by CeeCee James
It wasn’t long after that night when Dad caught me sneaking a piece of candy from my Easter basket. He raised his hand. I flinched and stumbled back. I was afraid of the big ring on Dad’s left hand. The blue stone in it winked evilly at me. But, he pointed toward the dark, wood-paneled corner. He had me stand there while he leaned back in a chair and watched me like a cat watches a mouse. With a singsong tone, he directed me, “Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down.” He sipped from his coffee cup and ate my candy while he watched my legs shake. It lasted for hours, until he grew bored and my candy was gone. My nose slid up and down a black groove in the paneling, and I wished there was an escape.
My third birthday was a few days later. Dad called me to get on his bike. He strapped the white helmet on to my head, and thumped the top twice, “There you go, mushroom head.” He grinned and picked me up, setting me on the black seat, and then climbed on in front of me. Mama rode behind me. My arms weren’t able to reach around Dad, so I clutched the stiff leather of his jacket at his sides, and my hands ached from the effort. I cried every time I rode behind him, afraid I might let go and fall off onto the rushing blurred pavement. Mama always said, “I’m just waiting for your laces to be eaten up by that engine!”
We roared up to Grandma’s house. Dad climbed off, leaving me to scramble down on my own. He walked into Grandma’s house before us. Mama pulled me back with a jerk on my arm and said, “Don’t you embarrass me. I’ll give you a smack you won’t forget,” before she shoved me into the house.
The kitchen was filled with my relatives. I winked back tears. Grandma clapped, and I ran over to hug her knees. There was cheering so I tried to smile back. My cousins batted balloons back and forth over my head. I watched them and thought the balloons floated by magic.
Grandma gave me a plastic tea-set with a big red ribbon. I felt a splat as my cousin stuck the bow to the top of my head, which made me laugh, until the tape pulled my hair when I tried to yank it off. Someone opened the tea-set package for me, and I set the cups on the tiny plates around the table. Humming, I poured a cup with my plastic teapot. My cousin grabbed at the teapot.
“It’s mine! Grandma gave it to me!” I said.
Mama leaned over from the couch and pinched me hard on the underside of my arm. She hissed under her breath, “You share that toy with your cousin.”
I handed the teapot over to my cousin with a lump in my throat. Mama thought I wasn’t a nice girl, like my cousin Christy. “Smile!” There was a flash as Grandma took a picture.
Later, I went outside to have a few minutes by myself. My first prayer came as I walked around on the top of an old railroad tie that edged the garden. My three-year-old self reached out to the Creator, and I prayed over and over in a chant, “Please God, let me start over. Let me start my life over. I will be good this time. I will do it right. I will be a good girl. I will be good.”
~The Escape~
The summer of 1976, when I was three, Mama packed me in her old Pontiac, along with a few grocery bags of clothes, and we left our white farm house. I sat in the back seat of Mama’s car. Her eyes flashed angrily when they caught mine in the rear-view mirror.
“Your Dad threatened to hunt me down and kill me if I left him,” she blurted out. I looked at her wide eyed. “He’s looking for us right now. I stayed with him all these years because of you.”
I slid my fingers along the stitching on the green vinyl back seat as heat flooded my face. Slowly, I scooted my body out of reach from a back slap of her hand. My nose still hurt from the one earlier. I didn’t know how mad she was, and didn’t know what to say to make it better.
“Sorry Mama,” I whispered.
Mama stepped on the gas and I lurched back into the seat. “He’s a sadist!” I had no idea what that was, but nodded and listened with my thumb in my mouth. My other hand tried to twirl a short wisp of my hair. “I’ll never forgive myself for what I allowed him to do to our pets. He killed every animal we owned.”
Mama then described the time our mama cat had her kittens. When they were a few weeks old, Dad took the kittens upstairs to the bathroom. He filled the bath tub up with water, and then pushed the kittens beneath the surface of the water. He didn’t let them drown straight away; he brought them back up to the surface to get a weak gasp of air. They meowed, before they sunk under the water again. If Mama couldn’t save the kittens, she probably couldn’t save herself or me either.
As we drove I thought about our dog, Bo. I wondered if Dad killed him too, and pictured a cartoon dog ghost coming out of him, playing a harp while floating up to the clouds. Sighing, I wriggled on the seat, tired of sitting. My legs were numb, was I ever going to get out? Finally Mama turned off the highway and on to a country road. Where were we going? After a few more minutes Mama drove down a long, dusty driveway that was full of cars. At the end was a large brown house. The windows were opened and billowing checkered curtains waved at us when the breeze came through. A covered, painted porch with broad steps led to the front door, with white rocking chairs scattered between the open windows. The house itself was backed up against a green haze of woods.
We walked up the steps and Mama cleared her throat and took a deep breath before she pulled the wooden screen door open with a squeak. I stumbled over one of my blue tennis shoes that had come untied. I glanced down and saw my legs were grubby from playing outside earlier that morning. Tears stung my eyes. I didn’t want anyone to see me looking like a dirty girl. Mama pushed me ahead of her into their living room. I wanted to hide behind her, but, she held me in front of her with a firm grip on my shoulder as the group of laughing people turned to look at us.
Their family was getting together that day for their annual barbeque, and Mama and I had been invited. The sea of strange faces left me frozen and bewildered, and unsure of how to act.
A teenage girl rescued me by bringing over a coloring book. She gave me a friendly smile and opened a new box of crayons, rows of colors, all with sharp points. I put my fingers in my mouth and glanced at Mama. Was I bothering the girl? But Mama had left the room. I took one of the crayons being held out to me and sat on the floor to color the princess picture. The teenage girl looked like the princess in the fairy tale coloring book, and I wanted to color the picture extra nice for her.
I watched their family while I colored. Boys chased each other around the couches and jumped over the coffee tables. Kids and the adults talked in happy and loud voices, but the words sounded jumbled to my ears. I blinked my eyes, glanced down and saw marks on the outside of the dark lines. I had ruined it.
One little girl with brown pigtails ran up to me and tried to catch my hand. She tried to coax me to join her in the chasing, but I pulled my hand back. Why does she want me? She shrugged her shoulders and darted away to join a group of big girls, about six or seven years old. The girls held each other’s hands in a long chain and raced outside, their bare feet slapping against the wood floor.
Curious, I put down the crayon, and followed them, attracted to their pixie-like energy.
I approached their group with slow steps, but when the girls saw me draw near they bowled me over like a bunch of puppies. Their high-pitched chatter made me laugh. I let them grab my hands, and we ran, all linked together, down to the little pond at the edge of the property.
The sun was hot and made the grass smell like hay. I slipped off my shoes, and waded into the pond. We all tried to catch the tiny, speckled gray minnows. The minnows were too fast for us, and darted away from our clumsy hands, only to tease us a moment later when they swam near our feet again. After a while we gave up chasing them, and instead played tag in the water. The thick mud squishing up between my toes made me giggle.
The sun was an orange ribbon rippling on the top of the water when the oldest cousin said, “It’s time to catch some frogs for Nana.” We shrieked and pointed whenever we saw the bulgy eyes of a frog peep up out of the water, and scrambled to catch it. I was excited to scream; there
was no one to yell at me.
The two oldest cousins carried back the frogs in the clear plastic containers, and an old woman met us at the back door. She thanked us while she wiped her hands on an apron.
“I’m going to cook up these here frogs,” she said as the frogs hopped and thumped in the containers in her hands. We peeked through the kitchen door to watch, squealed at the thud of her knife, and ran away.
After dinner was over, Mama found me. I said goodbye but didn’t want to go. She walked ahead of me, tall tan legs-- she had a scab on the back of one-- and we climbed in her old junker car. As soon as we left the driveway she spoke.
“I don’t like you talking to those people. They’re my friends, not yours.” She stared intently out the windshield. “I want you to stay out of sight. Next time walk away.”
“Okay Mama.”
We drove for a long time. My eyes felt heavy watching the tall trees fly by. I yawned.
Much later, when all the stars were out, we drove back up that long dusty driveway with our headlights off. Mama stared at the dark house for a minute and then beckoned to me. I crawled out her side of the car, before she closed the door with a quiet click. We snuck onto the covered porch of the summer house. Mama, barely breathing, whispered to me.
“Quiet, be very quiet.”
We climbed in the creaking rocking chairs, Mama with her finger over her lips. I closed my eyes. We slept on those chairs, and crept off when the sky became light gray the next day.
The family didn’t realize we were there at night. I thought it was an adventure and was too young to realize that we were homeless.
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Copyright 2015 © [CeeCee James] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review
