Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Bremerton’

Dancer in the River, Part I (Shuttered Houses), Chap. 4

Posted in Tall Timbers Anthology, tagged , on January 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Chapter 4

Dad had given up on getting us back and moved to Stockton, California, freeing my mother from fear and causing me to fear that I’d never see him again. Does he live in a house or in his car? Does he have a job?  My Dad went off and left us worried and guilty and hungry all the time because there’s no money. You never go to bed full and you sleep on a cot in the closet. Mom says, “I’m flat busted”.

And now I have to worry about cardboard all the time. I bent down to readjust it. If I splash in that puddle my cardboard will fall apart, and there’s no more cardboard right now.

I hiked up 6th Street and picked my friend Diane up on the way to school. I marvelled at her ruffled slip. It was so white! We washed our clothes infrequently and even then in the bathtub with a bar of soap. Nothing was white. I swung my rusty red plaid lunch box that smelled of old bananas and wondered what Diane’s family would do tonight.

For me, Friday nights were forming a pattern.

Me and Grandma

Me and Grandma

Mom will hang her arm on my shoulder and walk me to Grandma’s.

Grandma and I will crunch on lemon candy sticks and watch the Destroyer wrestle his opponent to the floor while Mom drinks beer with her sister at the White Pig Tavern, known to the Navy as the “Albino Swino”. I will worry she’ll meet a new husband and not come back… and then I’ll make that idea go away because she’ll come back for me and we’ll survive. Mom was a grownup and would make it work somehow.

I will feel the weight of those arms protecting me as we make our way down the dark and rainy streets, a little butterfly in a cocoon rocking side to side with Mom, the sole of my left foot rubbed raw by the wet sidewalk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Dancer in the River, Part I (Shuttered Houses), Chap. 2

Posted in Tall Timbers Anthology, tagged , , , on December 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Chapter 2

Car accidents happened under my bedroom window. Mom said sometimes sailors drive too fast, and their cars didn’t make the corner by our house. They’d go off the road into the creek by the waterwheel. Lights and sirens meant go back to bed.

I hear flashing lights, sirens, and voices.  A peek over the protective 2 x 4s nailed across my upstairs bedroom window finds no car in the creek, so I tiptoe downstairs to find men packing Mom out on a stretcher. My Dad is crying. It’s Mom’s first day home from the hospital after a major, and seriously botched surgery. I am told to stand back. Something is very wrong. No one will tell me anything.

The next night I crawled into their bed and snuggled up with Dad and his whiskey breath, trying to get warm. My nose ran. I want Mom. Dad is holding me close and patting my back. After a while he shifts me and rubs circles on my tummy. “Shh shh, it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.”

The clock ticks and the house squeaks. “S’alright, baby…” The furnace rumbles on, and an owl asks, “Who?” while the soft circles and crooning nearly lulls me to sleep. I open my eyes when the circles start going out of their sphere, dipping lower and lower still, my eyes wide when his hand slips beneath the elastic of my pajamas. It’s all right, baby…

In the next millennium, grown up me will remember this for the 1,000th time when I put pen to paper and think, No one can see this scene in the photograph, no one but me.

Read Full Post »