The Garbage Man’s Daughter
Book 1
Letting Go of Shame
By
Gloria Shell Mitchell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Gloria Shell Mitchell
All rights reserved.
EncourageMint Books
Inglewood, CA
ISBN: 978-0-9761010-1-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010939770
THE GARBAGE MAN’S DAUGHTER Series by Gloria Shell Mitchell is a work of creative nonfiction. The names have been changed to protect the identities of the innocent, or otherwise.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Life Application Study Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Published by:
EncourageMint Books
P.O. Box 5596
Inglewood, CA 90310-5596
Cover Design by: kadesigns1@aol.com
Email: gloriashellmitchell@gmail.com
Dedication
The Garbage Man’s Daughter series is dedicated to all the people who inspired me to write.
I dedicate this book series in loving memory to my beloved parents, James “Jasper” Shell and Minnie Pelzer Shell, my grandparents, Jervia Pelzer, Carrie Gantt Pelzer, and Jake Shell, my sisters Carrie June, Marie Harmon, Diane Purvis, and Melba Shell, my brother Alexander Shell and nephew Alphonso Shell, my cousin Benjamin F. Pelzer, Jr., my aunt Rose Ann Shuler and her daughter, Maggie Dozier whose impact upon my life are included.
I give special mother recognition to my daughters, Richette Bell and Joy Christin Mitchell who know the pain of children of divorce, and to alumni of my divorce support groups Prayerfully Addressing Divorce and Laugh, Love and Live Again.
I dedicate this work to the following precious individuals: my brother James and sisters Elizabeth, Mattie, MeLinda, Deborah, Josephine, Gwendolyn, Bessie, Cynthia; my Uncle Benjamin Pelzer and Aunt Willie Mae Pelzer; unmarried mothers and absentee fathers; school teachers; and all who are sick, hurting, abused, neglected, rejected, and confused.
Special Thanks and Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to my writing coach and editor, Martha Tucker of Premiere Writers, who took me by the hand and walked me across the finish line with the manuscript that I began writing in 1985. I offer special thanks to my online writing group members, Yolantha Harrison-Pace, Janice Lauderdale and Dena McLemore.
Johnny Morris, my program engineer at radio station KTYM in Inglewood, CA encouraged me to finish this project so he could record my audio book.
My accountability partners, Kenneth Franklin and Barbara Lindsey, listened and elaborated on each chapter read in our Christian Teachers Association dinner meetings.
My prayer partner since 1988, Emma Richardson, age 93, insisted that I read the entire manuscript to her. Prayer partners Beverly Williams and Lillian Laffitte, the clergy in The Gathering of Reverend Sisters Fellowship led by Rev. Barbara Jean Jenkins, and members of my church family at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, CA provided much needed prayer support.
Manuscript readers, English teachers Addie Burroughs and Laurel Simpson, as well as author, Victoria Wilson Darrah, provided honest feedback.
My friends, Linda Nisby Johnson, Christine Parham, Brenda Darby, Darlene Colbert, Frizell Randolph Smith, Valerie Elston, and others read and offered suggestions for improvement.
I gained ideas for improvement from authors Richard Krawiec, Candace Cole, Sha’ Givens, Rosie Milligan, Sharon Norris Elliott, Vivica Keyes and editors Joyce Martin, Gwen Pierre, and Nichole Palmer.
My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, showed me the life issues to be addressed in this book series and convinced me that there are “no things” that happen by coincidence. I learned that God uses every experience to teach us life lessons.
Finally, I express my sincere gratitude to the teachers at C. A. Johnson High School during the 1960s, all past, present and future public and private school teachers and other educators. Thank you for your commitment to teach succeeding generations.
Foreword
Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in-for thus ‘tis sweet-
into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
An excerpt from Baptism by Claude McKay
Selected Poems (1953)
This first book written by my sister, The Reverend Dr. Gloria Shell Mitchell, is very much a baptism by fire. She walks boldly where few of us dare to go, writing an intimate portrayal of a family with all of its warts, foibles, and secrets.
I am honored to be given the opportunity to write the foreword to Gloria’s book “The Garbage Man’s Daughter.” I marvel that after months of editing and revisions I am able to say, my sister has written a book!
The Book is provocative; part memoir, part Greek tragedy, it has hurt and humor in each chapter. It tells everyone that although you may be born into a life that seems destitute and destined for failure, there is a way out. This is truly what my sister has always lived and believed. Gloria came up from poverty but turned around and threw down a rope, many times, to help others up.
Sis: I’m very proud of your achievement, birthing this baby! Now, you no longer have to hear the annoying question, “how is the book coming?”
Elizabeth Shell Carr, LCSW
Writer, psychotherapist
Brooklyn, NY
Introduction
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
A quote by Lord Polonius in Act 1. Scene III of Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
I had a lifelong habit of doodling wherever I was until the day someone asked, “What are you always writing?” That’s when I realized that I always scribbled BOOK. Once I decided to write a book, my doodling habit vanished.
I have noticed that people often suppress, rather than openly address, negative childhood experiences. Consequently, facades are worn, pleasant and superficial topics are freely discussed, and shallow relationships are formed. By facilitating divorce recovery groups, I clearly observed that shame hinders healing and even promotes sickness. Past hurts, no matter how shameful, must be recognized and dumped like garbage for wounded people to stop hurting others and themselves.
While recovering from my own divorce, I often asked, “Why me, Lord?” Eventually, God replied, “Why not you? When I strengthen you, go strengthen your sisters and brothers.”
Therefore, The Garbage Man’s Daughter series was written to strengthen and promote inner healing in readers who know the pain and shame of brokenness, especially family dysfunction and divorce. Davida Kincaid, who represents me and nameless others, simplistically shares her painful journey toward love, acceptance, wholeness and genuine relationships.
May you remember the famous Shakespearean quote, “to thine own self be true” as you ponder the reflection questions in the back of the book.
Chapter 1
“Aw-shucks, not him again!” I mumbled as I stepped into our tiny cluttered living room. It was only our second Friday night in the country when I laid eyes on Mama’s bald-headed boyfriend, Mr. Fred, from Marshall Village. He didn’t even give us time to get used to our new house out here in the woods before he showed up last Friday night.
Mr. Fred stood toe-to-toe in front of Mama like a skinny tree swaying in the wind. His shiny bald peanut head bobbed a wee bit above Mama’s five-foot chocolate frame. Her tiny hands gripped his waist to keep him from falling.
Let him fall! I thought. A good bump on his head might knock some sense into him. I chuckled and stepped up my pace. He turned his head and looked at me as I stomped past them. I’m sure he noticed that this nine-year-old girl didn’t like him one bit. When I rolled my eyes like I was slicing him with a knife, he knew better than to say a word to me. I hated seeing him in my mama’s face like that. There was no way he could ever take my daddy’s place. NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
The puckered linoleum rug squeaked real loud as I crossed the floor. I wanted to startle the two lovebirds. In my head, the floor screamed, “Go home! Go home!” to the rhythm of my footsteps. I rather enjoyed the rhythm because the words clearly expressed how I felt. I brushed past Mr. Fred and Mama as I headed for the kitchen. Playing kickball outside in the June heat had made me thirsty. I wished I could kick him out of our house but I knew that pretty soon he and Mama would disappear into her bedroom. In a way, that was good because I couldn’t stand to see them together.
I was tired of that man stealing my mama from us. It was bad enough that he stole her from Daddy. Ever since we moved, we never see much of her until after Mr. Fred is gone.
I placed the old beat up metal bucket full of water I had just drawn from the well on the kitchen table and muttered softly, “Seeing that sloppy drunk all weekend is just as bad as taking a dose of Cod Liver Oil. Both of them leave a bad taste in my mouth and make me want to puke. Ugh!” I made an ugly face and smiled at my thoughts.
I imagined myself thumping Mr. Fred on the head as I scooped eight dippers of water and poured them in the half-gallon plastic pitcher. I picked a pack of cherry Kool-Aid from a sealed plastic container on the table, thumped it a couple of times to loosen the powder, ripped open the pack at one corner, and emptied the bag into the water. I stirred in two cups of Dixie Crystals granulated sugar that I took from the five-pound bag in the airtight grocery can. I could imagine Mr. Fred’s head throbbing from a thump on his head.
I don’t know how Mama with her pretty teeth can stand to look at that man’s snaggleteeth and smell his whiskey breath. I can’t stand the way he brags about being good at everything but never shows anything he’s done. My Uncle Clyde says, “That man can’t even hold his liquor!”
I stirred the drink with a long silver spoon and tasted a little bit on the tip of my tongue. “Ummm. Needs a little more sugar,” I said to myself. I dumped in a tad more sugar straight from the bag then turned to the refrigerator for a lemon in the vegetable bin. Wouldn’t you know? No lemons.
I wish I could go, one… two…three… and poof! Mr. Fred would disappear. I smiled at how silly that sounded. Last week I wished Mr. Fred would disappear and never come back. Well, he showed up the same time this Friday night. It seems to me that he’d be able to see that our little country house is full of children and there’s no room for him. I’ll bet his mama’s glad to get rid of him when he comes out here on Friday night.
“C’mon Sunday night and take what Uncle Clyde calls ‘this poor excuse of a man’ out of our house,” I cried softly.
I dumped a whole tray of ice cubes in the red liquid and poured myself a full glass. Then I snatched open the café curtains so I could see what was happening in the living room. I saw Mr. Fred stagger backward while Mama held on to him until he plopped down on the sofa. The moment the springs squeaked on my bed I yelled at him, “Get off my bed! I don’t want to smell your pee like I did last week. Mama, make him get up!”
“I’ll take care of him!” Mama yelled back. “You just mind your own business!” She yanked Mr. Fred’s arms and practically pulled him off the sofa bed. She flung his right arm over her shoulder and guided him to her bedroom.
“Yep! There they go!” I said as I let go of the kitchen curtain.
I heard the mattress squeal as Mr. Fred fell on it with the thud of a chopped down tree. “If only he’ll just stay in the bedroom until it’s time for him to leave on Sunday night,” I mumbled. I closed my eyes, crossed my middle and index fingers, and made a wish. “Stay in there!”
I liked it better when we lived in Marshall Village and Mama went up to Mr. Fred’s apartment while Daddy was in the hospital. But now that Daddy’s gone and we’ve moved to this country house, Mr. Fred pays somebody to bring his drunk self to visit Mama. Daddy never got sloppy drunk and peed on himself, but this man falls down, vomits, and staggers around all the time.
It’s downright disgusting the way he likes to hug everybody and slobber on us. He talks so much he foams at the mouth like a mad dog. I’m glad he knew I meant what I said when I screamed at him, “If you ever touch me again I’ll hurt you!” Even if I am nine I gave him a piece of my mind ‘cause he deserved it.
I drank the tall glass of cherry Kool-Aid then poured another half glass. While staring at droplets rolling down outside my glass of cold drink, I said, “I can’t figure out what Mama sees in him anymore than I can figure out how water drops got on the outside of this glass.”
The drink was a pretty red color and it smelled and tasted good too. But Mr. Fred? I shook my head. Oh yeah, I guess Mama puts up with him for the twenty dollars he gives her every Friday night. I wondered how he lived off whiskey most of the time. Having him at our house made no sense. If Mama just wanted a man, she could have stayed with Daddy.
I gulped the last of my drink, rinsed out the glass and put it in the dishpan. Here I am drinking a five-cent pack of Kool-Aid that has to be shared with my whole family while that man has money to spend on Jack Daniels whiskey, I thought. I just don’t understand it. I headed back outdoors wondering how anybody could pay more for something to drink than for food to eat.
***
Later that night, I pulled the sofa away from the wall and pushed on the back to turn it into my bed. I was thinking, if only Mama knew how hard it is to fall asleep when my nostrils have to smell Mr. Fred’s pee! As if the smell of his old pee wasn’t bad enough, I told her that bedbugs crawl on me as soon as I get comfortable. I fight the little critters as long as I’m awake but I can’t stay awake all night. I tucked a sheet in the cracks of the sofa and laid my pillow on one end. I tied a scarf tight around my head to keep bedbugs from crawling in my ears. I sighed when my bed was made. I knew if I managed to fall asleep, I could at least get a little rest before the bedbugs attacked.
“Bedtime!” I shouted. My brother Harry and little sisters Vera, April and Gladys came running over to me. I glanced over at Mama’s closed bedroom door. “Oh well!” I sighed again.
We joined hands in a circle to recite our nightly prayer together: “Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Do what’s right, with all your might. Goodnight.”
After they marched off to bed, I turned off the light and knelt down to say my private prayer, “Lord, please let me be able to go to sleep. Amen.”
I settled down between a sheet folded lengthwise and drifted off to sleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. It wasn’t long before I jumped up and ran across the room and flicked on the light. Thousands of those little bloodsuckers ran every which way. I was so mad at them.
I had sprayed the cracks and corners of that green pleather chair what seemed like a thousand times, but those bedbugs kept on attacking me. I took revenge and smashed hundreds of them with my hand. They must have seen me closing in on them as I smashed more and more of them. But when I realized that the fresh blood oozing from their bodies onto my hand was mine, I no longer felt victorious. When I was worn out from fighting bedbugs, I wiped my hands on the washcloth I kept beside my pillow and lay back down. I left the light on, hoping they would be too afraid to come back. I stretched out on my back with my eyes wide open and waited for sleep to come. What had I done to have to live like this?
I thought about the day that seemed so long ago when Mama walked in from work, saying, “My brother’s coming tomorrow to move us to the country.”
I was so shocked I couldn’t say a word. Somebody please tell me why I had to give up my comfortable bed in Marshall Village, in the city, to move to this dreadful place in the woods outside Columbia?
Thoughts and more thoughts flooded my mind as I lay there in the dimness staring at the ceiling light. I kept thinking back to that day when my whole life changed.
Chapter 2
I lay in bed thinking back to the day we moved from Marshall Village to the country. Our move had been sudden, and to me, unnecessary. Just like Mama said, Uncle Clyde backed his red pickup in front of our Marshall Village apartment on Saturday morning, the day after I finished third grade. He and his helper, dressed in white tee shirts and blue jeans like a set of twins, stomped inside our apartment and started taking beds apart and moving furniture out of the house and hauling it away. After all the furniture was gone, my brother and sisters and I were sitting on the truck bed the last time Uncle Clyde drove away.
My sister Beverly looked over at me and said, “Life in the country is going to be a hair-raising experience.” She laughed.
I laughed too because I saw how hard she was trying to keep the wind from blowing her hair in her eyes. As I lay in my bedbug-infested bed thinking about that day, I can honestly say I’m not laughing now because what she said was true.
***
The very first day in the country was sizzling hot. I felt like I’d walked into an oven as I struggled with a bag of clothes, dragging it into our new square blockhouse. I took one look around our tiny bedroom and right then I knew I was going to hate living out here.
“I want to go back to Marshall Village where we left my daddy, my two big sisters, all my friends, my school, my church, my godparents, and Cooper’s corner store,” I begged. “I want to go back home!”
I don’t know why I complained to my brother Harry, but I did. I guess I always turned to him because he listened to me, even though he usually didn’t say much to anybody.
“People are supposed to move to better houses like we did when we moved from the duplex downtown to Marshall Village,” I grumbled. “Naw, not us! We moved to this two-bedroom house made out of ugly, gray concrete blocks. We only got a living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms on six acres of nothing but trees. You know a house should be bigger than this.”
Harry started to go out of the room, but I pulled his shirttail. “Whoever heard of a house with no bathroom in it? I’m not going down some slippery clay path to use that stink outhouse full of flies and spider webs. You can’t even have privacy with all those big cracks in that rotten, pine wood with knots in it.”
“Well, – ” Harry shrugged his shoulders but didn’t try to leave.
“When we first got here I had to use it. A big bumblebee flew in there and I tried to swat it with a paper sack. I ended up ripping my tank top on a rusty nail that was sticking through the wood when I tried to open the door so I could get out in a hurry. Look at my top.”
“Sis, I saw Mama put a pot behind her bed.”
“There ought to be a law against outdoor toilets. It’s scary to go in that little house. It’s too stink to breathe in there. And peeing in a little pot in the house is crazy!”
“Well, sis, you could—”
“We could go back to Marshall Village that’s what.”
“I hear you Sis,” Harry said.
“Well, I guess if we have a choice, the night pot won’t be so bad after all!” I rattled on. “Why would anybody build a house and put the bathroom outdoors? That’s my ten thousand dollar question that I hope somebody will answer for me one day ‘cause it makes absolutely no sense to me now!” I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor with my arms folded, breathing hard at Harry who was sitting on his bed in a corner of the kitchen. I shook my head in disgust and took a long, deep breath.
“The only good thing about the move to the country is living next door to Grandpa and Grandma Cox,” I said. “It feels good being able to go over there and always find the door unlocked. It seems like I have two houses rather than one, especially when it rains. I just love wading in the water that flows down the hill from our house. It makes a little rushing river around their front porch that seems to say, “Come on in, the water’s fine.”
When I turned my head while making gestures to describe the rushing water, Harry jumped up and sneaked toward the backdoor.
“Why didn’t you just tell me to hush?” I yelled as he ran out the door. “Oh well, thanks anyhow for listening as long as you did.”
I walked over to the kitchen door and looked at all the pine trees behind our house and Grandpa’s. I remembered standing on the hill facing the woods and counting treetops the day we moved to the country and Grandpa Cox – looking like a tree himself – interrupted my count.
“We got mostly Pines,” he said.
I gave up counting because Pines were everywhere.
“Looks like Johnny Appleseed camped here for years and planted Pine trees every day,” I told Grandpa. “Children are supposed to have a yard to play in, like we had in Marshall Village, not trees everywhere.”
“Trees help ya breathe fresh air,” he said.
“The only yard we have to play in is the dirt driveway between the two houses,” I complained. “I sure am glad the shortcut through the vegetable garden is not scary like Creepy Crater was in Marshall Village.” I pointed to a thorn bush loaded with red roses in the corner of the garden.
“Those roses smell good, except when you spread cow manure,” I told Grandpa.
“Your grandma and I like living out here in da woods,” Grandpa said. “Nobody bothers us.”
By harvest time, Grandpa sure had done a lot. He’d put up a wire fence to keep people and animal feet away from the neatly plowed rows of cabbage, okra, string beans, tomatoes, strawberries, collards, corn, sugar cane, and watermelons in his garden. When the fence went up, we knew it was time to go in the garden and fight those big prickly tomato worms. The sight of those worms convinced me that taking the long way around the garden was not a bad idea.
When Mama walked into the kitchen that night wearing a tight skirt that showed her big behind and tiny waist, I began blurting out.
“Mama, how did we end up living in the house your oldest brother built for himself?” I asked as she stared at the square hunk of cornbread I was eating. I secretly wished Uncle Ezekiel would come home and kick us out so we could move back to Marshall Village.
“We moved in this empty house because we needed a place to stay after my husband left,” Mama said. This house has been empty ever since my brothers Ezekiel and Moses walked all the way to downtown Columbia and joined the Army. And after they enlisted, my three younger brothers, Clyde, Cupid and Daniel tried to enlist too. The Army rejected Cupid and Daniel ‘cause they were too young but they turned Clyde down flat ‘cause he had asthma. My brothers were determined to get away from my mama so they didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Three weeks later Cupid and Daniel hitchhiked all the way to Charleston where they lied about their age and enlisted in the Army too. That left only my brother Clyde and me at home.”
“I don’t blame them for running away from the country,” I said. “There’s too much work to do around this place.”
Mama paid no attention to me. “I reckon Clyde, with that fat belly of his was too lazy to work. He hated being left behind. That’s probably why he married Judy and moved to Marshall Village,” she said.
“Now his fat belly is still enjoying living in Marshall Village while we’re out here in this country fighting creepy critters and working hard just to have food to eat,” I said under my breath.
And oh, I almost forgot, I said to myself, I have to put up with Mr. Fred while wishing for my daddy.
This was my last thought before I yawned and drifted off to sleep.
* * *
I woke up early Saturday morning to the sound of a rooster crowing. I was ready for a new lesson from Grandpa Cox. I ran next door and found him taking a square white cardboard box out of the freezer. When he laid it on the table I read the box top.
“What are chit-ter-lings?” I asked Grandpa.
“Baby, you didn’t say dat right,” he said. “Them’s chitlins and they’s good eatin.”
“Then why does it say, “Chit-ter-lings” on the box?” I asked. I was confused.
“That’s cause whoever wrote that word never had none,” Grandpa replied. He laughed at his own joke.
I laughed too. I loved Grandpa Cox because he spent lots of time teaching me. I followed him outside to the barn where he gave hands-on lessons about country living. “S-l-i-d-e yo hand ‘neath da hen to git da eggs like dis here,” he said while showing me his sliding hand. It sounded easy enough, so I leaned over and gently slid my hand beneath the hen and removed a smooth oval egg from a little pile of hay. The hen went, “cluck, cluck, cluck.”
“The same to you,” I whispered. I felt guilty–like a thief stealing chicks to kill and eat for dinner. Suddenly I cried, “Ouch!” when the hen pecked my naked skin and it hurt. I jerked my hand away, dropping the egg and rubbing my pain. “That hurt!” I cried.
Grandpa reached down and snatched up the hen that pecked my hand. The hen had laid six fresh eggs inside a pile of hay. I guess she was sitting on them to hide them.
“Ya gotta act like ya know whatcha doing so they kin trust ya,” he said.
“Oh, now you tell me,” I pouted.
After a few more pecks, I started acting like I knew what I was doing while stealing hen eggs. But I kept my distance from that cocky rooster that strutted around like he owned the whole barnyard. He had an evil look in his eyes.
“Take them eggs to your grandma,” Grandpa said. “Go slow so ya won’t crack ‘em.”
I carefully held the Easter basket containing a dozen fresh eggs by the handle as I took baby steps down the hill to Grandma’s house. I watched the eggs every step of the way to make sure they didn’t roll around. I walked inside and gently placed the basket on the kitchen table.
“Fresh eggs, Grandma!” I hollered.
Grandma turned away from the kitchen stove and picked up one egg in each hand. She glanced at all the eggs in the basket.
“I see Jerry’s got ya working. Ya done good, child.”
“Thanks, Grandma!” I shouted and ran back toward the door. I spotted Grandpa wearing brown overalls closing the wooden gate to the fenced yard where Old Bessie was standing quietly in one spot. I ran over to the yard and crawled through the wooden posts in the fence so I could get to Grandpa. I watched him sit down on a three-legged stool with a milk bucket in his hand. He yanked Old Bessie’s tits and her milk made a strange noise as it squirted into the empty bucket. The more he squirted, the less noise the milk made. Grandpa yanked a couple of tits until no more milk came out.
“Wanna try it now?” Grandpa asked.
“Yes Sir,” I said.
He patted Old Bessie’s fat belly and removed his hand. “Here, put yo hand on her tit like dis,” he said as he took my hand and placed it on one tit.
I got tickled as I wrapped my hand around Old Bessie’s tit. I giggled and Bessie turned her head toward me and went, “M-o-o.” I pulled the tit but no milk came out.
“Ya gotta show her ya da boss,” he said. “Act like ya know what ya doing when ya pull the cow’s tit.”
The next time I pulled hard on the tit and milk squirted up in my face rather than down in the bucket. I giggled as I wiped fresh milk from my eyes. Grandpa laughed heartily as he pushed the bucket into the right spot.
“Try it ‘gain,” he said.
I guess I did it right because Old Bessie didn’t move or moo, and milk squirted into the bucket. I felt like I was robbing the cow of milk for her calf, even though she didn’t have one. From that day on I had fun milking Old Bessie.
It was fascinating to watch Grandpa kill a chicken. Sometimes he grabbed it by the feet and chopped off the head with a hatchet. I couldn’t figure out how a chicken with no head could run around in circles until it dropped dead, but it was still amazing to watch. Other times he would wring the chicken’s neck and drop the animal on the ground so it could run around flapping its wings until it finished dying. Yucky, yuk, yuk! I felt sorry for innocent chickens that fought hard to stay alive when they were already dead. And I could not even force myself to eat a chicken that I saw Grandpa kill.
“I think killing harmless chickens is animal cruelty,” I told Grandpa.
“Why do ya think the good Lawd made dese birds so tasty?” he asked. “Jes so they kin run ‘round the yard ‘til they die?”
“Well, you’re right again,” I said. Grandpa’s answers made a whole lot of sense.
After the chicken dropped dead, Grandpa dipped it in a big pot of boiling hot water and handed me a wet bird by its feet.
“Pluck off da feathers like dis,” he said. He pulled big feathers out of the chicken’s body and they slid right out. I was surprised to see how easy it was to pluck the feathers.
“What did you do with the chicken feet?” I asked while plucking the chicken.
“Well, I chopped ‘em off, cut off the toenails with scissors, and they’s in the pot boiling rat now. I’ll fetch one fo ya after while.” Grandpa went inside and soon returned with a chicken foot. He peeled the skin off the foot like he was peeling an orange and I got another surprise. When boiled and seasoned, the meaty part of bony chicken feet taste good.
“Chicken feet taste good, Grandpa,” I said. “I sure am glad you cut off those yellow fingernails or toenails, whichever they are.”
“Foots got toenails,” he said.
In no time at all, Grandpa showed me how to do a lot of other things in the busy farmyard. I tied sticks into a bundle to make a broom to sweep the driveway and yard, used an ax to chop down trees and split logs for firewood, primed a pump to get running water in my grandparents’ house, tossed a bucket in a well and drew water with a rope, and untangled the clothes that wrapped around the wringer of his washing machine. I dug white potatoes out of the ground, parched peanuts in a brick hearth, canned watermelon rind and other peelings that we used to throw in the garbage before we moved to the country, and shook pecans off the tree rather than wait for the husks to open so the nuts could fall to the ground.
Dang! There’s a big difference in living in the country from living in the city.
* * *
It was hard to believe that one Saturday morning I stretched out in a bathtub half full of hot and cold running water in Marshall Village, and the next morning I realized that not everybody can take a hot bath.
In my new country home, there was no water but well water, no faucet, no bathtub, and no bathroom in the house. Besides struggling to bathe while standing up in a round tin tub, I struggled to learn how to wash wet clothes on a glass scrub board without getting blisters on my hands. I must admit that it was kind of fun folding sheets taken off the clothesline. Folding sheets was kind of like dancing with a partner. You have to start off right to end up right.
It took me awhile to learn how to neatly stack firewood without causing an avalanche. Many times I had to restack the woodpile behind the kitchen stove because I pulled the wrong log. And Mama had the nerve to fuss at me when I used too much kindling to start a fire.
“Heck, I don’t know what I’m doing,” I murmured to myself.
My palms turned red from rubbing newspaper or brown paper bags to make soft toilet tissue. Sometimes I made a mess while I was learning how to pee in a night pot without sitting down on it. I think my greatest challenge was sitting on the outdoor toilet without looking at the crap below the seat. Prayer is definitely in order when your private parts are vulnerable to a bee string, a fly or something worse.
Grandpa gave me lots of safety tips about how to handle matches. When we were out of kindling, I learned how to make a fire with rolled up newspaper without snuffing out the flame. I also learned how to pour the right amount of kerosene on firewood, lift a twenty-pound sack of coals without injuring my back, get up extra early to make a fire to heat up the cast iron stove, heat water for bathing, wash up using a wash basin, recognize when heat from the fireplace had parched my legs even when my backside was freezing cold, be on time to catch the school bus, and adjust to walking through chicken and goose poop sprinkled all over the yard.
I couldn’t understand why Daddy never came to visit us and Mr. Fred came every Friday. Every time I thought about life in Marshall Village I told Mama, “I miss my daddy.” I liked saying that when Mr. Fred came to visit.
I could count on Mama saying, “You’ll get over it.”
I felt like somebody needed to remind her she was still a married woman. When Mama’s boyfriend came to our house I felt like running away and hiding until he left. But there was no place to hide in the scary country woods. My grandpa had made sure to tell me how dangerous it was out among the trees.
“Something or somebody could snatch ya out in them woods!” he warned us.
I got knots in my stomach just thinking about how far I had to walk out in the country to get to the nearest store. That was no fun.
“Why did Mama bring us out here?” was a question I wished somebody could answer for me as random thoughts scrambled my brain.
Instead of seeing children playing outdoors like we did in Marshall Village, all I ever saw were dogs, cats, cows, chickens and other animals everywhere, pooping before my very eyes. It was annoying to have to inhale the mingled odors from fertilizer, animals, outdoor toilets, slop, roses and other crap.
“Did anybody ask us if we wanted to move out here?” I blurted. I wanted Mama to hear me complaining to Harry.
Harry just stared at me with a blank face and big round eyes.
He’s no help, but at least he listens, I thought. It was hard to believe that nobody else in my family complained but me. Country living was a totally different way of life for all of us. I had to learn new vocabulary words like, “cow teats” instead of “tits” according to my big sister Beverly who loved to use big words,” new foods, new animals, new people, and new information necessary for survival.
“Ya gotta learn dis or you kin get yoself hurt,” Grandpa constantly warned me. “Vida, ya da eldest, ya gotta teach da younger chillen.”
Since I had to teach others, I tried to make learning fun. I quickly learned how to eat and drink foods I had never heard of before, strange sounding things like liver pudding, pig feet, pig ears, buttermilk, hog head cheese, tripe, chicken feet, hickory nuts, and goose eggs. I picked only ripe strawberries, no green ones. I guarded my hands from the green tomato worms, which really are scary-looking caterpillars. And I carefully avoided bruising the skin when digging up the white and sweet potatoes. With Grandpa’s guidance I learned how to use the ax, hoe, pick, hedge clippers, sling blade and wheel barrow almost as well as he could.
“Show me ya muscles,” Grandpa said one day after I finished clipping the hedges in front of his house.
I clenched my fist and raised my right arm to show him my bulging bicep. I smiled proudly when he pressed the hard bulge.
“Keep on working, he said. Child, ya coming ‘long jes fine,” he said.
Occasionally Grandma showed me how to do women’s work. As if all Grandpa’s lessons weren’t enough to learn, Grandma taught me things like how to protect clothes hanging on the wall from soot by hanging them in plastic dry cleaning bags tied at the top and bottom. She showed me how to cover the mattress with hard plastic beneath the sheet to protect it from yellow stains when somebody peed in the bed. When my old black and white saddle oxfords got holes in them, my grandma showed me how to carefully measure, cut a piece of cardboard box and put it in my shoe so nobody would know I had holes in my soles. She let me sort dried beans and put them in a big pot of water to cook for hours. The longer they cooked, the less water was in the pot. It’s interesting that the beans looked like little rocks before they were cooked but afterward they were tender, juicy and yummy for the tummy.
“Out here, we have to make our own fun since the nearest neighbors with children are a quarter mile away,” I told Harry.
“Not me,” Harry said. “I got friends up the road.” He walked on outside like he didn’t even miss playing with the children in Marshall Village.
After he left, I thought about the first week we moved in the country. Everybody on Cashmere Road got up at dawn to go pick blackberries off the vines before the snakes got to them. That was fun for me because people of all ages showed up with jars, cups and buckets and parted the bushes in search of ripe berries.
I was glad they told my little sisters and me to wear long pants to keep the briars from scratching our legs. After we had picked all the blackberries off the vines on the ground, I looked up and spotted some on a huge tree deep in the woods.
“What about the berries on that tree over there?” I asked, pointing to some plump berries.
“Hey, hey, hey!” shouted Miss Luvenia, the oldest woman with us. “We hit the jackpot today. That’s a mulberry tree in front of that empty house over there.” She reached up and adjusted the rag tied around her head to catch the sweat from her brow. She was sweating like crazy.
“Good looking out!” the ladies shouted as they hurried over to the tree.
“Here we go ‘round the mulberry tree early in the morning,” the children sang as everybody ran toward the tree.
The women shook the tree while the children gathered berries. It was raining mulberries.
I felt like the guy who yelled, “Land ho!” or Christopher Columbus when he first came to America.
With all containers filled, we happily marched home singing, “When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah! We’ll give him a hearty welcoming, hurrah, hurrah!” Picking berries has been fun, and now our morning work is done, hurrah, hurrah!”
Mama hadn’t gone berry picking with us but she sure was happy and smiled big when she saw my bucket full of berries.
“Ya’ll did good for the first time picking blackberries,” she said.
“We got mulberries too!” I said. I told her all about the big mulberry tree down in the woods as she washed and cooked the berries. In no time she had canned them in Ball jars and screwed a gold metal ring around the lid. She left some berries in the pot and made dumplings to eat with them by dropping balls of dough in the pot.
Canned foods were supposed to be eaten in winter but we ate those berries before the end of that month. “Blackberries and dumplings! Mulberry pies! Yummy, yum, yum!” I shouted to my little sisters when I smelled the aroma of berries. The look on their faces showed me they were afraid to taste mulberries. So I said, “Don’t frown before you eat some for yourself.”
Life without my daddy was like a bad dream. I wondered when I‘d wake up and find that I had been sleeping for a long time.
“Lord, when will we go back home?” I asked. I guess I fell asleep before he answered.
Chapter 3
On Saturday morning, I leaned over the log fence and watched Grandpa toss a bucket of slop into the trough to feed the two hogs. I frowned as I watched them wagging their little tails on the end of their fat rumps while they went “oink, oink, oink.”
“How can crispy fried bacon taste so good when hogs eat all that nasty stuff and wallow in the mud?” I shouted.
“Might look like mess to you, but da hogs like slop,” Grandpa answered. He put the slop bucket down, then walked over to the barn to untie Old Bessie as usual. “I gotta feed my cow.”
“What’s she chewing?” I asked. “Old Bessie looks like she’s already found some grass to eat.”
“Cows chew the cud.”
“The what?” I asked. “I’ve never heard that word before.”
Grandpa leaned over and picked up the pitchfork that he’d knocked over while reaching for the rope to untie Old Bessie. “Dis here pitchfork ought always lean ‘gainst the side of da barn. Always turn it backwards like dis.” He shoved the pitchfork in the ground covered with hay and pushed the handle against the barn.
“Old Bessie coulda got hurt if she step on it. Huh? What’d ya say? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I ‘member now. Let’s see how I kin splain myself. The cud is… umm …grass the cow already done swallowed and she spit it back up to chew it some mo.”
“Grandpa, did you make that up? That made no sense to me. How can somebody eat throw-up? Yuk!”
“You chillen got a lot to learn about God’s creatures,” he said as he limped over to untie Old Bessie so she could roam around in her little fenced area next to the barn. That evening, Old Bessie was lying on her side when Grandpa went to tie her up. He leaned over and slapped her belly but she didn’t move.
“Oh Lawdy,” Grandpa moaned, “Old Bessie done breathed her last.”
“What’s wrong with her? I asked as I climbed through the fence and carefully tiptoed around piles of manure as I went over to stand beside Grandpa.
“I reckon she died from ‘hollow tail’ disease. We gotta bury her,” Grandpa said.
“Why don’t you butcher her like you did that hog and eat the meat?” I asked.
“Ya can’t eat no parts of a dead cow ya don’t butcher,” Grandpa said. “If ya eat the beef from a dead cow, the same thing that killed her might kill you too.”
“Ohhhh, it makes sense now that you put it like that Grandpa,” I said.
With Old Bessie gone, that was the end of our fresh milk every morning. I soon learned that Old Bessie’s milk was a lot thicker than store-bought milk. Grandpa said bought milk is “watered-down.”
***
A few weeks after Old Bessie had died, I was walking beside Grandpa as he carried the slop bucket back into the house after feeding the hogs. I knew he would set it down beside the kitchen stove and dump in more table scraps and other stuff to attract plenty of flies. As we walked I looked up at him and told him what was on my mind.
“Grandpa, I wish Mama and Daddy got along like you and Grandma. We moved out here ‘cause they don’t like each other.”
“Well now, my lil Justine is da apple of my eye. We been together ever since hatchet was a hammer.” He laughed at his own joke.
I laughed too, even though I didn’t fully understand what he meant. I just assumed they’d been together for a real long time, almost fifty years, I think. I looked around to make sure that nobody would hear what I was about to say. Then I looked up at Grandpa.
“Did you and grandma ever fight like Mama and Daddy used to?”
“Look at me,” Grandpa said with a huge grin on his face. “Don’t ya know a big man like me could hurt my lil wife if I hit her? Nope. Me and your grandma git along jes fine. Ain’t no need ta fight. She’s good ta me.”
Just then I heard Mama call me, so I turned around and ran back up the hill. I looked back and shouted, “I’ll see you later, Grandpa.” I knew I probably had to fix dinner plates for everybody like I usually did after Mama finished cooking. Maybe I need to make more bottles of Carnation baby formula with boiling hot water, I thought. Whatever it was, Mama mostly called me when it was time for me to do some chores. If I finished them, she just made up some more things for me to do. So I took my good ole sweet time finishing my work.
“I’m coming!” I hollered as I ran toward our back door.
***
I got used to waking up around six o’clock in the morning to the distant sound of Grandpa starting up his rickety black ’56 Ford pickup. The same rattling sound we heard early in the morning was the same sound we heard when he returned around six o’clock in the evening. We could set our clock by my grandpa’s going and coming.
Like clockwork Grandma Cox had a hot dinner waiting on the stove for her husband when he came home from work. She called it ‘supper’ when she fixed grits instead of rice. Grandma set the table for two and sometimes she let me help her. I smiled when she got just as excited as we did at the sound of Grandpa’s truck pulling into the driveway in the evening.
Today, as Grandpa pulled into the driveway, she quickly untied her soiled apron and rushed to put on a fresh one. She dabbed a bit of red lipstick on her bottom lip and smeared it with her top lip. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment, wiped the excess lipstick from around her lips with her fingertip, and then patted her hair to make it lay down flat. By the time Grandpa reached the house, she was standing at the front door holding his slippers in her hand.
“Hey, Jerry!” she smiled.
Grandpa leaned down and kissed her on her cheek. “Something sure smells good in here,” he said as he limped across the living room wooden floor to their bedroom.
I knew Grandpa was talking about the aroma coming from the kitchen even though Grandma had dabbed a little bit of perfume behind her ears. Grandma followed close behind him. He plopped down on his twin bed, leaned over, untied and tugged at his cracked, tan brogan boots until each one slid off his foot. Grandma stood nearby waiting to see if he needed help. Sometimes his bad leg hurt too much for him to take off his own boots.
The moment each musty foot was released from its dirty boot, Grandma snuffed out the lingering odor by pushing a brown corduroy slipper over the foot that had just stunk up the room. I laughed as I watched Grandma cover up foot odor as quickly as I could swat a fly that tried to land on my plate.
Next, Grandpa limped straight to their bathroom to freshen up with the warm water Grandma had already run in the bathroom sink.
They were smart to add on a bathroom to their blockhouse, I thought.
The weather had been hot all day. I guess that’s why Grandpa dipped both of his big hands in the sink and splashed water over his face and neck. Grandma stood in the bathroom doorway behind him ready to hand him a clean white hand towel.
“Thank ya, Hun,” my 6’4” Grandpa said in his gruff voice and then smiled. He leaned down real low and gently pecked his 4’9” wife on the cheek.
Grandma giggled and said, “You welcome, Jerry.”
I think that peck on Grandma’s cheek made her day ‘cause after she received it she turned and went back to the kitchen to fix Grandpa’s dinner plate.
Grandma hardly ever said much to anybody. Most of the time, she spent her entire day cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and ironing. But she spent all evening treating Grandpa like he was a king. Every day she fixed his food, picked up his plate after he ate, propped pillows behind his head, fluffed his pillow, threw a quilt over him while he napped in his favorite chair, and ran his bath water. They seemed to have no worries at all. The only thing that bothered me was that they slept in separate beds in the small bedroom adjacent to the bathroom they had added to their house. I didn’t understand why they had twin beds when Mama and Daddy slept in one big double bed.
I liked watching my grandparents show affection. They were complete opposites of Mama and Mr. Fred. The two of them were disgusting together.
“Marriage must be a beautiful thing when the husband and wife love each other,” I told myself. “If Mama and Daddy had behaved like my grandparents, then my family would still be together.” I fought back tears. Then I thought about all the fights between Mama and Daddy. I’m glad Mama didn’t kill Daddy, I thought.
After Grandpa freshened up, he limped over to take his seat in a wooden chair at the round kitchen table covered with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. I heard a loud grunt as his weight shifted from his feet to the chair. He reached for the tall crystal salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table. I knew exactly what he wanted so I helped him out by sliding the salt-and-pepper shakers closer to his right hand. I pushed the shakers toward him and Grandpa laughed. His “Ha, Ha, Ha” reminded me of Santa Claus’ “Ho, Ho, Ho.” Grandpa stared at me with his mouth open.
“You chillen know what I like jes like my lil wife!” he said.
“We sure do,” I said, smiling. I wondered if Grandma was going to invite me to join them for dinner today. Sometimes she did and other times Grandma hinted that she wanted to be alone with her husband. She’d say, “I think your Mama needs you at home,” rather than just telling me to go home.
“Sit down. Lemme fix ya a plate,” Grandma said after I put the shakers in Grandpa’s reach.
“Yes ma’am!” I said. This was one of those days when I was going to enjoy a stew beef and potato dinner with them, and Grandma’s homemade biscuits.
As I pulled out the wooden chair to sit down, I realized that it didn’t take me long to figure out when Grandma wanted me to leave. I smiled as I thought about the first time Grandma said Mama wanted me. I ran home wondering how Grandma heard Mama’s voice when I didn’t hear a thing.
“Grandma said you called me,” I panted.
Mama laughed and said, “My mama always told us, ‘Go somewhere and sit down’ or ‘Go outside and play’ when she wanted to be alone with her husband.”
“Ohhhhh, so that’s why I didn’t hear you calling me. I get it now,” I said.
When the plates were on the table with huge portions on Grandpa’s plate and enough food for a mouse to eat on Grandma’s, it was time to pray over the meal. I liked to hear Grandpa say the grace. He stared at us without saying a word and then everybody at the table bowed their heads and closed their eyes while we held hands.
“Grace in the kitchen, grace in the hall, please for God’s sake, don’t eat it all,” was Grandpa’s favorite prayer. That was a funny prayer because he always ate all his food. When Grandpa finished praying he didn’t eat until Grandma said a Bible verse. Her favorite verses were “Jesus wept” and “the Lord is my shepherd.”
“Amen,” we all said in unison at the end of prayer time.
While Grandpa was eating, I saw moist food rolling around inside his mouth when he talked. He always had plenty to share about his day at work. Then when his plate was empty, he leaned back in his chair, pounded his chest with his fists, gave a loud burp, and said, “Dat was good eatin!” It hit the spot.”
His words made Grandma’s face light up like a street light in Marshall Village. Grandma blushed and said, “Thank you, Jerry.”
My grandpa knew just what to say to make his wife feel good. I wish somebody had taught my daddy to treat his wife like Grandpa treated Grandma. I guess that’s what happens when a boy grows up without his father being around to teach him how to be a man.
For some strange reason I asked myself, “Why doesn’t Grandpa ever ask Grandma how she spent her day?” Immediately, I answered my own question. I guess he thinks women who stay at home everyday don’t have much to talk about.
As soon as they finished eating, Grandpa got up and went outside or somewhere to do some work. I wanted to follow him but today I stayed and helped Grandma clean the dirty dishes and store food in the Frigidaire refrigerator.
What a peaceful life they have, I thought. It’s nice having a perfect couple living next door, even though it is too late to help Mama and Daddy.
***
One Monday evening while I was reading the book, Little Women, I heard Grandpa’s truck pull into the driveway. I jumped up from the sofa, carefully laid my book face down on the kitchen table, and ran toward the back door to greet him. Mama stood in the kitchen doorway watching as my little sisters hurried outside so they could be standing at the door of the truck the moment Grandpa opened it. We never knew when he had a treat for us. My little sisters and Harry jumped up and down with excitement as we all rushed to claim a spot.
As I stepped out the kitchen door, I glanced back and cried, “Mama, I love your daddy!”
Mama briefly shook her head as if she were both shocked and insulted. She had a strange look on her face.
I abruptly turned and asked, “Mama, don’t you love your daddy too?”
That’s when Mama started talking about a family secret that forced me to listen.