Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Our Family Summer

“And once we tame this hair, we’ll head over to the Roses and pick out a nice new set of clothes for you,” Aunt Sara said lifting our little brother up onto the kitchen stool she’d set on the front porch. Little brother squirmed, wiggled and whistled through the gap in his teeth, but Aunt Sara kept a hand on him and he didn’t go anywhere.

We giggled together at his misery. Having been there ourselves we could all the better enjoy little brother’s suffering.

“You run along now,” Aunt Sara called to us.

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Daddy was around the side of the house laying on an unfolded cardboard box beneath his 1966 Ford pick-up. A lit cigarette rested in the metal lid of a jelly jar near his feet. One of us poked little sister in the ribs and whispered a dare take a puff off Daddy’s cigarette, but she said no she wouldn’t. We all knew how serious Daddy was about his smokes. He wouldn’t want a puff wasted on one of us.

Just then, we heard a loud bang and Daddy yelled out a cuss word. One that Momma said he should never say around the children. Then we saw Daddy’s hands on the truck’s bumper and he pulled himself out from under. He sat up and took a puff off his cigarette. “What’re you over here doing?” he asked us. “Need to be careful. Got the truck up on this here jack. You see?” He pointed to a thin metal rod held in place by a half a concrete block on one side and an rusted iron anvil on the other. “Playing around here, you might hit it and send this whole truck down. You don’t want that do ya?” he asked.

We said, no, we didn’t want that.

“Well run along now,” he said. “Go play.”

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Momma had most of Daddy’s underpants hanging on the line and was just starting on little brother’s. She was whistling Pop Goes the Weasel and reaching into a bag her Momma had made from an old pair of blue jeans to pull out a clothespin. We joined in with her whistling as we ran around her in a circle, dancing beneath underclothes and when she reached the POP we dropped to the ground giggling.

Momma stopped whistling to scold us. “You see me doing the wash, dontcha?” she said. “Still you come round trying to get more grass stains as if I didn’t have plenty to deal with with your Daddy out there rolling around under that old truck.”

We stood up and danced around some more trying to get her to start up whistling again, but we could tell she was through.

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In the kitchen Granny was putting jars into a large pot of boiling water set atop the stove. She jumped when we threw the door open and came running inside.

"Lord!" she said, catching her breath, "you done shook me good. Be careful, now. Can't you see I'm canning? This water is HOT and a kitchen ain't no place for playing around, you hear?"

We said we were thirsty and came in for a drink. We said we'd behave and wouldn't be any trouble.

She said, "Well, listen, you get a drink'a'water and then get on back outside. Children ought to be outside on a day like today anyway. Here take this and drink it." She handed big sister a tall plastic cup filled with water.

Big sister took a big gulp and passed the cup around until we'd all had our share, then we set the cup on the kitchen table and headed back outside to find some place to play.

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Big brother said we should go up to the field. So we did.

The field was Mr. Snopes’ land. It sat behind our property past a row of trees and a rusted barb-wire fence. Snopes, Daddy said, was an old such’n’such who was as tight with his money as they come. Daddy said, he’d come into the AutoShop where Daddy worked all the time wanting one of them to fix his truck for free.

His field was a good place for playing, though. It was big and flat for the most part and had a big tree stump right in the middle that was wide and round and good for all kinds of pretending.

Big sister sat down behind the stump and said it was the check-out counter at her grocery store and the rest of us had better buy something or get out. There wasn’t any loitering in big sister’s store.

Little sister jumped right in and starting picking dandelions, she said, to make poke salad with for supper. Little sister hopped around the tree stump from dandelion to dandelion looking for only the very, very best - even passing up some the rest of us thought were perfectly good. She said, though, that she had the most wonderful family and only the best would do for them. With every one she picked big sister took a note with her finger on a flat piece of bark that was her ledger. She took care to count each and every one. After nine or ten, she said, whew, little sister must have a big family to feed or else she must be made’a money. To that little sister said, no, she just loved ‘em that much that she wanted them to be happy.

Just then big brother came running in holding a bent stick in his hand hollering that this was a stick-up and everybody needed to hand over their cash. We all yelled and threw our hands up in the air. Big brother had taken off his shirt and tied it into a money sack. He went around to each of us and we pulled up a hand full of grass and put it in his sack. He was nice about it though and said, thank you for your generosity in these hard times.

After that we all went to hunt butterflies in the flower bushes growing at the edge of the field by the treeline. We'd watch, being very still, as a butterfly would float down onto a flower bud, then one of us would holler and jump toward it. The butterfly, knowing nothing of us, would just flutter away without even thinking anything happened. Then we'd setup to do it again. Once in a while we caught one too.

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We were sitting high up in our tree when we saw little brother running across the Snopes’ field toward us, his shortened hair stuck to his head with sweat. Things seemed normal enough at first. We all thought he’d finally gotten away from Aunt Sara and was on the run for it. One of us kidded that Aunt Sara would give him a switchin' when she finally caught him. We all laughed a little at that. We knew it was true.

But when little brother got close we heard him yelling, Granny! Granny! and could tell something was wrong about the way he did it, so we jumped down from the tree and ran to meet him.

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Daddy said in Granny’s day they’d have the body set up in the house for folks to come by and pay their respects, but in today’s world we had to go to the funeral home. Momma said she wouldn’t have a dead body in her living room for nothing, but then she told us not to tell Daddy that since Granny was his Momma and she didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was.

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The next day we all dressed up in our Sunday clothes and squeezed into the back seat as best we could. Momma and Daddy were still in the house. Momma was helping Daddy with his tie. The younger of us took to asking questions about Granny. What happened to her? Where was she? When was she coming back? The older of us tried to explain things. Granny wasn't coming back. She was with Jesus in heaven. She had a big, golden house with many rooms and was singing with the angels, praising God, all the time. It was her reward.

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We could all see how sad Daddy was and we worked hard to behave every day at the funeral home. We sat still and didn’t run around too much. Even when our cousins came and wanted to go play hide-and-seek we said, no, we’d better not, Daddy didn’t like it when we got too loud. Little sister did spill some grape juice on her dress, but Daddy never pays much attention to things like that, so it was okay. Momma even told us later how good we’d been. She sounded a little surprised when she said it.

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At the funeral it was us who were surprised when we saw Daddy crying. The preacher was talking about the wicked and the blessed and how Granny had surely been one of the blessed when all of a sudden we turned and saw Daddy. His face was all twisted up and redder than usual and wet. His crying made a sound big brother said was like an old dog. We'd never seen anything like it and we all remembered how mad he got when we cried, so for a while we didn't know what to think. But then little sister and brother started crying too and before long we all joined in and forgot all about Daddy.

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That was the last summer we all slept in the same bed. That fall Momma decided we needed to have separate bedrooms for the boys and the girls so she made Daddy finish panelling and carpeting the back half of the garage and put up some doors for privacy so the boys could move in there. But that night, after seeing Granny put in the ground, we were all still together in our big double bed with the iron frame and we stayed awake longer than usual.

Big sister told us how she’d never want to be put in a box like Granny, but big brother said that was silly because when you’re dead, you don’t mind much where you’re put. He told us that he’d touched Granny’s hand when they’d her set up for people to say goodbye and it had felt really strange, like a stone pulled out of a creek bottom. Little brother told how he’d seen Granny in his dream the night before and little sister said she had too. They both said Granny had been swinging in her old porch swing and singing old songs. Big sister said it was going to be very different now that Granny was gone and we wouldn’t get to see her any more. We agreed it would be.

After that we took turns saying our prayers. We prayed for Momma and Daddy and for Aunt Sara and, even though big brother said we didn't need to any more, we prayed for Granny. Then we said our good nights and our sweet dreams and settled in to get comfortable. Some of us went to sleep quicker than others, but it wasn't long before we were all out for the night.