Part XII

I don't remember much about second grade at all. I remember the class room and I remember my friends, but not my teacher. At first I thought maybe my memory escaped me because it was uneventful, but when I calculated my age, I realize that my home life is what was getting all my attention. I found a second grade photo recently and noticed how sad my eyes were. "The eyes TRULY are windows to the soul." They reveal much more than we ever fathom until we look back on that time in our lives.

I was seven years old in second grade, and I was a very unhappy little girl. Daddy was gone more often, but when he was home he was acting strange again. He was getting into trouble doing things I thought were weird and stupid. I felt guilty thinking Daddy was acting stupid but I couldn't help it. He was going on these "camping and hunting" trips a lot. I don't remember him ever taking us on those trips in Jesse the Camper like he'd promised. He always left alone.

That wasn't the stupid part. He was telling Mama he would be home on a certain day, but he never was. He'd come home two or three days later, and always acted weird. He'd be dirty and moody and talk mean to Mama. Sometimes he talked mean to us, too. That hurt my feelings more than anything. He was always acting nervous and had to be busy doing something all the time. He wasn't throwing us into bed anymore. If he WAS there, he seemed to be in his office when we'd go to tell him goodnight. Now the office door was locked and we had to knock, waiting in our pajamas outside the door.

I wasn't getting much sleep at all. When Daddy was home, he stayed up all night. I lay in bed listening to him yell at Mama because she'd beg him to go to sleep. He always said he was going to leave again if she didn't hush. Then Mama would beg him to tell her what was happening, and it always ended with her crying and me holding the pillow as tight as I could against my ears to drown it out.

Many nights I'd hear Daddy's car squeal on the asphalt and screech down the driveway. I'd wait for what seemed like forever to see if Mama passed by my door to got to bed, but she never did. Sometimes I''d sneak down the hall and peek in the living room. I'd always see her silhouette standing in the picture window of the living room with the red glow of a cigarette in her hand or up to where her mouth was. A couple of times I'd hear her in the kitchen. I'd peek in there to find her standing in THAT window ironing our uniforms or polishing our school shoes looking like she was in a daze.

That's when Eula started making our lunches. I'd ask her where Mama was and she'd say she was "laying down for a minute." I'm sure Mama had been up all night, but she always drove us to the bus stop at the end of the driveway. Sometimes we'd have to wake her up to take us, but she never let anyone else do it. Eula offered many times and promised to watch us get on the bus, but the answer was always the same. "No, thank you, Eula. I know you want to help, but I like to watch my girls get on the bus myself." (We found out years later that we had several kidnapping threats, and Mama was petrified someone might try to take us.)

I felt so sorry for her. She was always exhausted and didn't look happy at all. Sometimes her mouth would smile, but her eyes reminded me of Grandma's. They always looked sad. She stopped wearing makeup unless she had to go somewhere important. Her hair was usually in a ponytail instead of up like she used to wear it because it took less time to fix. Eula said she did that because "she had her hands full with a baby and other things", but I knew it was because she was too tired to deal with it.

Daddy wasn't acting awful all the time - just most of the time. I remember he brought strange gifts home now instead of dolls. A few times he brought us a box of records that were stamped, "Columbia Records. Not for sale - demonstration only." We loved music, but these records were by people we'd never heard of. One time he brought four little baby chicks home. That in itself wasn't odd for Daddy, but these chicks were put in the back yard with our German Shepherd, Gretchen. We'd had Gretchen a while and she was a sweet dog. Daddy said, "If they live with Gretchen and she kills them, that's just nature." I spent every waking moment that wasn't occupied with school outside guarding our chicks and teaching Gretchen to leave them alone.

I thought that was mean of Daddy. The chicks were tiny and Gretchen was really sweet, but she was very big compared to them. Mama made them a little "house" from a big box and helped me teach Gretchen to leave them alone. Unfortunately, none of them lived long. One drowned in Gretchen's water bowl. Another was accidentally stepped on by the dog, and the other two met their demise within a few days.

One day, Daddy came home from a trip somewhere and had a little black billy goat with him. He was so cute, and we fell in love immediately. He tied him to a post in the back yard and told us we needed to "fatten him up". We named him Billy and didn't think he was that skinny, but we made sure he ate a lot. That wasn't a big job. Billy ate everything within sight. He and Gretchen seemed to like each other, so that wasn't a big deal. We loved him. He'd rub up against us like he was hugging us, and I brushed him a lot with Gretchen's brush. Mama seemed to be really upset with Daddy, and that was confusing. She always liked pets, except maybe for Homer.

Oddly, I don't remember talking to Rosanne about how strange Daddy was acting. I've thought about that a lot recently. I think we were pretending our lives were normal. (After learning about the disease of addiction years later, I realized it's very common for children to keep the family secrets.)

If Daddy was home or going to be home, I always asked Mama if I could stay with my grandparents on the weekends. I didn't tell why, I just made sure it worked out that way. I made a regular habit of taking the bus to Grandma and Grandpa's house on Fridays and catching it to school on Monday morning. Mama seemed okay with it as long as I promised to polish my shoes Sunday night and Grandma washed and ironed my school uniform.

The name calling on the bus didn't even phase me anymore. I didn't care. Between my night terrors and losing sleep listening to my parents fight until the wee hours, I was too tired to worry about something like that. The kids on the bus soon grew weary from not getting a response, so they moved on to taunt other children with names that rhymed. School was a good distraction, but I was tired and couldn't wait until it was time to board the bus and head home.

I believe it was sometime during that year that Daddy took Jesse the Camper for his last ride. He went on a "camping" trip to the springs in the mountains and came back in a taxi cab a few days later. We never saw Jesse again. Naturally, we wanted to know where the camper was. Daddy said it caught on fire and he couldn't put the fire out. I was sad not only because I'd never see it again, but now I knew for sure that we'd never go on a family camping trip.

Years later, we found out that Jesse DID catch on fire, but only after Daddy ran it off a very high cliff. He managed to jump out as it was careening down a huge cliff. It rolled over several times and exploded into fire.