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PatchWork |
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PatchWork |
Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
Running Away From Home
At first I thought I’d just eat flies. There were several dozen buzzing my naked legs in the warmth of that September morning. Everytime I got close to that idea, I knew I could never go through with it. I knew that flies were nasty, hatching out in manure piles around the farm. There was no doubt that a mouthful would be sure poison but the thought of them being chewed up and swallowed was just too much for me to stand.
Sitting
there, gloomy, mistreated, indulging in self-pity, I decided that I’d just
have to run away from home. There just wasn’t anything else to do.
When your own mother turns her back on you and you are only five years
old, you just have to show somebody, anybody,
that you are important, that you count for something.
I
picked up the red bandanna, knotted the corners together just like I’d seen in
the comic strips and tied it to a short stick I’d found in the woodpile. I had
two biscuits spit open with a piece of ham inside each and and I guess that
would last me until I got to the orphan’s home.
I
had no idea where that place might be but I had heard enough about it to know
that they took care of children whose parents had died or didn’t want them
anymore. My parents weren’t dead
but it was clear to me that they didn’t want me.
They probably never had wanted me for that matter, coming along so far
behind my sisters and my brother. They
all bossed me around, telling me what to do all the time and I was just tired of
it. I had to run away and live
somewhere else.
“Shoot”,
I said out loud to the flies circling my ears, “My own sister doesn’t even
want me to help with her shower.”
There
was going to be a shower that night for June and her soon-to-be husband.
Everybody was going over to the schoolhouse later to decorate for the
party. Mama was awful busy smearing
white icing on a white cake and she just shoved me out of the kitchen when I
came inside, letting the screen door bang.
“Mama,”
I told her, “I want to help you fix that cake.”
She gave me a look that Dad called her “black look” and just melted
me out the door. Nobody paid any
attention at all to me and so I decided right that minute that I’d go eat some
flies and then of course I’d die after that.
Then they would all feel sorry that they had been mean to me.
I
thought about the funeral that they’d have for me and how Brother Barnett
would stand up there, white shirt, dark suit, sweat poppin’ out across his
forehead, and he’d say that this pore little girl never had nobody to play
with and finally her own mama and sister talked mean to her and so she just went
out and ate flies until she died.
His
voice would get all soft and teary and he’d tell about how much that little
girl (me) loved her family and how hard she tried to do right and to help but
they just pushed her away until her little heart just broke.
About then I started to cry remembering how it was to play in the willow
trees out behind the smokehouse, and make playhouses under that giant
cottonwood. I guessed they’d give my little red coaster wagon and my
tricycle to some other little kid and then they’d let my brother take my doll,
Josephine to school at Christmas time to give to some poor little orphan.
The
tears were coming pretty fast now when I remembered that I was soon to be an
orphan myself. My brother’s dog,
Beaver was trailing along with me, trying to show that he loved me so I stopped
and grabbed him around the neck and cried and cried for the good old days when I
was just four.
When
I got to the mailbox, I sat down to rest for a minute and eat one of my mama’s
biscuits. The ham inside reminded
me of the great time I had last year at hog-killing when all the neighbors
coming in to help scald, scrape, and cut up four big hogs in the pen out beside
the barn. Beaver sat down beside me
and stared at every bit that I took so I tossed him the other ham filled
biscuit.
As
I stood up, I saw a big cloud of dust coming down the main road from over toward
Medicine Mounds. As the dust cloud
got closer, I saw that it was caused by my sister, Audrey’s Model A Ford, the
one with a rumble seat. Her husband, Calvin was in the front seat with her and they
pulled over to my side of road.
“What
are you doing way off up here by the mailbox?” Audrey asked.
“Oh,
Beaver and me were coming to meet you,” I smiled and said.
“Well,
get in the rumble seat then and we’ll go to the house.”
I
climbed up on the fender and settled myself on the red leather seat while Beaver
stood in the road wagging his tail. I
clapped my hands and he jumped up in the seat and sat beside me.
Audrey
stepped on the gas.
As
the car raced down the dusty road, I leaned over,
grabbed my dog around the neck and whispered in his ear, “Well, I
believe I’ll go back and give them just one more chance to treat me right.”