Storytelling

Aunt Ader’s Place Part Eleven

 

evil-womanTrouble had its own plan and always lurked in the shadows waiting to jump me.  The simplest thing could go wrong.  There was just no way to anticipate what was down the road.  Billy and Troy were out of pocket when Uncle Parnell was ready to leave.  Daddy sent me and Sue to look for them.  Some neighbor boys told us they had seen them close to the railroad track.  Daddy had told us many times not to let him catch us on the railroad track.  We played close to it all the time, but out of consideration to him, were very careful not to let him catch us.  The kids went along to help.  Near the railroad, we found Billy’s sling shot.  I knew he would never have abandoned it.  This was serious!!!!   One kid slipped under the fence and scrambled up into one of the railcars, pulling the other up after him.  We heard them exclaiming, “Golleeeee…would you look at this!

pig-graffiti

Realizing they had probably found the boys’ bodies, we forgot about our warning and flew after them into the car.  There weren’t any bodies, but we stared in disbelief at graffiti-covered plywood walls. Most were in pencil, but many were brilliantly colored.  Monsters, naked women, effervescent angels, lurid devils, chimeric animals, faces of both beauty and evil, and, beatific pictures of Jesus looked back at us. Creativity in the form of poems also adorned the walls.

graffiti_devil_or_angel_poster-p228001309729216928tdcp_400

Since I had only a smattering of suspicion of the meaning of sex, I found the artwork and poetry edifying, though I suspected its use would land me in the doghouse at home.  Caught up in this rare cultural bonanza, we forgot about Billy and Troy.  Anyway, I was pretty sure they would turn up, but this was going to be my only chance at an educational opportunity of this magnitude.  Apparently, there are a lot of creative people riding the rails.  I certainly never saw anything like this at Sunday School.

As we continued our inspection, we heard a low rumble and felt the car jolt.  Holy Cow!!!   We jumped out and raced for the house as the train squealed and jerked into movement.  It was nearly dark! Caught up in all we’d seen, we’d completely lost track of time.  We sped for the house, knowing this was the most heinous crime we’d ever committed.  We were almost out of breath, when we met Billy and Troy.  “Boy are y’all in trouble.  Everybody’s out looking for you.”

I felt sick.  We went in slow and sad, the walk of doom.  Sure enough, everyone was furious.  The truth had beaten us home.  Froggy and Jamey had told them they left us  in the boxcars.  Daddy was furious!!!!  We’d done exactly what he had always warned us against and terrified them all.  Mother thought we had either fallen under the train or the hobos had gotten us!!!  Furiously, Daddy sent me to my room to ponder the evil I had done while Uncle Parnell grabbed Sue and Troy up and took off.  I didn’t dare open my door.  No one mentioned supper, especially not me.  Wild animals couldn’t have dragged me out of that room.  I rethought the whole incident over and over, re-scripting it in my mind, the way it should have been.  It wasn’t my fault.  I was only looking for Billy and Troy.  They could have been bleeding to death in the boxcar.  In my mind, I saved them countless times, risking my life as I jumped from the moving railroad car at the last second.  I imagined lots of different versions, none of them including me doing that I’d been forbidden to do.  No matter how hard I worked at it, I just couldn’t make it come out right.  I never realized it when I went to sleep, but my trouble was the first thing I remembered when I woke up.

I was surprised when Mother called me to get ready for school and eat breakfast, justlike  every other morning.  How could the day start out normally when I was in so much trouble?  I hated oatmeal, but ate it without complaint hoping to get on Mother’s good side.  She never said a word about my trouble and I certainly didn’t bring it up.  I went to school with a sense of dread, where it was business as usual, except I made sure to behave and avoid a note from the teacher.  I didn’t know if things could get any worse, but I certainly didn’t want to find out.

I hated to see the school day end.  I didn’t want to go home.  Daddy never forgot to take care of business when we’d gotten in trouble.  He wasn’t home when I got off the bus, a brief reprieve.  I did my homework, ate dinner, and was watching TV with the other kids when I heard Daddy’s truck.  I went to my room and sat in the gloom, waiting for the worst.  He and Mother laughed and talked just like they always did.  Finally, my door opened.  I shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep, but Daddy wasn’t fooled. He started his lecture the way he always did.

“We need to have a talk,” even though I wasn’t going to be doing much of the talking.  “You scared us all.  You did just what I told you not to do.  Something terrible could have happened.  Your mother thought either hobos got you or you were stuck on the train.”  He droned on and on like he always did, while I waited for my punishment.  I got in trouble all the time and knew the routine. I zoned out pretty soon, hearing just “rumble, rumble, rumble” like he was turning a crank.

I was careful to listen for the pause, when he always asked me why I did whatever it was I had done.  I had learned to stick with, “I don’t know” until he tired of asking because, I wasn’t  about to tell the truth: “I didn’t think I’d get caught” (“Smart aleck”- deeper trouble), or “I thought  such and such” (“That’s what you get for thinking”) or “I didn’t think so and so” (“If you’re not going to think you might as well be alike on both ends.”) Daddy’s lectures always went on forever until he got down to business, something involving a switch or belt.  I never did decide which I preferred, despite extensive research.  Unbelievably, this time ended differently.  Because my cousin Sue was involved, Daddy had gone by to talk to Uncle Parnell on the way home.

Uncle Parnell’s children didn’t enjoy the consistent discipline our family did.  Sue was a talented liar, and got off the hook with an incredible tale which Uncle Parnell pretended to believe.  Daddy was disgusted, and for some illogical reason, for which I was truly grateful, Daddy reasoned that even though I had disobeyed, at least I hadn’t lied the way Sue had.  I got credit for being the better person and was spared.  Good old Sue!!!

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 9

A visit to Aunt Julie’s house was wild times.  There were no rules, except one.  She needed her afternoon nap, so we had to lie down from one to three till she was done.  I thought two hours of enforced bed time would kill me, but we spent the time wisely, playing semi-quietly, tussling with puppies, kittens, turtles, frogs, or  lizards,  giggling, and building forts.  Eventually we’d get around to jumping on the bed and she’d be forced to quiet us with an expletive, a reward in itself since I never got to hear cursing or filthy talk at home.

Aunt Julie’s kids were feral children, with no fashion concerns, styling about in their underwear, or step-ins, as Aunt Julie called them. I embraced this style and would have been a faithful follower, had Mother not shown up and stuck her big nose in my business.

“Don’t you EVER pull that stunt again. (EVER was spoken through clenched teeth for emphasis.). You KNOW better”

i always hated knowing better.  “But Aunt Julie….”  She cut me off.

“You heard me.  Get in the house and get some clothes on right now.”  The breeze on my flat chest was just a memory now.  Sadly, I went for clothes.  Mother was such a downer.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 8

Aunt Julie was from a very proper home, though generally untroubled by the high standards set by   her mother, Mrs. Townsend.  That austere lady always wore black dresses with white collars, stockings tied in a roll at her knees, and a severe black straw or felt hat, depending on the season.  Though Aunt Julie’s housekeeping was poor to nonexistent, on the occasions Mrs. Townsend was to visit, the house was immaculate.  It was confusing on those rare times to come in and find the kitchen sparkling,  the toilets flushed and scrubbed, and bathroom floors free of piles of dirty laundry and unlittered with used sanitary napkins.  I never understood why no one flushed the turds since the toilets worked.  I had no idea what the soiled sanitary pads played till my cousin Sue explained her older sisters had a lot of nosebleeds.  At the rate the napkins multiplied, I was amazed never to have witnessed a nosebleed.

When Granny visited, the kids wore starched and ironed clothes instead of running around near naked in their step-ins as they normally did.aunt Julie and the kids were glad to see Granny go, but my uncle said he wished she lived there to keep Aunt Julieon her toes.  Aunt Jule had fourkids.  Three of them gre up to live in squalor, while Sue’s homemaking skills were impeccable.

 

 

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 7

Aunt Julie looked like a wild woman, but I adored her.  She cackled like a hen when she laughed with her crinkly black hair standing up like a nest of stinging worms.  I saw her comb it once or twice, but it didn’t make a bit of difference.  Fortunately, she was easy going and didn’t seem bothered by it.  She was a skinny, little woman with a big stomach and pipe-stem legs.  The legs of her pants bloused out and never touched her.  Had I not known her since I was born, I’d have thought she was a witch.  She had a filthy mouth, peppering her language with forbidden words.  I learned early on Mother would warm my britches should I repeat anything coming out of Aunt Julie’s mouth.

One of Aunt Julie’s phrases always hooked me.  She often prefaced statements with, “as the old saying goes.”  I loved old sayings, so I was all ears waiting for what came next.  Sadly more often than not, she finished with something perfectly mundane like, “I  have to make a pan of biscuits.”  I never failed to be disappointed, feeling she had not followed through on her promise.  “Fortunately, from time to time, she finished up with a thrilling phrase like, “If I don’t get to the bathroom soon I’m gonna s___ my drawers.”  Her use of forbidden language always brightened days moderated by Mother’s prudish language.  We weren’t even allowed to say pee pee or doo doo.  It’s rough being a gee gee-er in a world of kids who doo doo or donkey.  I don’t think Mother cared how she marked us.  More on Aunt Julie later.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 6

img_1578Aunt Ader’s Place held more thrills than Disneyland.  Much of my large extended family gathered on a beautiful Halloween.  The women packed the hysterical children into a caravan of cars and made the rounds of a dozen houses scattered about the country neighborhood.  The twenty-odd children piling fighting their way out of cars must have looked like Attila and his ferocious Huns as we descended on the locals.  The drivers quickly gave up the battle and headed back as sugar-fired kids battled for Tootsie Rolls in the back seats.

Ensuring the madness continued, just as evening fell, we returned to a roaring bonfire in Aunt Ader’s front yard.  That was all it took to turn us into wild people, rabid in hot pursuit of each other.  Eventually, we wore down and settled in to roast hot dogs and marshmallows  on the open fire.  Many were burned beyond redemption, but some were even eaten.

As the evening cooled and the fire burned low and we sat on logs around the fire the stories started, first the old favorites like Bloody Bones that no one really believed.  As we quieted and the little ones drifted off in their parents arms, the older folks started with “true” scary stories: the time a mad-dog tried to drag Great-Aunt Bessie’s baby  from a pallet in the yard, the time so long ago when a hog devoured some cousin’s neighbor’s kid who fell into the pen.  Cousin Ray told a a man seeking shelter from the night who was turned away from several houses because he seemed suspicious but was eventually was taken in.  The next day the family’s mutilated bodies were found and murderous man never seen again. They later learned, the same thing had happened somewhere else. The beauty of all these terrible stories was that they all happened long ago to perfectly expendable people we’d never met, so we were able to enjoy them guilt-free with no emotional investment except a tingle of horror.

Finally, the delicious tales ended and we piled into cars for a dreamless ride home, to the sound of Mother and Daddy talking low in the front seat.  Of course, Mother assured us those stories were just tall-tales, not to be believed, but that didn’t hender my pleasure at all.

Your Girdle’s Wet

Phyllis and I had been at it all weekend. It was her first weekend home from college in 1965 and she was on top of Daddy’s good list. Daddy liked his kids a lot better when he hadn’t seen us lately, so Phyllis was basking in the warmth of his rare approval. Since I still lived at home and was a smart-aleck, I was definitely was not on his good list. His ingratiating treatment really grated on my nerves, since he was gracious by proxy, ordering me to, “Do this for Phyllis. Get Phyllis some more cake. Stop what you’re doing and kiss Phyllis’s behind again.” Of course, Phyllis was soaking all this up since only two weeks before, she had been one of the peons who had to “Get so and so some more cake, Kiss so and so’s behind.”

We took a few hours off to sleep and let Phyllis’s behind get a little rest from all that kissing and picked up the fight where we left off. Sunday morning found me in a particularly bad mood knowing Phyllis would switch into her “sweet and precious persona” as soon as she stepped into the sanctuary, while “mean Phyllis ” recharged to be unleashed on me as soon as we got home. For good measure, I insulted her again just before going in to take a shower. She pounded on the bathroom door, demanding the girdle she had hung to dry on a towel rod. I got out of the tub, stripped the girdle from the rod, and flung it out the bathroom door, and yelled at her, “Here’s your darned old girdle! It’s wet anyway!”

This was all it took. Phyllis flew to Mother, squalling so hard, she couldn’t even tell Mother anything except how horrible I had been to her. Mother finally calmed her enough to find out what was wrong, and Phyllis blubbered out, “She said my girdle’s wet. Boo hoo hoo!”

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 6

Mettie was abandoned by her mother, Cynthia, as an infant, leaving her with her own mother.  Though divorce was almost unheard of at that time, Cynthia was twice-divorced. Her father went on to remarry and took no responsibility for her.  He only visited her once, when she was the widowed mother of seven. Late one night, Mawmaw told this tale of her early years, the only time I ever heard this.

“I jist turned nine years old, ‘bout the age you are now. Me and Ma had picked some beans in the cool a’the mornin’ an’ I was a’helpin’ ‘er git ‘em ready fer canning. Ma set down in her rocker to rest jist a minute an’ I was a’playin’ with my kitten. I was glad she was a’sleepin’ a while since I didn’ want’a mess with them beans no how. After a spell, I saw Ma’s head was kinda hung to one side an’ spit was a’runnin’ out’a her mouth kinda foamy. She wouldn’ wake up. I got up to run over to git Miz Jone’s an’ seen there was a fire between our place an’ hearn. There warn’t nothin’ to do but run through it the best I could. Them flames was a’lickin’ at my feet an’ I was jist a’cryin’. I got Miz Jones, but it ain’t made no difference. When they got over to see ‘bout Ma, she was dead. They sent for Uncle Jeb to git’er buried.

I had to go to Uncle Jeb’s, then. He was awful good to me, but Aunt Lottie was jist hard down. She whooped on me ever chancet she got, an’ they was plenty. She made shore I ain’t done no sittin’ aroun’. I married soon’s I could, jist to git outta her way.

I never really had no home after Ma died.  I knowed Aunt Lottie didn’t want me around ‘lessen they was work to be done.  She’d put me out to help a woman that was having a baby, help with the canning, or help with the sick.  I never seen no pay, just worked for my keep.  Sometimes my mama would get settled and send for me, but I had to stay out of the way of her man,  so back I’d go to Uncle Jep and Aunt Lottie, till she could put me off on somebody else.  It was hard times for sure.

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 5

blackdog2

As the fire burned low, the lap babies had been put down and knee babies were sleeping quietly on pallets, the chatter from the older children slowed as they; too, drifted off to sleep at the feet of their mothers, aunts, and grandmother.  Desperate for ghost stories, I hung on the words of my superstitious Maw Maw. She held grandchildren spellbound with all the scary tales she knew.  Should she falter, one of my aunts urged her on…”Mama, remember about the big black dogs running through the house.” Her stories were more terrifying because she believed them with all her being.

“Oh yeah, lots of times, late at night, if the wind was still, and the night was dark, me and Granny could hear them ghost dogs, howling and scratching at the door, trying to get in…but once in a while, if the moon was full, we’d see them big, black devil dogs blowing right into the room where me and Granny was, made of black smoke from the fires of hell with blazing coals for eyes.  We hid under the covers, ‘cause Granny said ‘if you ever looked in them fiery eyes, you was bound for Hell’.”

Opportunities to hear scintillating stories like these were rare, usually limited to visits with Maw Maw, my paternal grandmother. Mother could hardly snatch her spellbound children from the writhing mass of cousins clustered around Maw Maw’s knees. Daddy ruled the roost, and he liked the stories as much as anyone.  Mother held the ridiculous notion that tender minds didn’t need to hear scary stories, more concerned about the nightmares she’d be dealing with in a few short hours than the extreme pleasure they afforded us at the time.

I do wish I could hear and savor those stories again, unmolested by that nagging voice in the background.  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.  Those stories are just pretend, like cartoons. Now, go on to sleep and forget about them.”

Maw Maw by CarMettie Swain Knight, a champion ghost storyteller

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 3

warhome2Uncle Dunc and Aunt Lucille had a houseful of kids.  Sometimes we were lucky enough that Bert, the eldest would drop in our games, raising our rough play to fever pitch.  Naturally, he tired of us soon, leaving us deflated when he went about the business.  I was always leery of the two big girls, since they seemed smart-aleck.  Ava, the oldest, was pretty with a bouncy, blonde ponytail.  Though I overheard Mother whispering she was trashy for mowing in her swimsuit out by the road, I thought it made perfect sense and worked well for her since she married a guy with a greasy ducktail and had a baby before her seventeenth birthday.  I kept a watch on both girls to see if they sprouted leg hair like Aunt Lucille.

swimsuitI believe Ava saw herself like this.

Prudy, the next girl was skinny with a lot of pimples and wore those pointy bras common to the late fifties and early sixties.  Her swimsuit kind of wrinkled over her skinny behind so she didn’t mow out by the street.  In fact, she worked as a carhop down at the drive-in for a while after dropping out of high school before hooking Toxie, who worked at the filling station and always smelled like oil.  Red rags always hung out of his back pocket.  I never had any contact with Toxie except when he yelled at me from under the hood of an old car suspended from a tree branch in Uncle Dunc’s front yard when I hit a ball into it.  I never really liked him much after that.

Carolyn was just a couple of years ahead of me, but must have been easier to control than her big sisters.  Her long hair, parted down the middle was braided so tightly it pulled her eyes back and hung in tight, thin braids almost to her waist.  The other girls must have rebelled against their mother in their dress and behavior, but at ten or so, mousy little Carolyn suffered under Aunt Lucille’s bossiness, since she only wore dresses and had to attend fundamentalist church services along with her mother and younger twin brothers.  They were wild little boys a couple of years younger than I, still peed their pants a good bit, and didn’t seem worried by Aunt Lucille at all.  Carolyn said she wouldn’t be allowed to have boyfriends, drop out of school, or cut her hair till she was sixteen.  I was only six or seven at the time, but that seemed very unfair to me.

I made a point to stay out of Aunt Lucille’s way since she yelled at kids a lot and was fond of using a switch on Carolyn and the little boys when she could catch them.  I certainly never asked to spend the night like I did at Cousin Sue’s and Cousin Cathy’s house.  We only visited Uncle Dunc for a year or so, until he moved off Aunt Ader’s Place, which incidentally was very near Daddy’s favorite brother.  I heard later he gave up drinking after a car-wreck left him paralyzed and he had no one to depend on but Aunt Lucille.