Uncle Ernest and Aunt Doreen were living in a town near Fresno called Clovis and there we headed. It wasn’t a long trip, but it was hot, the car kept overheating on the San Luis Obispo mountain roads as we headed inland toward Bakersfield and up through the San Joaquin Valley to Clovis. Mom was frequently carsick which had me hysterical with concern. We were, as usual, saving money on motor-courts and made the two-hundred miles or so in one nerve-wracking haul. When we arrived on our relatives’ front porch at midnight, we looked like the sort of relatives that relatives are reluctant to claim.
We were back in comfort—always somebody else’s—for a few days. A refrigerator! Gas cooking stove! Bathroom taps that actually produced what they advertised. The flood waters of the Nile filled, foamed and flushed the toilet. A separate dining room with a real heirloom table and chairs. Velvet—not cut—covered furniture in a softly lighted living room. Right out of Ladies’ Home Journal.
So we shouldn’t possibly get spoiled by all that luxury, Dad found a stop-gap job—Friant Dam was there, but Dad had to wait for it—on a farm just outside town. The job provided housing of sorts and a minimal wage for taking care of several acres of grape vines. Wine grapes.
Our housing was in or rather part of the house of Dad’s new bosses, B. V. Hollings and Son and consisted of a kitchen on the slanting floor of a screened-in front porch, the living room (just big enough for Mom and Dad’s double bed, a table and some chairs), and a closet-like room deemed a bedroom simply by calling it one which Junior and I shared. Alligator Ranch had been a mansion by comparison.
I was enrolled in the seventh grade of Clovis Grammar School, one block from Uncle Ernest’s house which I tried not to look at from the school yard, and Junior was a freshman at the local high school several blocks away. Here the Junior High school system didn’t apply, it was a standard four-year school. School started almost as soon as we were settled in at B. V. Hollings and Son (Ranch). Ranch was added like that in parenthesis, as an afterthought on the mailbox in front of the cluster of dilapidated buildings. One of which was our outdoor toilet, a fly-blown horror that spelled instant constipation until Mom and I whitewashed it inside and out and covered the offending contents with many layers of ashes.
B. V. Hollings turned out to be a woman. Well, she said she was. Her only concession to femininity was to wear dresses. Her son was definitely her son and she was as proud of him as if he’d been normal. He was a case-book moron, but had the good grace to be mute and didn’t make any pathetic drooling moronic sounds. This was a mixed blessing because he was sly and cunning and was always where you’d least expect to find him. Within days we were all tiptoeing around, peeking behind doors, around corners, even under beds to make sure Syl wasn’t there. I thought at first Syl was short for Silly, but it turned out to be Sylvester.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Hollings cackled, “Sylvester Reginald Hollings. Used to be Hollings-head but we was decapitated.” She screeched with manic laughter. “Old family joke. Old English name.” She winked and nudged Mom with an elbow dangerously close to her mountainous middle. Since she came up just below Mom’s shoulder, it was difficult for her to make any gesture without inflicting grievous bodily harm. She was as awkward as Sylvester was stealthy and I was constantly insinuating myself between her and the new baby Woods. “Hey, you didn’t start out with that old English name, Woodcock, and have your cock cut off, did you?” she asked Dad innocently.
“As far as I know,” Dad said, trying to keep a straight face, “it was just plain Woods. We never had a cock.”
“Don’t know why people change their names. It was that crazy husband of mine. Ought to a chopped his own head off. That’d been a right smart better.” She screeched again. “It’s my family that had the names. I’ve got one that there ain’t nobody can guess. Can you? Can you guess what B. V. stands for?” Her little eyes became slits as she glanced from one to the other of us. “Hah! Thought not! Won’t tell you, neither. Won’t tell nobody. Put an ad in the paper once—the Fresno Bee—said I’d pay anybody a hundert dollars if they could guess my name. Whoooeee, you shoulda’ seen what I got in the mail! I mean, letters by the thousands, didn’t I, Syl?” she poked him on the shoulder which caused his eyelids to droop lower, “and the things they wrote! Why things you couldn’t even find in the dictionary. Some was outright nasty. You wouldn’t believe what people’ll do.” She nudged Syl, “Come on, son, let’s get them geese and ducks in.”
“Looney as a birddog,” Dad said, shaking his head. “But she knows how to grow grapes. She’s got quite a harvest out there.”
Chapter Eleven
DISCOVERING YET ANOTHER BIRTH DEFECT—the moron (the mere idea of having a Sylvester in the family was more than I could cope with)—sent me straight into the arms of the nearest Baptist Church. I needed more spiritual strength than I could muster up on my own to carry this new load of worry about the baby.
Once involved, I became a very active member of the First Baptist Church. I’d stuck firmly to my sacred vow with God and thought if I was in the house of God as much as possible, He might take a bit more notice of me and keep His side of the bargain. Time was drawing near. Mom said toward the end of October or mid-November at the latest and Halloween had come and gone and no baby. Mom didn’t walk now so much as waddle. She’d sit with her legs wide apart and lean back in her chair holding onto her enormous stomach and sigh, “Oooh, dear. If I could just get a good deep breath.” All this to make us laugh. “And I swear I’ve carried this child for a year. If the stork doesn’t come soon, I’m going to send him an urgent telegram.”
I did feel closer to God in the church. Each time the preacher said, “Let us pray,” I’d start in a monologue on that same obsessive subject—we’d long ago dropped that “thee” and “thou” routine, or at least I had and I talked directly to Him as the only friend I could discuss this problem with, as indeed He was. “I’m still keeping my promise to you, but you know that (you’re watching all the time—I wouldn’t dare), and don’t know what else I can do to make further sacrifices, but I would … I haven’t had a bite of candy in … oh, heavens, I don’t know how long. I’ve not fussed with Junior. I’ve even learned not to let his sniffling in bed at night bother me. Well, not too much. Anyway, I don’t say anything to him. I’ve been doing his share of the dishes every night— have you noticed?—and without grumbling so’s he can get at the extra homework from High School. All those other chores I keep right on doing—the laundry and all that, so I don’t know what else I can do, but I have to ask one more thing of you.
“It just seems there’s no end to what can happen … can go wrong … well, when a baby’s born. I mentioned—well, you know—like what happened to Clementine and Bradford and being like Mrs. Scrit’s little girl, being just plain dead on arrival and I’ve asked you to please, with all your power to see that those things don’t happen. Now then, I’ve just met somebody called Sylvester Reginald Hollings. Mom says he’s a moron. A case-book example—which I figure must mean the very best possible example—and well, it’s … it’s just pathetic. I know you wouldn’t want to feel responsible for bringing somebody else into the world like that, so I’m asking just this one thing more … if I can sort of sneak it on the list with all the others? I hope I’m not asking too much, but things … things keep cropping up. Oh dear God! Please, please, please …”
I’d been singing lead soprano in the choir right up through the big Thanksgiving service. Actually right up through half of it. Then my voice broke. Cracked on my solo chorus in “Peace Be Still.” It didn’t crack in an up and down line—you know like some boys’ voices do—it broke right across the middle. One second I was holding a nice high note, then there was some sort of momentary stoppage in my throat and the note dropped down about a mile. Well, more than an octave. And there my voice has stayed, sort of comfortably down there just by my navel. I was mortified on the one hand—having it happen in performance—but delighted on the other. All my bodily chan
ges were happening right on time and I took it as a good omen. Almost as a sign from God that everything else would be all right. With the baby, I mean. When we were getting out of our choir robes in the vestry, I heard one of the boys from my class in school call me a “pious prick”—I must have been looking awfully smug. In my enlightened state, I took it as a compliment.
Mom had been taken to the county hospital by Dad while I was in church. He didn’t get home until about three in the morning. I was sitting up waiting for him, having kept up the running monologue with God for hours but finished abruptly when I heard the car pull up the dirt lane with, “OK. It’s up to you, now. I’ve simply done all I can …”
The door flew open, Dad was, as they say back home, looplegged drunk. “She’s fine … both shes is fine. She and she. Her and her.” He was hugging me and tears were running down both our faces. “Junior!” Dad called unnecessarily—he was already there hugging us. “You’ve all got a baby sister.” He giggled stupidly and repeated, “She and she. Milly and … and …” he slumped in a chair and put his face in his hands and mumbled, “and I’ve got another mouth to feed …” I thought he was crying, but after a few seconds’ silence, he lifted his face from his hands and grinned. “And I’ve got a baby daughter,” he sat up proudly. “She’s … she’s …”
“Rebecca,” I said softly, reminding him of the name Junior had chosen and we’d all agreed on.
The minute I was convinced—after an after-school visit to the hospital and a view of a little red-wrinkled squalling infant that Junior said had a face like a catcher’s mitt—that all was perfect with Mom and baby, I was ready to toss my halo to the winds. God and I had kept our vows. It wasn’t that I wanted to dash to the nearest secluded spot and masturbate, it was just that I felt free and exhilarated. But before I happily let my halo disintegrate into dust, I went into the catholic church I passed every morning on my way to school. I had three pennies—how I’d amassed such a fortune eludes me—and I dropped them into a slotted box and lighted a long slim amber candle the way Mrs. Scrit had taught me. “That’s for Rebecca, God, and for Mom. Thank you.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say but, “You’re a gent. You kept your bargain.”
I suppose I might have overdone the announcement at school a bit. I naturally told my teacher first—she seemed thrilled and said she’d come see my mother when she got home from hospital. My terror that she’d see where we lived put the first damper on my excitement, but I told her I’d let her know when Mom was ready to have visitors.
The second damper came from the bully from church who had called me a pious prick. He overheard me telling other classmates and he said, “That ought to be your name, suction. Rebecca. Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm,” he minced girlishly. He got the laugh he wanted from the others and God got one more request from me. “Please, God, I’m going to have to fight that asshole one of these days. Stay on my side once more, please. And help.”
No longer held by vows, I was open for all comers. That doesn’t sound all that nice, but I guess it’s near enough the truth. Masturbation wasn’t even a consideration, Mrs. Hollings took care of the problem. That sounds even less nice. I mean she took care of the problem by hiring another family—the Strouds—to help with the grape harvest and they moved into what could only with the utmost kindness be called a shack. The Stroud family was made up of females—except for the skinny, drained-out father—of all ages, sizes and descriptions. A sort of take-your-pick. I was ready and I did. Mine was called Naomi and she was quite simply Mary Ann six years on. In age and experience.
Naomi could twirl a baton and she was going to teach me how. She was going to be the champion baton-twirler of the world. At the 1939 World’s Fair in San Francisco there’d be a contest and she was going to enter and win it. And I believed her. She was that good. She had a real baton, silver colored with a large rubber ball at one end and a rubber stopper on the other. When she twirled it, you saw nothing but the blur of flashing silver. She could twirl it around her head, around her neck, around her waist, around both legs, around one leg at a time, she could toss it so high that it faded out of sight and she’d catch it each time without letting the speed of the twirling diminish by a second. She was a magician with a magic wand.
“You see, if you slow down enough for the eye to make out the ball on the end, then, poo, you’re disqualified. That means you’ve got to keep up the same rhythm and speed or … well, poo, you just ain’t in the runnin’.” They were from Oklahoma, all blue-eyed, with matted blond hair and filthy dirty. “I say ‘poo’ a lot to break myself from saying ‘shit.’ Paw said I was sayin’ shit so much I was beginnin’ to smell like it.” I was mad about her.
Naomi was an excellent teacher—both in baton-twirling and what she called “shaggin’.” In both activities she was firmly in charge. She arranged the choreography for her baton-twirling presentation and worked out all the movements and positions when we shagged in a manner that suited her best. What suited her best was straddling over on top of me. It suited me just fine too.
“Ooo-ooh, no. You ain’t goin’ to get me in that position. That down-on-my-back position. I’m goin’ to be right up here where I can see what’s goin’ on. That old flat-out business don’t give a girl a chanct to run, jump or dodge.” She never giggled, but laughed deep in her throat, husky and I found it sexy. “That’s what happened to Patty May. She told me. When she was just fourteen. That little’un, Bobbie June? Well, she ain’t my baby sister, she’s Patty May’s baby. I’m her Aunt Naomi.” Her laughter bubbled. “Auntie Naomi at thirteen. Besides, Momma’d be dead if she’d had us all. That’s why I’m goin’ to do it my way.”
And she did. I was putty in her hands. She’d stretch me out on my back on the big work table in the barn and when she got me hard would squat down over me, guiding me into what she called her “cooze” while I lay back with my hands behind my head watching spellbound as this puzzle fitted so beautifully together. Squatting there, watching herself through her legs with her head bent over, she’d sometimes stroke herself at the top of her cooze while she’d spin around on me and her eyes’d get glazed and her head would drop back while she made a gurgling sound deep in her throat with her husky voice.
“What’s that lump you play with,” I asked on one of our first sessions.
“That’s the little man in the boat. He’s a girl’s best friend. Feel. It gets hard like you do.”
I did and it did. She’d move herself around on me in the strangest ways, in little circles, slightly up and down—rather the way Mary Ann had done on my finger that first time in the Valentine Post Office, but having my thing inside her instead of a finger was a considerable improvement. Being inside her cooze was as warm and moist as Vic’s mouth. Then she’d put all her weight down on my groin and grind her buttocks into me so hard that it’d hurt. But the minute she felt me responding too much, she’d do a sharp little flipping movement with her behind that dislodged us and she’d drop down flat on me, so we were stomach to stomach and then she’d do delicious rippling movements with her tummy that made me come. There were variations on that theme, but only at her instigation.
As I became more adept at twirling the baton—and I could soon do all the tricks she did—I elaborated on her basic patterns and worked out more complicated combinations. I used an old broom handle for practice and had it with me most of the time. It all took a great deal of practice and I didn’t have all that much free time what with school and taking care of Becky. She was my baby. Nobody seemed to question the fact when I just took her over. After Mom’s breasts became too painful to feed her, I prepared her formula, boiling the bottles and nipples and warming the milk to exactly the right temperature, feeding her, burping her, bathing her and finally washing her diapers.
“I’ll gladly do the dishes every night,” Junior said, “so long as I don’t have to even see those filthy things.” The covered bucket in which the diapers soaked was kept discreetly under the sink in the kitchen. W
ith no indoor toilet to dump the waste into, the water did turn a rather sickly yellow.
“Oh, don’t be so fussy. It’s just milk. That’s all she eats now.”
“Maybe it started out milk,” he said pedantically, “but it has been through her entire system and it is now shit.”
So I scrubbed the diapers as directed by Mom—soaked, rinsed, boiled, rubbed on the board in hot soapy water, then four—count them carefully—four clear water rinses or she’ll get a rash. “I’ve got dish-pan hands, and you’ve got diaper-digits,” Junior said comparing our rough and reddened hands.
Christmas was as gay as we could make it. That is make it with no money. Mrs. Hollings brought us a huge tree from a ranch she said she had down near Visalia and insisted on helping us decorate it. Junior and I made much the same decorations we’d done that last year at Grandpa and Grandma Woods’.
“Ain’t it lovely havin’ a tree!” Mrs. Hollings cackled. She bore a rather alarming resemblance to a parrot and her watchful beady little eyes were pure MacKenzie. “It was Syl’s idea. No good havin’ one for us now. Both too old.” She hit Syl on the shoulder and shouted—she always shouted at him as though that would make him comprehend and perhaps it did, but nothing we said to him ever seemed to register—“Go get the ladder and the angel.” He slithered away into their part of the house. “Well, have you guessed yet?” MacKenzie’s eyes flicked around at us all. We knew what she meant. She asked that question every time we saw her. “What the B. V. stands for in my name? Not yet? Well, keep workin’ on it. You might git it one day. And the hundert dollars.” Her look was of triumph, knowing we’d never guess. She scrambled up the ladder Syl had placed next to the tree with surprising agility, looking now like a cross between a bird and a monkey.
In Tall Cotton Page 28