“I’ll tell him. If you kill him, I’ll tell him. I will!”
Mama saw how scared I was. Brenda did not seem to want to say anything. Mama sighed deeply and pulled me to her side. She looked very serious as she spoke to me.
“We were just playing, Frances. Just talking. That’s all. Go back to bed and I promise you nothing is gonna happen to anybody.”
I wanted to believe her, so it did not take much more convincing than that. I inched closer to Mama and she held me in her arms. She pulled me down and I snuggled into her lap, my fingers finding a rough fold of her cotton dress. I patted it as my heartbeat gradually slowed back to normal. All the while, Brenda did not say a word. After a while Mama carried me back to the room we slept in and laid me on the bed, tucking me under the blanket next to my sisters and Robbie.
My mama patted my head and softly started to tell me a story. It was the Indian princess and the frog, and it brought back the night we had danced around the shack. I fell asleep feeling a little better. I do not know how long I slept, but my eyes shot open when the front door opened and Daddy’s curses filled the cabin. As I often did, I reached out for Brenda where she usually slept beside me. She was not there.
As my hand darted about looking for my sister, Mama screamed. I heard the thud and groan of Daddy striking her. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried my hardest to pretend it was all a bad dream. The cursing and the pounding continued, and Susie’s hand found mine under the covers. Robbie crawled up quickly from the foot of the quilt and wrapped both of his little arms around my waist. He nearly squeezed the breath out of me but I hardly noticed in my fear. We were all afraid to move or speak.
The beating was worse than ever before. It went on and on until I thought I’d get physically sick. I tried to blot out Mama’s screams and his maniacal curses and accusations.
“Please Broadus, stop, please,” she pleaded, but soon her words were silenced, and I heard her body fall to the floor. I shook and cried until my tears dried up, but my body was racked with sobs.
I prayed. I screamed inside my head. I poured out my grief and fear until the cabin fell silent. The final prayer on my lips before I fell into a fitful sleep was, “Please let me escape the ugliness and horror and see something pretty in this life. Please take care of my mama.”
The next morning I awoke to find Daddy and Brenda packing up our meager belongings and placing them in the old car he’d swindled away from someone. We were moving again, going to another camp. Mama was too weak to even get up out of her bed. To my surprise, Daddy let her be. He must have known that he’d broken her ribs and her nose, which was swollen and slanted to one side. I could not stop staring at her as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
As was often the case, she needed medical attention but would not receive it. He would make her prove her loyalty before taking her to the hospital; he waited until he was satisfied that she would not turn him in to the authorities. So she traveled in pain. The cotton had been picked, and Daddy was on the hunt for more work. After several weeks Mama had recovered enough to be alert, I overheard her mention our Uncle Mose.
We were headed toward Greenville, South Carolina. When I found out we were actually going to Uncle Mose’s house, I was elated. Uncle Mose was Daddy’s brother. He was the complete opposite of Daddy. None of his brothers were mean like he was. My Uncle Mose was a kind man, large and quiet with the air of someone who understood the land and farming in a way that had been lost a century before. As we parked the car and walked nearer to his house, we could not hide our excitement. I skipped down the sidewalk, and even Brenda’s gaze lifted from the ground. She did not smile, though.
Daddy swung at me, landing a blow to my shoulder. I stumbled but kept my feet. He looked around to see if anyone was in their yard, watching us. He saw no one.
“Stop running and wait for me, Frances. And understand this.” Daddy gripped Mama by the arm. His blue eyes burned like fire. “If any one of you says anything while we are there, I will kill you.”
I could see his knuckles turning white as he squeezed her. She whimpered but then went silent. I looked up at her face. Her pretty features were drawn thin. I wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her, but I could feel Daddy’s eyes on me and cowered away.
We walked the last hundred yards in silence. Uncle Mose came outside. When Daddy saw him, he strode forward, a charming smile splitting his face.
“How are you, brother?” he said, extending a hand in greeting.
Uncle Mose nodded. “Good. You?”
Even at five I could sense the suspicion behind my uncle’s tone. He glanced at Mama, who just stared at the ground. Uncle Mose knew something about my daddy that I did not. The two had been in Civilian Conservation Corps camp together when they were young men. The program, called CCC for short, began in 1933 as part of the New Deal, set up by President Roosevelt to create jobs. Young men could join and the government would put them to work planting trees and creating parks and wildlife refuges.
One day, my uncle saw my daddy get in a fight with a man at the camp. It was a vicious battle, and the other man got Daddy to the ground. Grabbing him by the hair, he slammed Daddy’s head into the concrete over and over again. When the other man walked away, my daddy’s head was busted open. My uncle swore he saw pieces of Daddy’s brain on the sidewalk.
I don’t tell this story as an excuse for my daddy’s behavior and temperament. My uncle, though, thought his brother was a different man before that day. Maybe something happened to his head that caused him to change. Maybe the evil inside Daddy had been there all along. I’ll never know.
“We won’t be a bother, Mose,” my daddy said as my uncle looked him over. “Just looking for a better car, and then we’ll be off. I have a job lined up in Oklahoma. Good one too.”
“Mmm hmm,” my uncle said.
At that point my cousin Jimmy appeared; at least I thought he was my cousin. I would learn much later that he was actually my brother, and he would go on to play a large part in my search to reunite my family later in life. In truth, my daddy had sold him to my aunt and uncle for five dollars, recorded in the courthouse in Greenville, South Carolina, with a bill of sale. He forced Mama to sell baby Jimmy because he believed she had been unfaithful and Jimmy was not his child. Daddy’s belief was totally unfounded. Mama was never allowed to go anyplace alone, much less consort with other men, but when Daddy got something in his head, there was no changing his mind. I remember noticing how Mama almost touched Jimmy on occasion, but only now can I begin to understand her loss. It reminded me of a story in the Bible when Moses’ mother was forced to give her son away to save his life. I realize now that my mama went along with daddy to save Jimmy. With my uncle, he would be safe and have a life apart from her sad one.
At Uncle Mose’s house, the adults faded into the background for me. I became a kid again, playing and laughing in the yard with the boy I didn’t realize was my older brother. This was a rare taste of freedom, to run and play without fear. On top of that, my uncle’s wife, Gracie, cooked us all dinner. In the largest cast-iron skillet I’d ever seen, she would fry Irish potatoes and serve us pinto beans with ham hocks boiled in a two-gallon pot. I can still taste her cornbread, baked in another cast-iron skillet until it was golden brown. And I can remember Mama watching us eat and play with a smile on her face when Daddy was out of the house for a while. Life at my uncle’s house must have been what a normal life was like for a child my age. But I didn’t know what normal meant.
We slept in a bed with sheets and took warm baths in a big claw-footed tub when we visited my uncle’s house. We had hot meals and ate twice a day. Playtime was all day, and my daddy never dared touch Mama in anger. I wished it could last forever.
Then daddy bought another car. It was a jalopy that seemed to be held together by chicken wire and clothespins. Daddy was good with his hands, and all throughout my childhood, he kept sputtering old wrecks running by what seemed like sheer force of will—until he could sell it to some poor
unsuspecting soul and buy another one.
In the late 1950s, you could shake a man’s hand and it was like signing a contract. Most people were honest; nobody locked their doors back then. Daddy gave a local used car dealer the money we had earned from working on the farm for several weeks as a down payment, but when the next payment came due, we were hundreds of miles away. He did this often. Making out his own bill of sale, he would then trade the car he had for a less expensive one, a deal the owner of the car lot was eager to seal. Once he got the title to the older car, he’d promise to send his title the following week to the dealer for the one he “owned.” Of course he never did.
My dad felt he needed a different car. The car we arrived in had blown a head gasket the day we reached South Carolina, and traveling by train was getting harder to do without someone seeing us. He could not let us get caught. He knew if the train conductors saw us riding in a boxcar, they might merely throw us off, but they could also call the sheriff. Daddy could not allow that. Even then before his arrest, I could sense his fear of the police. It seemed strange to me that a man who could be so mean, a man who would not hesitate to fight another man twice his size, would show any fear. But he did, and it was a fear that followed him throughout his life. His terrifying demeanor changed at even the mention of the police. I found out later that he had been locked up and the arresting officer had beaten him severely with a billy club to the point he had to be hospitalized. That may have been why he feared the police the way he did.
When Daddy showed up with that rattletrap car, we had to pack in like a bunch of sardines and go to our next destination. It tore at my five-year-old heart to have to leave. I wanted more than anything to stay and share the life of my lost brother.
As soon as our car pulled out of my uncle’s driveway and out of sight, Daddy’s hand shot out, slamming into the side of my mother’s face without warning.
“You tramp!” my Dad screamed.
We all sat in the backseat afraid to move, knowing what was coming. Drops of deep red blood ran down Mama’s chin. She reached up to dab at her face and he slapped her again.
“Don’t even move, you witch!” He ordered. “I ought to kill you for flirting with my brother like some floozy!” Mama was crying, trying to choke back the sobs. “As soon as I find a place to pull this car over I’m gonna teach you to show me proper respect.”
Mama said not a word. Her hair hung in her eyes, but she did not make a move to brush it away. It was as if she was trying to wish away the words and the anger—and what she knew was coming next.
“I should have never taken you from your slack-jawed parents. Nobody else would have you. Now look what I got.”
I could see his leathery neck and his cheek full of stubble. His skin turned redder and redder as his voice rose.
“You’re no woman. I seen how you strutted around in front of my brother. Crossing your legs so he could see up your dress. You wanted to make a fool out of me, didn’t you?”
Mama tried one time to deflect the words Daddy was using against her. As usual, he was working himself up into a lather that would soon turn into a rage. Her efforts to change the subject only made him worse.
“Broadus,” she said. “Look at that mountain. I ain’t seen nothing so pretty, have you?”
“Shut your mouth, you pig! I’ll tell you when you can speak! I’m gonna show you, and this time you’re gonna learn to keep your snaggletooth mouth shut!”
“Honey.” She tried again to get his attention off of her. “Did you see those deer over by that oak we just passed? They weren’t near as big as the one you and Mose shot and skinned. You sure do know how to fix deer meat.”
Daddy ignored her attempt, instead cursing her until he was sweating and his hands were shaking from anger. He drove faster and faster. I prayed, Dear God, please let a policeman come by and save Mama.
He cursed and threatened and howled the most awful words at her, but she did not flinch. Daddy pounded the steering wheel with his fist, accusing Mama with obscene lies he made up in his head. Suddenly and without warning, the car came to a screeching halt on the side of the road. Daddy burst out of his door and stormed around the front of the hood.
Mama mewed down deep in her throat, a sound like nothing I had ever heard. She softly cried, “No, Broadus, please don’t hit me.” Then her door was ripped open. Daddy’s large hand reached into the car and his fingers latched into Mama’s hair. He dragged her out onto the grassy bank by the road. All the while, he was screaming those awful words and spitting out cusses at her.
At first, I just sat there, terrified to move, as Daddy literally dragged Mama up the bank and toward a line of trees a few hundred feet from the road. Mama tried to walk, but he yanked her along so fast that she could not stay on her feet. She lost her shoes, but he kept dragging her and hitting her in the head with his fist. She was a small, frail woman, beautiful with long dark hair and a dimple in her chin like mine. She pleaded with him, but you could see that Daddy could not wait to get her in those woods.
Once they were out of sight, the bloodcurdling screaming started. It sounded as though Mama was going to die. I slid off the backseat onto the floorboard. I lay facedown, pressing my hands to my ears as hard as I could. No matter how hard I squeezed, I could not block out the sounds of Mama’s pleading. I wished it could be me. In my heart, I would gladly have taken the beating for her.
Mama was a ray of light. When Daddy wasn’t around, she was lots of fun, and she told me fairy tales every night except the times when he had beat her up so bad that she couldn’t talk. She taught me to say my nighttime prayers when I first began to speak. I don’t ever remember Mama being anything but kind to me, and I loved her dearly.
When Daddy hurt her, it felt as though a part of me would die. Sometimes she would have to go to the hospital to get her ribs set or stitches in a cut that would not stop bleeding on its own. He would buy her candy as an offering to keep her from telling the doctors how she got hurt. It was always chocolate-covered cherries—her favorite. He would force her to eat his guilt offering before allowing her to get medical treatment. It made me physically sick to see how bad she hurt, her mouth swollen and bleeding, and yet knowing she couldn’t get medical treatment until she ate his candy.
I made a vow, lying on the floorboard in the car that day, that I would take my mama far away, and we would live in a beautiful house like in one of her fairy tales. I would not let anybody ever hurt her again.
Time stretched out. The beating went on longer than such a thing seemed possible. Then, finally, the woods went silent. The car was quiet. I remember being thankful the screaming stopped, but as the seconds went by, my relief was replaced by fear. It was one of the first times I thought that Mama might be dead. It was too quiet.
Daddy walked out of the woods first. His pace had slowed and his face was no longer red. He looked like a man who had just come back from working hard out in the fields. There was blood on the back of his hands. Mama eventually struggled out of the trees. One of her eyes was swollen closed and blood dripped onto the front of her dress from a slashing cut that ran across her chin. I learned later that he had taken out his knife and cut where her dimple had been.
By the next morning I knew something was different about that beating Mama endured. When I saw Daddy, I noticed right away that it must have been worse than most. He was doting on her, touching her hair and laughing like they were newly in love. He piled us into the car. I was afraid at first to get in, but he put his hand on my back and pushed me toward the door. I was confused, and his kindness to Mama did nothing to soften the fear. In fact, it made the feeling more ominous.
We drove for miles that morning and all through the night. We rode in silence, every one of us afraid to speak. Mama slept with her head against the passenger-side window, and we only stopped for gas. I assumed we were on the run again, but early the next morning he pulled onto a tree-lined road. I saw a sign but did not recognize it for what it was—the entranc
e to a park. I leaned forward, gripping Susie’s hand as I pressed my nose against the window.
What I saw that day was beauty that only God could create. I had prayed for peace and to escape ugliness and horrors of this migrant life, and God showed me beauty beyond my imagination! I had no idea we were in California, so I didn’t know the giant trees surrounding our car were redwoods. At the park’s entrance, my heart nearly stopped. We were approaching the biggest tree I had ever seen with a hole through its base, and I could hardly breathe as we drove right through the middle of it! The sight was astonishing to me—trees so wide and tall that I thought they might swallow the car. Lush green ferns covered the ground between the trunks like the rolling surf of a green ocean. A light fog hung just above the leaves like the whitecaps of breaking waves.
Daddy pulled off at one of the open picnic areas.
“Wilma.” He nudged Mama. “You feel like going for a walk?”
Her eyes wide, Mama got out of the car in awe of her surroundings. He had bought her another box of chocolate-covered cherries, and she clutched it to her chest like a security blanket. The scarlet of the box matched the angry wound on her chin. I think he was afraid Mama might actually die from the beating he’d given her, and that he would end up in prison for it.
“You kids go play in the park for a while,” he ordered. “I’ll blow the horn when it’s time for you to come back.”
We all looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Wide-mouthed, we watched as he led her into the woods. Mama shuffled along behind him as if she were half asleep.
For a few moments I sat in the car, watching the spot where my parents had disappeared around the bend of a path. I think we all knew what was happening. Daddy did it all the time. He would beat Mama so bad, and then buy her a cheap box of chocolates. He knew he had gone too far the night before and he was trying to make sure she did not turn him in. It worked too.
Eventually, my sisters got out of the car. One by one, they wandered off as if lost in the fog. My little brother glanced at me, but then hurried to join them. I was left alone among those mammoth trees. For some reason, I could not move at first. Instead, I watched the path, hoping to see Mama reappear. I was afraid that maybe Daddy would beat her up again in those woods and I’d never see her again.
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