The Woods at Barlow Bend

by Jodie Cain Smith

  After our I dos were said and the marriage license signed, Gordon and I swore Sandy and Milton to secrecy. I threatened never to speak to Sandy again if she breathed a word about Gordon and me being husband and wife to anyone. Sandy and Milton agreed to our terms and kept their oath of silence through March, April, and into May.

  I was sure that Daddy wouldn’t support my elopement with Gordon, and needed to make sure Meg, Billy, and Albert would be all right after I left. I couldn’t depend on Farrish to care for them, so I needed time to make my three siblings self-sufficient. Billy made a nice wage in the fields, and Meg was still with the Blacksher Home, so they would have money for food. I knew I could teach Meg everything I knew in the kitchen. She was already a better house keeper than I, and a stickler for the rules, any rules, so I knew she would make sure that Billy and Albert would get to school on time and would always do their share of the chores. Gordon and I had agreed to keep the marriage a secret until graduation. So, by the time graduation day, revelation day, rolled around, they had to be able to take care of themselves. I would never be able to leave if I thought they would fall apart without me, no matter how desperately I needed to get out of that house.

  On the morning of my graduation, I readied myself to tell Daddy that I no longer belonged to him. I had kept my promise to Momma and to the stars over Clarke County to care for Daddy and to love him despite his flaws for as long as I could.

  I told Meg, Billy, and Albert about my marriage, and that I was leaving with Gordon the night before graduation. I didn’t want them to feel blindsided when I left with Gordon after the ceremony instead of coming home with them. They took my news as well as could be expected. Albert cried. He begged me not to leave him with Farrish and the Brisby monsters. He didn’t understand why Gordon and I couldn’t live in the tiny house in Uriah with all of them. I told him that there was no room for another body in that house, but I would come see him as often as I could. Billy, who was trying desperately to act like a man, shook my hand and told me “best wishes.” At least some of Aunt Mittie’s good manners had rubbed off on him. All the while, though, he had a very stern expression on his face telling me his true feelings about the situation. He thought I was disrupting his life. He was right. I was.

  Meg was the worst. She yelled at me for not taking her with me to Monroeville for the wedding ceremony. I knew she would be hurt by my secret, but I didn’t know how much.

  “I should have been your maid of honor!”

  That was one of many rules that, in Meg’s mind, I had broken. Tears rolled down my face as I watched my sister’s heart break in two. Meg didn’t cry though, not a single tear. She crossed her arms, made her blue eyes icy, and stormed out of the room. Billy followed her. Albert stayed by my side and helped me pack my suitcase. When we were done, I hid it under my bed.

  “You did what?” Daddy yelled in the kitchen on the morning of my graduation. He stood up from the table so quickly and with such thrust that he knocked his chair backward.

  “Daddy, if you’ll just calm down…”

  “I will not calm down. You had no right to run off like that. He had no right to take you!”

  “Gordon didn’t take me Daddy. I went on my own.”

  I tried as hard as I could to keep my voice steady. I had planned out what I would say to Daddy about my marriage and my future plans, but I hadn’t planned on him being this angry.

  “That boy tricked you!”

  “He did not trick me, Daddy!”

  “What do you know? You’re a child!” Daddy said and then yelled for a good ten minutes straight about how I abandoned the family, betrayed him, and how he was going to teach that boy a lesson. “I’ll teach him to run in and steal a man’s child!”

  I couldn’t stand his words anymore. My cheeks burned the same way they did the day Momma died, the same way they did during the trial, but on this day, Momma’s voice found my tongue.

  “Daddy, I am not a child. I stopped being a child the day we lost Momma,” I said in a voice so confident and commanding that I wasn’t even sure it was my own. “You will not say these things to me again. You will congratulate Gordon and you will let me go.”

  “I will not…” Daddy interrupted, but I cut him off.

  “No! I have not abandoned you. You drove me away. I did not betray you. You betrayed us by what you did to Momma, by expecting us to accept every piece of white trash you bring in this house. I will not live like this for another second!” I had opened the floodgates and couldn’t close them again. “You abandoned us for a year while you were in jail. You wrote me what? One letter? But I’m supposed to stand by you through everything? Well, I can’t do that anymore. I won’t. You humiliated us in Frisco City. You abandoned us at the hotel. And then you took us away from Mittie!”

  “Mittie ain’t your mother!”

  “Shut up!” I was on my feet and couldn’t hold back my rage, “How many women have been in and out of your life, Daddy? Momma, Elsie, Sarah? How many feet away from your bastard child did you bury Momma? How many? And now you bring your latest piece of trash and her children here? Do you plan on marrying Farrish or just play house until you get bored? Not to worry, huh Daddy? Good, ol’ Hattie will keep everything in order, right? Ever since Momma died, you expected me to raise your children and keep your house. Well, I am your daughter, not your wife!”

  Tears poured down my cheeks. I had not sobbed like this in years, and it felt good. Daddy looked like I had slapped him. For a split second, I was terrified by the prospect of doing what Momma never could, but I knew I had to. I couldn’t live as a substitute for her any longer. I had to leave him. I wiped my eyes with a kitchen towel, took a deep breath, and turned back to Daddy sitting in a chair, silenced by my outburst.

  “I’m a married woman now. You can’t change that,” I said, my voice calm and strong, “Gordon has found us a place in Monroeville. We leave next week.” I turned to walk out of the kitchen and then remembered, “Oh, and Daddy, don’t forget, commencement starts at 2 p.m. in the gymnasium. I would like you to be there.”

  I went to my bedroom, fixed my face and hair, and slipped the simple gold band that Gordon had given me in March on my left ring finger. I carried my suitcase, the one with Momma’s monogram on the clasp, and walked out the front door. Gordon was standing next to his car, waiting to drive us to the school. He had wanted us to tell Daddy about the elopement together, but after a very long and heated discussion, I convinced Gordon that leaving Daddy was something I had to do on my own.

  Chapter 29

  March 1963

  Mobile, Alabama

  A week after my high school graduation, Gordon and I moved into an apartment in Monroeville, Alabama, north of Frisco City on Route 21. Seven dollars a month got us one bedroom, one bathroom, an eat-in kitchen, and a living room. Gordon worked as a clerk for the local grocery store. Mr. Simpson of Main Street Fashions in Uriah put in a call for me to Mr. Donaldson, owner of the largest clothing store in Monroeville, largest, of course, next to the Vanity Fair factory and offices that had opened a few years before we moved to Monroeville. After hearing Mr. Simpson’s recommendation, Mr. Donaldson hired me on the spot as an assistant in the Ladies’ Fashion Department. My responsibilities were basically the same as in Uriah, but my hours were much longer. Slowly, over the first year or so of our marriage, we furnished our first home with hand-me-downs from his family and cheap treasures from secondhand stores and classified ads in Monroeville’s newspaper. By the fall of 1938, the only new things in that apartment were my new life that I adored, and our newborn son, Ray Gordon Riley, Jr. We called him Ray and loved him to pieces.

  Daddy married Farrish Brisby in January of 1938. I have no idea why he married her. Maybe, he thought he needed to provide a better example for Meg, Billy, and Albert. Maybe, he actually loved Farrish. Maybe, she refused to play the role of wife without proper billing. Shortly after their courthouse ceremony, Daddy, Farrish, and their six children moved to a $10.00 a month r
ental in Frisco City. Daddy continued to peddle junk through the streets and back country roads of Monroe County. Farrish continued doing hair in the cramped, rented kitchen. Momma continued to be buried a short five minute walk down the road from the newlyweds. I wonder if Farrish knew who else was buried five minutes from her new home.

  I thought it was disgusting that Daddy moved Farrish and her three brats so close to Momma. I couldn’t believe he thought that Meg, Billy, and Albert wanted to live so close to the little white house that had brought us so much joy and then witnessed much pain. I couldn’t believe that in four years’ time, this man that I once adored, had gone from being a successful businessman living with his beautiful wife and four children in a home that he built with his own hands, to living in a cheap rental with a tired hairdresser, three brats, and the three children of his own who hadn’t left him yet. The man who once owned a hotel and café in Grove Hill now peered out his bedroom window at least four times a night to make sure his truck full of junk was still parked out front.

  Within a few short years, Daddy and Farrish’s marriage failed, leaving one more woman in Daddy’s wake. I never asked him why. He eventually moved south and found the last woman he would marry, Lily. Lily was actually as lovely as her name. She was respectable and, in many ways, too good for Daddy, but I guess she, like so many before her, fell for his charms. Daddy found another café in Foley, Alabama, and seemed content. He ran the café, and Lily kept the dessert counter stocked with the best homemade pies in Baldwin County. Daddy never stopped expecting me to fulfill the role of dutiful daughter.

  After a couple of years in Monroeville, Gordon and I moved to Mobile where we loved each other through a couple of moves from apartment to apartment until finally settling in a house in Toulminville, a suburb on the north side. A blonde-haired girl and a little boy with sweet, chubby cheeks came into our lives in quick succession after our move to Mobile. Gordon worked for the Mobile Bus Line for a few years. Then, like so many young men of the time, he enlisted in the Navy. While he was somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, I gave birth to another little girl. I named her after Gordon’s mother. Gordon refused to call the baby Bessie. His mother’s nickname wasn’t pretty enough for the tiny, porcelain-skinned angel. Then, after the war, we had one more girl. Gordon expected nothing but the best from his sons, and doted over his daughters.

  Through the years, we had countless fights over too many hours spent fishing and not enough hours in church. Gordon preferred the shoreline to a church pew any day of the week, but especially on Sundays. We argued over money and the kids and why, for the hundredth time, Gordon should get dressed earlier than he did each night so that he wouldn’t be late for his job as a night clerk at the Post Office. We took family vacations to the river and made sure the kids knew how to behave in public. We stretched every dime we had as far as it would go. As a thirteen-year-old girl, I had stretched out in my bed and dreamt of a simple life with a man I was wild about, a man who was crazy about me. As a woman, I made sure that dream came true, even if it was just for a few years.

  My time with Gordon passed too quickly. On March 4, 1963, my war baby Beth, by then a porcelain-skinned teenager, and I waited outside Sears in downtown Mobile. I was working in the Optical Department, and Beth was enrolled at Murphy High School. Gordon worked the night shift at the post office, so he slept through the mornings and into early afternoon until it was time to pick us up from downtown. When he didn’t show up that day, I told Beth he must have overslept. But, in my heart, I knew that wasn’t true. In my heart, I knew he was gone.

  Beth and I caught the city bus at Stanton Road in Mobile, which brought us north to Osage in Toulminville. The whole time we were on the bus and then while I practically sprinted the two miles down Osage to our house, I kept telling Beth how angry I was that her father overslept. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what was really going on; that I was furious at her father for leaving me. Gordon leaving me so soon was not part of my plan. I wasn’t ready. I still loved him too much to lose him. There was so much I didn’t know yet, so much that I never had to worry about because I had Gordon. I didn’t know how to drive. I had never balanced the checkbook. Gordon managed the finances. Gordon did the grocery shopping. Gordon took care of us. I would never be able to feed and clothe the children on what I made working part time at Sears. Even with Ray off at college and one daughter married, the financial burden would be too great. And I wasn’t ready to live without him.

  My anger and fear carried me down Osage Street. I ran through the front door of our house, down the hall and straight to the bathroom. Before I saw Gordon, I knew he would be there on the floor, like his father in the cotton field in Uriah. I told Beth to call an ambulance. There was nothing the doctors could do to help, but I didn’t want Beth to see her daddy like that. That was the one thing my father got right. I never had to see Momma’s lifeless body. And Gordon was lifeless. My sweet Gordon lay on the pale pink tile of our bathroom, dead from a massive heart attack at the age of 42. For a moment, I wanted to lay next to him, to go with him. I told Beth to stay in the hallway, yelling at her to keep her away. I knelt next to him and ran my fingers through his wavy hair. I kissed him and told him that I loved him and that he made my life so much better. Then, I sat on the cold tile next to him until the coroner arrived and took him away.

  Chapter 30

  February 1993

  Spanish Fort, Alabama

  A little over three years fell between the day Momma died and the day I married Gordon. In those three years, I learned so much about myself, the world around me, and just life in general. Without knowing, I carried those lessons and everyone who helped and hurt me during those three years through my marriage to Gordon and every day that followed Gordon’s death. I didn’t really feel the weight of their lessons until after Gordon died, and I had to figure out how to pick myself up from the pink tile floor and carry on without him.

  After several horrible months, I slowly started to mend, and I started to listen to the lessons of my past. First, there was Daddy. Daddy taught me the good, the bad, and the ugly of survival. He taught me that I had to take care of myself, that no fall from grace garnered surrender. I sat at our kitchen table and learned to balance a checkbook. I studied the little black ledger that Gordon kept on top of our dresser. The ledger included our monthly budget, meticulously calculated to last penny. I was able to make Gordon’s pension, the pension I never knew about until after his death, go further than I first thought possible.

  From Daddy’s life, I also learned that there is grace in surviving alone. Daddy drifted from woman to woman, terrified to be alone. I didn’t want that life. I never loved another man after Gordon. In fact, I never even tried. Why should I drift from man to man when I had everything I wanted from a man in Gordon? In my heart, anyone else would have been nothing more than a stand-in, a pathetic attempt to recreate what I had for twenty-six years. I made a promise to love Gordon always and to be faithful to him until death, and that’s what I’ve done. I’ve kept my promise.

  Daddy died in Foley, Alabama in 1973. Our relationship was never what it should have been. He couldn’t undo everything I learned during the trial, and I couldn’t forget. He may have convinced a jury that he wasn’t guilty, but after all I learned during the trial and the years that followed, I couldn’t fully declare his innocence. We never could get back to the carefree summer days on the river near Barlow Bend. During the three years following Momma’s death, I learned too much about him to love him blindly as a daughter should love her father. I simply knew him too well.

  Aunt Mittie lived the rest of her life in the little farmhouse she shared with Uncle Melvin. She lived to the age of eighty, when in January 1980, Mittie Franklin passed away in Luverne, Alabama. Aunt Mittie may have lived her entire life in one county in rural Alabama, scrubbing out the stains from the laundry of generations in Luverne, but she believed I could achieve whatever I set my mind to. She also wanted me to expect more out
of my life. I may have only had a high school diploma and bounced from temporary home to temporary home throughout my time in school, but I wasn’t the trash some people may have thought me to be. Aunt Mittie taught me that I was something more and deserved more.

  A few months after Gordon died, I convinced my boss at Sears to promote me to a management position. I heard Mittie coaching me, “Stand up straight and look him in the eye. Speak firmly, but be respectful. Mind your manners.” My boss agreed to promote me to a part-time management position at the new Sears store on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay.

  The months and first few years following Gordon’s death were the hardest in my life, but I kept the lessons of my past close to me. I conducted myself with dignity, to avoid the trappings of John Howard. Sometimes, my grief was so thick that drowning in the bottom of a bottle was tempting, but I couldn’t let myself fall that far. Uncle John ended up in Bryce Mental Hospital to “dry out” for a while. After that, I don’t know what happened to him, and I really don’t care.

  I remember the love shown on Papa Lowman’s face when he testified at Daddy’s trial. He knew his daughter. He knew her strengths and failures and chose to love her unconditionally. I may not have always made the right decisions in my children’s minds, but I always loved my kids the best way I could. They may tell you that my judgments of their choices were sometimes harsh, but hopefully, they will also say my love for them was unconditional.