I felt sleep coming close. The longer I looked, the stranger the dark lines on the wall and ceiling seemed to me. It was as if they skittered across the roof beams and trailed down the walls toward the floor. I blinked, trying to clear away the discomfort I felt on seeing that movement, but it only made it clearer. It was as if the walls had legs, lots of legs!
Something large crawled out of a hole in the floor right beside my hand. It was an enormous, hairy black spider! I screamed and pushed myself away from the hole.
That’s when I noticed the others. Spiders were everywhere—on the walls, ceiling, floor—and they kept pouring into the shack from every direction. I jumped up, barely avoiding another one that was an inch from crawling onto my leg. I screamed again when I saw the red hourglass on the back of that spider. Black widows! Hundreds of them!
Mary Anne, either reacting to me or the spiders, joined in the screaming. She was latched onto my leg in a matter of seconds. I tried to get her loose, eyeing what looked like a big Missouri tarantula racing toward my feet.
I had one thought: Get up on that table! I lunged for one of the sturdy legs and yanked Mary Anne off the ground, pushing her up and climbing behind her. Nellie was already on top of the table and was screaming and dancing up and down, tears rolling down her face.
From up high, I could see just how bad it was. The spiders must have been hibernating in the cold, nesting in the floors, ceiling, and walls. They seemed to be drawn in by the heat and were coming in from every hole or opening in the cabin. Millie stood in place, jumping up and down and screaming like a wild woman. She snatched her son up and shook him in the air as if trying to shake unseen spiders from him. I saw one of them rising over the edge of the table. I kicked at it and sent the thing flying through the air.
As we screamed, Daddy grabbed an old rag of clothing, wrapped it around a log, and rushed to the fire. He set the edge aflame and whipped that torch back and forth like a sword, burning up spiders. When he whipped it toward the ceiling, spiders rained down on us. One landed on my head. I whipped my hair around like mad, screaming until it dropped off. Little Mary Anne was hysterical, but I was busy slapping spiders off the table—our only refuge in the house. The revulsion I felt was overwhelming, and I felt sick to my stomach from the fear. Time lost its meaning as we floated in a living nightmare that I thought I might never wake up from.
“They’re dead,” Daddy finally announced. But I did not believe him. I could still see spiders all over the floor, thousands of legs twitching.
“Get off the table, now,” he ordered.
We were all too afraid to move. I looked at Nellie and Mary Anne, not wanting to be the first one down.
“Get down from there,” he growled, this time angry.
There was no arguing. We were just as frightened of his anger as we were of the spiders. As I climbed down, I saw that the spiders that remained were all singed or stomped to death. The smell of burning hair filled the cabin. Daddy told us to get to sleep. He may as well have told me to sprout wings and fly. When I did close my eyes, all I could see were squirming, wriggling spiders. I sat up until dawn, that scent filling my nose and the nightmare etching an indelible fear into my mind.
Chapter 24
Mr. Spencer
I often wonder if the fear of spiders stuck with Nellie as it did with me. I am still deathly afraid of them. But Nellie was strong and tough, more like Daddy than any of us. Although he had us all cowed down, she had a shell around her, a hard determination that seemed to keep her from feeling too deeply. At least that is how she appeared to me. Memories of that night flooded my mind as I sat in my home, years later, with Wayne.
As if sensing my thoughts, Wayne came and sat beside me on the couch, wrapping an arm around me. He had continued a valiant search for my family members even as my relationship with Jimmy grew. I had been told that Nellie had died long ago. Wayne knew this but never believed it. He always told me that he felt in his heart that she was not dead.
One day early in the spring, a few months after we found Jimmy, Wayne came home with a phone number. It was for one of Nellie’s daughters. It took courage, but I dialed the number. Nellie’s daughter told me that my sister was very much alive and gave me her contact information. I reached out to her that same day. We spoke, and it was as though we had not missed a day. She was as easy to talk to as she’d ever been, and her voice even had the same sound as it had when we were kids. At the end of the conversation, I knew that all the pieces were coming together.
“We should plan a reunion,” I told her. “I’ve been talking with Brenda and Jimmy and our cousins. We could gather all our families together, meet again, and catch up on our lives.”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Nellie said.
I felt like a marathon runner who sees the finish line less than a mile away. My soul stirred at the thought. My family was finally going to come back together! Even through the elation, my mind wandered back to how it had all ended, how I had lost every one of them and had been left behind, the last of us to escape Daddy’s evil.
Needless to say, we stayed but one night in that spider-infested shack. Daddy moved us on from there, heading north. We did not stop until we reached Niles, Michigan. There Daddy met a farm owner named Mr. Spencer. That meeting became the fuse that started the final dismantling of what was left of my family. Mr. Spencer also saved my life.
Mr. Spencer owned a farm covering hundreds of acres. He grew apples, grapes, and blueberries, as well as many other crops. During the prime harvest season, he employed dozens of workers. They lived in the twenty or more small cabins that he built on his land. He cared about his workers and treated them with fairness and honesty.
He was in his late forties and had married late in life. His wife, Jackie, was only twenty-six, and she had already been married and had three children. She and Mr. Spencer had one son of their own, whom Mr. Spencer adored. Farming was Mr. Spencer’s life, and he was as childlike and trusting as a young boy. He often joked that before he’d met Jackie, his farmhands had been his family.
In addition to the smaller cabins, he built a nice little house that the foreman stayed in during the harvest. Thanks to Daddy’s special arrangements, it was ours! The foreman’s house had been neglected and needed much work, but it seemed a castle to me. It had three rooms aligned like train cars, including such luxuries as a small kitchen with a stove, a sink, and a table with chairs. It also had electricity and running water in the kitchen; a small pump was stationed at the sink. The kitchen door had a pane of glass that allowed the sunlight to brighten the room. I’d never been in a farm shack that let in so much light, especially one that had no holes in the walls. The middle room was used as the bedroom and opened into the front room with a solid door for the entrance.
It was such a nice place, compared to our usual living arrangements. At first, I thought we weren’t supposed to be there. When we pulled into the camp, I could not believe it when Daddy passed the small cramped cabins and stopped in front of this little house. I stood by the car and stared at the slightly sagging tin roof and the large front porch with its loose floorboards, and it looked amazing to me. With the grapevines that spread out from one side of the house and the woods that shaded the other, it all looked so much like a home that it was hard to imagine being allowed to live there.
I was told to help carry our belongings inside, and the sense of being an intruder lessened. It felt good to be a part of a real house with electricity and even a stove that looked like what other people used to cook. At fourteen, I was beginning to notice things like that more often.
Daddy gathered Millie, Nellie, and me into a group.
“Mr. Spencer made an arrangement with me. We can stay here through the winter, in the foreman’s house, if we help take care of the grapevines and I fix the place up. Don’t you think you’re gonna be shirking your work, you hear?”
After the shack with the spiders, this house was like heaven, and I was grateful to b
e allowed to stay. I had no argument with cutting back the grapevines and doing anything I could do in order to live in such a clean house with real furniture.
Not only did Mr. Spencer let us live in the foreman’s house, but he also paid Daddy a salary for the work he did. For the first time that winter, we were warm and not as terribly hungry as we had been. Unfortunately, the extra money also gave Daddy the opportunity to take up his drinking again. We settled into the typical dance: him getting drunk, and me doing everything I could to avoid him and protect Mary Anne.
Mr. Spencer lived a few miles down the road from our new home. His two-story farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel drive. He lived there with Jackie and their four children, who were all much younger than me. I found myself over at their house helping with the children and housework on occasion, and I got to know them pretty well. I especially liked Jackie, who insisted we call her by her first name. Right away I realized they were different than most folks we’d come across in our travels. Jackie was very generous, and Mr. Spencer was eager to make our lives comfortable, offering an extra heater or a day off if the weather was very cold.
I escaped our home often, trying to avoid the fights between Daddy and Millie. They were getting more violent, and I did not have the heart to see Mary Anne watch her mother suffer more abuse. She was little, and she had been so bubbly and sweet when we met her. I could see her personality changing right before my eyes. She was broken, and she flinched whenever anyone came near. She never spoke unless we were alone. It hurt to see what Daddy had done, and I often wondered what would become of her.
Strangely, as the abuse continued, Millie seemed to grow closer to Daddy. I noticed that a change had come over her one night while Daddy was out drinking. She spoke to me and Nellie.
“You two are getting older.”
Nellie nodded, and I just listened while playing paper dolls with Mary Anne on the floor. I noticed she was paying attention, too, and I remember thinking she looked worried. I had become to her what Brenda had been to me, and I knew I was oftentimes the only buffer to keep her from harm.
“You know,” Millie said, “it’s about time for you girls to head out on your own. I think you’re both old enough to make it alone.”
Nellie sat still, silently nodding her head in agreement. I just listened as she continued.
“I think things would get better between Broadus and me, and Mary Anne, too, if you went on your way.”
I looked at Mary Anne to see what she thought. She acted as if she hadn’t heard her, but I could see she had and didn’t like the idea.
Nellie sat at the table. She did not look up. Instead, she scratched a fingernail along the tabletop.
“He won’t just let us go, you know.”
“You could run off. You’re old enough to make it on your own now.”
“I could,” Nellie said, still not looking at any of us. “I could start a new life. Get a job and take care of myself. He can’t stop me.”
“No, he can’t,” Millie agreed.
Later that night, Nellie and I lay in the darkness, trying to sleep. Nellie started whispering to me, and I noticed right away that her voice sounded different.
“I think I’d get a job in town somewhere. Maybe at a movie theater dishing out popcorn. Or at a place ladies go to get their hair fixed. I’d be good at that.”
I sat quietly, my stomach turning. With each word she said, I grew more and more afraid. I pictured Daddy storming into the room, grabbing us both by the neck and squeezing the life out of us. I think he might have done it, too, if he heard Nellie talking like that. We had lived under a mountain of fear for so long that I could not believe that Nellie had climbed so high as to actually think about trying to run away. Nellie was sixteen at the time, and I was fourteen.
She is much stronger than me, I thought. At least she can dream about it.
As the weeks passed, though, her stories got more frequent and more detailed. Even I could sense that they weren’t just words anymore. She was planning her escape! At the same time, Millie found a way to get us out of the house at least some of the time. She lined us up to babysit for the Spencers’ children. We loved it, and it gave Millie time alone with Daddy.
Jackie was a good mother and fun-loving young woman. She didn’t seem all that much older than Brenda was when she left. Nellie and I quickly took to her, and Jackie returned the feeling. I loved going up to the house right from the start.
“How is life in your house?” she asked us one of the first nights we went up to sit for her kids.
“Good,” Nellie said.
Jackie looked at us for a long minute. I fidgeted in my chair and Nellie gave me a warning look.
“Are you mistreated?”
Nellie shook her head. I did too. I remember being a little bit surprised by that. The fear had not totally left Nellie yet. She would still not confirm Jackie’s suspicions.
Jackie sat with watchful eyes, gauging our reactions. With a slight shake of the head, she smiled.
“Come on in the back room. I have some clothes I want you to try on.”
She took us to her room and pulled a handful of blouses and dresses out of the closet. She held a few up, measuring them by sight.
“Frances, you try this one.”
She handed me a dress. My fingers touched the fabric; it was cotton, and it felt so clean and smooth. My heart ached for the time we’d spent at Connie Maxwell. I pressed the dress against my face, smelling the fresh fabric, and I cradled it tenderly.
“Here you go, Nellie.”
She handed my sister a blouse. Nellie’s eyes lit up. There was no sadness there, only a kind of fiery determination. We changed right there on the spot. It felt so good to be wearing something ironed and clean.
The work we did for Jackie, cleaning and cooking and tending the children, felt like a vacation to me. She played music on the radio all day, and I memorized every song as I ironed her clothes, washed dishes, and made the beds. Before we left that day, she gave us a small cardboard box with a few pretty dresses for each of us. She gave Nellie a pair of shoes!
When we arrived home, Daddy was there. It had been too cold to work the grapevines, so he spent the day fixing up the house. He was kneeling on the floor in the front room, hammering in a loose floorboard, when we came through the door.
“Where’d you get those clothes?”
Nellie answered without hesitation. “Mrs. Spencer made us wear ’em while we were in her house.”
“She think she’s better’n us,” he cursed, returning to his work. “What did you do, sit around and talk all day?”
“No, sir,” I said. “She had us working hard up at the house.”
“They better pay me for that.”
Truth be told, it was barely work with Jackie. Often, her sister Sandra would come by, and we’d visit all day, playing with the children and eating fresh-baked cookies. Jackie must have known the truth about our lives because she went out of her way to make us feel safe and happy. She often tried to get us to admit how bad it was, but Nellie never let on, at least not in front of me.
I especially enjoyed the radio. I loved hearing music so much and never tired of it, even if the same songs played over and over again. While I went about my work, I would sing along. It was such a wonderful place.
I was happy, and Daddy started to notice it. He became suspicious of what we did all day that made me so happy. I knew that the music was part of the reason I was so joyful, but I dared not tell him. He questioned us every night. We tried to make it sound like hard work, but his questions became more and more pointed.
One night, I stepped into the house humming a song I’d heard that day on the radio. Daddy was there. He pounced.
“Where’d you hear that song?!”
I froze, my throat tightening up. I shrugged and lowered my eyes.
“I think Mrs. Spencer was listening to music with her sister while we was working hard,” Nellie said. “Frances musta overheard i
t.”
“You been talking to that woman?” he asked for the hundredth time.
“No,” Nellie said.
I glanced at her and noticed something odd. She had changed somehow. When she said no, she had her arms crossed and she looked him straight in the eye. Her feet were planted, and she did not sound timid at all. She was sixteen now, and I saw a flash of the adult she was to become.
Daddy eyed her up and down. It was like lightning crossing between them.
“I wonder,” he said.
Nellie finally flinched. Her eyes lowered, and a dark, evil smirk crossed Daddy’s face.
Not long after that night, Daddy found a way to steal our joy again. We woke up early in the morning, excitedly expecting to go clean house, babysit, and get away from Daddy’s iron fist. He watched us get dressed and brush our hair. As we started toward the door, he stood up and barred the way.
“You’re not going over there anymore.”
He seemed to gain strength from our disappointment. The look on his face was one of pure joy, and my heart sank. I walked away from the door and he followed.
“You won’t be goin’ up there again,” he said. “That woman don’t want you up at her house no more.”
I was devastated. Jackie had returned some light to my life. Daddy knew that, no matter how we tried to hide it from him.
“What?!” Nellie said.
She was still standing by the door. I was shocked by her reaction. I looked at her, willing her with everything I had to stay quiet. Daddy looked as surprised as I did.
“You ain’t goin’ up there no more. And if you don’t shut your mouth, you’re not gonna be able to shut it.”
“Jackie never said that,” Nellie snapped right back at him.
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