and Agnes wouldn’t let her go home. Ruby lived with her for over a year and a half before Agnes died in May 1995, even then she maintained her sense of humor. I called them from Dallas and they each got on an extension in the apartment, when I spoke with her for the last time about a month before she passed away. Ruby said, “Agnes hasn’t put any clothes on in three days.” Agnes chimed in, “I’ve got on my pajamas. Ruby wants everyone to think I’m naked. I don’t like naked, it draws flies.” and giggled. Even then she still had that wonderful sense of humor.
I been having a hard time recently, feeling down and depressed. One morning I was having a difficult time shutting the top drawer of my dresser where I keep old cards and letters. I pulled the drawer way out to see why it wasn't shutting properly and found a card sticking up that was jamming the drawer. It was a card from my aunt Agnes mailed to me in March of 1992 when I moved back to Dallas and was looking for work. Inside the card was a note that offered words of encouragement, love, and hope, along with her usual sense of humor "Don't worry, they can't eat you!" I believe she reached out to me that morning to help me just as she did so many years ago.
Agnes was a “character” she didn’t get married until she was thirty nine and once said, “And honey, don’t think people didn’t talk about me.” She loved to drive over to Midland Air Field during the war and dance and drink with the soldiers. One of her boyfriends once said, “If the back seat of my car could talk……” Once my grandmother said my grandfather handed her a flask of bourbon while they were walking down Grant Street in Odessa, she took a sip and then began clawing the air like she was climbing a wall. She got her beauty license back in the days when you didn’t have to have any formal training and she did hair for over forty years retiring in 1973, but she didn’t like for people to know she hadn’t gone to school. She’d owned her own beauty shop since the 1940’s and made a good living. Pretty much everything she and Sonny had was because of her.
I remember once while I was living with Ruby, I was on my way to an optometrist appointment in Odessa and I had some paperwork with me as well as a hidden half pint of Bacardi rum. It was hot as hell and Agnes caught me on my way to my car to ask where I was going. I really didn’t have time to talk, but I reached in and started my Cadillac so the air conditioner could at least start cooling the car down. As I tossed my arm load of stuff on the front seat the bottle of rum shot out on the brocade and lay there all by itself. I thought, “Oh shit!” “What’s that?” She asked. “Rum.” I said. “What do you drink it with?” She asked. “Coke.” I said. “That used to be my favorite drink during the war, you be careful.” She scolded. She’d been there and done that, so she wasn’t as judgmental about drinking as Ruby was.
Once in the late eighties they came to Dallas to visit after my uncle Sonny died and we went to the “Spaghetti Warehouse”. We talked them both into getting frozen Daiquiris and Ruby sipped hers through pursed lips, while Agnes thoroughly enjoyed hers. She kept saying, “I think I’m getting tight, I haven’t been this tight in years.” That apparently what they called getting drunk in their youth. Every time Agnes ate anything it was the best she’d ever had in her entire life. She could buy a hot dog from a street vendor and say, “Oh my, this is the best hot dog I’ve ever had.” She loved off color jokes and always had one to tell you from one of her beauty shop clients.
She could have her moments though, she didn’t suffer fools easily. Once she ordered hamburgers and fries for five of us and as she got to the drive in window to pick them up and pay for them, the girl handed her one bag. She handed it to me expecting there to be another. The girl gave her the total, she paid her and said, “Is that all of our order?” The girl said, “Yes mam that was three cheeseburgers, two hamburgers and five orders of fries.” Agnes said, “Well why’d you cram it all into one damned sack for?” Then threw her Oldsmobile in gear and screeched the tires, Danny and I thought it was hysterical. Another time Danny didn’t find it as funny, she was taking us to meet our grandmother, and had given us some money to buy a toy. She went out to the car to wait while we decided what we wanted. I was easy I always bought a toy car, but Danny would walk up and down the isles forever trying to make up his mind. I went out and got in the front seat. “Where’s Danny?” She asked. “He’s still looking.” I said. After quite some time she said, “What’s taking him so long? I’ve never seen anybody take this long to pick out a toy. Go in and tell him to hurry up, we have to meet your grandmother.” I went in and told him for what little good it did and then went back to the car. After a while she sent me back in again and I said, “Agnes said if you can’t make up your mind then you’ll just have to wait.” He finally decided on something and as he was walking out to get in the back seat Agnes stopped him at her window and chewed him out for being so inconsiderate. When we drove to our grandmother’s pink 1962 Buick and transferred our luggage from the Oldsmobile and drove off, my grandmother cracked up when Danny said, “That’s the gripeinst woman I ever saw.”
I guess it was sometime in the mid eighties when mother told me something I’d never even heard a whisper about. Apparently in the forties Agnes had an affair with my uncle Earl, Ruby’s husband. I knew there’d been mention of him either buying her a car, or helping her buy a car and even once heard Ruby and Agnes argue about it with Agnes saying, “Ruby I paid him back for that car.” I didn’t know he’d also bought her a diamond engagement ring. Of course hers was only a one half carat, while Ruby had a carat and a half. Mother mentioned once when my grandfather noticed Ruby was down and depressed he asked her what was wrong. “Earl’s trifling on me.” she told him. He asked, “Is it someone we both know?” “Yes.” she said. I don’t think they said very much more about it and somehow the affair ended. I think my grandfather may have had a little talk with his baby sister about her behavior. I myself couldn’t believe she would do something like that to Ruby. In fact they were so close that “Ruby and Agnes” seemed like it was all one word to me when I was growing up.
Mother also told me that when she and her younger sister were teenagers Earl would try and feel them up and come into their rooms late at night after Ruby was asleep trying to get them to have sex with them. She told her father who supposedly confronted Earl about it who of course denied it. When her father took Earl’s side in the matter she told her mother about it and they spoke with either a lawyer, or a judge and when he told mother that Earl could possibly go to prison and loose his business, mother decided not to press the issue because of what it would do to Ruby. No wonder she married at seventeen and got out of that house as soon as she could. I never knew any of this growing up and except for the car issue I never heard it discussed. I do however have that half carat diamond set in a mans ring that I wear all the time.
Agnes never seemed daunted by anything in life no matter what. Whenever I’d get down or depressed about something she’d say, “Well you’d better back your self into a corner and have a little talk with your self young man.” She had such a cheery outlook on life, but all that changed when she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s in the early nineties. Ruby went to stay with her while she was suffering from shingles and Agnes wouldn’t let her go home. Ruby lived with her for over a year and a half before Agnes died in May 1995, even then she maintained her sense of humor. I called them from Dallas and they each got on an extension in the apartment, when I spoke with her for the last time about a month before she passed away. Ruby said, “Agnes hasn’t put any clothes on in three days.” Agnes chimed in, “I’ve got on my pajamas. Ruby wants everyone to think I’m naked. I don’t like naked, it draws flies.” and giggled. Even then she still had that wonderful sense of humor.
I been having a hard time recently, feeling down and depressed. One morning I was having a difficult time shutting the top drawer of my dresser where I keep old cards and letters. I pulled the drawer way out to see why it wasn't shutting properly and found a card sticking up that was jamming the drawer. It was a card from my aunt Agnes mailed to me in March of 1992 when I moved back to Dallas and was looking for work. Inside the card was a note that offered words of encouragement, love, and hope, along with her usual sense of humor "Don't worry, they can't eat you!" I believe she reached out to me that morning to help me just as she did so many years ago.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
OH DOCTOR
In 1968 when I was thirteen and my father was in Viet Nam, I finally got someone to listen to me and realize that I might actually have a heart problem. I went into tachycardia in gym class one day and the coach told me I couldn’t participate until I had a letter from a doctor telling him it was OK. My mother took me to the Army hospital at Fort Hood, but they couldn’t find anything wrong, so they scheduled an appointment for me at Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The second Saturday in December my mother and grandmother drove me down there and checked me in, they couldn’t stay because my sister Stacy was less that a month old.
The hospital was new to me I’d never been in one before, so I was nervous. My brother Danny had been in the hospital at least three times that I could remember, but I’d never been to anything other than an emergency room and that was usually with him. Since it was the weekend things were pretty quite and the guys I was on the ward with were military, so they just thought I was a young enlisted kid. They were shocked to find I was only thirteen because I was so tall for my age. I remember the guy in the next bed was in there because he’d been struck by lightening while trimming hedges on the base. He was OK, but they just wanted him in there to make sure he hadn’t suffered any heart damage. The next day was Sunday and for some reason the doctor who was assigned to me decided to come in and start my paperwork and physical exam. Who was I to question his tactics? In fact it made me feel better that all the offices were empty because I really didn’t like the idea of a whole bunch of people seeing me naked. Back then they didn’t require two people in the room, so it was just him and me. His name was Dr. Anderson, he was in his late twenties and very attractive and he said he was from Beverly Hills. I asked, “Are you related to the Anderson’s in Merced, California? They used to trim our poodle.” “No.” he said. After asking me all sorts of questions about my heart, like when I first noticed it and what seemed to cause it to beat rapidly, he told me to take off all my clothes and put them on a chair. No gown, no pajamas, no nothing, he wanted me stark naked lying on the examination table.
You remember how it is when you’re thirteen everything embarrasses you. Since I was fully developed and shaving I was ahead of most of the boys in my class. It was something he seemed intrigued with as well. As he was examining my genitals the questions started. “Have you noticed the other boys in your gym class?” “Yes.” I said cautiously. “Are their penis’s as large as yours?” I didn’t want him to think I looked, but I said, “Most of them aren’t, maybe one other guy is.” He did the turn your head and cough routine and then left the room to get a tube of KY. I was scared to death when he had me bend over and stuck his finger up my ass, but I was trying to act as grown up as possible. Then he had me lie back down and took my pulse on my wrist and then placed his hand on my groin as if he were feeling my pulse there as well. Then he asked me, “Do you ever have any wet dreams?” I was mortified, as a bed wetter until the age of twelve I was deeply ashamed of it and didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I said, “I used to wet the bed, but I stopped that when I was twelve.” He said, “That’s not what I mean, do you have any sexual dreams and ejaculate in your sleep?” “No.” I said. He then asked me, “What makes you sexually aroused, when do you get an erection?” I couldn’t tell him looking at the men’s underwear ads in the Sears catalogue, so I said, “While watching TV.” “What shows do you get aroused watching?” He asked. Well, I didn’t want to tell him it was while watching the cute guys in tight bell bottoms on “American Bandstand, so I said something stupid like, “The Munster’s.” “Who gets you aroused on The Munster’s?” he said. “Uh, I don’t know” I said. I was starting to get very uncomfortable, but I was getting an erection in spite of it. He stroked it a few times and pre cum was oozing out the head, so he took a tissue and wiped it off. “What do you think about when you masturbate?” He asked. I quickly lied and said, “I don’t do that.” For some reason I was standing up in front of him by that time and he was sitting on one of those stools with rollers. He handed me the tissue, slid the stool back a couple feet and said, “Here, milk that down for me.” I stroked my dick a few times and then handed him the tissue. I wanted to go ahead and jack off, but he was a doctor and I didn’t realize that every teenage boy did it, so I didn’t want to be some freak. I guess he realized I wasn’t going to perform for him so he told me to get dressed.
I was in there about a week and they miss diagnosed me as having PAT, or paroxysmal atrial tachycardia. It wasn’t until I was thirty two that they found out I actually had WPW, or Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome which can result in sudden death, that all my operations started. When he’d make his rounds during the week with a nurse he’d pull back the covers on my bed and hold my penis through the fly in my pajamas. I guess he was making it look like he was taking my pulse with an artery or something, but he’d hold me until I got hard.
On the drive home I was reading the medical chart they gave me to give to the doctors at Fort Hood and he’d written, “The patient is an obese, over anxious thirteen year old male…” I had to ask my mother what obese meant and she said, “Fat.” It hurt my feelings, but years later as an adult I realized he was covering his ass with the “over anxious” part in case I told someone what had gone on. I hadn’t been examined, I’d been molested.
The hospital was new to me I’d never been in one before, so I was nervous. My brother Danny had been in the hospital at least three times that I could remember, but I’d never been to anything other than an emergency room and that was usually with him. Since it was the weekend things were pretty quite and the guys I was on the ward with were military, so they just thought I was a young enlisted kid. They were shocked to find I was only thirteen because I was so tall for my age. I remember the guy in the next bed was in there because he’d been struck by lightening while trimming hedges on the base. He was OK, but they just wanted him in there to make sure he hadn’t suffered any heart damage. The next day was Sunday and for some reason the doctor who was assigned to me decided to come in and start my paperwork and physical exam. Who was I to question his tactics? In fact it made me feel better that all the offices were empty because I really didn’t like the idea of a whole bunch of people seeing me naked. Back then they didn’t require two people in the room, so it was just him and me. His name was Dr. Anderson, he was in his late twenties and very attractive and he said he was from Beverly Hills. I asked, “Are you related to the Anderson’s in Merced, California? They used to trim our poodle.” “No.” he said. After asking me all sorts of questions about my heart, like when I first noticed it and what seemed to cause it to beat rapidly, he told me to take off all my clothes and put them on a chair. No gown, no pajamas, no nothing, he wanted me stark naked lying on the examination table.
You remember how it is when you’re thirteen everything embarrasses you. Since I was fully developed and shaving I was ahead of most of the boys in my class. It was something he seemed intrigued with as well. As he was examining my genitals the questions started. “Have you noticed the other boys in your gym class?” “Yes.” I said cautiously. “Are their penis’s as large as yours?” I didn’t want him to think I looked, but I said, “Most of them aren’t, maybe one other guy is.” He did the turn your head and cough routine and then left the room to get a tube of KY. I was scared to death when he had me bend over and stuck his finger up my ass, but I was trying to act as grown up as possible. Then he had me lie back down and took my pulse on my wrist and then placed his hand on my groin as if he were feeling my pulse there as well. Then he asked me, “Do you ever have any wet dreams?” I was mortified, as a bed wetter until the age of twelve I was deeply ashamed of it and didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I said, “I used to wet the bed, but I stopped that when I was twelve.” He said, “That’s not what I mean, do you have any sexual dreams and ejaculate in your sleep?” “No.” I said. He then asked me, “What makes you sexually aroused, when do you get an erection?” I couldn’t tell him looking at the men’s underwear ads in the Sears catalogue, so I said, “While watching TV.” “What shows do you get aroused watching?” He asked. Well, I didn’t want to tell him it was while watching the cute guys in tight bell bottoms on “American Bandstand, so I said something stupid like, “The Munster’s.” “Who gets you aroused on The Munster’s?” he said. “Uh, I don’t know” I said. I was starting to get very uncomfortable, but I was getting an erection in spite of it. He stroked it a few times and pre cum was oozing out the head, so he took a tissue and wiped it off. “What do you think about when you masturbate?” He asked. I quickly lied and said, “I don’t do that.” For some reason I was standing up in front of him by that time and he was sitting on one of those stools with rollers. He handed me the tissue, slid the stool back a couple feet and said, “Here, milk that down for me.” I stroked my dick a few times and then handed him the tissue. I wanted to go ahead and jack off, but he was a doctor and I didn’t realize that every teenage boy did it, so I didn’t want to be some freak. I guess he realized I wasn’t going to perform for him so he told me to get dressed.
I was in there about a week and they miss diagnosed me as having PAT, or paroxysmal atrial tachycardia. It wasn’t until I was thirty two that they found out I actually had WPW, or Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome which can result in sudden death, that all my operations started. When he’d make his rounds during the week with a nurse he’d pull back the covers on my bed and hold my penis through the fly in my pajamas. I guess he was making it look like he was taking my pulse with an artery or something, but he’d hold me until I got hard.
On the drive home I was reading the medical chart they gave me to give to the doctors at Fort Hood and he’d written, “The patient is an obese, over anxious thirteen year old male…” I had to ask my mother what obese meant and she said, “Fat.” It hurt my feelings, but years later as an adult I realized he was covering his ass with the “over anxious” part in case I told someone what had gone on. I hadn’t been examined, I’d been molested.
HAUNTED HOUSE
When I was seven we moved to Merced, California. My father was in the Air Force at the time and we moved into a little white wood seventy five dollar a month rent house. The house next door was white stucco with red trim and looked much nicer. As soon as it became available we moved into it even though it was five dollars a month more.
On our first day of moving in I was sitting at the top of the stairs most of the attic had been converted into a third bedroom. I was looking all around thinking, “Oh boy, we’re just like the people on TV now.” because we had a two story house. Visions of “My Three Son’s”, “The Donna Reed Show”, and “Father Knows Best” went through my mind. Then I noticed the attic door was open, it was closed when I came up the stairs and sat down. I got up and closed it, made sure it was latched and then sat down again to continue my grandiose day dreaming. Breaking the silence, I suddenly heard the attic door start to “creeeeek” open. I then turned and watched it slowly open as wide as it could. There was nothing but shadowy blackness with strange shapes behind it. I flew down those stairs three at a time in sheer panic and neither my brother nor I would ever sleep in that room, unless my grandparents slept in there when they were visiting.
The stairs were very narrow, steep, and there was a small landing where they turned. Our Toy Poodle “Pepe” couldn't get up, or down, the stairs by himself he had to be carried. One morning he woke my mother up with a persistent annoying bark that only tiny dogs can make. She thought he wanted to be let out, but when she got up to search the house for him she couldn't find him. After following the sound of his bark, she discovered him at the top of the stairs, he wanted someone to come get him down. My mother asked, “Which one of you left him up there?” “We didn’t he was in our bed when we went to sleep last night.” She scolded us for taking him up there all the while we fiercely denied doing it, but wouldn’t go up those stairs after dark for anything.
After we’d been there a few months two girls about our age moved in across the street. When they saw the bedroom they just couldn’t believe that we didn’t use it and chose to share a room downstairs. They found some old things my mother had stored in the attic in boxes and asked her permission to use them to “fix up” the room. My mother said, “You can do whatever you want, just don’t leave a mess for me to have to clean up.” With a Chenille bedspread, some Organza curtains, pillows, lamps, knick knacks, candles, and quite a bit of girlish creativity, they transformed that room into something a girl out of one of those television shows would have adored. Danny and I were quite taken with it all and spend most of a Saturday afternoon running around getting hammers and nails, holding things in place, sitting up the ironing board and running downstairs for cleaning products, brooms, dust mops and rags. We were amazed by those girls, and that room, when they were finished. We all agreed it looked just like something from a magazine with all that flowered wall paper and Chintz. The older girl said, “Both of you are silly of being scared of this room. Look how pretty it is. You need to spend the night up here tonight. If we had such a pretty room we would sleep in here every night.” I wanted to tell them they were welcome to it, but I didn’t want to sound like a baby.
That night Danny and I decided we would do just that. We told my mother we wanted to sleep up there, but not to turn the light out until she went to bed. The only overhead light in the room was on a long pull chain that hung down the stairwell and could be turned on and off at the bottom of the stairs. We wanted to take our dog with us, but she was afraid he would pee on the floor because he couldn’t go down the stairs by himself. We walked upstairs to bed and lie there talking about how wonderful the room looked and what a great job the girls had done. As we were getting quiet and trying to go to sleep something happened that we could never explain. It seemed that the two of us decided to break and run for the stairs at the same time without ever saying a word. We looked like “The Three Stooges” trying to push one another out of the way to be the first down the stairs. After quite a commotion my mother said, “I knew that wouldn’t last. Now go to bed in your room and I’ll turn out the light.”
Sometime later Danny and I were getting dressed for school one morning and he told me he woke up during the night, and there was an old man sitting at the foot of our bed. I asked him, “Why didn't yell, or wake someone up?”
He said, “I was too scared, I just pulled the covers over my head. I waited and then looked again and he was still there.” I asked him what he did next and he said he did it two more times and finally on the third time the man was gone. I was furious with him for not telling my mother. My father would be home a month then gone a month, so we were often alone in the house. We had no air conditioning, so in the summer the windows and screen doors were left open. We’d already seen a man on our porch one night when we lived in the house next door and my mother had all her panties stolen off the clothes line one night. I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.
We refused to sleep without a night light, it was a small wooden lamp with a black “push switch” that sat on top of our chest of drawers. One night after we'd gone to bed we were talking quietly and the light went out. We bolted down the hall and into the living room. My dad told us we scardy cats and that the light bulb had probably just burned out. He walked us back in to our room, pushed the switch, and the lamp came right back on. We grumbled to each other that, “Someone turned that light out.”
Neither one of us would ever stay alone in that house, I remember once when my mother had taken my brother to the doctor, I wasn't allowed to go and after a few minutes alone I felt so uneasy, I got the dog and sat on the front porch and watched TV through the screen door until my mother came home. My mother even admitted in later years that she always felt like someone was watching her in that house.
The few good things I remember about that house were that we always had a lot of different color Geraniums growing in the flower beds and a couple of flowers that grew from bulbs we called, "Naked Ladies." There was a big Banana tree, non fruit bearing, which grew just outside our bedroom window and there was a huge Apricot tree in the back yard that not only produced wonderful Apricots, but was so big we used to climb it. A big Camilla bush behind my parent’s bedroom window had beautiful white flowers that had no fragrance and a glass enclosed back porch.
Our landlady Mrs. Lydel, whose husband had built the three homes in 1946 and 1947, had died in 1951. She had at least ten giant rose bushes in her back yard, she used to let me cut flowers from and each bush had a different kind of rose. Rumor had it that the Lydel’s had lived in our house until there was a fire and while it was being rebuilt they moved to the house next door and never moved back. I found an old love seat in the small attic that had been scorched and an old Cloisonné lamp that I thought was cool, I took a hammer and knocked all the enamel out of it. How dumb was that? My brother and all our friends decided it was Mr. Lydel he saw in our bedroom that night.
The house is still there. I saw it listed on the internet a few years ago for two hundred ninety five thousand dollars. I saw recently where it sold for eighty five thousand dollars, which is a much more realistic price.
On our first day of moving in I was sitting at the top of the stairs most of the attic had been converted into a third bedroom. I was looking all around thinking, “Oh boy, we’re just like the people on TV now.” because we had a two story house. Visions of “My Three Son’s”, “The Donna Reed Show”, and “Father Knows Best” went through my mind. Then I noticed the attic door was open, it was closed when I came up the stairs and sat down. I got up and closed it, made sure it was latched and then sat down again to continue my grandiose day dreaming. Breaking the silence, I suddenly heard the attic door start to “creeeeek” open. I then turned and watched it slowly open as wide as it could. There was nothing but shadowy blackness with strange shapes behind it. I flew down those stairs three at a time in sheer panic and neither my brother nor I would ever sleep in that room, unless my grandparents slept in there when they were visiting.
The stairs were very narrow, steep, and there was a small landing where they turned. Our Toy Poodle “Pepe” couldn't get up, or down, the stairs by himself he had to be carried. One morning he woke my mother up with a persistent annoying bark that only tiny dogs can make. She thought he wanted to be let out, but when she got up to search the house for him she couldn't find him. After following the sound of his bark, she discovered him at the top of the stairs, he wanted someone to come get him down. My mother asked, “Which one of you left him up there?” “We didn’t he was in our bed when we went to sleep last night.” She scolded us for taking him up there all the while we fiercely denied doing it, but wouldn’t go up those stairs after dark for anything.
After we’d been there a few months two girls about our age moved in across the street. When they saw the bedroom they just couldn’t believe that we didn’t use it and chose to share a room downstairs. They found some old things my mother had stored in the attic in boxes and asked her permission to use them to “fix up” the room. My mother said, “You can do whatever you want, just don’t leave a mess for me to have to clean up.” With a Chenille bedspread, some Organza curtains, pillows, lamps, knick knacks, candles, and quite a bit of girlish creativity, they transformed that room into something a girl out of one of those television shows would have adored. Danny and I were quite taken with it all and spend most of a Saturday afternoon running around getting hammers and nails, holding things in place, sitting up the ironing board and running downstairs for cleaning products, brooms, dust mops and rags. We were amazed by those girls, and that room, when they were finished. We all agreed it looked just like something from a magazine with all that flowered wall paper and Chintz. The older girl said, “Both of you are silly of being scared of this room. Look how pretty it is. You need to spend the night up here tonight. If we had such a pretty room we would sleep in here every night.” I wanted to tell them they were welcome to it, but I didn’t want to sound like a baby.
That night Danny and I decided we would do just that. We told my mother we wanted to sleep up there, but not to turn the light out until she went to bed. The only overhead light in the room was on a long pull chain that hung down the stairwell and could be turned on and off at the bottom of the stairs. We wanted to take our dog with us, but she was afraid he would pee on the floor because he couldn’t go down the stairs by himself. We walked upstairs to bed and lie there talking about how wonderful the room looked and what a great job the girls had done. As we were getting quiet and trying to go to sleep something happened that we could never explain. It seemed that the two of us decided to break and run for the stairs at the same time without ever saying a word. We looked like “The Three Stooges” trying to push one another out of the way to be the first down the stairs. After quite a commotion my mother said, “I knew that wouldn’t last. Now go to bed in your room and I’ll turn out the light.”
Sometime later Danny and I were getting dressed for school one morning and he told me he woke up during the night, and there was an old man sitting at the foot of our bed. I asked him, “Why didn't yell, or wake someone up?”
He said, “I was too scared, I just pulled the covers over my head. I waited and then looked again and he was still there.” I asked him what he did next and he said he did it two more times and finally on the third time the man was gone. I was furious with him for not telling my mother. My father would be home a month then gone a month, so we were often alone in the house. We had no air conditioning, so in the summer the windows and screen doors were left open. We’d already seen a man on our porch one night when we lived in the house next door and my mother had all her panties stolen off the clothes line one night. I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.
We refused to sleep without a night light, it was a small wooden lamp with a black “push switch” that sat on top of our chest of drawers. One night after we'd gone to bed we were talking quietly and the light went out. We bolted down the hall and into the living room. My dad told us we scardy cats and that the light bulb had probably just burned out. He walked us back in to our room, pushed the switch, and the lamp came right back on. We grumbled to each other that, “Someone turned that light out.”
Neither one of us would ever stay alone in that house, I remember once when my mother had taken my brother to the doctor, I wasn't allowed to go and after a few minutes alone I felt so uneasy, I got the dog and sat on the front porch and watched TV through the screen door until my mother came home. My mother even admitted in later years that she always felt like someone was watching her in that house.
The few good things I remember about that house were that we always had a lot of different color Geraniums growing in the flower beds and a couple of flowers that grew from bulbs we called, "Naked Ladies." There was a big Banana tree, non fruit bearing, which grew just outside our bedroom window and there was a huge Apricot tree in the back yard that not only produced wonderful Apricots, but was so big we used to climb it. A big Camilla bush behind my parent’s bedroom window had beautiful white flowers that had no fragrance and a glass enclosed back porch.
Our landlady Mrs. Lydel, whose husband had built the three homes in 1946 and 1947, had died in 1951. She had at least ten giant rose bushes in her back yard, she used to let me cut flowers from and each bush had a different kind of rose. Rumor had it that the Lydel’s had lived in our house until there was a fire and while it was being rebuilt they moved to the house next door and never moved back. I found an old love seat in the small attic that had been scorched and an old Cloisonné lamp that I thought was cool, I took a hammer and knocked all the enamel out of it. How dumb was that? My brother and all our friends decided it was Mr. Lydel he saw in our bedroom that night.
The house is still there. I saw it listed on the internet a few years ago for two hundred ninety five thousand dollars. I saw recently where it sold for eighty five thousand dollars, which is a much more realistic price.
HEY YOU
I don't understand a lot of things today, but why do children trust strangers? I'm fifty four and as a child I was told all kinds of things to look out for including accepting candy, or rides, from strangers. When I was alone I had no problem telling people "no thank you,” even people I knew, but if my little brother was with me he would be opening the car door and crawling in before I could say anything, even to the point of him telling me, "You can walk if you want to, but I'm riding." I knew I'd catch hell if I let him ride alone, so I had to get in the car too. I guess if they'd been murder's they'd have had two little boys to kill instead of one.
I remember once when I was about eight in 1963 I was walking to the store with a note from my mother to buy her a pack of cigarettes, yes that was a different era. I had to walk past Yosemite High School, it was summer so I was only wearing shorts and flip flops. As I was walking past some of the outer classrooms I heard a man's voice say, "Hey, you". I scanned the buildings looking for the source of the voice when I suddenly saw a figure standing behind a screen door all I could see was his silhouette and I just kept on walking. He said, "Hey, you" a couple more times before he said "Hey, you without the shirt, come over here". Well, I was the only person on the street, so I guess he thought I was a dumb ass kid and he had to specifically describe myself to me. I just walked faster and kept looking over my shoulder to see if he'd come out of the building.
After I bought the cigarettes and maybe some penny candy, I walked back home down the same street, but I kept looking at the buildings and looking in the hedges to make sure he wasn't hiding somewhere. I didn't tell my mother until years later because at that age you never know what you’re going to get yelled at for. She said I was smart not to walk over there because he probably would have molested me, murdered me, or both. You'd think here and now kids would be a little more cautious, but every day there’s another one on the news gone missing.
I remember once when I was about eight in 1963 I was walking to the store with a note from my mother to buy her a pack of cigarettes, yes that was a different era. I had to walk past Yosemite High School, it was summer so I was only wearing shorts and flip flops. As I was walking past some of the outer classrooms I heard a man's voice say, "Hey, you". I scanned the buildings looking for the source of the voice when I suddenly saw a figure standing behind a screen door all I could see was his silhouette and I just kept on walking. He said, "Hey, you" a couple more times before he said "Hey, you without the shirt, come over here". Well, I was the only person on the street, so I guess he thought I was a dumb ass kid and he had to specifically describe myself to me. I just walked faster and kept looking over my shoulder to see if he'd come out of the building.
After I bought the cigarettes and maybe some penny candy, I walked back home down the same street, but I kept looking at the buildings and looking in the hedges to make sure he wasn't hiding somewhere. I didn't tell my mother until years later because at that age you never know what you’re going to get yelled at for. She said I was smart not to walk over there because he probably would have molested me, murdered me, or both. You'd think here and now kids would be a little more cautious, but every day there’s another one on the news gone missing.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST
We moved to Odessa, Texas in 1964 when my father was away during basic training for the Special Forces. My grandmother Edna had a tiny little forty dollar a month rent house on South Washington Street, and we lived there rent free. The living conditions were the worst I think we ever suffered through in all the years I was growing up. It was three rooms with no air conditioning and the gas heater was so old my mother turned it off at night because she was afraid we’d die in our sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning. When the West Texas sandstorms started in late January you could see sand come in from under the door and blow across the old worn linoleum floor. We had only one piece of our furniture from California and that was our coffee table stereo. Money was so tight that one night mother realized she had nothing to feed us kids for dinner, so she used her key to go to my great grandparent’s house next door, who happened to be out of town, and got a can of Tuna fish out of the pantry. She says she still feels guilty to this day because she never replaced it.
Believe it or not, the living conditions weren’t the worst part of living there It was the miserable cunt of a fourth grade teacher I had named Sybil Rutherford. Miss Rutherford was in her mid fifties, but she looked much older. Her hair was dyed red, she dressed in shirt waist dresses, wore short heeled shoes, earrings, bracelets, red lipstick and tons of rouge. She reminded me of the witch from “The Wizard of Oz”, but that witch was “Mary Poppins” compared to her. She hated Mexicans and she hated boys, in fact the only child in the class she did like was a little blond haired girl named Theresa who sat directly in front of her desk. I don’t know how she felt about blacks because the school was segregated, but knowing her she probably would have set up a gallows in the principal’s office for them. Each and every single day she lined up a group of kids to be taken to the principal’s office to be paddled for anything from forgetting their homework to not dressing correctly. I saw one little Hispanic girl have a meltdown on the front lawn before school one morning. She was crying hysterically and rolling around on the grass. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying to her mother who was trying to calm her except the word “Bruja” which she kept repeating. I asked my mother what it meant when I got home and she said it was Spanish for witch. It took at least an hour out of each day for those kids to be paddled and some of them got it every day. It was a poor neighborhood and it wasn’t those children’s fault that sometimes they had broken laces in their shoes or holes in their socks, but that bitch looked for things to punish us for.
One time I was sitting out near the playground at recess talking to this older boy named John. Years later I would know him by his stage name “Amazing Mazine” a big overweight comedy drag queen. John happened to notice I had a red tack in the arch of one of my shoes. He tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. He told me to take my shoe off and he would get it out for me. I told him not to worry about it I couldn’t feel it, but he insisted. Thank God he did because the next day all hell broke loose. I didn’t know it, but apparently some of the Hispanic boys were putting tacks on the heels and toes of their shoes so they would make a tapping noise. Miss Rutherford had all the kids in the class hold their feet up so she could inspect their shoes and any child who had a tack was send to the principal’s office for punishment. My heart raced at the thought of how close I’d come to getting paddled.
She wrote our homework assignment on the blackboard every day and I carefully wrote it down word for word and re read it over and over. Then when I got home I called my friend Henry and asked him to read it to me again, so I could make sure I’d it written down correctly. I know I drove Henry crazy, but he patiently read it to me every day. I don’t think I ever had that much homework in high school. I would stay up until midnight making my mother check my work over and over because a low grade meant a trip to the office.
I began to get nervous ticks around that time and started showing signs of OCD. I would walk back three times to check and see if I’d locked a door, count steps, count change, count sections of sidewalks and check every five minutes to see if I’d remembered my belt. I worried if I even thought I’d told a lie, couldn’t remember things I’d said and repeated things in my mind over and over. Still I was anxious to please that old bitch. One day when I knew the answer to a question she asked the class I raised my hand energetically and she said, “Oh come on up here before you have a stroke!” When I told Ruby and Agnes about it they said, “Can you imagine saying something like that to a ten year old child?” They urged my mother to call the school and she did, but they just told her even though a lot of parents had complained about Miss Rutherford she had tenure and there was nothing they could do. Today that evil bitch would be on the local news pending an investigation into her conduct and then fired.
She had to take off work for a hysterectomy and we had a lovely young substitute fresh from college who didn’t believe in homework and no one was ever sent to the office. She wore pencil skirts, really high heels, and had black hair which she wore in a huge “Bubble” that was teased so much you could read the blackboard through it. You could feel the tension leave the classroom and all the kids just adored her. She’d been there about six weeks when she said, “Class I have some bad news for you.” Our hearts sank we just knew she was leaving, “Miss Rutherford will be gone for another four weeks.” The whole class erupted in squeals, screams, and applause. By the shocked look on her face you could tell she wasn’t expecting that kind of jubilation. We moved to North Carolina before Miss Rutherford came back and on my last day she gave me a big hug and wished me the best in my new home. She was so sweet, I had tears in my eyes as I walked out of that class.
I found out a few years later from “Amazing Mazine” that Miss Rutherford was a lesbian and was having a relationship with another teacher at the school. I wish I’d known it then I would have told my mother and then all hell would’ve broken loose. I did some research on the Internet a couple of years ago and found out that she didn’t die until 1991. I wish I knew where that evil bitch is buried because I’d drink a case of beer and go piss on her grave.
Believe it or not, the living conditions weren’t the worst part of living there It was the miserable cunt of a fourth grade teacher I had named Sybil Rutherford. Miss Rutherford was in her mid fifties, but she looked much older. Her hair was dyed red, she dressed in shirt waist dresses, wore short heeled shoes, earrings, bracelets, red lipstick and tons of rouge. She reminded me of the witch from “The Wizard of Oz”, but that witch was “Mary Poppins” compared to her. She hated Mexicans and she hated boys, in fact the only child in the class she did like was a little blond haired girl named Theresa who sat directly in front of her desk. I don’t know how she felt about blacks because the school was segregated, but knowing her she probably would have set up a gallows in the principal’s office for them. Each and every single day she lined up a group of kids to be taken to the principal’s office to be paddled for anything from forgetting their homework to not dressing correctly. I saw one little Hispanic girl have a meltdown on the front lawn before school one morning. She was crying hysterically and rolling around on the grass. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying to her mother who was trying to calm her except the word “Bruja” which she kept repeating. I asked my mother what it meant when I got home and she said it was Spanish for witch. It took at least an hour out of each day for those kids to be paddled and some of them got it every day. It was a poor neighborhood and it wasn’t those children’s fault that sometimes they had broken laces in their shoes or holes in their socks, but that bitch looked for things to punish us for.
One time I was sitting out near the playground at recess talking to this older boy named John. Years later I would know him by his stage name “Amazing Mazine” a big overweight comedy drag queen. John happened to notice I had a red tack in the arch of one of my shoes. He tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. He told me to take my shoe off and he would get it out for me. I told him not to worry about it I couldn’t feel it, but he insisted. Thank God he did because the next day all hell broke loose. I didn’t know it, but apparently some of the Hispanic boys were putting tacks on the heels and toes of their shoes so they would make a tapping noise. Miss Rutherford had all the kids in the class hold their feet up so she could inspect their shoes and any child who had a tack was send to the principal’s office for punishment. My heart raced at the thought of how close I’d come to getting paddled.
She wrote our homework assignment on the blackboard every day and I carefully wrote it down word for word and re read it over and over. Then when I got home I called my friend Henry and asked him to read it to me again, so I could make sure I’d it written down correctly. I know I drove Henry crazy, but he patiently read it to me every day. I don’t think I ever had that much homework in high school. I would stay up until midnight making my mother check my work over and over because a low grade meant a trip to the office.
I began to get nervous ticks around that time and started showing signs of OCD. I would walk back three times to check and see if I’d locked a door, count steps, count change, count sections of sidewalks and check every five minutes to see if I’d remembered my belt. I worried if I even thought I’d told a lie, couldn’t remember things I’d said and repeated things in my mind over and over. Still I was anxious to please that old bitch. One day when I knew the answer to a question she asked the class I raised my hand energetically and she said, “Oh come on up here before you have a stroke!” When I told Ruby and Agnes about it they said, “Can you imagine saying something like that to a ten year old child?” They urged my mother to call the school and she did, but they just told her even though a lot of parents had complained about Miss Rutherford she had tenure and there was nothing they could do. Today that evil bitch would be on the local news pending an investigation into her conduct and then fired.
She had to take off work for a hysterectomy and we had a lovely young substitute fresh from college who didn’t believe in homework and no one was ever sent to the office. She wore pencil skirts, really high heels, and had black hair which she wore in a huge “Bubble” that was teased so much you could read the blackboard through it. You could feel the tension leave the classroom and all the kids just adored her. She’d been there about six weeks when she said, “Class I have some bad news for you.” Our hearts sank we just knew she was leaving, “Miss Rutherford will be gone for another four weeks.” The whole class erupted in squeals, screams, and applause. By the shocked look on her face you could tell she wasn’t expecting that kind of jubilation. We moved to North Carolina before Miss Rutherford came back and on my last day she gave me a big hug and wished me the best in my new home. She was so sweet, I had tears in my eyes as I walked out of that class.
I found out a few years later from “Amazing Mazine” that Miss Rutherford was a lesbian and was having a relationship with another teacher at the school. I wish I’d known it then I would have told my mother and then all hell would’ve broken loose. I did some research on the Internet a couple of years ago and found out that she didn’t die until 1991. I wish I knew where that evil bitch is buried because I’d drink a case of beer and go piss on her grave.
Monday, February 8, 2010
DANNY’S REVENGE
As I was carefully putting things back in the medicine chest this morning, labels always to the front you know. I remembered that one morning when my little brother was about eight he brushed his teeth with Brylcream, what a dummy. It made me think of the old jingle. "Brylcream a little dab el do ya, but watch out, the gal’s will all pursue ya."
Today he would be diagnosed with ADHD and be given large doses of Concerta, or something like it. He was perfectly satisfied with being a D minus student as long as he could play and didn’t have to do homework. I myself wouldn’t have cared except for the fact that since the day he was born when I was two it was my responsibility to watch him and make sure he didn’t get lost, into trouble, or hurt himself. When he did all of those things, which was often, my mother would always scold me, “He’s your little brother and you’re supposed to watch out for him. Why did you let him do that?” All of this while she was cleaning up his blood, bandaging him, or driving him to the emergency room. You’d have thought that after several years she’d have realized that no matter how much bossing, griping, and yelling I did he was going to do whatever he damned well pleased anyway and no one was going to stop him. “You’re not the boss of me!” was his favorite saying.
One Sunday as we were changing from our “church” clothes to our play clothes he said. “Look at my arm, look at the marks mama left on me.” He held his arm up and sure enough there were three tiny little crescent shaped bruises already red, green, and soon to be purple. My mother has always had long hard perfectly manicured fingernails and when we were kids and acted up in public she would reach under our arms to the soft fleshy part and give us a tiny little pinch. It must’ve looked innocent as hell to anyone watching, but those tiny little pinches hurt so bad they could make you go blind, blackout, and pee your pants at the same time. He said, “You just wait till next week, I’m gonna fix her!” “What are you going to do?” I asked. “I’m not telling you tattle tale, you’ll tell on me.” He was right I was a prissy little tattle tale and would rat him out every chance I got just to try and gain favor with my parent’s. Even at the age of eight I knew he was their favorite. I just wish I would have realized early on that it was a fact of life that would never change no matter how hard I tried to be perfect. It would have made my life immeasurably easier.
We didn’t always go to church with my parents, mostly he and I walked together to the little Nazarene church down the street from our house in Merced, California to attend Sunday school. We were Baptist, but the Nazarene church was the only one within walking distance. I remember singing the song about John 3:16. “John three sixteen, that’s the verse for me, read it and you’ll know it, then to other’s show it. John three sixteen that’s the verse for me, tells us of eternal life.”
It was a rare occasion that my father was in town since his job repairing flight simulators in the Air Force kept him out of town every other month, thank God! At least those times were somewhat peaceful. When we knew it was getting close to time for him to come home we’d call out to our mother after we’d gone to bed, “Mama, when is daddy coming home?” Then she’d say, “In three days, or next week.” I can’t fucking believe that she thought for years that it was because we missed him we just wanted to know when our lives were going to turn into pure hell again. Not that life with her was a piece of cake, but somehow mental abuse at that age seemed better than physical abuse. He was, and still is, a monster.
All that next week I begged Danny to tell me what he had planned for mother, but he wouldn’t budge. That little shit had the patience of Job, while I on the other hand had to tell everything I knew. “Oh, come on please, pretty please? I’ll give you my candy bar.” I’d beg. “No, you’ll tell.” He’d say. “No I won’t, I promise. I’ll let you ride my bike.” I pleaded. “I don’t care about your stupid bike, I’m not gonna tell you.” He said, nothing worked.
We didn’t attend church with my parent’s that often it was boring as hell to us, but we put up with it because it usually meant we went out for pizza afterwards, or mother would make a nice pancake, egg, and bacon lunch for us when we got home. As it turned out we didn’t go to church the next Sunday, so it was two weeks before we went again. No matter how much begging and pleading I did that smug little shit wouldn’t tell me what he was going to do to her. That was the longest two weeks of my life. When it was time to go I was electrified with anticipation. My mother always sat between the two of us to keep us from fighting and my brother always sat next to my father because I didn’t want to be near him I loved my mother best. As the Sunday service continued to the point where even I wanted to run down the isles screaming Danny leaned forward and looked at me to see if I was watching him. He had an impish grin on his face and as brothers we didn’t need to say a word to know he was telling me the time was here and to watch and pay attention. He began slowly and innocently swinging his legs back and forth with each swing they went just a little bit further and further and further. My eyes went from his legs to my mother’s face, his legs to my mother’s face, his legs to my mother’s face, until his shoes hit the pew in front of us. Without taking her eyes off the preacher my mother reached over with her right hand and delivered one of those expert tiny little deadly pinches to my brother’s left arm. He screamed at the top of his lungs, “Owww stop pinching me!” I almost passed out, I looked at my mother waiting to see what she was going to do. I just knew she was going to kill him on the spot. Her face turned beet red, but her eyes never left that preacher and she never said a word, not then, not later, not ever, I couldn’t believe it.
As we were changing from our “church” clothes when we got home he grinned at me and said, “I told you I was gonna fix her.”
Today he would be diagnosed with ADHD and be given large doses of Concerta, or something like it. He was perfectly satisfied with being a D minus student as long as he could play and didn’t have to do homework. I myself wouldn’t have cared except for the fact that since the day he was born when I was two it was my responsibility to watch him and make sure he didn’t get lost, into trouble, or hurt himself. When he did all of those things, which was often, my mother would always scold me, “He’s your little brother and you’re supposed to watch out for him. Why did you let him do that?” All of this while she was cleaning up his blood, bandaging him, or driving him to the emergency room. You’d have thought that after several years she’d have realized that no matter how much bossing, griping, and yelling I did he was going to do whatever he damned well pleased anyway and no one was going to stop him. “You’re not the boss of me!” was his favorite saying.
One Sunday as we were changing from our “church” clothes to our play clothes he said. “Look at my arm, look at the marks mama left on me.” He held his arm up and sure enough there were three tiny little crescent shaped bruises already red, green, and soon to be purple. My mother has always had long hard perfectly manicured fingernails and when we were kids and acted up in public she would reach under our arms to the soft fleshy part and give us a tiny little pinch. It must’ve looked innocent as hell to anyone watching, but those tiny little pinches hurt so bad they could make you go blind, blackout, and pee your pants at the same time. He said, “You just wait till next week, I’m gonna fix her!” “What are you going to do?” I asked. “I’m not telling you tattle tale, you’ll tell on me.” He was right I was a prissy little tattle tale and would rat him out every chance I got just to try and gain favor with my parent’s. Even at the age of eight I knew he was their favorite. I just wish I would have realized early on that it was a fact of life that would never change no matter how hard I tried to be perfect. It would have made my life immeasurably easier.
We didn’t always go to church with my parents, mostly he and I walked together to the little Nazarene church down the street from our house in Merced, California to attend Sunday school. We were Baptist, but the Nazarene church was the only one within walking distance. I remember singing the song about John 3:16. “John three sixteen, that’s the verse for me, read it and you’ll know it, then to other’s show it. John three sixteen that’s the verse for me, tells us of eternal life.”
It was a rare occasion that my father was in town since his job repairing flight simulators in the Air Force kept him out of town every other month, thank God! At least those times were somewhat peaceful. When we knew it was getting close to time for him to come home we’d call out to our mother after we’d gone to bed, “Mama, when is daddy coming home?” Then she’d say, “In three days, or next week.” I can’t fucking believe that she thought for years that it was because we missed him we just wanted to know when our lives were going to turn into pure hell again. Not that life with her was a piece of cake, but somehow mental abuse at that age seemed better than physical abuse. He was, and still is, a monster.
All that next week I begged Danny to tell me what he had planned for mother, but he wouldn’t budge. That little shit had the patience of Job, while I on the other hand had to tell everything I knew. “Oh, come on please, pretty please? I’ll give you my candy bar.” I’d beg. “No, you’ll tell.” He’d say. “No I won’t, I promise. I’ll let you ride my bike.” I pleaded. “I don’t care about your stupid bike, I’m not gonna tell you.” He said, nothing worked.
We didn’t attend church with my parent’s that often it was boring as hell to us, but we put up with it because it usually meant we went out for pizza afterwards, or mother would make a nice pancake, egg, and bacon lunch for us when we got home. As it turned out we didn’t go to church the next Sunday, so it was two weeks before we went again. No matter how much begging and pleading I did that smug little shit wouldn’t tell me what he was going to do to her. That was the longest two weeks of my life. When it was time to go I was electrified with anticipation. My mother always sat between the two of us to keep us from fighting and my brother always sat next to my father because I didn’t want to be near him I loved my mother best. As the Sunday service continued to the point where even I wanted to run down the isles screaming Danny leaned forward and looked at me to see if I was watching him. He had an impish grin on his face and as brothers we didn’t need to say a word to know he was telling me the time was here and to watch and pay attention. He began slowly and innocently swinging his legs back and forth with each swing they went just a little bit further and further and further. My eyes went from his legs to my mother’s face, his legs to my mother’s face, his legs to my mother’s face, until his shoes hit the pew in front of us. Without taking her eyes off the preacher my mother reached over with her right hand and delivered one of those expert tiny little deadly pinches to my brother’s left arm. He screamed at the top of his lungs, “Owww stop pinching me!” I almost passed out, I looked at my mother waiting to see what she was going to do. I just knew she was going to kill him on the spot. Her face turned beet red, but her eyes never left that preacher and she never said a word, not then, not later, not ever, I couldn’t believe it.
As we were changing from our “church” clothes when we got home he grinned at me and said, “I told you I was gonna fix her.”
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