1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/JULIE GOES AWAY

"Honey," Aunt Kate said, her honeysweet voice kind and soothing.   "If there's a dog heaven, I know Julie's in it."  She wasn't our aunt, but she wanted to be called that.  And her voice always sounded the same way:  sweet, smooth, unruffled.  I knew Aunt Kate, a pillar of the tiny church we attended, didn't believe that animals went to heaven, but she said it to try to make me feel better.

At that, I burst into more tears.  My face was red and splotched.  I didn't "cry pretty" like some people.  It was an ugly sight.  My nose stopped up, my eyes swelled, and I looked a mess.  I wished I could cry like the women in the movies who dabbed at their eyes and noses, their facial features unmarred and perfect. 

"But I didn't get to say goodbye to her," I wailed.  "They took her to the vet, and they never brought her home.  They didn't even ask me!"  There was a brief lull as I thought of more indignation and hurt.  "And she was just staring at me when she left with them.  Just staring at me from over the back of the tailgate like she didn't even know me," I sobbed.  "She was droolin' real  bad."

"Honey, she had sleepin' sickness.  There's no gettin' over that.  Your mama and daddy did what they thought was best.  They knew she wud'n gonna get well.  It was for the best."  She took my snotty hands in her soft, plump ones, held them both in one and patted with the other. 

"Why don't you try some of this coconut cake Aunt Kate brought ya'll?  I made it this morning when I heard about Julie.  I know you loved that puppy.  She was a real sweet girl."

I had cried so long I'd about made myself sick.  To date, Julie's death was the most grievous thing I had ever experienced.  Julie didn't demand anything.  She played if I wanted to play, rested if I wanted to rest, and Jan and I had her chase us just about every night that she lived, growling, shaking the llama houseshoes we ran in, like her life depended on killing them. 

I loved sneaking to the door every night to let her in, and the light pressure of her body as she jumped on the foot of the bed and settled down on the tops of my feet. Her light snoring and tiny grunts and yelps were comforting night sounds.  Occasionally, when she slept during the day, we laughed at her little yips, like she was having a bad dream.

Mother came into the kitchen about that time.  She'd been doing something, but I wondered what, since she always spent time with Aunt Kate when she visited.  She'd helped her up the front steps, since Aunt Kate was round and elderly.  She'd taken the cake and put it in the kitchen-then she disappeared for about five minutes.

Aunt Kate, with her twisted gray hair and perfect powdered face, looked like she could have come out of a tintype formal portrait.  She always wore a dress; her soft hairdo swept up and framed that face, that  etching of  human kindness.

Mother didn't like for her children to cry.  Maybe that's why she so rarely told us no, or don't, or stop.  It made her uncomfortable.  She wasn't one to dig deep into the emotions.  Pragmatic, she just thought people, including children,  had to buck up and deal with whatever came their way.

 My grandmother Nettie told me once it was just mother's way, not necessarily a bad way, just her way.  She'd grown up with a mother who wouldn't sign her report card, making her wait till her dad could do it.  Since he worked the evening shift, the kids always had to take their cards a day late.   "Kids don't understand mental illness,"  she'd said, so they just had to find ways to make it okay.  Mother's method was just to ignore it and push on .  It worked pretty well for her, but I needed more. 

I know Mother would never have called Aunt Kate to talk to me, but since Aunt Kate had shown up, she just more or less let it happen.  And it worked.  I sniffled a few more minutes, but I felt encouraged that Julie had made such a good impression on her.  And I accepted her assessment of sleeping sickness.  Julie couldn't have lived drooling like that and staring at people.  It would have scared them. 

Aunt Kate slipped the knife  through the three layer cake and placed her scrumptious creation on a dish Mother had bought at Safeway.  It was blue and white and featured an idyllic country scene with a picturesque house.  "Here, sweetie," she said kindly.  "Eat this.  You'll feel better."

Going against what I believed to be true, I allowed myself to picture Julie running on top of a puffy white cloud, bounding  forward awkwardly  like she always did.  Abruptly I saw her stop, front legs splayed, and there in a little indentation of the cloud was a llama houseshoe.  If there was a dog heaven, she would be happy there.

I took a big bite of cake, savoring the rough texture of the coconut and the sweetness.   Sudddenly I felt certain I could be me again, stop crying and move forward.

 "That's better, isn't it?" Mother asked me, but I think it was more of a statement.  She didn't wait for an answer, getting saucers for herself and Aunt Kate.  "Want some coffee, Kate?" she asked, already gathering the cups.   

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/THE RUNAWAY

A few years after we moved to Corbet, I ran away from home.  Well, to be  exactly accurate, I didn't actually do it, but I intended to. 

I almost never got mad at Mother, but I think we were talking about when I got to do certain things that made me feel more grown up, and we did not agree about the when of things.  Apparently it affected me much more than it did her, for even though in a childish rage I pulled out all the drawers in the dresser and left my clothes hanging haphazardly out of their normal places, setting up a scene that would instantly relay to her that I was gone,  she never came to our end of our long ranchstyle house to check on me.

Standing waiting behind the door lost its appeal after about ten minutes.  I had  hoped to hear her open it and lament loudly (maybe even cry ) about my having run away.  I had planned to step from behind the door, reassure her that I was no longer mad (now that she was properly upset about my absence), she would say she was sorry, and all would be well again.

Eventually, I refolded the clothes, put them back in their proper places, gently slid the drawers back in place, and opened the bedroom door into the hall.  My anger, now a sputter replacing an open throttle, left me mopey, but chastened.  I drug my loafers on the carpet with each step, scraping minute bits of black suede off the toes onto the champagne colored carpet.  I expected Mother to be in the kitchen, because after all, what parent would leave the house when their kid might be running away?

Jan was sitting at the kitchen table eating a piece of chocolate cake.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked, but I wasn't sure if she really wanted to know or was just making a comment about how morose I looked.    

I contemplated how much to tell her.  Maybe I should just keep it all to myself-- but I couldn't.  I never could keep things to myself. 

"Well, I was going to run away from home--I sort of did -- but Mother didn't even come to check on me," I groused.

She observed me for a few seconds, about like you'd glance at a sewage plant pointed out on  a lake tour.  "Why'd you do that?" she asked,  nonchalantly, focusing again on her food, cutting a big bite of cake.

Suddenly all the drama I'd felt and enacted seemed petty and stupid.

"That's pretty stupid," she said as if reading my mind.  "I hope you straightened up your side of the room," she laughed.

We shared a room with twin beds, and it was like it was divided by the prime meridian, her side messy, mine neat, except for the slightly grimy spot where Julie slept each night at the foot of my bed.

"Where's Mother?"  I wanted to know; I just wasn't sure I wanted to see her right now.

"Oh, she's outside on the patio reading the paper.  She said it was such a pretty day she didn't want to waste it all inside.  She'd always rather be outside than in, you know that.  She's sitting out there by that big tree trunk you made Daddy drag up there."  Jan wasn't a fan of my crude home improvement projects.

"That's the fish cleaning table," I huffed.  "Mother really likes it."

"Well, anyway, she's out there.  Nettie's out there too.  She just drove up."

I took a deep breath and went outside, edging around the corner of the garage and under the shade of the large oak that grew just a few feet from the house.  Mother and Nettie were seated in lawnchairs, talking.  Nettie looked up and smiled, and I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. 

"Hi," I said without much enthusiasm. 

Mother smiled at me and kept on talking about Muleshoe, Texas where Daddy was working now, near Lubbock.  Then she went on about what Neila was doing in Austin and the fact that Elton had started working as the produce manager at Safeway.  You couldn't tell there had been any conflict between us earlier in the day, and I knew she'd never mention it to Nettie or to me, but I wanted to ask her why she never came to check on me, so I sat listening to them, trying to let go of my anger. 

I looked over at the fishcleaning table/treetrunk.  I had dug a hole, then begged Daddy to get the tractor and drag the partial trunk over.  I pictured it having pots of varicolored blooming flowers sitting on it, but in our family pragmatism usually won out over aesthetics, so it became fish over flowers. 

I didn't even like to eat fish.  It smelled too bad, but Mother would stand at the treetrunk, cut their heads off, gut them, scale them, then march inside and cook them.   The death and the eating were way too close in time to each other for me. 

Nettie decided she wanted to fish, so she asked me to get a cane pole from the garage.  She had brought some minnows, which were sitting in a gray metal bucket in the shade under the tree.  She walked slowly out toward the tank in her Daniel Green houseshoes, wearing her huge large brim hat, something like a farmer's sombrero, carrying the pole, while I ambled along with the minnow bucket.

"I'll clean whatever you catch," Mother had called out as she went inside to prepare lunch.

"I don't like to fish," I told Nettie as I tried to trap one of the fast moving minnows for her.  Handing one to her, I watched, wincing as she slipped the hook through the minnow's back.

"Why?" she said, holding the pole up straight, then slinging the line over her head and forward, letting the little minnow land with a "plop" in the dark mossy water.  We watched the red and white cork bob languidly.  Nettie sat down in a faded green  metal lawnchair that we left out by the tank summer and winter.  I pulled its rusty twin beside her though it was heavy and took some effort, dirt and leaves clinging to the curved metal legs. 

"First, I think it's too boring--unless the fish are really biting.  Second, Daddy doesn't ever want us to talk or move around.  He always thinks the fish can hear all the noise and won't bite.  I don't think they're that smart.  And third, I feel sorry for the minnows and the fish.  They look so pitiful, hooks hung in their lips, trying to breathe when they're out of water."  I noticed that I was saying that a lot now--I felt sorry for this thing, that person, that situation.   

"Well, I like fishing, myself, and I didn't even know they had lips," Nettie said, staring placidly at the calm water.  "I don't think the fish feel as much as you think.  Th' end justifies th' means."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, fish are for eatin'.  We have to catch 'em to eat 'em, don't we?"  She laughed her quiet chuckle.
"Ooh, I'm burnin' down!"  She always said that when the rest of us said "burning up". 

A warm breeze wafted across us, but our sweaty shirts stuck to the green paint of the chairs as we leaned forward to watch something nibbling  at Nettie's hook, causing the red and white cork to bobble.  Her knees creaked and popped as she stood up slowly, getting ready.  One, two, three bobs of the cork, she jerked the line to set the hook, then she raised the pole straight up and swung a small bass around and onto the ground. 

"Get the stringer," she instructed as she removed the hook from the fish's lip.  A few drops of red blood spread across the scaly skin like red food coloring.  I looked away.  I pitched the stringer to her, but found some reason to look toward the bawling cows in the pasture.  Then I busied myself groping in the bucket for a minnow which I knew she'd need in a few seconds.  Handing the tiny fish to her, I suddenly decided to go inside and trotted off toward the house. 

"Come inside soon," I yelled back over my shoulder at her like I was her mother.  "It's really hot out here." 

She didn't answer, just sailed the string, the sad little minnow hung  to the hook by its backbone, and the cork, into the water with a tiny splash,  her big hat moving this way and that, trying to keep up with her arm movements.  

Then under my breath, I whispered, "Yeah, I know, I'm burning down." And I laughed all the way to the backdoor.   I took the two steps in one stride opening the screened door simultaneously, bursting through the utility room  into the kitchen.  Mother was standing with her back to me, peeling potatoes.

"Where's Nettie?" she asked, without looking around.

"Out by the tank fishing."

"Catching any?  We could have them for lunch."

"One little one."  I started to say I felt sorry for it, but Mother wouldn't understand that.

 "Mother, I probably wouldn't have run away, even if you had come to look for me," I started. 

"What?" she asked absentmindedly, reaching into the cabinet for salt.  "What are you talking about?"

"Umm, nothing," I decided to say nothing further about it.  I doubted Jan would think it important enough to mention to Mother what I had told her earlier. 

"Okay," she said, still concentrating on the potatoes and reaching to turn on the gas burner. 

That was the day I decided that theatrics didn't work in our family.  No one paid attention to drama, and  if they did, they would just think it was stupid.  I had to come up with a new plan for  getting my point across. 

Mother would listen to Jan because she was the baby; Neila because she was the oldest; Susan was calm, smart, and logical.  I needed to find an ally.  Someone older, someone who would take my part no matter what.  Who was I kidding?  Well, an ally at any rate.

"Well," I thought, "I'm burning down today."  And I headed back out to the tank and took a seat beside my grandmother.  "How old were you when you started going to dances?" I asked, hoping against hope that she'd be truthful.  "And what about wearing makeup?  And shaving your legs?"

At that, she looked over at me with a questioning look and a small grin and settled back into her chair. 

"Oooh, now let's see.  Give those to me slower.  I'm burnin' down."