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Just Folks Gettin By Part 6

busThe next day, Lucille got a letter and read it to Jenny over lunch. “Oh listen to this.  It’s from Cousin Sally, Aunt Lucy’s daughter.  Remember I told you Aunt Lucy had her widowed daughter and grandchildren livin’ with her.  Well, this is the one.  I sure was crazy about her.  Me and Velma run around with her a lot while I stayed there.  Anyway, listen to this:

 

Dear Lucille,

I hope this finds you well.  I made you a copy of that dishtowel embroidery pattern of Mama’s you wanted.  Remember how she done it up in yellow and blue to match them dishes she got down at the Five and Dime with her birthday money that time?   I done some for a wedding gift for Maybelline’s  daughter, Jessie’s wedding shower.  She acted like she really liked them.  I done two pair, one in blue and green and one pair in yellow and orange.  They didn’t look as good as Mama’s but the girl seemed like she liked them.  She said that’s the first bit of needlework anybody give her yet.  Used to didn’t nobody have no money to buy nothing, so I never got the habit of buying gifts I could make.  Bless her heart, if I was the gossiping type, I’d say that that gal’s going to need a baby shower soon, but that ain’t Christian, so I won’t. 

My garden is doing real good.  I already put up two hundred jars of tomato vegetable soup and fifty quarts of peas.  That soup will be real good this winter when we ain’t had nothing fresh in a while.  I can add a little meat when I get tired of it plain, but I never got the habit of needing meat every meal.  I know you remember we had meat it was just on Sunday, and then it was probably just an old hen that had quit laying Mama didn’t want to feed no more.  Boy, I was scared to death of them chickens after Mama cut their head off.   Lots of times they’d run in circles till they just dropped over.  I never thought much of something it didn’t need a head, especially after that one run me up under the porch.  I had nightmares about that for years.  You and Velma laughed like that was the funniest thing you ever seen.  I hid every time Mama killed a chicken after that.

Mavis (“That’s her daughter, Jenny”) is expecting in the next couple of weeks.  I am supposed go stay a few weeks after the baby comes to help out.  Soon as she found out she was thataway she made me promise to come.  She sent me a ticket last week.  I’m all packed just waiting to hear the baby is here.  I made arrangements with Myrtis down bus stop to git the mailman to let me know.  He always runs by nine and that would give me time to get to the noon bus.  It’ll get me to Bonneville by four and they can have somebody pick me up.  I sure hope they have a girl this time.  Them four boys is cute but Mavis is sure wanting another girl after she lost that baby girl last year that was a blue baby.  She ain’t got over it yet.  She says she’s carrying this one high like she did Brenda.  I’m hoping she’ll be too busy to keep on mourning.  It sure was a blessing when she found out she was thataway about two weeks after Brenda died. They would have been about sixteen months apart.  I’m worried about her, but I believe she’ll be okay.  Don’t forget to keep praying for her.

I better close.  You can write back to me at Mavis’s house at the same address you used last time.  I’ll let you know how things go.  Keep in touch.

                                                                                                               Love,

                                                                                                                Sally

Well, ain’t that nice she’s gittin’ to go stay with Mavis.  She was real worried about her after she lost her baby.  She wouldn’t git out of the bed for about three weeks till her husband told her she had to.  Sally said she walked around like a ghost till she found out this new baby was coming.  Sally was real worried about her.  I thought I wanted to die after your daddy got in trouble and Jimmy died, but I knew I had to scrap around and figure out some way to take care of you.  After that, I was workin’ so hard I just felt numb.  I do believe Uncle Marsh helping me git that dishwashing job saved me.  When I wasn’t workin’ I was so tired I staggered to the bed and passed out, then got up and did it again.  My best days was Monday’s when the café was closed.  I just lived to go see you on Mondays.”  Lucille mused.  

Jenny broke in, “Oh Mama, you’ll never know how I looked forward to your visits.  I was about the only kid who ever had a regular visitor.  It made me feel so special.  Sometimes we’d all be in the to the classroom and a couple would come in.  We weren’t supposed to know, but they were looking for a child.  All the kids would be looking at each other, real excited, hoping to get a chance to shine.  Later they’d whisper, wondering if they’d be chosen.  Once in a while, a kid would be called to meet folks, and we’d be buzzing, wondering if they’d be adopted.  I felt so happy, knowing I had you.  It put me in a special class all to myself.  Once in a great while another kid would be lucky enough to have a visitor, but no one else had a mama who came every Monday. You always reminded me we’d be together again with Daddy.  I didn’t much remember him, but I always held onto the idea of going home.

 

 

 

Just Folks Getting By Part 5

flour-sack-underwear-poemhttp://suttonhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-flour-sack-underwear-poem.html#links

“I was never so proud of anything as that bus ticket.  I wrote back that afternoon I’d be on the four o’clock bus the next day.  I rushed around and got our clothes washed and ironed.  It didn’t take long to pack your four little dresses, nightgown, flour sack panties, slips and socks in a cardboard box tied up with string.  By that time I was down to two dresses, a slip, and three pair of flour sack panties.  I made room for Mama’s Bible recording our marriage, you two kids’ birthdate and Jimmy’s death. I’d got so skinny, I didn’t get another brassiere when mine wore out.  Aunt Lucy wasn’t able to go to the bus station.  She was down in her back.  I cried when I kissed her, not knowin’ if I’d ever see her again.  We set out walkin’ three miles to the bus station before it was good light, wearing cotton dresses and our only sweaters.  You was draggin’ a little rag doll Aunt Lucy had made you out of a flour sack and a wore-out apron.  Nobody wasted nothin’, then.  Our little bit of stuff got mighty heavy before we made it half a mile down that dusty road.  I had to stop and let you sit on the box and rest a time or two.  I couldn’t carry you, the box, and the sack lunch Aunt Lucy had packed. Lucky for us, Amos Jones came by in his old pick up and gave us ride.  He stopped off at the café and we had coffee, since we’d got there early.  He bought you a glass of milk and gave you the fried egg sandwich he’d brung for his lunch.  I sure was proud.  You’d been too sleepy to eat good when we left Aunt Lucy’s and I wanted to make our lunch last.  When he left, he made me take a dollar.  He growed up with your daddy and wanted to do something for his old friend.  I figured it was his last dollar.  It was for sure my only dollar and I was proud to git it.  I sure hope it didn’t hurt him too bad to give it, but he wouldn’t let me refuse.  It’s funny how folks with the least to give is the most likely to help. 

Amos and his wife had four kids.  Aunt Lucy wrote me ‘bout a year later his wife died in childbirth leavin’ him with all the kids and a sick baby.  About two months later he married a widow-woman who had a baby ‘bout the same age.  A tractor had rolled over on her husband just before her baby was born.  She married him moved right in to take care of his kids and nurse the baby.  She knew folks would talk bad about them marryin’ so soon, but they both had to have some help.  I sure wouldn’t have thought bad about them.  They was just doin’ what they had to to take care of their young’uns.”

Jenny didn’t know anything about that kind of desperation.  “Didn’t she have any family or friends she could have stayed with till she could have gotten a job?  I can’t imagine marrying that quick if something happened to Ben.  You’d need some time to mourn.  They couldn’t have loved each other.”

“Honey, I’m glad you don’t remember nothin’ about a life that hard.  If that woman had folks, they might’a been starvin’ too.  Most men didn’t have jobs, ‘cept farmin’.  A woman had to be powerful lucky to come up with a job.  If a feller had a job to give, it went to a man with a family.  Until your Uncle Marsh found me that dishwashin’ job where he worked, I did any work I could git.  I sat with the sick, nursed new mama’s, helped with crops and canning.  I almost never got a nickel.  I was workin’ for food and a place for me and you to sleep, and lots of time, havin’ to dodge the menfolks.  If I went to milk, I took you with me so you got some milk right off. If I worked in the kitchen, I tried to slip you a little somethin’.  I never threw a biscuit out, even if it was left on somebody’s plate.  That might be all the supper you was gittin’.   I was always scared you was gonna starve.  They was whole families walkin’ down the road with nothin’ but the clothes on their backs.  I was always skeert that was gonna be you and me.  Lots of folks starved.  It was rough!  To this day, I won’t leave a penny laying in the road.  That could end up the last penny I’d git.”

Jenny hugged her little one.  “It must have been awful worryin’ about your baby being hungry.  I’d move heaven and earth to take care of Lucy.  I worry if I don’t eat right so she can get plenty.  I know if something happened to me, Ben would do the best he could, but he’d have to learn everything.  If something ever happened to me, would you come take care of Lucy?”

“Why sure I would, honey, but don’t borrow trouble.  You’ll spoil your milk.  Let’s talk about something happy.  I never saw anybody so proud as you after your daddy got home and Shirley was born.  You thought you was her mama.  One morning she squalled out while I was at the clothesline.   Before I could git in there, you’d got up in the crib with her and took your dress off.  You had her cuddled up to your little flat chest tryin’ to nurse her.  She couldn’t find nothin’ and she was mad as hops.  You was such a little mama.”

“Ooh, don’t tell Ben that one.  He’d carry me high.  I’d never hear the last of it.  How is Shirley?  Have you heard from her since you got here?”

“No, she’s got her hands full with them three little ones, an’ Martin workin’ nights, trying to sleep days.  I never could’a kept y’all quiet.  That’s why I started keepin’ ‘em at my place instead of goin’ over there when she’s teachin’.  Joey starts school next fall, though, so that’ll just leave Betsy and Marty with me durin’ the day.  Them two is a handful.  She’s kind a’talkin’ ‘bout havin’ another one, but I hope she’ll take a little time with it, till them girls is a little bigger. I’m glad you had this one in May so I can stay the whole summer with you.  What are you gonna do when you go back to work?  I wish I lived close enough so I could keep her.”

“Well, I haven’t told Ben, but I’m thinking about staying home with her.  As long as it took her to come along, I don’t know if I’ll be able to have another one. He’s doing really well down at the hardware store. By the time I got somebody in to keep her, I wouldn’t come out much ahead workin’.  You know how that is, don’t you.”  She reached over and squeezed her mother’s wrinkled hand.

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/just-folks-getting-by-part-1/

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/just-folks-getting-by-part-2/

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/just-folks-getting-by-part-3/

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2017/02/15/just-folks-getting-by-part-4/

https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2017/02/16/just-folks-getting-by-part-5/

Just Folks Getting By Part 4

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Both these quilts are are made with fabrics from feedsacks.  I was fortunate enough to be given the treasure of these vintage quilt tops.  Note the beautiful hand work on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt.  All the girls are completely different.  No two squares are alike on either quilt.  All I had to do was quilt them.

imageLucille and Jenny were working together on a quilt top Lucille had started when she first found out Jenny was pregnant.  “See this here pink, flowery piece.  When I was a’carryin’ you, I got two feed sacks and managed to swap my neighbor for another to make me a dress.  I fought you’ll ever have times that hard, but I ain’t sorry I know how to manage when times is hard.  Them chickenfeed sacks was real purty. It took three for a woman’s dress, two for a child, and two for a man’s short sleeve shirt. All you had to do was unravel them, wash’ em, soak’ em in salt water to set the color, an’ git to sewin’.  I had had enough left of this piece to make a collar and cuffs for a little dress for you.  I like to think of Lucy sleepin’ under the same stuff I wore when I was in the family way with you then you wore as a baby.  Who’d a’thought all these years later it would still be around.  If it don’t wear too bad, it could be she’ll be wrappin’ a baby in it one day.  I know I wouldn’t have hung onto a store blanket that way.  Once it got wore, I’d a’throwed it out. 

I’ll have to tell you a funny on me and your daddy.  The first time I made him a feedsack shirt, I put the buttons on the left instead of the right, not being used to sewing for a man.  Well, he wore it over to his Uncle Melvin’s to Sunday dinner and the menfolks just carried him high.  Turns out, he knowed it was wrong all along; he just didn’t want to hurt my feelings.  I told him not to wear it off the place after that.  I didn’t want nobody shamin’ him on my account.  You know he had to be a good man to wear that shirt knowing they was gonna laugh at him.  I made real sure to always git his buttons on the right, after that! Darned, if it didn’t take years to wear that shirt out, with them wrong-sided buttons staring me in the face!”

Jenny considered. “He was a good daddy.  I don’t remember him ever fussing at me.  I didn’t even know him when we all moved back home after I got out of the orphanage, but I do remember thinking I didn’t have to mind him till you straightened me out.  Exactly how did I come to be in the orphanage?  I don’t remember much before being there.”

“Well, you daddy got in trouble for moonshining on his Uncle Melvin’s place.  Him and some of Uncle Melvin’s boys was all in it.  Your Uncle Melvin had about four hundred acres him and his boys was working when your daddy got in with them.  The drought and dust storms started about the time we married and Russ never had a real good crop.  Ever’ year, it just got worse.  Finally, Uncle Melvin come to talk to your Daddy.  He’d borrowed from the bank and they was gonna take the place.  Well, that would git our living as well as Uncle Melvin’s and all his boys.  Luther, his oldest boy had got to running moonshine, and it was good money, especially for them hard times.  Somehow, folks can find the money to drink.  Anyway, Luther set up his own still at a crick on the back of Uncle Melvin’s place.  That crick dried up every summer, but would run pretty good over the winter when it rained north of us.  Your daddy run moonshine for Luther awhile and done real good.  Jimmy was already having real bad athsma from the dust storms, so your daddy put us on the bus and sent us back to stay with Aunt Lucy, meaning to come for us when the dust settled.  Jimmy died a few days after we got there.  That’s where we was when I got the letter letting me know he was going to jail.  If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have wished I was dead.  He got five years.”

“Oh no,” Jenny exclaimed. “I never knew how that happened.  “Why didn’t we stay at Aunt Lucy’s till he got out.”

“Well, we did stay a few weeks till Uncle Marshall come to visit.  That was Aunt Lucy’s younger brother.  He died when you was about six.  I doubt you remember him.” Lucille mused.  “Uncle Marsh never married and we was real close.  He was working two jobs in Dallas.  He was a janitor at a hotel and the Bar and Grill next door.  He knew your daddy and felt just awful about him being in the pen.  He said the Bar and Grill needed a dishwater and he might be able to get the job.  Now, I know that don’t sound like much of a job to you, but I was desperate enough to pray I’d get it.  I couldn’t impose on Aunt Lucille forever.  She was old and already had a widowed daughter and grandchildren living with her.  She got her husband’s Civil War Pension, but it didn’t go far enough to stretch for two more.

My sister Velma was having her fourth baby so I went to help out for a few days, hoping to hear from Uncle Marshall.  Velma’s old man was sorry.  He follered me out to the barn one night, wanting to mess with me.  I hit him in the head with the milk bucket and went in and told Velma we was gonna have to leave.  She got to crying, saying she’d feared it might turn out that way.  She sent word to a neighbor who needed help with gittin’ in her garden and canning and she said we could stay with her a couple of weeks till she could get her garden in.  After that, another neighbor needed help with her mama who’d had a stroke.  We moved ever’ few weeks for a while, just takin’ whatever work I could get.  Of course, I never got no pay, just food and a place to stay, but it got our feet out from under Aunt Lucy’s table. 

Sometimes, I’d git so worried I couldn’t sleep when our work was comin’ to a close, fearin’ I wouldn’t be able to get you under a roof.  I never eat no more than I could help, not wanting to impose.  I got down to one-hundred eleven pounds, which ain’t much for a big woman like me.  I just ate enough to make sure I wouldn’t git down sick.  I always made sure you got enough, even if I was afraid to.  I made real sure to stay shy of the men at the house, not wantin’ to have no problems.  Sometimes, I had to set them straight, right off.  It got to where I’d tell the man and woman right off when I got there, I didn’t want nothing to do with no man.

Finally, I got a letter a bus ticket from Uncle Marsh.  I like to cried with relief.

Just Folks Getting By Part 3

“Jenny, leave them dishes for me and I’ll sit with you while you rock the baby.  This little feller is so sweet.  I know you cain’t remember Jimmy, but Lucy’s eyelashes are just like his, so long and curly.  Seemed like they was wasted on a boy.  This one is shore to break some hearts with them purty eyes and pink cheeks.”  Lucille admired the baby in Jenny’s arms.

“Mama, seems like I do remember you pulling me and Jimmy in a little brown wagon down that long driveway to the row of mailboxes.  Somebody sent me you a letter with a lollipop for me and Jimmy in it.  Do you remember that?  How old was I?” 

“Lordy, child.  That was from your Aunt Lucy.  She was so good to us.  I never thought you’d remember that.  You couldn’t have been much more than two, ‘cause she died a good while before you turned three.  That was a good day.  You young’ns didn’t never git much candy.  You was both so tickled.   I never got to see Aunt Lu but a time or two after me and your daddy married.  We moved up to his uncle’s farm in the Panhandle soon after we married.  We didn’t have no car so we didn’t go nowhere we couldn’t go in a wagon, walk, or catch a ride. 

Do you remember the time your Aunt Betty come to stay awhile?  Well, she was Holiness. You know that church where the women don’t wear no makeup and don’t cut their hair.  They was a tent revival and nothin’ would do but we all had to go.  I didn’t care nothin’ about it since I was Methodist, but your Daddy had been raised up Holiness, so when Betty asked him to take her we all had to go along. I always made you sit still in church so you just loved it when they got to shoutin’ an’ raisin’ their hands.  Then Betty got the spirit and was a’speakin’ in tongues.  I believe you thought it was a game cause you got to jabberin’ just like her.  I didn’ have a whole lot of idea what to do so I just kept quiet while you was a’worshiping with her.  You played “church” for days.  I think Betty was real proud of you.”  She smiled at the memory.

“I remember that.  I loved Aunt Betty.”  Jenny broke in.  “I wish I could see her now.”

“Yeah, your Aunt Betty always took a lot of time with you.”

 

 

Just Folks Getting By Part 2

Good baby0002Photo of my great-grandmother, Sarah Jones Perkin’s, still born baby circa 1900

For some reason, Lucille had always loved washing dishes.  After breakfast, she stacked the dishes in the dishpan, added the soap, ran scalding water over them, and brought a glass of milk and a cup of coffee to Jenny where she was nursing the baby on her shady front porch.  Jenny had been married seven years and had almost given up on a baby when Lucy surprised her.

“Thanks for the milk, Mama.  Did you have trouble getting pregnant like I did?” she asked.

“Lord, no!  I had Jimmy only ten months after I married, and me only fifteen.” she laughed.”  After that, I think I miscarried twice before I got that way with you.  Back then, we didn’t run to the doctor for every little thing, so I never was sure if I lost babies or not.  I couldn’t have been too far along, if I was.  We was about to starve, so my curse wasn’t real regular.  You didn’t come along till five years after Jimmy,” Lucille reminded her.

“I never knew you were that young when you got married.  Why, you couldn’t have even finished school.  What was your daddy thinking letting you marry that young?” Jenny was feeling protective of her own sweet baby.

“Honey, my daddy was was the reason I needed to git married.  He was a mean drunk.  My mama died when me and my twin sister Velma was about ten.  Seemed like he never got tired of beatin’ on her.  He’d come in drunk long after we was asleep in bed like a ragin’ bull.  We’d learnt to hide and Mama took the whuppin’.  I really think a beatin’ is what finally kilt her.  He come in and whipped her and kicked her around real bad one Thursday night.  She crept around three or four days till she died with the most awful black blood comin’ from her bowels.  Nobody never said nothin’ to him.  It was a man’s business if he felt like beatin’ his wife.

Daddy started in on me and Velma after Mama died.  We made sure not to get caught off alone with him or he’d a’done us some real dirt.  I met your Daddy when I was fourteen, but I let him think I was a lot older.  Me and Melba was stayin’ with Aunt Lucy by now.  That’s Mama’s sister I was named for.  She was so good to us.  I slipped out one night and went to the pictures with Russ.  I feel bad now about doing Aunt Lucy that way, now, but you know how boy-crazy young girls is.  I sat with him a few times at church, and he got to coming to see me at Aunt Lucy’s.  We wanted to gut married, but Aunt Lucy said I’d have to git Daddy to sign for me.  I wasn’t about to go to Daddy for nothin’.  The next Friday morning I skipped school and run off with Russ to Oklahoma.  His sister was an old friend of my mama’s.  She knowed how bad Daddy done Mama and knew I needed to get away, so she went with us and signed like she was my mama.  I always ‘preciated her doin’ that.  I left Velma a note tellin’ her I’d run off to got married so they wouldn’t think somethin’ awful had happened.  Lordy, I never meant to gab so long.  I got to git back to them dishes.”  She heaved herself to her feet and headed back to the kitchen.

Jenny caught her by the hand. “Mama, I’m real proud you came to stay awhile.”

“Me, too, Honey.  Me, too.”

 

Just Folks Getting By Part 1

This story is not about my family, but from a time and place when my grandparents struggled to raise their family.  This is a picture of my grandparents Roscoe Gordon Holdaway and Mary Elizabeth Perkins Holdaway when they first married.  Mary Elizabeth Perkins and Roscoe Gordon Holdaway Wedding Pictu“Mama, how come I had to live in that orphanage for a while when I was little?  If you ever told me, I don’t remember.” Jenny sat in a porch rocker nursing her new baby.  Her mother Lucille sat across from her in another, crocheting a blanket for Little Lucy.

Oh, Jenny, I been wondering when you was gonna ask about that.  That like to broke my heart.  I don’t want you to think bad of your daddy.  He was a real good man, but got caught up in some trouble when you was just a baby.  We was a’farming the Henderson Place up in the Panhandle where The Dustbowl was the worst and he got caught moonshining.  You have to understand, back in The Great Depression, things was different.  They’d been a long drought an’ he hadn’t made a good crop in years.  Dust just kept a blowin’ ever’thing away.  It was just awful seein’ them dust clouds roll in, knowin’ we was gonna be a’smotherin’ and lose our crops..  That dust would git down in your lungs and turned to mud.   That’s what happened to your brother Jimmy when you was just a baby.  He died of the dust pneumonia.  Anyway, that’s what got your daddy moonshining.  We was a’starvin’ and then Jimmy got bad sick.  It was real flat out there and he put a still in the storm cellar.  The sheriff seen the smoke and come and broke it up and hauled him off to jail.  I didn’t know what I was gonna do.  Since I’m a’gonna be here a few days, it’d be a good time to tell you.  Now, you got a baby of your own, you ought’a be able to know what a hard thing it is to leave a young’un.  I always worried you’d hold it against me, but if I hadn’t a’put you in that orphanage, you’d a’died like Jimmy.  You almost did anyway.”  Lucille had difficulty speaking through her tears.

“Oh Mama.  I never held anything against you.” Jenny interjected.  “I remember you coming to get me on your days off.  I went there when I was so little, I didn’t know any other life.  I couldn’t wait to see you when Mama Margie and Mama Bertha told me you were coming.  Not many kids ever had anybody to come see them.  I thought I was real lucky, especially when you’d take me out on my birthday and Christmas every year.  Those were really special times.  Most kids never went out except when we all went.  I remember getting to sleep over with you a few times.  Those were the best times, snuggled close to you in your bed in your cute little-bitty room in that kitchen.”

“I’m glad you remember it that way, but that wasn’t a ‘cute little-bitty room.’  It was a cot in the pantry, but it’s a mercy that’s what you thought.  Mr. Jones let me clear out a space big enough for a cot.  Do you remember I had all them canned goods stowed up under the bed?  Till Mr. Jones let me git a cat, I had to set mousetraps all around and they’d be a’snappin’ all night.  I shore was proud of Ol’ Smoky.  She wouldn’t let a mouse stay on the place.  I sure slept a lot better after she come.  She was a good old cat.”  They both got a good chuckle out of that.

Andrew and Molly Part 19

Molly went about her business as usual.  With four children under five, the house and homestead to run, she had all she could handle.  Even with Malcolm and Martha Wilson’s help and Rosemarie to nurse the baby, every moment held its demands.  The farm was now in excess of five hundred acres.  Will managed it for her, as well as continuing his blacksmithing.  They’d planned to negotiate for three more bondsmen and increase the timber harvesting the next spring.  Molly had hopes she Andrew could work their situation out, but he’d not approached her, though she did see him helping Will about his blacksmith shop.

The older couple strolled over after supper that evening. Will spoke to Molly.  “Molly, you and Andrew have matters you need to discuss.  God joined you together and you were separated through no fault on either part.  Your circumstances are tangled.  Neither of you benefits from antagonism.  Andrew wants to meet to discuss your situation.  Are you willing?  He’d like to come over if you are ready.”

“We do need to talk.  We vowed to love each other once.  This is a test of that promise.  It would be best for everyone if we find common ground.”

In minutes Will was back with Andrew.  “Can I see the baby?” Rosemarie reluctantly surrendered the baby but stayed at his side.  “He looks recovered.  His cheeks are round again.  I am grateful.”  Rosemarie beamed when he handed the baby back.     “I was wrong to reproach you for marrying.  Will has explained your danger.  I had no right.  The child is my son.  The Indians held another captive, the wife of a trader.  She was killed when we were escaping.  I want you back.  Will you think about it?

Molly thought long before she answered.  “We are not the same people who loved each other then, but we have needs and there are children who need us both.  I have been leaning on Will and Aggie too long.  You need to know, James left half the farm to me, the rest to the children, so it will never be yours.  I have the final say in its use, but land we get from this day forward we share.  Can you agree to that?”

“All I have thought of was getting back to you.  I was a bondsman, then a slave.  The life you offer is more than I ever hoped for.  We are still young enough to have a long life together.  I am willing.”  he answered.

“Will, can you fetch the reverend?  We need marrying.”

They were  married more than thirty years and had five more children.  Like all couples, they wrangled many times, but together increased their holdings.  It was a good life.

 

 

Andrew and Molly Part 18

Andrew slept most of the next forty-eight hours, only waking long enough to tend his needs and ask after the baby.  With Rosemarie in attendance, the baby had little need of anyone else.  Ecstatic at her reprieve, she’d barely relinquish her hold on the baby, sleeping on a pallet by its cradle.  The little girls were delighted at the acquisition of the baby, vying for the chance to kiss its pink cheeks and rub its blond fuzzy head.  Even Jamie wasn’t too proud to hold it, being thoroughly tired of girls. They insisted it was their brother, though Molly kept reminding them they didn’t know whose baby it was.  “That man gave us this baby.” Addie insisted.  “When Pap gave  us a puppy we got to keep it.  We didn’t have a baby.”

“No Aggie.  That’s not the way it works with babies.  This baby may have a mother who’s looking for it, right now.” Molly explained.

“That’s not fair.  She can just get another one.  We need this one.” Addie insisted.

The baby quickly plumped up with regular feedings.  The childrens’ hand-me-downs were put to good use.  Rosemarie fairly doted on it, lavishing on it all the love she meant for her lost baby.

Late on the afternoon of the second day, Andrew woke and wandered through looking for Molly, encountering Rosemarie nursing the baby.  He asked after Molly.

“Mistress Wharton stepped across to see Mistress Bartles.”

“No, I am looking for my wife Molly, not Mistress Wharton.” He explained.

“The only Molly I’ve met is Mistress Molly Wharton. I just came after the baby got here.”  she answered.

He found Molly watching the children at play in the backyard.  “Whose children are those?”  he asked.

“They are mine.  After you were gone, we all thought you were dead.  I found I was to have your child.  To save me from trouble, James Wharton married me.  You know what can happen to a bondswoman found with child.  Jamie is your child, though James Wharton gave him his name.”  she paused.

“You married Wharton! How could you marry Wharton?  Why didn’t you wait?  You didn’t even give me the chance to get back!  How could you marry so soon?” he demanded of her.

Will and Aggie walked up, having seen them in conversation.  It was clear Andrew was overwrought. Will addressed Andrew.  “Hold your peace, man.  Wharton saved her by the marrying.  She could have been punished or sold to another.  She was fortunate he offered.  She’d have been foolish to refuse.  Your capture left her in a grave situation.”

Molly spoke.  “I’ll thank you to compose yourself.  Will, can you put him up?  Come children!”  With that, she left them, stalking to the house.

 

Molly and Andrew Part 17

Molly was stunned to see Andrew standing before her.  She’d long ago given him up. He was emancipated and scarred, little resembling the healthy man she’d last seen.  He dropped to the ground at her feet, wrapping his arms around her legs. “Molly, Molly, I thought I’d never see you again.”

Overwhelmed at his unexpected return after so long, she was bewildered and confused.  As he wept and buried his head in her skirts, she dropped to her knees and held him.  The little girls clung to their mother as she called to Jamie,  “Go get Pap and Gran!  Run! Run!”

Jamie whirled and ran, shrieking, “Pap!  Gran!  Ma wants you!  Hurry!”

Molly felt no connection to the poor wretch she was trying to comfort. Her crying girls added to the confusion by pulling at her.  Amid all this, she heard the weak cries of an infant coming from his pack.

“”Feed him, please.  He’s had nothing since yesterday morning.”  With this, Andrew struggled to work a pack off his back.  He lay it on the ground, tenderly unwrapping it to reveal a starving baby boy, bound in a malodorous blanket.  The child could have been no more than a few weeks old.  “Help please,” he beseeched her.  “He may yet die.”

“God in Heaven!  Poor baby!  Hurry girls.  We have to feed him!”  Forgetting Andrew, she scooped up the wailing baby and ran for the house, pulling Hannah by the hand. Aggie kept up the best she could.  She couldn’t see Will, Aggie, and Jamie reaching Andrew behind her.  With the baby in one arm, she heated milk in a pan over the fire.  As it warmed, she hastily washed the baby, wrapping it snugly in a towel.  Dipping a clean cloth in warm milk over and over, the baby sucked. Meanwhile, Will and Addie supported Andrew between them, seated him at the table, and got him food and drink.  Afterward, Will helped him bathe and get into James’ nightshirt then into bed in spare room.

In the meantime, Molly and Addie bathed and dressed the baby, settling it in the cradle.  Once it was full, warm, and dry, the baby gave them no trouble.

As the excitement settled and the children played at their feet, Molly, Will, and Addie tried to piece the story together.  Apparently, Andrew and a few others had been enslaved by the Powhatan tribe, since his capture.  They had been able to escape after a recent trader brought measles, decimating the village, leaving no one to pursue them.  They’d been traveling several days and he the baby were the only survivors.

Molly had no idea what to make of Andrew’s return with the baby.  She’d married Andrew in England and then, thinking him dead, married James in Jamestown.,  She had no idea where this left her, but today there was business to tend.  At Addie’s suggestion, she sent Will to pay to fine and bargain for the indenture of a sixteen-year-year old girl who was sitting in jail for the crime of having had a bastard child.  It had been stillborn yesterday, so she should still be able to nurse this baby.

She would just deal with what had to be done today and let tomorrow take care of itself.  For now, everyone under her roof was fed and safe.