by Lynn Austin
My daddy was the kindest, gentlest man in the whole world and as happy-go-lucky as a circus clown. He would get right down on the floor and play with the boys and me, and we’d tickle each other and laugh until the tears ran. Daddy never lost his temper or spanked us, even when the boys deserved it, even when Daddy had been drinking. And he treated my mom like she was the queen of the world. Too bad he was away more often than he was home.
When I was old enough to ask Mom about his long absences, she told me that he was a long-distance truck driver. Later she changed her story and said he was a traveling salesman. I never asked what Daddy trucked or sold. My melancholy, Communist uncle lived with us whenever Daddy was away, staying with us for months at a time, so at least there was a man around the house.
Uncle Leonard was Mom’s older brother and Daddy’s best friend. He was very tall and stoop-shouldered with a droopy, bloodhound face and Brylcreemed black hair. He slept on our living room couch and stored his clothing in boxes stuffed behind it. He had hundreds of books, piled in stacks in every room of our house. The boys used them like bricks to build forts. Uncle Leonard spent his evenings sitting at our chrome dining table, scribbling manifestos on yellow, legal-size note pads. The stacks of his Communist rantings left no place for us to sit down and eat, but that didn’t matter; we never sat down for a meal anyway.
Our car belonged to Uncle Leonard and so did our TV, purchased secondhand, Mom said, so that he could watch the McCarthy hearings.
He watched the news every night, and I’m sure our neighbors two blocks away could hear Uncle Leonard arguing with Walter Cronkite. I’d learned to accept my uncle and his billowing cigars as part of the furnishings, but he made me mad that day when he put in his two-cents’worth about May Elizabeth’s birthday party.
“What about a present?” he asked. “A spoiled, bourgeois rich kid like her is going to expect a present—and a nice one, too.”
Daddy’s grin never wavered. “Then we’d better go shopping for one, right, Kathy?”
“Shopping!” Mom said with a huff. “You think the Hayworths are worth six more months, Donald?”
It seemed as though his smile faded slightly at her question, but he quickly recovered. “My Kathy is certainly worth it.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but a few days before the party, Daddy loaded Poke, JT, and me into Uncle Leonard’s decaying 1950 Ford sedan and took us shopping. Not at Brinkley’s Drugstore in downtown Riverside, mind you; we drove all the way to Bensenville to shop at Woolworth’s. Daddy carried JT in his arms as we perused the aisles, looking for something May Elizabeth would like. He had Annie’s misshapen diaper bag slung over his shoulder, which seemed a little odd seeing as Annie had stayed home and three-year-old JT didn’t wear diapers. Besides, Daddy never would have volunteered to change a diaper even if JT had worn one. But there wasn’t time to ask questions. I quickly became distracted by so many choices.
“I don’t know what to buy her,” I moaned.
“Well, you’re her best friend,” Daddy coached. “Just pick something you would like to have, and she’s sure to like it, too.”
There were lots of things I liked. Daddy watched me gaze at packages of hair barrettes, a magic slate that you could draw on then lift to erase, a plastic doll bottle that seemed to magically empty when you tilted it upside down, and so much more. Poke lingered near the Davy Crockett stuff: coonskin caps, rubber tomahawks, and plastic six-shooters with holsters. I finally decided on a box of Play-Doh in four different colors for May Elizabeth’s present.
Once I’d made up my mind, Daddy led us to the nickel-and-dime counter and told us we could each have a quarter to spend. “I need to look at something for your mother,” he said, setting JT down beside Poke and me. Daddy disappeared, leaving us to contemplate the colorful array of ten-cent toys.
There were so many to choose from! Of course my brothers wanted everything in sight. They didn’t understand the value of a quarter and kept reaching their grubby fists into the bins and pulling out items as if Daddy had told them to buy one of each thing. I was exhausted from tugging toys out of their hands and telling them that all the plastic whistles and rubber soldiers and toy cars they were trying to stuff into their pockets cost more money than they were allowed, then listening to them scream in protest. The storeowner hovered close to the three of us, and I saw sweat form on his brow as he tried to make sure that everything the boys stuffed into their pockets made it out again.
Finally my father reappeared and took over, helping JT choose a rubber snake and Poke a plastic dagger. I had settled on a pop-bead necklace. Daddy lifted JT up on the counter while he paid for our treats and for a box of dusting powder that he had chosen for Mom. We were back in the car and on our way home before I realized that we had forgotten the very thing we’d come for: May Elizabeth’s birthday present.
“Daddy, stop! We forgot the present! Go back! We have to go back!”
“I didn’t forget it, honey,” he said, laughing. “It’s right here in the bag.”
“Where? Which bag?” I peered over the front seat, searching frantically. The only thing in the Woolworth’s bag was Mom’s dusting powder.
I didn’t see a box of Play-Doh anywhere. “Where is it, Daddy? Where?”
“It’s right here. …” Daddy slowed the car down a bit, driving with one hand while he fished Annie’s diaper bag off the floor and set it on the seat. Sure enough, May Elizabeth’s present was inside—and also the magic drawing slate and the plastic doll bottle that I’d admired, and a coonskin cap for each of the boys. I also saw a bottle of cologne for Mom to go with the dusting powder, and a shiny three-piece screwdriver set that I figured Daddy had bought for himself.
“Are all of these things for us?” I asked in surprise.
“You bet they are. Why should that Hayworth kid be the only one who gets presents?”
It felt like Christmas as I gave the boys their new hats and sat back to draw on my magic slate. The boys took turns annoying me with their furry raccoon tails. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I began to wonder exactly when Daddy had paid for all of those surprises. He hadn’t put them on the counter when he’d stood in line at the cash register. And why had the clerk put everything in the diaper bag instead of in a Woolworth’s bag? I could have used some extra bags for my lunches.
I got such a funny feeling in my stomach the more I thought about it, that I finally had to go think about something else.
Chapter
6
C ompared to our house, the Hayworths lived in a mansion. Uncle Leonard drove me there on the day of May Elizabeth’s party, and he started shaking his gloomy head as soon as he turned the car into her long, curving driveway. “Do you know how many proletariat apartments could be carved out of that bourgeois palace?” he asked.
I didn’t wait for him to finish calculating. I gave the car door a slam— you had to or it wouldn’t stay closed—and ran up the steps to ring the doorbell. The first thing I noticed when Mrs. Hayworth invited me inside was that everyone was dressed in fancy clothes. I felt bedraggled. The other girls all wore crinkly crinolines under their party dresses and ribbons in their Shirley Temple curls. My mousy brown hair hung in limp strands, and I was the only one wearing sneakers instead of patent leather shoes. My gift, wrapped in cheesy, dime-store paper, looked forlorn beside all the others trimmed with glitter and curling ribbons and shiny bows. Several times I noticed the adults looking at me, and I knew they were whispering about me behind their hands.
The food was wonderful. Mr. Hayworth cooked hot dogs on his charcoal grill beside the swimming pool, and he let me eat as many as I wanted. I ate four, on squishy white buns with mustard, catsup, and relish. I ate potato salad that day for the first time in my life, and hard-boiled eggs that May said had been “deviled,” and a heavenly treat she called ambrosia salad. There was a towering mold of Jell-O in striped layers and Pepsi-Cola to drink. The cake came from a bakery and had huge icing flo
wers on it and ten candles for May to blow out. She gave everyone a goody bag full of candy and a brand-new Hula-Hoop to take home as a present.
The house was very modern and clean, with thick carpets and a sunken living room with Danish-modern furniture. The only other house I’d ever been inside was Charley Grout’s house, next door, so May’s house seemed like something from a dream or a TV show. She had her own bedroom with a canopy bed, a fluffy comforter, hundreds of stuffed animals, dozens of dolls. Even her bathroom was all ruffly and clean, with a shining turquoise sink and toilet, and a mosaic-tile floor that was so spotless you could have eaten off it. I peeked under the princess doll that was sitting on the toilet tank and saw that she hid an extra roll of toilet paper beneath her ruffled skirt.
Later we played games like pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs, but I didn’t win any prizes. I walked around in a daze all afternoon, the way Poke always did, just trying to take everything in. The party seemed to speed by so quickly that the next thing I knew, Mrs. Hayworth was driving me home.
“Would you like to come to Sunday school tomorrow with May Elizabeth and our family?” she asked as her Cadillac glided to a halt in front of my house.
“I guess so. …” That was my standard reply whenever I felt shy and didn’t know what else to say. Either that or “I don’t know…”
“Why don’t you ask your parents, okay? Sunday school starts at ninethirty. We’ll wait for you out front. You know where Park Street Church is, don’t you, honey?”
“Uh huh.” Mommy and Uncle Leonard would say that religion was a crutch for the weak-minded masses, but I really wanted to go. I wanted to be anywhere but home. “Thank you for inviting me to the party,” I remembered to say as I climbed from the car.
“You’re very welcome, honey. I hope you’ll come and visit us again.”
There is always a natural letdown whenever you return home from a party, but what I felt that afternoon when I walked up our sagging porch steps was much, much worse. I saw my house with new eyes and noticed for the first time how foul it smelled—like dirty diapers and too many cats. Our living room floors were made of bare plywood; the linoleum in the kitchen was stained and torn; the bathroom floor was rotting beneath our leaky toilet. All of our furniture sagged and reeked, and the picture on our black-and-white TV skipped so badly that you had to nod your head up and down like those dolls that ride in the rear windows of cars as you tried to watch a program. Our bedrooms didn’t even have beds, just mattresses on the floor. All four of us kids slept in the same room, Poke and JT on one mattress, Annie and me on the other.
When I walked through the front door that afternoon, Daddy lay sprawled on the couch, nodding his way through a World Series baseball game. He had the volume turned way up so he could hear it above the sound of Annie’s wailing. “How was the party?” he asked.
“Good.”
“Good? That’s all—just ‘good’? Did she like the present we got her?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I had fun,” I said without enthusiasm. “Look at all the stuff she gave me.”
I had the Hula-Hoop slung around my neck, and I was holding the goody bag high above my head to keep it away from my brothers. They could smell candy the way sharks scented blood, and they had moved in quickly for the kill, circling around me. I wished I had a secret hiding place where I could stash it. The boys were forever taking my stuff and ruining it. They’d already busted open my doll bottle to see how it worked and ripped the cellophane off my magic drawing slate so they could stick it on the TV screen and scribble over their favorite cartoons. My dolls had suffered so much abuse from Poke and JT that Betsy Wetsy looked more like a disaster victim than a baby. Barbie had barely survived her lobotomy before being scalped. If I didn’t eat all of my goody-bag candy before sundown today, I could kiss it good-bye.
“I’ll bet the Hayworths have a big house, huh?” Daddy asked. “And lots of fancy things, like a color TV?”
“Yeah. It’s really nice.” I sat down beside him on the couch, stuffing candy in my cheeks like a squirrel. He chased Poke and JT away and started asking me a lot more questions about the Hayworth home, ending with the unfathomable one: “Do they have a dog?”
I didn’t want to think about their house anymore, but Daddy seemed to be the only person who was interested in hearing about the party, so I snuggled up beside him, sharing all the details. I even dared to ask him if I could go to Sunday school with May Elizabeth and her family tomorrow.
“So they’re religious people, are they?” Daddy asked. “What church do they belong to? Do they all go, even Mr. Hayworth? Every Sunday?What time?”
He sounded so interested that I wondered if he wanted to come, too. His smile grew broader and broader as I answered all his questions. Then he hugged me and said, “Sure, honey. I think it would be a wonderful idea for you to go to Sunday school.” He turned off the TV and hurried next door to borrow the neighbors’telephone. We didn’t have a phone because Uncle Leonard didn’t want the FBI listening in on his conversations.
I felt weary from all the excitement of the party and nauseated from eating so much candy. I went to my room, still clutching my Hula-Hoop, wondering where on earth I could hide it. But when I saw my mustysmelling mattress that never seemed to have a sheet and remembered May Elizabeth’s puffy, canopied bed, I ran outside to the backyard and cried.
I walked to Park Street Church by myself the next day and stood out front for a long time watching for the Hayworth’s Cadillac. “Kathleen, you came,” May’s mother said when she spotted me. She sounded overjoyed. May Elizabeth seemed less than pleased as she looked me up and down. Her mother took my hand and led me inside as if I were part of the family. Sunday school was about to start.
Students from all grades met in a group in the church basement. We sang songs with a lot of hand motions, and the kids tossed quarters and dimes into an offering basket. When it was time to divide into smaller groups for our lesson, the room dissolved into chaos as kids scraped chairs across the cement floor and the teachers unfolded screens to make partitions.
“We’re in a class with the fourth through sixth graders,” May told me above the din. “We meet upstairs in the sanctuary.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. I thought of my mom’s sanctuary and knew I must have misunderstood. “What? The sanctuary?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Upstairs.”
I pictured everyone crowding inside a smelly old outhouse behind the church, and I backed away. “There’s no way I’m sitting in a sanctuary!” I said as I bolted toward the door. May ran after me.
“Wait… wait… where are you going?”
“Sanctuaries smell horrible, and they have spiders and flies.”
“What are you talking about? There aren’t any spiders. And it smells real nice. Come and see.”
I remembered how different my house was from May’s, and I thought maybe the rich people’s sanctuaries were nicer, too. I let her lead me upstairs. The church sanctuary was beautiful, with stained-glass windows and polished wood pews. It smelled like flowers and candle wax. I didn’t see any spiders—or any holes to pee in, either. But I was still confused by the word “sanctuary,” and for years I thought God had a pretty nice outhouse.
The lesson that first morning was about Jesus and the lepers. At first I thought the teacher was saying “leopards,” and I wondered how anyone dared leave home in Jesus’day with packs of wild cats wandering around.
Then the teacher explained that lepers were people who had a terrible disease that made their body parts turn rotten and fall off. This gruesome piece of news delighted all of the boys, and Ron Hayworth started to sing:
“Leprosy is crawling all over me. … There goes my eyeball into my highball. …”
The white-haired teacher, Miss Trimble, had to repeat, “Boys… boys…” over and over in her shaky voice until order was finally restored. When I learned about the fruit of the Spirit a few years later, I decided that Miss Trimb
le must have had patience the size of a watermelon.
When she finally managed to quiet everyone down, she explained that the disease was contagious and anyone who touched a leper was very likely to start losing a thumb or a nose, too. To avoid this disaster, the lepers had to stand at a distance and shout “Unclean… unclean!” so people would know to stay away from them.
“But Jesus walked right up to those lepers and touched them,” Miss Trimble told us happily. Ron and the other boys fell silent momentarily, impressed with Jesus’courage. Then the teacher told us that not only did all of Jesus’fingers and toes stay where they belonged, but the leprosy magically disappeared from the lepers’bodies when He touched them, just like the pictures on my magic drawing slate disappeared when I lifted the plastic.
I didn’t understand all the deep, spiritual principles the teacher was trying to make that first day, but I certainly understood that there were two very different classes of people involved—lepers and non-lepers. Uncle Leonard had drilled the truth about class distinctions into me ever since I was as small as Annie, and I knew that the ruling elite always picked on the underdogs—the lepers. When I looked at the Sunday school lesson in those terms, I liked Jesus. He was for the little guy—sort of a kindly, magical union negotiator.
The teacher gave each of us a colorful, eight-page newspaper to take home and reminded us not to forget our memory verse for next week. Then she prayed for us in her shaky voice and dismissed us. The moment she did, the boys turned their newspapers into airplanes and held a contest to see who could land theirs on the organ pipes first. May Elizabeth and I went out into the hallway, where Mr. and Mrs. Hayworth were waiting for us.
“Would you like to stay and go to church with us, Kathleen?” she asked.
The hallway and sanctuary were filling up with families, and I could see that, once again, I wasn’t dressed like everyone else. For one thing, every girl in sight had on black patent leather shoes shined with Vaseline, and I had on sneakers without any socks because I hadn’t been able to find any clean ones that morning. The ladies and girls all wore hats and white gloves, including May Elizabeth and her mother. It seemed to be required attire. One family with three daughters was wearing hats that resembled a set of dishes: the mother wore the dinner plate, the oldest daughter the soup bowl, the middle one the salad plate, and the youngest one the tea cup.